The Pelvic Floor Doesn’t Work in Isolation

The pelvic floor doesn’t work in isolation is the short answer I give to those asking me what I think about pelvic floor exercises such as vaginal weight lifting or Kegels. Below is my email response to a woman who asked what I thought about using vaginal weights to strengthen the pelvic floor. This is a post explaining that there is a better way to achieve pelvic floor health, a more natural way.

As a Restorative Exercise Specialist, my approach to working with pelvic floor weakness is to bring the body into alignment through Restorative Exercise and natural movement. When you move naturally throughout the day, the pelvic floor responds to the loads placed on it. You shouldn’t have to “spot treat” the pelvic floor. Strengthening should happen naturally. If your pelvic floor isn’t responding appropriately then perhaps it’s because you’re not allowing it to function as a whole with the rest of your body.

When you focus on the pelvic floor through vaginal weights or Kegels, you isolate only one piece of a complex system. By spot treating the pelvic floor, you leave out other very important players in pelvic floor health which are the respiratory diaphragm, transverse abdominis, gluteus maximus, lateral rotators of the hips and the feet (yes the feet!). What you may end up with when you spot treat with vaginal weights or several hundred Kegels a day is a hypertonic pelvic floor. Short tight muscles don’t equal strong muscles. Muscles need to be at the correct length (not too short and not too long) for optimal force generation and they need to be responsive to the task at hand.

Another thing to think about is that if you’re sitting or standing with a posteriorly tilted pelvis or have a counter-nutated sacrum you’re not allowing the uterosacral ligaments (USL) to do their job. When the pelvis is in neutral, the uterus is suspended by the USL. Ligaments need proper direction of load to stimulate the correct balance of collagen production. One of the main supporting ligaments of the uterus is the uterosacral ligament, and if the USLs aren’t loaded correctly because you are sitting on your tailbone (a posteriorly tilted pelvis) the ligaments loose their strength and resiliency. How can the USLs suspend the uterus if the uterus is sitting on the USL? It can’t! So it makes sense to support the pelvic organs from above instead of just focusing on walling organs in with a too tight pelvic floor.

[bctt tweet=”The body is beautifully designed to hold in our pelvic organs without artificial weight training.” username=”AlignmentMonkey”]

The body is beautifully designed to hold in our pelvic organs without artificial weight training. By honoring the biomechanical design of your body and using it the way nature intended-minimizing sitting and avoid wearing positive heeled shoes (read about what high heels do to your uterus here), moving in alignment and changing our societal beliefs about how women should sit and walk (tailbone tucked, feet close together-you know, “like a lady”). Otherwise, we aren’t getting to the root of the problem. We are not broken, we just have to stop getting in our own way.

[bctt tweet=”Sitting, walking, standing like a lady can lead to a weak pelvic floor.” username=”AlignmentMonkey”]

As far as helping women identify their pelvic floor, I use stance to do so, not weights. When you breathe naturally (expanding the ribcage in a circumference with ribcage aligned over neutral pelvis) the pelvic floor elastically loads and your body responds by building the strength needed for YOUR particular body mass not an arbitrary weight.

Biomechanist Katy Bowman sums it up so well, “The pelvic floor is under constant load, you shouldn’t have to train it. If it’s not responding its positionally not able to do so. Positionally meaning, it’s position to the ground or it’s sarcomere position.”

Want to learn more:

Alignment Snacks, All Fo’ the Pelvic Flo’, Walk This Way, Stand This Way,. These 30-minute classes help to release the muscles that are keeping your pelvis from being in neutral and help strengthen the muscles that will support your pelvic floor. I also highly recommend the Healthy Pelvis download. ,. These 30-minute classes help to release the muscles that are keeping your pelvis from being in neutral and help strengthen the muscles that will support your pelvic floor. I also highly recommend the

Watch Katy Bowman demystify the pelvic floor: