Kegel Exercises: Why You Should Do Your Kegel Exercises

What are Kegels?

Kegel exercises are named after the doctor who devised them to help women strengthen the muscles of their pelvic floor. Strengthening and toning the muscles of the pelvic floor help with maintaining control of the urine and bowels, especially after the baby is born. These muscles can be damaged and stretched during pregnancy and birth if they are not exercised, leading to incontinence and a decrease in the enjoyment of sex.

How do I find this muscle, and how do I exercise it?

The easiest way to find the muscles of your pelvic floor is to try and stop and start the flow of urine while peeing. Ideally, this muscle alone should be isolated and you should try not to clench the muscles of your thighs or legs when exercising your pelvic floor. Once you find the muscle, don’t flex it while urinating as this can cause a UTI.

Another way to find this muscle is to grip the penis during intercourse.
Once you find the muscle, you want to practice drawing it up inside of you. This may be difficult at first. Try tightening layer by layer, going up, and then releasing floor by floor, like an elevator going down. You can do this several times, repeating the cycle a few times a day. Like any muscle, you will want to start off slow and gradually increase repetitions so that you are able to do a few hundred a day.

Many women devise a certain time of day to do these-it can be whenever you are in the car and reach a stoplight, or at commercial breaks when you are watching TV. It’s the exercise that no one knows you are doing!

There is also exercise equipment available for strengthening the pelvic floor muscles. Vaginal weights, or cones, can be purchased. The weights are small, plastic cones with stainless steel weights inside of them. Starting with the smallest weight, you insert the cone and see if your pelvic floor muscles can hold onto it. As your muscles get stronger, you progress to heavier weights.

The “Kegelmaster for Women” is another device on the market that provides resistance for the pelvic floor when practicing Kegels. It is marketed as an incontinence/greater sex life tool but the site also has some information about pelvic organ prolapse, which is helpful.

How do Kegels help with pregnancy and birth?

During pregnancy, strong muscles can prevent the leaking of urine, especially as the baby gets bigger and heavier. Because the muscles include those of the anus, hemorrhoids can also be prevented.
A well-exercised pelvic floor will keep things from moving around as the baby comes through the birth canal and the vagina. On the way out, the baby passes your rectum, your urethra and will stretch your vagina and perineum to the max. A strong pelvic floor will avoid any of these passing points to become overstretched or damaged as the baby is being born.

The pelvic floor muscles also help push the baby out. Practicing bulging these muscles out (don’t push just bulge though!) can help you identify what muscles you will use when you need to push your baby out.

How will Kegels help my sex life?

Anybody can benefit from doing Kegels regularly, but a woman who has just given birth may need them the most if her vagina feels stretched out. Ideally, Kegels allow you to have a tighter “grip” during sex because the walls of the vagina are strengthened. This can improve sexual satisfaction for both men and women.

Sources:

http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/baby/physrecovery/1154885.html

Frye, Anne. Holistic Midwifery Vol. 1 (264-65)

http://www.kegel-exercise.com/vaginal_cones.html

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