Add “Pelvic Floor Day” to Your Gym Routine to Maximize your Pelvic Floor Health

Pelvic Floor Day

Rena Malik and Julie Sarton discuss the innovative idea of incorporating a "pelvic floor day" into your gym routine. Julie explains that this day would include a series of pelvic floor lengthening and strengthening exercises, which are beneficial for the spine and hips. She emphasizes the importance of ending with lengthening exercises to avoid a hypertonic pelvic floor.

You could do a whole series of pelvic floor lengthening. Just so incredible because the spine will love it, the hips will love it, a lot of hip opening, decompression through the spine, and then you could do some strengthening.

--- Julie Sarton

Rena and Julie suggest exercises like deep squats and passive stretches to promote pelvic floor health 1.

   

Functional Training

Julie highlights the importance of functional movement training in daily activities. She advises starting with simple exercises like partial squats and lunges, which can be integrated into everyday tasks such as lifting laundry baskets or grocery bags. This approach helps in training the pelvic floor in various planes of motion, making it more effective for daily life and sports activities.

We train patients in three planes of motion that we move in. So sagittal is this way, frontal is this way, and transverse is this way. Most people will train this way in the sagittal plane.

--- Julie Sarton

Julie also recommends exercises that challenge balance and coordination, such as standing on one leg and incorporating head rotations 2.

   

Safety Tips

Safety is a crucial aspect when performing pelvic floor exercises. Rena and Julie stress the importance of using proper equipment to avoid injuries, such as ensuring weights are heavy enough to be effective but not too heavy to cause harm. Julie shares a story about a patient who used a platform to squat over the toilet, which significantly improved her pelvic floor health and alleviated her symptoms.

She bought, like, a whole platform that went over her toilet because she was trying to balance on her toilet.

--- Julie Sarton

Rena adds that traditional squatting methods, common in some cultures, can be beneficial for pelvic floor health 3 4.