How to do Pelvic Floor Exercises
Pelvic floor exercises are very easy to do and if you persevere they will soon become an automatic part of your daily routine. So how do you go about strenghtening your pelvic floor muscles?
- First of all you need to locate your pelvic floor muscles. To do this just stop and start the flow of urine next time you use the toilet. The muscles that allow you to do this are the pelvic floor muscles and the even squeeze-relax routine exercises are known as basic kegels. (Please note, once you have initially located your pelvic floor muscles you should not do kegels regularly when you are actually using the toilet as it can lead to urinary tract infections and other problems.)
- Now that you know where the muscles are you need to exercise them by squeezing and relaxing them frequently throughout the day. It is generally recommended that you aim to do around 200 a day and it's best to try to get into a rountine doing them in bursts of 10, 20, 30 at a time or whatever you can comfortably manage.
- Once you've mastered basic kegels you can move onto some variations. One of the more well-known Kegels is the Elevator Kegel. To do this exercise you need to tighten the muscles slowly imagining it's an elavator stopping on several levels. At each stop you should aim to hold the muscles for five seconds before releasing them. You can also try gradually releasing the muscles as you imagine going back down the elevator.
Over a very gradual period of time you will begin to notice that your pelvic floor exercises are having a positive impact. You will have more control over your bladder and bowel and your vagina will feel tightened which can make sex more pleasurable for many women.
If you find it difficult to remember to do the kegel exercises or you find it hard to do them it is possible to buy Kegel exercisers. These are little battery operated devices, similar to an over-sized tampon, which automatically stimulate the pelvic floor muscles electronically by sending a small electrical impulse to the affected muscles. Many women have great success with these as it makes the exercises easy to remember to do and they don't have to count how many or how often they do them. Also, because the strength of the electrical impulse can be altered it can be adjusted to be weaker or stronger as need be.
Unfortunately, for a small number of women no amount of Kegel exercises will help repair the damage caused by pregnancy and childbirth. If this is the case with you, your gp will refer you for a corrective procedure which will require a general anaesthetic but which has a high success rate.