We take care of our hair, skin and nails. We try to eat healthily and take care of our figure through regular physical activity. On top of that, there are regular checkups with the doctor, blood count, breast ultrasound, cytology, or checkups at the dentist... In all of this, can you find time for preventive healthcare of the pelvic floor muscles?
It turns out that you don’t have to give up physical activity to take care of your pelvic health. All you have to do is incorporate hypopressive training – an innovative training method dedicated to women’s health – into your training plan.
What are hypopressive exercises?
Hypopressive exercises mainly consist of postural and breathing exercises. The goal of hypopressive training is to reduce pressure in the chest, abdomen and pelvis through appropriate exercises, body positions and breathing techniques. In practice, these exercises mainly involve engagement of the spinal muscles and pelvic floor muscles.
Hypopressive exercises can be performed by anyone, although due to their character and focus on specific areas, hypopressive training is dedicated to women who need to strengthen the pelvic area. These exercises will work well for women with urinary incontinence, lowering of the reproductive organs, sexual dysfunction, or as part of a return to activity after childbirth.
In addition, hypopressive training can serve women as part of preparing for pregnancy by strengthening the spine, reducing pressure on the pelvic floor, improving posture or flattening abdominal muscles.
Why hypopressive training and not typical exercise?
“Tighten your belly!”, “Navel to the spine!”, “Hold the core!” – are you familiar with these slogans? All of these activities are designed to engage the abdominal muscles (and the entire muscle corset) to work. This stabilizes the lumbar region of the spine, so as to minimize the risk of its injury during exercising.
Unfortunately, this type of involvement of the abdominal muscle corset, in addition to protecting the spine, has negative consequences, especially for women. Tension in the abdomen (often with holding back air) raises pressure in the abdominal cavity. While this is good for our loins, the pelvic floor muscles particularly suffer from such an action. The increase in abdominal pressure causes “centrifugal” stress on the abdominal cavity from all sides, and the increased pressure must always find an outlet.
With increased abdominal pressure, that outlet is often... our pelvis. In other words, frequent tightening of the abdominal muscles and increasing abdominal pressure will weaken the pelvic floor muscles. And from there it’s a straight road to problems with incontinence (urinary, faecal and gas), genital prolapse or sexual dysfunction.
There’s a reason why urogynaecological physiotherapists are sounding the alarm — in an age of ubiquitous abdominal muscle training, strength training and strengthening one’s core, most women these days, instead of strengthening their pelvic floor muscles, need to... relax them, due to too much pressure and tension.
Hypopressive exercises – training for women for the 21st century
“Old habits die hard” — you will probably find this out if you try hypopressive training. This will likely be the first workout where, instead of tensing your abdomen with all your might, you will consciously redirect this tension to other areas.
This type of exercise teaches both conscious and unconscious control of abdominal pressure, on the part of the abdominal muscles and the back muscles, too. This requires learning to “operate” these muscles from scratch, so to speak, and working on making some of these activities happen automatically, outside of our consciousness.
Sounds like a lot of work, so is it even worth it? Yes, if, at the same time as taking care of your pelvic floor health, you would like to strengthen your abdominal muscles, improve your posture, strengthen your circulation and your overall body awareness.
Contraindications to hypopressive exercises
Hypopressive exercises must not be performed mainly by:
- people suffering from hypertension, significant diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscle (more than 3 cm),
- inguinal or umbilical hernia,
- pregnant women, unless a qualified urogynaecological physiotherapist in consultation with the physician in charge of the pregnancy agrees.
How to start?
You do not need any special equipment to start hypopressive training. Comfortable clothes and an exercise mat are enough.
However, don’t rely on self-study at home at first. It is not always possible to single-handedly reverse years of improper tightening of abdominal and pelvic floor muscles – the help of a specialist will be necessary here. It is best to consult a qualified physiotherapist (or urogynaecological physiotherapist). Under the guidance of a professional instructor, you will be expected to learn proper breathing techniques and muscle tension sequences. The duration and intensity of the exercises are adjusted individually.
The exercises themselves are quite complicated and require coordination of several elements at once, so inexperienced people should always perform them under the guidance of an instructor. Some elements that appear in hypopressive training include:
- placing the body in the appropriate position for the exercise,
- conscious breathing into specific regions of the chest and ribs,
- breathless work,
- opening and pulling apart the ribs and sucking in the abdomen (quite different from pulling in the abdomen in the common sense).
Only after you have been “trained” and with the permission of the instructor will you be able to continue the exercises on your own at home.