Everyday Habits That Weaken Your Pelvic Floor: Are You Unknowingly Throwing It Off Balance?

Let's talk more about how we are weakening our pelvic floor muscles and throwing them off balance in our day to day life without even realizing It!

As we have talked about before, the pelvic floor muscles are like a bowl at the base of your torso spanning from the pubic bone to the tailbone, to the inside of the hips and sit bones. While bowel, bladder and sexual function are the main roles of the pelvic floor we underestimate how much it contributes to our overall hip stability and strength!

Some things that can throw the pelvic floor off balance are part of our daily routine and we might be completely unaware of it! Below are some examples.

Sitting into one hip – this puts an uneven weight distribution throughout the pelvic and hip muscles causing one side to work harder than the other and sometimes even shifting our pelvic bones out of position if we sustain it for too long!

Crossing one leg under while sitting down – sitting position is very important for proper stabilization of our pelvis, if we are always off to one side this can impact not only our pelvic muscles by weakening them, but also impact our low back muscles causing further unwanted discomfort in the body!

Slouching on the couch – when we have poor posture and slouch, our pelvic floor muscles cannot function properly and have increased pressure applied to those muscles because we are not properly engaging or positioning our core! That can often lead to weakening pelvic floor muscles and eventually contribute to leakage when constantly sitting in a slouched or rounded back position.

Leaning forward while sitting in the toilet – this is a similar issue to slouching on the couch as it applies more pressure through the pelvic muscles, but also causes them to lengthen in an unnatural way making it more difficulty for them to contract and relax properly when urinating or having a bowel movement!

Standing without Core Activation/Proper spinal and Pelvic Alignment – often times when we stand, we sit into our bones and our hips pushing them forward, not engaging our core or our postural muscles. This can lead to increased pressure and decreased stability throughout the pelvis! Try and be aware of your posture ensuring that you are standing up tall, activating the core and not locking out the knees in a standing position! You should be able to still feel a strong contraction of your pelvic floor muscles when performing a kegel in a standing position. 

Straining on the toilet or sitting on the toilet for too long – when straining, we put increased pressure from our abdominal cavity down into our pelvic floor muscles. The longer we strain or even sit on the toilet, the more force comes down into those muscles causing them to get weaker and can even lead to dysfunction or hemorrhoids! If you are sitting for more than 3-5 minutes and are having difficulty ” taking care of business” then it's time to stand up and go do something else and try again later to protect your pelvic floor!

Just in case peeing – when we “just in case” pee we are subconsciously retraining our brain and bladder that we need to go before the bladder is truly full. This can also put unnecessary strain on those pelvic floor muscles.

Sedentary lifestyle – our pelvic floor muscles play such an important role in every movement and activity we do daily, if we are not exercising our body, even if it's just walking daily and doing short routines 3-5 times a week, we are not setting our pelvic floor muscles or our core up for success. Movement is so important for the body!

Are you guilty of doing any of these? Do you want more education on your pelvic floor? Are you concerned that you may have pelvic floor dysfunction or a weak pelvic floor? You can contact us now to set up a free phone consultation and see if pelvic floor PT is right for you!