How good is your pelvic floor awareness? Can you feel your pelvic floor?
Having some pelvic floor awareness is important. You are most likely aware of how to move your toes and you can feel this. Moving the pelvic floor and feeling this movement is important too. Sometimes it helps to use different things for feedback, so this article is going to explore that.
How should the pelvic floor move?
Our pelvic floor muscles need to have both mobility and stability in order to support us in the best way. These muscles move with our breathing patterns. As we inhale, our diaphragm lowers as does our pelvic floor. When we exhale, our diaphragm returns to its previous position and our pelvic floor should do the same.
How do I know if I have any pelvic floor awareness?
Think about pulling up (towards your head) with your pelvic floor and inwards (towards the centre) when you are engaging your pelvic floor muscles.
Below is a video clip which shows one example of how to use some feedback to your perineum to help feel your pelvic floor
Once you have that subtle feeling of your pelvic floor muscles moving, try finding them in different positions such as standing and when doing a squat. You can check out more videos showing this on my youtube playlists.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJqDcZOOLoNKdBwxmY_wawA/playlists?view_as=subscriber
How important is pelvic floor awareness?
This is super important, simply because your pelvic floor is part of your core. The purpose of our abdominal core is to support us when we are doing things throughout our day. I use the “Use it or Lose it” saying. Why should the pelvic floor be any different. The great news is its actually quite easy to include these muscles in our exercise sessions!
How can I use my pelvic floor awareness during exercise?
For example, if you are working out in the gym, pick a couple of exercises where you can more easily add in your pelvic floor.
- Biceps curl: exhale and pull up with your pelvic floor when you bend your elbow
- Squat: exhale and pull up with your pelvic floor as you stand back up
- Push Up: exhale and pull up with your pelvic floor as you straighten your elbows
- Side lying leg raise: exhale and pull up with your pelvic floor as you lift your leg