Everyone Should Care About Pelvic Floor Health

Many women (AND MEN) experience pelvic floor problems, but often they ignore them, think it’s just a part of aging, or may be too embarrassed to talk to a professional about them. The specific issues can vary and may involve injuries or damage to muscles in the pelvic area, the bowel, bladder, or uterus. Getting help early usually means better treatment results. If you do think you have issues, we recommend seeing your doctor who can do an exam to diagnose and figure out the best treatment. Treatment options range from medications to surgery, laser treatment, or physical therapy, depending on what's going on and where.

With our clients at the Body by Hannah Studio, we believe that proactively training the pelvic floor just like all of our other muscle groups is a great way to prevent weakening of the pelvic floor muscles over time. Creating mindfulness around many of our exercises to properly breathe and engage/relax these muscles is our first defense from future issues.

Let's break down five common problems when the pelvic floor isn't working properly. But first, think of the pelvic floor like a hammock made of lots of connected muscles that support your bladder, bowel, and other organs. These muscles help with things like controlling when you pee or poop, keeping your posture in check, and even sexual function.

1. Needing to pee a lot or urgently: If you're constantly running to the bathroom, it might be due to something called overactive bladder. Basically, the muscles in your bladder contract too much, making you feel like you gotta go all the time. Strengthening your pelvic floor can help calm down your bladder, reducing those urgent feelings.

2. Leaking urine when you cough, sneeze, or laugh: This is called stress urinary incontinence. It happens when the muscles supporting your bladder and urethra are weak or damaged, often from childbirth. Even simple movements like laughing can make you leak a little.

3. Trouble with pooping: Weak pelvic floor muscles can mess with how well you poop. Sometimes it leads to constipation or feeling like you can't fully empty your bowels. The process of pooping is pretty complex, and when those pelvic muscles aren't doing their job right, it can cause pain or discomfort.

4. Back or pelvic pain, or pain during sex: Your pelvic floor muscles play a role in a lot of daily activities, like keeping you upright and moving smoothly. But if they're weak or damaged, they can cause pain in your back or pelvis. They can also make sex uncomfortable, especially during orgasm, when those muscles contract strongly.

5. Feeling like things are falling down there: Damage to the pelvic floor can cause organs like the uterus or bladder to sag or bulge into the vagina. This is called prolapse. It's more common as women get older and their bodies change. You might feel pressure or heaviness in your pelvis, especially when standing for a long time or lifting heavy things.

We created a FREE pelvic floor introductory series with Dr. Kat Hamblin that will help you understand better what the pelvic floor is and how to begin to activate it and strengthen it! Download the BBH Fit App and search for Pelvic Floor Series to get started at home!

When More Is Not Better

“You either need to start eating more, or cut back on your exercise.”

When I told this to one client who wanted to lose fat and build more muscle, she told me she hard a hard time wrapping her head around that idea. Isn’t the goal to push harder and eat less when you want to lose weight and build muscle?

More exercise is only better if we can meet the demands of more. If more is leaving us always sore, prone to injuries, in constant pain and feeling “heavy” all the time, irritable and anxious or unable to mark improvement in our workouts and in making body composition changes, we may be doing too much. Or, I could also share the perspective that if you may not be over training, but you may be under recovering.

When we consider the balance of movement and recovery, we have to remember that if we are exercising more, our recovery needs to be even more intentional and meet the demands of what we’re asking our body to do, otherwise, we send our body into a stress response that can prevent us from feeling our best and meeting fitness goals like weight loss and strength gains.

On average, most of us benefit best from training 3-5 days per week of moderate to intense workouts. You can certainly exercise 7 days per week but likely some of those days should be mobility focused or lower intensity.

If you’re participating in the BUILD program in the BBH Online Studio, you’ve already noticed that even though we schedule out 6 days of workouts for you each week, we want you to focus on meeting the 3 priority days workouts first! If you’re recovering well from those 3 workouts, you’re invited to complete our supplementary workouts. Always included are mobility focused workouts and recovery focused workouts. Every single workout shouldn’t crush you.

If you’re hitting these recommendations and not seeing results and notice your body is always exhausted, you likely need to prioritize recovery better to meet the demands of your moderate/intense workouts with these tips:

• Fuel Better: Often when I have clients track their nutrition to help troubleshoot why they aren’t seeing results from all of their hard work, I find a lack of nutrients and proper hydration. Not enough protein is a big culprit for a lot of women but also lack of energy from very low-carb diets with frequent exercising contribute to lack of results.

• Sleep Better: Ya’ll, I cannot stress the importance of this one for better recovery. Get on a schedule. Go to bed earlier. And try to keep the routine at least most weekends too.

• Consider your program: Stop over doing it! If you’re training 6-7 days per week and doing a heavy full body workout or HIIT workouts every single workout, you may want to consider varying your workouts to include recovery based workouts, lower intensity cardio and mobility focused workouts between heavy days to give your muscles more time to recover.

• Supplement: Many times, lack of important minerals from for example an insufficiently nutrient dense diet can lead to deficiencies that aid in better muscle tissue repair. Start with a basic multi-vitamin if you haven’t already!

If you feel like you need more guidance, it’s not too late to join the BUILD program on the BBH Online studio. As a member of the BBH Online studio, you can expect the availability of more personalized coaching just by reaching out to your BBH trainers any time you have a question.