People often want to know if it’s OK to do pelvic floor exercises on the toilet. In summary the answer is no!
Here’s why….
People often ask us if it’s a good idea to do pelvic floor exercises on the toilet. The short answer is no … with a small caveat at the end. But again, no!
It sends mixed messages to your brain
Doing pelvic floor exercises on the toilet — a common one is pausing peeing for a few seconds — messes with your brain /bladder feedback mechanism. By stopping yourself from peeing mid-flow, you send a message to your brain that you’re done. This is confusing, as you’re not done.
If you regularly do your Kegels on the toilet then the relationship between bladder, brain and pelvic floor can become dysfunctional.
Sitting is not an optimal position
The above is the main reason, but there’s also an effectiveness argument. Sitting is not the best position in which to train pelvic floor. Anyone who has worked with Baz knows that she want to get you off the floor as quick as possible so you can do them while standing and moving.
Lying on your back is the best way to ease into it if you’re just starting out doing pelvic floor exercises as you begin to feel what the pelvic floor is doing. Sitting isn’t optimal for this. Sitting on the bog definitely isn’t optimal for this!
We need to train functional control
We need to train the pelvic floor to relax when on the toilet and contract when lifting, jumping, sneezing or laughing. The pelvic floor is not supposed to contract mid flow so why would you want to train it to do so? We want to train the pelvic floor to do the different jobs we need it to do. Being able to relax on the toilet is a key pelvic floor task.
OK here’s the caveat
Stopping yourself from peeing (before starting again) can be a useful test to do every now and again. Once a month is good. It is useful to see if you can stop yourself from peeing mid flow and hold it for 5 seconds so you can know where you’re at.
If you can’t do the test then you know what you need to do … that’s right, your pelvic floor exercises. If you’re struggling to stick with it, download Squeezy by the NHS and it’ll remind you every day.
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