How to Kegel – Health Professional Kegel Exercises Video Guidelines

 

kegel exercises‘How to Kegel’ is a short online exercise video designed to help women understand Kegel exercises and how to perofrm them correctly. ‘How to Kegel’ video is presented by Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist Michelle Kenway. Michelle is the author of Inside Out and producer of the Inside Out DVD series.

 

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‘How to Kegel’ Video Contents

The following kegel exercise video teaches you how to exercise and strengthen your pelvic floor muscles with guidelines and techniques for how to:

  1. Find your pelvic floor muscles;
  2. Feel your kegel exercises;
  3. Perform your exercises for pelvic floor strengthening; and
  4. Position your body for your kegel exercises.

For further information on how to kegel, please refer to the written exercise guidelines that follow the video below.

Video duration: 5 minutes

 

Note to ensure the smooth viewing of the video, it is recommended that you press on this play arrow and then when the video starts loading you press the ‘pause’ button until you can see that the entire video has loaded. This will help avoid the video stopping to load while you watch.

How to Kegel Video Contents

How to locate your pelvic floor muscles

Pelvic floor muscles are located at the base or the lowest part of the pelvis. Pelvic floor muscles can be located between the sit bones by placing your fingers under your sit bones in sitting – they span the space between the sit bones and run from the pubic bone at the front to the tail bone at the back. The pelvic floor muscles in women wrap around the three pelvic openings (vagina, urethra and anus).

How to feel your kegel exercises

When you contract your pelvic floor muscles for kegel exercises, it feels like an inwards lift and squeeze of the pelvic openings. Some women feel a very definite contraction of their pelvic floor muscles, others feel very little. These techniques can help feel kegel exercises:

  1. Stop or slow the flow of urine (one a week and only as a test) of the correct action and your pelvic floor strength.
  2. Look at the entrance of the vagina and watch the opening contract inwards with your exercise.
  3. Feel your perineum (between the vagina and anus) as you practice your exercise. You should feel an inwards lift and squeeze, rather than a downwards bulge which suggests you are performing the incorrect technique.

How to Kegel – pelvic floor strength training guidelines

The research into how to most effectively improve pelvic floor strength provides the following guidelines:

  • Try to do your Kegel exercises daily
  • Aim to perform each kegel exercise for 3 to 10 seconds at a time
  • Relax your pelvic floor muscles completely, rest and recover before your next exercise
  • Repeat your kegel exercises up to 8-12 times in a row for one full set of exercises
  • Try to do 3 sets of kegel exercises every day when you are strengthening your pelvic floor muscles.

How long for changes with kegel exercises?

Changes in your pelvic floor muscles start to occur within a couple of weeks of exercising these muscles; however it can take up to 5-6 months of regular kegel exercise for weak pelvic floor muscles to recover their strength and to regain control.

Best positions for kegel exercises

When starting out the best kegel positions are often lying down- on your side, back, stomach or kneeling on all fours. These positions eliminate the need to lift the pelvic floor muscles to lift against gravity and can sometimes help women with very weak pelvic floor muscles to start strengthening.

Progress kegel exercises by practicing them in sitting and standing when you are able to. These upright positions help to challenge and strengthen the pelvic floor muscles by exercising them against the downward force of gravity.

Inside Out Book & DVDABOUT THE AUTHOR, Michelle Kenway

Michelle Kenway is a Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist and author of Inside Out – the Essential Women’s Guide to Pelvic Support. The Inside Out exercise DVD and book show women how to strengthen the pelvic floor and exercise effectively with pelvic floor safe exercises.

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