The elusive pelvic floor

“Suck up your pelvic floor!”

If you have ever attended one of my pilates classes at Breathe Studio, you will be all too familiar with this sentence. After all, I say it at least fifty times per class. And that’s a conservative estimate.

The pelvic floor is a hammock-like muscle that sits at the base of the pelvic girdle. It supports several bodily functions including bladder and bowel movements, childbirth and intensifying sexual pleasure.

It is somewhat common knowledge amongst women that we should undertake specific exercises to strengthen our pelvic floor. Such exercises can improve our sexual experience (and that of our partner) and help us avoid bladder incontinence and uterine prolapse.

But how do we know we’re doing it right?

This morning my lovely client Alex mentioned that she is never quite sure that she is pulling up her pelvic floor correctly. I told her that the first thing she should do is look up a diagram of the pelvic floor. Understanding its unique hammock-like shape and location would help her understand how it contracts and where she should feel that contraction in her pelvis.

I then told her to squeeze the muscles around her urethra, vagina and anus upwards inside her pelvis. The upwards squeezing direction is key. I told her to release and repeat four to ten times.

At the start, it may not be easy to find your pelvic floor. However, the good thing about it is that, like every other smooth muscle, the more we train it, the stronger the mind-muscle connection becomes, and the easier it is to find. As a pilates studio owner, I train my pelvic floor multiple times a day, and I can locate and contract it with the same ease I can contract my bicep!

Written by Emma Henderson, Founder/Owner, Breathe Studio