Some pelvic floor exercises that you currently see online in exercise videos actually aren't pelvic
floor exercises at all. In actual fact, they'll waste your time and your energy. If you're trying
to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. If you've currently got weak pelvic floor muscles, or if
you've got pelvic floor dysfunction problems, such as vaginal looseness, bladder control problems,
or even prolapse issues. The really worrying thing is that some of these exercises are potentially
dangerous for women that already have pelvic floor weakness or pelvic floor dysfunction.
Hi, I'm Michelle. And today we're going through five of these online exercise videos that you
will readily find that are described represented as pelvic floor exercises, when in actual fact,
they're not pelvic floor exercises at all, what they will do is waste your time,
your energy, and perhaps make you feel disillusion that you're not getting
the games that you want to make with your correct pelvic floor exercises.
So let's start with the bridge exercise. Now this exercise involves lifting and lowering the trunk
on and off the ground by lying on an exercise mat on the floor, it's often also called a floor
bridge. Now, this is a fantastic exercise for strengthening your buttocks and your buttocks,
outside your body, and your large gluteal muscles and it just involves lifting and
lowering as you can see on the screen to strengthen those muscles. Now, it's really
important to know that the glutes or the gluteal muscles, actually outside the body, the buttocks,
actually, this is the pelvis here, and they actually sit here at the back of the pelvis.
So, the pelvic floor muscles, in contrast, actually sit inside the body in and around
this part of the opening of the pelvis in and around your three pelvic openings and that's
why they're called the pelvic floor muscles. Now, one of the most important things I'm going
to say today is pelvic floor exercises need to be specific for the pelvic floor muscles,
these muscles here. Exercising other muscles in the body isn’t going to strengthen these
muscles specifically. If you're trying to overcome pelvic floor problems, or if your pelvic floor
muscles are weak. These are the muscles that you need to specifically strengthen not other
muscles in the body and there's not going to be a magic carryover effect on these actual muscles if
your muscles are already weak. If you're not sure how to do your pelvic floor exercises correctly,
you can check my exercise video above here, which describes exactly how to do pelvic floor exercises
for recovering pelvic floor muscle function and overcoming pelvic floor problems. So, as we can
see, the bridge exercise is unfortunately well it's a lovely exercise, but it's not
a great exercise for the pelvic floor muscles at all. In fact, it's not a pelvic floor exercise.
The second exercise I'd like you to draw your attention to is the abdominal curl or the
abdominal crunch and you'll see this done in many different forms; legs raised, shoulders, you know,
hands behind their head as you can see here and it's an exercise for the rectus abdominus,
or six-pack muscles, that six-pack that everyone wants to get. First point is, incidentally,
these exercises will never flatten your stomach if that's the reason you're doing them and what
researchers actually found is in women with weak pelvic floor muscles during this exercise,
by contracting these upper abdominal muscles forces a pressure downwards on
the pelvic floor that the pelvic floor is actually pushed down repeatedly with every
intense exercise that's done in women with weak pelvic floor muscles. Now,
if your pelvic floor is already strong, you've got no problems. I'm not talking about that
situation. This is if you're actually trying to repair your pelvic floor. So,
abdominal curl exercises, and intense abdominal exercises will potentially damage or stretch out
and further weaken your pelvic floor muscles. So these definitely aren't pelvic floor exercises. So
don't confuse these core exercises with the pelvic floor, which are also core muscles.
The third exercise that I'd like to draw your attention to is the squat. And again,
this is a terrific exercise for strengthening the thighs, and the buttocks, or don't have a
problem with women doing squats if their pelvic floor muscles are working really well. However,
this is not a pelvic floor exercise, even though you'll commonly see it represented as such,
in online videos at the moment. Now you will see that this exercise involves often involves the
legs' wider part and again with a weight. If you're doing this particular exercise in that
form that you can actually see online now, this actually creates another pressure downwards and
this is again research-based research back that deep squats increase the load on the pelvic floor,
and this will happen in women, particularly after childbirth with menopause with weak
pelvic floor muscles. You can possibly make this exercise more pelvic floor friendly by
keeping the legs narrow rather than wide and doing a wall squat perhaps but it's
not a pelvic floor exercise, it's not going to fix your pelvic floor problems unfortunately.
The fourth exercise is an interesting exercise and I want to draw your attention to it because it's
actually recommended as a pelvic floor exercise. It's an Adductor squeeze. So what it involves is
actually placing our Pilates ball or a yoga block between the legs and actually squeezing
the knees together. So, you might if you've tried this exercise, you might even feel a
tightening in the groin area. This is actually a thigh adductor exercise or a strengthening
exercise for inside the thighs, has nothing to do with the pelvic floor muscles and it won't make
pelvic floor exercises any more effective even though it's currently stated in some videos that
it will. Again as pelvic floor physiotherapists, we actually discourage women from tightening the
adductor muscles, from tightening the buttocks, from tightening the abdominal muscles because
they can actually counteract pelvic floor exercises, and doing the adductor exercises
and buttock exercises can actually feel as though you're doing your pelvic floor exercises when in
actual fact you're not. So these exercises again, for the inside of the thighs will not
strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. They're categorically not pelvic floor exercises.
Now, the last exercise that I'd like to draw your attention to again, as recommended as a
pelvic floor exercise online is called a pelvic tilt. Now, even the name pelvic you think pelvic
or perhaps pelvic floor, this is not even a strengthening exercise. This is an exercise
to encourage the movement of the lower back and to free up the pelvis. So it involves lying on
the ground, flattening the back, or the arch of the backflow back into the ground or the mat,
and then releasing so you're tilting your pelvis forward and back. So this creates a nice movement
in the back and it can be a great exercise for freeing up a stiff lower back but it's not a
pelvic floor exercise. It actually involves muscles of the hips, the abdominal muscles,
and even some of the back muscles, not the pelvic floor muscles and so, as we've already stated,
it's not a pelvic floor exercise. So, we've gone through those five exercises and I think now you
start to see that many of these exercises actually have nothing to do with specifically training the
pelvic floor muscles. So they are not specific pelvic floor exercises, they categorically
will not strengthen and repair your pelvic floor and fix up your pelvic floor problems.
I really would love to hear from you on this issue. I always read your comments below. So
please feel welcome to contact me in the comments below. If you found this information beneficial
for you. I'd be really grateful if you could give the video a like below because that
encourages YouTube to share this information which is important information for women,
again with other women that might benefit too. So I'd like to really thank you for
your time for watching today. I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Goodbye for now.