Pelvic Floor Tightness- The Probable Cause to Your Pelvic Floor Dysfunction!

When I first began on this Pelvic Health journey I was shocked to learn that many women with Pelvic Floor Dysfunction actually have TIGHT pelvic floor muscles as opposed to weak.  This may seem counterintuitive but let me explain…

For years, Kegel or Pelvic Floor Strengthening exercises were the gold standard for treating pelvic floor dysfunction, especially urinary leakage.  If you’ve ever read a women’s magazine, you know what I’m talking about.  However, for some women, Kegel exercises were actually making their leakage worse.  So how can strengthening be a bad thing?!

Let’s use an analogy to clear this up.  Make a tight fist with one hand.  Now, try to squeeze your fist even tighter.  It doesn’t move much does it?  This is exactly what happens for some women with urinary leakage.  Their muscles are already “making a fist” so when they try to squeeze their muscles further to stop the flow of urine, they can’t do it and leakage occurs.  The other thought is that if your pelvic floor muscles are constantly “making a fist”, they will fatigue and cannot contract to stop the leaking when asked to do so.  

Tightness within the Pelvic Floor musculature can also cause pelvic pain.  Again if we think of our previous fist example, your hand would be hurting if you held it clenched all day.  You would develop knots or trigger points in the muscles and the hand wouldn’t be able to function properly.  Then, in order to do your daily tasks, other muscles would have to take over the job of the hand.  This would lead to those muscles getting overworked.  It’s a vicious cycle!

Now, thanks to Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy we know that sometimes we need to LENGTHEN the muscles before we STRENGTHEN.  This means that we need to loosen up the tight muscles BEFORE we add in strengthening.  

At Empower Women’s Health we take a comprehensive approach to Pelvic Health and will determine if you need to lengthen, strengthen or a combination of both to completely abolish your Pelvic Floor problems!  Be sure to check out this week’s Facebook and Instagram posts for tips on relaxing that pelvic floor.