Hi friends! We often think pelvic floor issues won’t affect us if we are young or if we haven’t have kids, but the truth is pelvic floor issues can affect any one or any age or any gender. So, when should you start training your pelvic floor muscles?
The Best Time to Start Pelvic Floor Training: Now!
Your pelvic floor muscles play a crucial role in supporting your bladder, bowel, and sexual function. But when is the best time to start training them? The answer is simple: now. Whether you’re young, pregnant, postpartum, or in menopause, pelvic floor exercises are important at every stage of life.
Why Train Your Pelvic Floor?
Strengthening your pelvic floor muscles can help prevent or manage issues like urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, and sexual dysfunction. These muscles support important organs (like the bowel and bladder) and contribute to core stability and posture, so keeping them strong is essential.
The Right Time to Start
The best time to start pelvic floor training is now. Don’t wait until problems start—strengthening your pelvic floor early can prevent issues. Prevention is the best medicine!
Here’s why you should train your pelvic floor at any age or stage of life:
Before Pregnancy: Strengthening your pelvic floor muscles can help support your body through pregnancy and delivery to prevent any issues like urinary incontinence and aid in faster postpartum recovery.
During Pregnancy: Exercising your pelvic floor during pregnancy helps prepare for childbirth, reduces the risk of complications, and supports bladder and bowel control. Pelvic floor muscle training has been shown to shorten labor (Du, 2015)!
Postpartum: After childbirth, pelvic floor exercises are key for recovery, improving bladder control, and supporting sexual health.
In Your 20, 30s, and 40s: As with any muscles in our body, if we don’t use them we’ll lose them! Training them now can prevent incontinence and other pelvic health issues to help us live our lives doing what we love most without leakage or other symptoms.
During Menopause: Hormonal changes in menopause can make the pelvic floor muscles need to work harder to get the same job done (Khanjani, 2019). Strengthening them can reduce incontinence and prolapse symptoms.
Older Adults: Muscle tone naturally declines with age, but it’s never too late to start. Even if you’ve had symptoms for years, strengthening the pelvic floor muscles will often improve symptoms!
Signs You Might Need to Train Your Pelvic Floor
Leaking urine when coughing, laughing, or exercising
Pelvic heaviness or pressure
Difficulty controlling your bowel or bladder
Decreased sexual satisfaction or sensation
Pelvic pain
If you notice any of these signs, it’s a good idea to start pelvic floor exercises. Keep in mind, Kegel exercises are not the only way to train the pelvic floor muscles. A pelvic floor physical or occupational therapist is a great resources to help you learn how to use your pelvic floor muscles along with other muscles that work alongside it, like the core and hips. A well-functioning pelvic floor has help from other areas of the body!
Ask your provider for a referral to a therapist near you, or find one a www.mypfm.com/find-a-pt
To learn more about your pelvic floor muscles, check out these great resources:
Watch our YouTube playlist on Pelvic Physical Therapy
Learn more about your pelvic floor on our Instagram
Visit our Amazon store for our favorite pelvic health products
Sign up for our email newsletter
For providers, check out myPFM Academy to learn more so you can better help your clients. With two membership options, you have access to courses, a growing library of patient handouts, hundreds of custom sharable images and infographics, and multilingual resources.
Written by Emily Reul, PT, DPT
Refernces
Du Y, Xu L, Ding L, Wang Y, Wang Z. The effect of antenatal pelvic floor muscle training on labor and delivery outcomes: a systematic review and meta-anaylsis. Int Urogynecol J 26, 1415–1427 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00192-015-2654-4
Khanjani S, Panay N. Vaginal estrogen deficiency. The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. 2019;21:37-42.