Which one of these two exercises do you think is the best bladder control exercise for women
who are seeking to overcome bladder leakage?
Hi, I'm Michelle and unfortunately neither of these two exercises will help you
with your bladder control. The correct exercises to do are Kegel Exercises for
women. The exercises you've just seen will just strengthen the buttock muscles. They're
great for strengthening the buttocks, the hips, and the thighs. Today I'm going to guide you
through everything you need to know especially if you're a beginner starting out to know how
to do your bladder control exercises. Now these are specific exercises for stress incontinence,
in other words leakage when you cough, or when you sneeze, or also to urge incontinence. So when you
have that really strong urge to go and you can't control it like putting the key in the door.
So what we're going to do is go through the two essential steps that you need to know for
doing these exercises. I'm going to take you then through the best positions to do these exercises
and we'll talk about “how many exercises you need to do to get the best possible results and
overcome bladder leakage?” So just to start with, so you know where your muscles are
that you're exercising. They're not the outside muscles, so the muscles that you just saw before
were outside the pelvis. So this is the pelvis, this is outside the pelvis, and that's where those
muscles are the buttock muscles sit. So these are the sit bones that you sit on here. So the muscles
that we need to exercise are the muscles that are in and around the bones where you sit in here.
They're at the base of the pelvis which is why they're called the pelvic floor muscles.
So if you actually look at the same muscles here and you can see them on screen here as a close-up.
There these muscles that actually encircle the pelvic openings the vagina, the urethra or the
bladder opening, and also to the anus. So these are the muscles that we're going to be exercising.
So they are internal, they can't be seen from the outside. So let's start, the first step is to know
how to activate these muscles for your bladder control. The first step for women is to squeeze
around the openings, so you're squeezing around all three openings at once. As if
you're squeezing them closed like that, as if you're stopping passing gas, and as if you're
stopping the flow of urine. So that squeeze, that's the first part. See if you can squeeze now
and then relax. Now the second part and this is a really important part for your bladder control
is to lift inwards. So after you've done the squeeze or even if you can do it with the squeeze,
lift the areas in and around those openings inwards. And lift up inside,
and then lower down slowly, and relax. So two key steps you need to know - squeezing and lifting,
and then very important that you relax back down to resting. They are the two key actions. If
you're not sure how to feel or find and feel those pelvic floor muscles, you can refer to my video
above which teaches you some really good little tricks for feeling those muscles and actually
identifying in them and knowing that you're doing your pelvic floor exercises correctly.
Now to do those exercises for strengthening here's what you do. You need to do two types of
exercises- long exercises and short exercises. Now the long exercises are for your endurance muscles.
So these are the muscles that will help you hold on to the bladder contents as the bladder expands
and the muscle pelvic floor muscles will work as the bladder fills up.
So we want these muscles to work for long periods of time, and that's how we need to train them. So
what I'd like you to do now if you can is squeeze, and lift inwards, and try to count. So if you're
sitting, sit yourself tall. If you're standing, if you're lying down with your knees bent,
and then try to squeeze. And then lift inwards and you'd be counting for up to 10 seconds, so that
squeeze and lift inwards. Now see if you can do that squeeze and lift, squeeze and lift, squeeze
and lift, and then relax down slowly if you can. Now don't worry if you can't feel the letting go,
sometimes this happens because the muscles are weak when you're a beginner.
So often it takes a little bit of time before you can actually feel that squeezing, and lifting,
and the letting go sensation. Now ideally you're aiming to do these holes the long holds for your
long endurance muscles for up to 10 seconds at a time. And we try to aim to do 10 of these
exercises in a row. Having a rest in between each exercise and trying to do those three times a day.
Now let's move on to your short exercises. These are really important for stopping leaks when you
cough or when you sneeze, so we need the pelvic floor muscles to be able to contract really
quickly. And that's why we're training them with these power exercises. So it's a strong
powerful lift and squeeze and this is a one second.
Lift, and lower squeeze, lift, and lower. Can you try one or two? Now where you are? Squeeze,
lift inwards, and then lower down, and relax. So again we're aiming to do up to 10 of those
in a row. And once again you're trying to do those three times a day. So in total you'd have
your long exercises, your three lots of ten long exercises, and your three lots of ten
short exercises. And it's best to spread those out throughout the day rather than trying to do
them all in one go. So you might do ten, and then ten, and then ten, that's the best way of doing
your exercises because it gives your pelvic floor muscles a chance to recover in between exercises.
Now let's move on to the best positions for doing these. When you're a beginner starting out,
and I'll get my little model here. It might be hard to contract these muscles, so what you
might find is you need to start doing them lying down because gravity isn't working. When you're
sitting or standing, you have to lift the muscles against gravity so it means that the muscles have
to work harder fantastic for strengthening in upright positions, in sitting, and standing.
But it can be a little bit more challenging. So start in the position that you can best feel
your pelvic floor muscles working so it might be lying, it might be sitting upright away from
the back of a chair, or it might be standing, and doing your exercises in your standing positions.
As I said start with a position that you could feel your muscles working best in but
try to aim towards doing your exercises in those upright sitting and standing positions, you can-
when you can because they're the positions that you're likely most likely to experience bladder
leakage. So they're the positions that you actually need to train the muscles to work in.
So they're, they're our key positions- lying down, sitting, and progressing to standing when you can.
Now really important part of your training is functional training. And I want to go through
a couple of parts of this so that you actually can control blood leaks and these bladder control
exercises for leakage in real world situations. So let's say for example, you're having problems with
bladder leakage when you cough or when you sneeze. There's a technique called the neck. And it means
to squeeze and lift inwards, immediately before and during a cough. And you can try that now.
So you might just feel a cough unbrace, so you do a little small cough. And feel,
you can usually feel a bit of a pressure downwards and that's that pressure from the
diaphragm pressing down on your pelvic floor. This time try to squeeze and lift inwards,
and do the same cough, and then you should feel less of a pressured out. So this is what you
should do, the technique you should use before and during every time you cough, every time you
sneeze. If you're experiencing bladder leakage when you're laughing, again the same technique but
you've got to do it before that happens. If you're starting halfway through a cough, it's too late.
The second key functional training thing that I, or aspect of training that I want to go through
is doing your exercises and standing. Because as I mentioned that's when you're going to have your
leakage. So you might try, for example doing a pelvic floor exercise or a kegel exercise. Before
you actually put the key in the door at home, if that's when you experience your bladder urgency
or another good time to practice is before when you turn the shower on, if you feel experienced
by the urgency before or when the when the water's running. Put your, put the water running
and then try to contract your pelvic floor muscles with your squeeze and your lift
before and during as getting into the shower. And see if you can control that urge. What you will
find is the urge will eventually go or dissipate with the pelvic floor muscles on, so it's like an
off switch. So when you contract your pelvic floor muscles, the bladder will actually relax. And then
that will actually help you overcome your urgency. Now you might need to do these exercises a number
of times to get rid of that urgency and it does take practice. And it's best to start when your
blood is not really full. It can be a bit more challenging when the bladder is really full.
Now finally let's go through some of the key mistakes to avoid with bladder control
exercises. The first mistake is to squeeze your buttocks. We talked at the start of the video
about buttock exercises. They're not the right exercises and sometimes you can think you're doing
your pelvic floor exercises when you're actually squeezing your buttocks. So your buttocks should
remain relaxed throughout your kegel exercises. The second mistake is to pull your tummy muscles
especially the upper tummy muscles in hard when you, when you do your kegel exercises.
These upper tummy muscles above your navel should stay relaxed.
You might feel a gentle tension develop in the lower tummy muscles below your navel,
and that's perfectly normal but the apple ones should stay relaxed. The third mistake to avoid
is to hold your breath. Try to breathe out as you start your kegel exercises. And then resume normal
breathing during your long hold, so try to breathe normally. You might have to breathe a little bit
shallow at first and that's okay. You will find, you can normalize your breathing as your pelvic
floor muscles become stronger, as you practice your bladder control exercises. Now the final
mistake I wanted to mention is a really common mistake. And that is, that some women tend to bear
down or push down rather than lifting inwards. So really make sure that you're not bearing down with
your kegel exercises because that will make your bladder control worse. The other important thing I
wanted to mention is not constantly bracing your pelvic floor muscles. So this is a mistake that
I think many of us have tended to make in the past and holding the muscles on all the time.
Have confidence in the fact that doing your regular exercises will strengthen and thicken the
support, the pelvic floor muscles support. That they will work well for you when you are moving
around. It's a mistake to constantly brace them all the time when you're walking or when you're
exercising. Have confidence in the fact that those exercises that you will be doing will be
strengthening your pelvic floor muscles and that will give you better bladder control all around.
So we've talked about quite a number of things there, haven't we? We've talked about the two key
steps involved, the squeezing and the lifting. We've talked about the importance of doing long
and short exercises for comprehensive training. We've also talked about the
importance of doing your exercises, spreading them out during the course of the day,
and in different positions aiming eventually for doing your exercises in standing.
So these exercises can take up to three to five months to be really effective
and really improve your bladder control. But some ladies actually find that even after a couple of
weeks of practice at their pelvic floor improves and their bladder leakage reduces. And you might
expect that your bladder leakage reduces or stops all together with these exercises.
So I really hope that you've benefited from these exercises, in this little tutorial today. If you
found it helpful, I'd really appreciate it if you can give the video a like below because then that
helps encourage YouTube to share the video with other ladies that might benefit as well. I'd like
to thank you very much for watching today. I look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye for now!