The two exercises you can see on screen are sometimes taught as bladder control exercises
for men. Which one of these exercises do you think is the most effective for improving bladder
control? Hi, I'm Michelle. And unfortunately, neither of these two exercises will improve your
bladder control these exercises while they're still taught sometimes as Kegel exercises,
they're actually exercises for your buttocks for your hips and for your thighs, they won't
do anything for improving your bladder control so you're wasting your time if you're doing those.
Today, we're going to go through the correct Kegel exercises to do for improving your bladder
control, I'm going to show you the two key steps that you need to do to activate these muscles.
And then I'm going to teach you how to train these muscles most effectively. Now, just before
we start, you need to know where these muscles are. So I just talked about the hip muscles and
the back muscles that you actually training with the other exercises you can see goes outside the
pelvis. So this is the pelvis does muscles sit outside the muscles you need to train for these
exercises for Kegel exercises for bladder control. In and around the pelvis, they sit here at the
base of the pelvis, which is why they called the pelvic floor muscles, you can see them here
highlighted in blue. Now, the important muscles that to train for your bladder control are the
muscles at the front for men, so we're not so much worried about the muscles around the anus, we're
looking at the muscles, and we're strengthening the muscles that are around the front.
Now there's two key steps to activating these muscles. Let's go through these key steps. The
first step is to visualize or imagine you're stopping the flow of urine and contract the
muscles in and around your penis, as if you're stopping the flow. You can test this do it once
a week. But try not to do it as a regular exercise when you're emptying your bladder, because it can
interfere with bladder emptying and cause problems with bladder emptying. So that's step one is to
imagine you're stopping the flow. And you can test that to see whether it's working or not.
The second step is to shorten the penis, the action is to shorten the penis as if you're as
if it's a turtle pulling its head into its shell, so retracting its head back into a shell, and then
relaxing. So those are the two important parts of your Kegel exercise for bladder control, stopping
the flow and shortening the penis, then relaxing the muscles back to resting. Now, if you're not
sure whether you're shortening well enough or not, you can stand side on to a mirror, and you can
look for that shortening retraction X action, and then see the relaxation as well. Really
important that you get those two steps going together before you actually start your training.
Now how to train most effectively? Well, the first part is to do a combination of both
long and short Kegel exercises in your bladder control training exercise regime.
Now long Kegel exercises are exercises that you hold for a long duration of time, so we're looking
at for men holding up to 10 seconds. So that means doing the action that I just described,
shortening and stopping the flow and holding it for one and two, and up to 10 seconds.
And then repeat that a number of times per set during the day. And we try to get you to do
up to six sets a day of 10 exercises. So quite a few exercises of your long exercises,
we also try to get you to do short exercises. Now the other exercises,
the longer ones with a muscle endurance. The short ones are short, fast, hold their one second,
lift, lower, or contract, relax. And these are for strength and for power. To control the bladder,
it's actually an exercise called the neck. And they control bladder leaks with
activities like coughing, sneezing, heavy lifting. So we also try to get you to do 10 of those short
exercises in a row as well six times a day. So if you're not sure about the number of exercises you
need to be doing, just stay tuned, because my next video coming up and also link it above is on how
many Kegel exercises you need to do for training. I'm not going to go into that so much today.
Now, the third thing we need to go through is the best positions for doing your Kegel exercises
for improving your bladder control. Now when you start out, the muscles might be weak, which means
you might need to start lying down perhaps you can start lying down on a lounge or on a bed with
your knees bent and do that action that I talked about doing your long exercises and doing your
short exercises. Now as you improve and you can imagine if you're lying down pelvic floor muscles
are like that so they're not under any load. We then get you to actually move into sitting. So if
you're sitting on a chair, you can then start to lift the muscles against gravity, which is
really important for strengthening and making the best strength gains you can for your pelvic floor
muscles. So you can do those exercises there, and the other benefit from sitting is sometimes
you can feel the muscles around the base of the penis contracting and moving away from the chair.
So it acts as a good reference point for some feedback about the correctness of your exercise.
Now, finally, we get you to do exercises in standing, because standing is the position
that you really are most likely to leak or lick urine. So this is the position that you really
need to practice in, and also to your make your most strength gains lifted against gravity when
you are in standing, as opposed to lying down. So standing exercises are really important. If
you can do standing exercises when you first start out fantastic. Start with your standing exercises.
Now, finally, I want to talk about functional training. This is a really important part of
bladder control exercises for men. And it's often overlooked. functional training means
to train your muscles for when you really need them to work. So it's all well and good to do
your exercises. But if you don't use them when you need them, for example before and during a cough,
before and during a sneeze before and during lifting. Those are the times where you're more
inclined to have stress incontinence. So those are the times that you need to practice
those exercises. If you're a gentleman that has problems leaking, when you go from sitting
to standing, contract your pelvic floor muscles with the technique that I've already described,
when you sit in. And as you move into standing so that you actually get that
pre contraction happening as you move into standing and practice doing that.
When the bladder isn't full, so that you can actually improve your condition so that when
the bladder is full, you're more likely to be able to hold and remain confident. And remember,
finally, I talked about the importance of doing your exercises standing because that
is the position that you're most likely to leak. So it's important to practice your
exercises in preparation for when your bladder is full, and when you're more likely to leak
in standing. So we've talked about quite a lot there haven't we we've talked about the two
key essential parts of your Kegel exercise for bladder control. We've also talked about the
positions to start your exercises in to train most effectively for bladder control. And then
we talked about doing long and short exercises and the importance of functional training. So I really
hope this information helps you with Kegel exercises that improve your bladder control.
And if you've liked the video, I'd really appreciate it if you can give it a like below
because then YouTube will show it to other men that can benefit from this information
as well. Thanks so much for watching today. Look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye for now.