Weighted Pelvic Floor Exercises

In the craziness of everyday life it can be easy to forget about engaging your , especially when you’re carrying certain items; be it heavy food shopping, a suitcase or even just your laptop. 

With the help of pelvic floor physiotherapist Amanda Savage, we have gone through some key weight bearing and techniques to help us get used to engaging our pelvic floor, even when going about our daily lives. 

 

Weight training pelvic floor exercises

When lifting weights (in the gym or even just carrying a heavy object), it’s common for us to forget about our pelvic floor and just let it sort of “hang about”.  Here are some exercises that can help stop that from happening!
 
Bicep curl
 
When practising your bicep curl, you need to be mindful that your pelvic floor doesn’t revert back to zero activation. At first, you may find that this requires a lot of concentration, but eventually it will come automatically – a bit like driving a car!

Lateral arm raises
 
This exercise is definitely on the trickier side, but it’s also one of the most common actions we do in everyday life when we’re carrying anything really! 
When practising lifting your arms up and down to the side, you may find that it’s much easier to keep hold of your pelvic floor on the way up than on the way down. But again, with repetition and training this movement will start to become more natural and instinctive. 
 
Shoulder press

People also really struggle with their pelvic floor when it comes to reaching, finding that when they reach up, that there will be a little leak. So this is a great exercise to practise if you ever find yourself leaking when doing activities such as closing the car boot or reaching for a shelf.
 
Body jumps

Now even though this exercise doesn’t include physical weights, you’re still having to lift the weight of your own body! For this exercise the key is to maintain a tighter grip on your pelvic floor to maintain your bladder from leaking. Then once you’ve got the knack you can keep adding in another jump until you can keep holding repeatedly! 

 
Now get out there and start becoming a pro at keeping your pelvic floor activated, no matter what activity you’re doing! And to find out more ways to build up your pelvic floor muscles, check out our other pelvic floor exercise videos.