5 exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor

Symptoms that the pelvic floor is not right

Some symptoms reveal that the pelvic floor muscles are not in the best condition:

Does your pee leak? Do you have to run to the bathroom when you get home? Does it hurt during sexual intercourse? Has an anal or vaginal “air” escaped you? Do you feel like you are wearing a tampon wrong? Do you have a feeling of weight in the lower abdomen? Is it hard or does it hurt to have a bowel movement?

Any of these symptoms or problems that affect the urinary, gynecological, sexual or defecation world is reason enough to make a consultation about the pelvic floor status with a specialized physiotherapist.

Why does the pelvic floor give so much trouble?

When you imagine the pelvic floor, surely you visualize it as a hammock. It is a logical idea, but incomplete. The pelvic floor doesn’t hang down there, isolated. It is part of a larger set in the shape of a sphere: the abdominopelvic sphere.

Imagine the sphere as a balloon:

The top is the diaphragm.The wall is the transverse abdominis –the deepest muscle of the abdominals–. The lower part is the pelvic floor.

The three parties work together. When you squeeze the balloon at the top, the other side bulges. The pressure that comes from above falls below, on the pelvic floor.

the pelvic floor It’s not just for women. Men also have it, only, due to obvious anatomical differences, we express different problems. Men have the same pressure system as women.

re-educate the system

The pelvic floor is not usually the source of the problems, but suffers the consequences. The sphere deprograms and the pelvic floor falls a excess pressurewhich often weakens it.

One has to re-educate the system so that the abdominal girdle, the pelvic floor and the diaphragm work as a team again, that is, distributing the pressure correctly. For this reason, too local a focus on the pelvic floor (such as when only Kegel exercises are performed) falls short.

From hypopressive exercises to hypopressive attitude

Undoubtedly it is necessary to work when there are problems, but it is just as or even more interesting to prevent them. We will achieve this by adopting a hypopressive attitude, that is, learning to live with the pelvic floor in mind, without falling on it, respecting it. The hypopressive attitude is a bodily and vital attitude.

We say that the pelvic floor is “a world of queens”, because posture is the foundation. It is an unfolded, expanded, open posture… and elongation is your key. By stretching (with the chin tucked in) we activate the abdominal belt.

A queen’s posture opens spaces, decreases pressure, activates friendly muscles and optimizes the functioning of the abdominopelvic sphere.

Play at home: put a weight on top of your head and walk like a queen!