Incorporating Kegel exercises into your daily routine can help prevent pelvic floor problems, such as incontinence, and improve the quality of your sex life. Most importantly, you’ll learn to identify and isolate Kegel muscles and incorporate the exercise into your daily life.
Kegel Exercise Preparation
Suddenly holding it in while urinating finds the pelvic floor muscles. Before you do Kegel exercises, it’s important to properly locate the pelvic floor muscles that make up your pelvic floor. The most common method is to suddenly hold it in while urinating. This crunch is the basic movement of Kegel exercises. Allow the muscles to relax and resume urine flow, and you’ll get a better feel for the location of your Kegel muscles. Remember, if you have any medical issues that prevent you from doing Kegel exercises safely, see your doctor before starting.
- However, don’t hold in your pee as a regular Kegel exercise. Doing Kegel exercises while urinating may have the opposite effect and weaken your pelvic floor muscles.
If you still can’t find your Kegel muscles, insert your fingers into your vagina and squeeze the surrounding muscles. You will feel your muscles tighten and your pelvis move upward. Relax and your pelvis will drop back. Make sure the fingers you insert into your vagina are clean.
Use a hand mirror to find your Kegel muscles. If you haven’t found or separated the Kegel muscles yet, place a small mirror over the perineum, the skin-covered area between the vagina and anus. Practice tightening and relaxing your Kegel muscles. If you’re doing it correctly, you’ll see the perineum contract with each squeeze.
Before starting Kegel exercises, make sure your bladder is empty. This is very important. You don’t want to have a full or partially full bladder while doing Kegel exercises, otherwise you may experience pain or leak urine during the exercise. Do a bladder check before you begin your exercise routine to complete these exercises more efficiently.
Focus on tightening the pelvic floor muscles. Kegel exercises should only focus on these muscles, so for best results, you should avoid flexing other muscles such as your hips, thighs, or abdominals. To help you focus and improve your exercise efficiency, exhale and inhale normally during each set of Kegel exercises without holding your breath. This will help you relax and get the most benefit from pelvic floor muscle exercises.
- One way to keep your muscles relaxed is to place your hands on your abdomen and keep your abdomen relaxed.
- If you have some pain in your back or abdomen after completing a set of Kegel exercises, it means you are not doing the exercise correctly.
Maintain a comfortable position. You can do these exercises while sitting in a chair or lying on the floor. Make sure your hip and abdominal muscles are relaxed. If you are lying on your back, you should flatten your back, place your arms by your sides, and keep your knees together. Keep your head low to avoid straining your neck.
Do Kegel Exercises
Tighten your pelvic muscles and hold for five seconds. Once you get started, it’s a great workout. Don’t tighten too many muscles at once or for too long. If 5 seconds is still a long time for you, you can start with 2-3 seconds.
Relax your muscles and hold for 10 seconds. Ideally, you should give your pelvic floor muscles ten seconds of rest before repeating the exercise. This gives them enough time to relax and avoid strain. Count to ten before starting the next exercise.
Repeat the exercise 10 times. This is considered a set of Kegel exercises. If you start by tightening your muscles for five seconds, then tighten for five seconds, then relax for ten seconds, and repeat ten times. This is basically enough for one Kegel exercise, and you should do this set 3 to 4 times a day, but no more.
Aim to squeeze the muscles for ten seconds at a time. Each week you can increase the time you tense your muscles by a few seconds. You don’t have to do more than ten seconds at a time or do more than one set at a time. Once you hit that magic number of ten seconds, stick with it and continue doing sets of ten ten-second muscle crunches three to four times a day.
Stretch Kegel muscles. This is another variation of Kegel exercises. To stretch your Kegel muscles, think of your pelvic floor muscles as a vacuum. Tighten your glutes and stretch your legs. Hold this position for 5 seconds and then relax. Do ten in a row at a time, and it will take about 50 seconds to complete.
Get Sports Results
Do Kegel exercises at least 3 to 4 times a day. If you really want to stick with it, then you have to make it a part of your daily routine. 3-4 times a day is feasible, because each set of Kegel exercises does not last too long, and you can find a way to incorporate Kegel exercises into your life. You can start doing Kegels in the morning, afternoon, and evening, so you don’t have to worry about making a special schedule to do Kegels.
Fit Kegel exercises into your busy schedule. The best thing about Kegel exercises is that you can do them without anyone else knowing. You can do it while you’re sitting at the office, having lunch with friends, or just relaxing on the couch after a long day at work. While lying flat, isolating your Kegel muscles, and focusing your mind are important for beginners, once you get the hang of it, you can do Kegels anytime, anywhere.
- You can even do Kegels while doing an everyday task, such as checking your inbox or mail.
- Once you find a set of Kegel exercises that work for you, you should stick with that set and either do more Kegel exercises or exercise more diligently. If you do too much, you may have to strain when you urinate or poop.
- Keep in mind that interrupting urination is a great way to find Kegel muscles, but you shouldn’t do Kegels while urinating or you’ll risk incontinence and related problems.
If you do Kegel exercises regularly, you can expect to see results within a few months. For some women, the results are amazing; for others, Kegel exercises can prevent future urinary tract problems. Some women get frustrated because they don’t feel the slightest change after doing Kegel exercises for weeks. You have to stick with it long enough to feel the changes in your body. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), you will feel the effects as soon as 4-6 weeks later.
If you feel like you’re not doing Kegel exercises correctly, get help. Your doctor can help you identify and isolate the correct muscles to exercise. If you think you’ve been doing Kegel exercises long enough, say for a few months, and still aren’t seeing results, you should seek help from your doctor. Here’s what your doctor can do for you:
- If necessary, your doctor will provide you with biofeedback training. It involves placing a monitoring device inside the vagina, leaving electrodes outside. The monitor can tell you whether you successfully contracted your pelvic floor muscles and how long you maintained the contraction.
- Your doctor may also use electrical stimulation to help you identify your pelvic floor muscles. During this procedure, a small electrical current is passed to the pelvic floor muscles. When activated, the current causes the muscles to contract automatically. After some application, you can simulate the effects of electric current yourself.
If you want to treat incontinence, you need to continue doing Kegel exercises. If you want to keep your muscles strong and stay away from incontinence, then you must keep doing Kegel exercises. If you stop exercising, even for a few months, your incontinence may come back. You have to work hard to keep your muscles strong and make a commitment to keep going.
Tips
- You can perform slow or fast Kegel exercises at any time without anyone knowing what you are doing. Some women find it easy to incorporate Kegel exercises into their daily routine, such as driving, reading a book, watching television, talking on the phone, or sitting in front of a computer.
- Try not to hold your breath, contract your hips or thighs, tighten your abdomen or push it down, contract your muscles, and lift your abdomen.
- As you become more confident with these exercises, you’ll find that you can perform the exercises while standing. It’s important to keep practicing throughout the day. You can do it while washing dishes, waiting in line, or sitting at your desk. You can also do it during TV commercials or waiting at traffic lights.
- Eat as healthily as possible.
- Pregnant women can perform Kegel exercises.
- Imagine your lungs are in your pelvis, relaxing your perineum as you inhale and contracting as you exhale.