2 Introducing the pelvic floor and its muscles
Understanding where the pelvic floor is and its purpose is of key importance when it comes to working with athletes. By having this knowledge coaches, trainers and athletes are able to understand the causes of dysfunction and be proactive with their programming to help the women they are supporting.
You’ll start with a video to introduce you to the pelvic floor.
Activity 1 What is the pelvic floor and what should it be doing?
Timing: Allow about 20 minutes
Watch the video below where Baz Moffat of The Well HQ [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] introduces the pelvic floor, explains its purpose and the signs that it’s not functioning properly to look out for.
Then answer the following questions:
- What role does a healthy pelvic floor play?
- What are the signs that the pelvic floor is not functioning correctly?
Download this video clip.Video player: boc_sfps_1_session4_activity2.mp4
Transcript
BAZ MOFFAT
So this is a female pelvis. And the pelvic floor sits underneath and it attaches to a woman’s pubic bone at the front and comes all the way underneath and attaches to a coccyx at the back. And you can see here that there are-- it looks like two holes, but there are actually three. So there’s the vagina, the urethra, and then there’s the anus at the back.
And what I think is really important, which you can see on this is there’s a lot of muscle around the back passage. So it’s not just all about the front. When you’re learning to connect, we need the whole of the pelvic floor to be involved. A healthy pelvic floor should do what you want your body to be doing.
Now everybody should be able to have a pelvic floor that can hold strength for 10 seconds. So when you’re doing your exercises, you want it to be able to lift for 10 seconds. But then you also want it to be able to keep you dry when you’re doing whatever exercise you’re doing.
So if you walk that’s what you want you keep dry doing that. But if you’re doing park runs or if you’re playing competitive hockey, or netball or a competitive sprinter, then the pelvic floor needs to be able to keep you dry when you’re doing those activities.
So there are certain really obvious things like laughing, coughing, sneezing, which many women will be aware that it affects their pelvic floor. So your pelvic floor should be able to resist the increase in abdominal pressure when you’re laughing, coughing, sneezing. But it should also be able to resist the pressure from below when you’re jumping, landing, running, whatever form that takes. And so a healthy pelvic floor will be able to withstand the pressure that you’re creating within your body.
The main sign of pelvic floor dysfunction is leaking urine. And that might be when you laugh, cough, sneeze, or taking part in sport or exercise. Although it’s not life threatening and it doesn’t feel like an injury, it can really affect women’s enjoyment of sport and many women will give up sport because of this.
The other signs of dysfunction are urge incontinence. It’s not because of impact, it’s because you just can’t hold on any longer and it might be when you arrive home and you put a key in the door and then you just have this irresistible urge to empty your bladder and you don’t quite make it to the toilet.
And other signs of pelvic floor dysfunction may be pain in your pelvis, might be feelings of heaviness, or dragging feelings. But any of these signs are just really clear indications that your pelvic floor is not doing what it should do and you should go and get some help.
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Discussion
- The role of the pelvic floor is to keep us dry by preventing any leakage of urine, while we are doing whatever activity we want to do. The pelvic floor should also be able to withstand the increase in abdominal pressure caused by laughing, coughing and sneezing. Running and jumping also increase abdominal pressure and should be able to be performed without urine leakage.
- The main sign of pelvic floor dysfunction is leakage, or urinary incontinence, when laughing, coughing, sneezing, or taking part in exercise. However, urge incontinence, where you suddenly need to go and cannot hold on, and pelvic pain are also signs. Fortunately, in most cases dysfunction can be treated or improved through specific exercises.
Urinary incontinence (UI) is also referred to as stress incontinence (SI) due to it being caused by increased stress on the pelvic floor muscles.