In this video, I'll be guiding you through two of the most important Kegel exercises for women,
that help you recover both your pelvic floor strength and endurance.
Hi, I'm Michelle and today I'm guiding you through two of the most important
Kegel exercises you need to do to recover both your strength and your endurance. Now,
this is particularly relevant for you, if perhaps you're not getting the results that you're after
from your Kegels training or also too if you're new to Kegel exercises and just starting out and
particularly if you're strengthening for pelvic floor laxity or looseness if you're trying to
overcome prolapse symptoms or also to for bladder recovery. So these two exercises really need to be
incorporated into your regular daily program. So what I'll do, is we'll go through I’ll guide you
through the two exercises and we'll do those both together so that you know exactly how to do them
at home and include them into your training, and then what will also do is go through how
many of these exercises that you need to do and I'll do that after we've done a little training
routine at the start. So stay with me for that so that you know how many exercises to do a day.
Now, it's really important that you know why you're doing these exercises. They are fast
and slow Kegel exercises and the reason for that is because we've got fast twitch and slow twitch
muscle fibers in the pelvic floor. These are the two types of muscle cells. So that you need to
be training both these types of cells and both these types of fibers to get your best possible
results. If you're doing just one or the other, then you won't get the results that you're after
in terms of overcoming your pelvic floor problems and, and your overall pelvic floor recovery.
So, your fast twitch fibers are the muscles that give your pelvic floor strength and they work for
contracting when you cough, when you sneeze, when you exercise, when they've got a contract quickly
and strongly. Your endurance exercises are for your slow twitch muscle fibers. That's the second
type of muscle fiber and these are the ones that work for long periods of time. So they help to
overcome that looseness for that feeling of laxity in the pelvic floor, they're really important for
bladder control, really important for controlling prolapse symptoms so that you can see that we
need to include training for both types of the fibers to get our best possible results.
So let's get started with our training now. What we'll do is we'll start with the Fast exercises
for the fast twitch muscle fibers. These are like your Sprint exercises. So, what I want you
to do is you can see, I'm sitting in a chair, you can do these sitting in a chair at home,
or you could also do them lying down or standing if you prefer to as well. In the position that you
can best feel your pelvic floor muscles working. Now in sitting, you can either sit on towel roll
and I've shown that before if you have problems feeling the exercises, or in the chair that I'm
in, you can see them sitting away from the back of the chair that’s really important. Don't sit
and slouch against the back of the chair so sit against the away from the backrest if you're
sitting now. Lengthen your spine and sit, nice and Tall. So for these fast Kegel exercises,
what we're going to do is we're going to squeeze and lift inwards around the three pelvic openings
and that's the anus, the vagina, and the urethra or the opening to the urine tube. So you are
squeezing and lifting all those at once. If you're not sure, you can refer to my video above
that explains this in more detail, but that's the action we're using to do our fast exercises. Now,
these are one to two second exercises. So let's have a try at that. First of all,
rock between your sit bones, feel where your sit bones are, we're working those muscles
in between there, so nothing should happen in your buttocks. Nothing on the outside should
move all this. All the action happens on the inside in and around those pelvic openings.
So, here we go with our first exercise. Sitting nice and tall inward curve in the back, and we're
going to squeeze the openings and lift inwards and then relax them down. And let go. Let's try that
one more time together. Again, not squeezing the buttocks, not squeezing the thighs, not
pulling the tummy in, we're just focusing on those openings. Here we go. Squeeze and lift inwards if
you can, and now see if you can lower it down, and relax. Okay, that's our fast exercise.
Now let's move on to our slower exercise. This is the longer hold for overcoming that sensation of
looseness of pelvic floor, prolapse symptoms, and also to help with your bladder control as well.
These are rocks. Exercises are also two really important after childbirth and with menopause.
So, we're going to do our longer holds again just starting out gently. You don't need to do them
strongly only at the start and it's a very it's the same action that I just described. Squeezing
and lifting in words around the openings and then lowering down. But this time we're going
to try and hold that exercise as we do a couple of breaths in and out, and these are normal
breaths. So once again, search your posture up for success, so that means moving away from the back
of the chair, lifting the crown of your spine or the crown of the head and so that your spine is
lengthened and you're nice and tall. And what I want you to do at home is again, try to squeeze
and lift inwards around the pelvic openings, trying to breathe, squeeze and lift and breathe,
and now, see if you can relax that down and let go. It's a little bit harder than the fast ones,
isn't it? So, it doesn't matter how long you can hold these for at first. The idea is to get the
right technique when you're starting out of doing the longer, gentle a hold, lift and squeeze and
lowering down and then I've with practice and over time, your endurance will come as well.
So let's talk about what you need to do in terms of practicing at home for your fast fibers,
and for your slow twitch fibers, to get the best possible results. For your fast exercises,
squeezing and lifting, and lowering down. There the one to two second hold, and you trying to do
those up to 10 times in a row. So it's squeeze and lift and lower it down, squeeze, lift and lower it
down, up to ten. Doesn't matter if you can't make ten, two to three is absolutely fine. You try and
do that three times a day. So that's a total of thirty, three out of ten, 30 fast exercises a day.
For your slower exercises, again, you're trying to work up to 10-second hold and as I said it doesn't
matter if you can't go that far at first just do what you can manage to do even if it's two
to three seconds and you'll build up gradually. Now the 10-second, hold you trying to do ten of
those in a row, and again three times a day and you're slower holds are a little bit gentler
than the faster holds. The Fast contractions should become quite a strong contraction. The
strongest contraction you can do but the slower holds are a more gentle contraction about 70% of
what you can do but remembering to start out gently at first to get the technique correct.
Now, if you'd like a full workout of these exercises, it's coming up next.
So stay with me for that. But I really hope these exercises today, these fast and slow,
twitch Kegel exercises help you get the met the best results from your program and overcome
your pelvic floor problems at home. So, if you've enjoyed the video,
I'd be really grateful as always if you could give it a like below because then
that encourages you to share the information with other ladies too. Look forward to seeing you next
time. Stay with me for the video, coming up for the workout and I'll see you soon. Bye for now.