Not my usual thing, but it’s ‘unspoken’ so I’ll say it…
Ok ladies, it is time to talk about your pelvic floor. Before you freak and go all ‘but I’m not a mother!?#!’ on me listen to this:
Your gorgeous stiletto heels &/or your beautiful babies will be the reason you are using Tenna pads at 50.
Yup you heard me right. Your shoes, those beautiful peep toes and pumps can cause a weakened pelvic floor. This takes ‘bladder weakness’ from the Mum category and places it firmly in the woman category. So unless you want to be avoiding running, laughing, heels and all kinds of fun womanly things listen up. And the answer is NOT ‘do pelvic floor contractions to the point of exhaustion‘ like so many books prescribe.
Your pelvic floor is a sling of muscles between your sacrum (pointy end of your spine) and your pubis synthesis (the part that just aches for no reason in pregnancy) the front center of your pelvic bones. It should be like a trampoline; taught, but not tight to the point of toughness. Think of it like a man’s guns (yeah that got your attention); you want to see the muscle ripple when he picks something up, and you want the muscle to yield and feel softish to the touch. You don’t want him to feel like a brick wall and look like an ape.
Now for this trampoline pelvic floor to happen you need both ends of the muscle to be working in different directions. Think of a hammock. You know the lovely things that you lay in on a tropical holiday sipping a pina colida? Well that hammock is tied to two strong coconut trees, right? Right. Fortunately you don’t have coconut trees in your nether regions, so you need to rely on strong muscles acting on bone. In this case the answer is a strong pelvic floor, achieved through a reasonable number of kegels and strong glutes, achieved through squats.
So, ditch the guilt that you aren’t doing your quota of PC contractions and do some PC contractions in a squat. You can find the pictures about how to squat properly here and the video that explains everything (IS safe for work) and isn’t freaky at all here.
