Your pelvic floor muscles are not part of your daily training schedule, but being aware of these muscles (and training them) can be quite useful.
About a million Dutch people have pelvic floor complaints (source:Pelvic Floor Patients Foundation). Just to clear up a persistent misunderstanding:it's not just women.
Too little exercise, sedentary occupations and stress have a major influence on the pelvic floor. In women, pelvic floor complaints usually consist of incontinence, for example when you sneeze, play sports or lift something. Especially after a pregnancy or after the menopause, these kinds of complaints can arise, because then your pelvic floor muscles lose elasticity. Some women suffer from prolapse of the bladder, uterus or rectum, which gives a heavy feeling at the bottom and can cause pain during intercourse.
Read also: '3 tips against a weak bladder'
It is not only important that you can tighten your pelvic floor muscles, but also that they can relax. For example, too tight pelvic floor muscles can lead to regularly recurring bladder infections. Because your muscles are too tense, you do not urinate properly and a residual amount of urine remains in the bladder. This can contain bacteria that irritate the bladder wall. With a bladder infection that often recurs, there is therefore a chance that the cause lies in your pelvic floor tension. A course of antibiotics cures the inflammation, but it can be back in no time.
Another common complaint that arises from overactive pelvic floor muscles is pain during sex. If your muscles do not relax enough during penetration, you will experience a superficial pain at the entrance of the vagina. If the muscles are even tighter, this can even cause vaginismus. Constipation can also be a result of too tight pelvic floor muscles. Your bowels become congested and you develop a stomach ache. And what do you do if the big message doesn't want to get out? Right, you push a little harder. This can cause cracks or hemorrhoids.
If you have a lot of low back pain, it is quite possible that your pelvic floor muscles are not well developed. But it can also be the other way around:an unstable back can lead to overactive pelvic floor muscles, which in turn can cause back problems because you unconsciously tense and overload all kinds of muscles and joints. Have a pelvic floor physiotherapist determine the cause of your back pain. He or she can then draw up a targeted treatment plan.
Read also: 'With these exercises you train your pelvic floor muscles'
Don't tighten your pelvic muscles like crazy to keep things tight as a precaution, because extra training is not necessary for everyone. If you don't have pelvic floor complaints, you don't need to add an extra workout to your training schedule. In daily life you train these muscles enough without noticing. For example, when you need to pee, but you are standing in line at the cash register. Until the moment you finally get home with your buttocks pinched, you are training them unnoticed.
Have you never been pregnant? Then your pelvic floor should function normally. If you have given birth, it is advisable to train your pelvic floor muscles daily. Just like when pelvic floor complaints run in your family:whether you also suffer from them is partly hereditary. And… anyone who is over the age of forty has to work anyway. From the transition, the support tissue in your pelvis deteriorates, so you better be ahead of that. It doesn't have to take a lot of time:a small workout twice a week is enough.
