Knowing Your Pelvic Floor

First off, what in the Harriet’s Hornets is the Pelvic Floor? Well Ms., you came to the right place!

 

The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that lie like a hammock from your pubic bone to your tailbone. They function to: keep you from peeing and pooping your pants, help you enjoy intercourse, and provide support along with your other core muscles so that your arms and legs can move freely in space. This obviously is a very simplified version of anatomy but you get the point. It is a muscle, just like any other muscle in your body. What makes it a bit more challenging is, unlike most muscles, you can’t visually see the pelvic floor. This makes it more difficult to have self-awareness of how your pelvic floor is functioning.

 

So, what makes a great functioning pelvic floor you ask? Let’s take a look!

 

Top Seven Snippets for a Smooth Sailing Pelvic Floor

 

Your Breath

 

You may be thinking, what the heck Taryn, you have really gone off the deep end here. But let me reassure you, I haven’t gone completely nuts…not yet anyway. You see, our pelvic floor works with our breath…wait what!? When we inhale, our diaphragm descends along with our pelvic floor. When we exhale, our diaphragm recoils with a contraction of our pelvic floor. We can use this exhale to help contract our pelvic floor for things like picking up our child off the ground, doing a box jump, or getting up off a couch. If you suffer from stress incontinence or have a tight pelvic floor, breathing can be one factor we can alter to see if this changes your symptoms.

 

Positioning

 

Do you ever find yourself in the worst possible posture just hanging out? Just the other day I was at an eatery and I saw a previous patient of mine. She asked if I was expecting! Oh, dear goodness NO! When I looked down, I was hanging on my ligaments and just letting my stomach pooch out like I was 3 months pregnant again. Let it all hang out I guess…geez!

 

Now I will say, we aren’t talking about a perfect posture here but rather a position that your muscles, breath, and body functions at its best. Our bodies like to move and groove!

 

If you have had a baby, you may find that you revert back to your pregnancy posture (like me)! You may tuck your butt under, lean back, flare your ribs, and hang out on the ligaments in the front of your hips. This positioning with our butts tucked under makes it difficult for our pelvic floor muscles to fire throughout their full range of motion. On the flip side, our pelvic floor also doesn’t work well in an anterior pelvic tilt position or butt stuck out position.

 

Positioning can also affect your intra-abdominal pressure. If you have a forward shoulder posture with a rounded back, you are squishing your abdominal cavity creating more pressure down on your pelvic floor. This increased pressure if not managed correctly can create issues with leaking or even pelvic organ prolapse. So, check yourself!

 

Your Glutes

The glutes are beautiful beefy muscles that move our lower extremities and help “stabilize” our pelvis during weight bearing (when you have weight on your legs). If your glutes are being lazy or they are weak, who shows up to help? You guessed it, your pelvic floor! This compensation pattern may be a contributing factor to tight pelvic floors. Strengthen those glutes and maybe those pelvic floors will learn to relax a little.

 

If you have developed the “butt tucked under” positioning and your gluts are clenched. This also can affect the function of your pelvic floor. We need to start by untucking our tooshes and strengthen them.

 

 

Adductors

 

The adductor muscles (groin muscles) are a window into the pelvic floor due to close proximity of the adductor muscles and pelvic floor. If someone struggles with finding their pelvic floor, using the adductor muscles can provide some feedback to get the pelvic floor to wake up! For example, if someone is having difficulty feeling their pelvic floor, I would have them kick in their adductors by squeezing a ball between their knees.

 

On the other side of the coin, the adductors may be tight and grouchy if a gal is over utilizing her adductors to compensate for a weak pelvic floor. These grouchy adductors can play a role in leaking and incontinence.

 

Good Bowel Movements

 

Constipation is no Bueno in general but especially for the health of our pelvic floor. If you are chronically constipated you may bear down putting a lot of strain and stress on your pelvic floor. In addition, if you have a pelvic floor that isn’t operating in tip-top-shape, constipation may be a symptom of this. For example, if your pelvic floor is tight, it may not be able to relax and allow bowel movements to pass.

 

Having Strong Abdominal Muscles

 

If your abdominal muscles are weak and stretched out (like after a baby), you may have difficulty stabilizing your trunk during movement. This lack of stability may cause increased demand on other muscles (including your pelvic floor) for stability as well as poor management of intra-abdominal pressure.

 

Intra-abdominal pressure is the pressure within our abdominal cavities and plays a role in “stabilization”. If we were to pick up a barbell with a bunch of weight on it, we would need to be able to brace with our abdomen, creating enough pressure within our abdominal cavity to get that weight up off the ground. If we don’t have a strong abdomen, we will leak pressure and support to perform this task. This leaking of pressure may present as incontinence, flatulence, prolapse, difficulty healing a diastasis recti or other issues.

 

Knowing Your Pelvic Floor

 

Not really quite sure what your pelvic floor is doing? This is where the pelvic floor physical therapist swoops in to save the day. A pelvic floor PT can perform an internal evaluation to test your pelvic floor muscle strength and endurance as well as treat pesky trigger points in the pelvic floor muscles that can be causing you some pain.

 

Here are some common signs that may give you some insight into how your pelvic floor is functioning.

 

Over-Active Pelvic Floor	Under-Active Pelvic Floor
Are you a stressed out, type-A kind of gal	Are you a pretty relaxed, easy going person
Difficulty starting to pee or you have a 2nd pee	Difficult time feeling a kegel
Do you experience constipation	You experience urine leakage
Pain with sex	Tampons sometimes fall out
Leaking with sneezing or with stressful activities like jumping or running	Sex just doesn’t feel the same
SI joint or hip pain	Heavy feeling in your vagina
Have difficulty feeling your pelvic floor relax during a kegel	SI joint or hip pain

 

 

If you feel that maybe you need some additional help with your pelvic floor, reach out to me! I would love to help!