Pelvic Floor Therapy: What it is and Why it Matters
Let’s talk about the muscles no one talks about: pelvic floor muscles. These are absolutely essential to core strength, but their role is often misunderstood or discussed within a too-narrow range of specialized issues. For instance, most people think of the pelvic floor only in terms of something postpartum women or those experiencing bladder leakage struggle with. But they do so much more! In reality, stable pelvic floor muscles are the cornerstone of functional movement and stability for everybody—women and men of every age and situation.
So, here at A Life in Balance physical therapy Flemington NJ, we incorporate pelvic floor therapy into nearly every patient's care plan because these muscles affect everything from posture to pain relief! And the kicker is that it’s not just about strengthening. Pelvic floor physical therapy works on muscle function, coordination, and balance!
What Is the Pelvic Floor, and Why Does It Matter?
The pelvic floor is a bowl-like assembly of muscles that support and regulate bowel, urinary, sexual, and core strength functions. In fact, when the question, “What is pelvic floor therapy?” arises, those first functions usually come to mind. The core strength functions are often less appreciated, though they shouldn’t be!
Research shows that nearly one in three women will experience a pelvic floor disorder at some point in their lives—and while much of the focus is on women, studies also indicate that about one in six men are affected. These layers of muscle give crucial stability and balance to the spine and hips. They need to be able to relax and contract correctly, just like any other muscle group, to give you core stability for everything from sports and weekend activities to getting up out of a chair and walking through the grocery store.
Pelvic floor muscle instability is actually a core issue behind many injuries. Pelvic floor physical therapy helps provide patients with the following key benefits:
1. Stability and Balance
Everyone who comes to ALIB quickly learns that the body is an interconnected, interwoven system where dysfunction in one area can cause a domino effect of dysfunction in other areas. The pelvic floor muscles form the very foundation for core stability as they coordinate movement within the trunk and hip muscles. Under or overactive pelvic floor muscles can change overall balance and stability in your body movements. An unbalanced pelvic floor often contributes to injury and pain, while a stable, balanced pelvic floor can support efficient, healthy movement patterns and posture, which brings us to the next benefit.
2. Posture and Breathing
Pelvic floor muscles assist your diaphragm when you breathe, which means you use those muscles subconsciously all the time as they raise and lower with the diaphragm when you inhale and exhale. Your posture directly affects the balance and function of your breath and pelvic floor muscles. Poor posture causes asymmetrical engagement and pressure on those muscles, straining them and leading to imbalances and pain. Good posture, however, supports healthy pelvic floor muscle function, just as healthy pelvic floor muscles support good posture. Understanding and coordinating those muscles is a win-win strategy.
Strength Isn’t Always the Answer
When we talk about physical therapy and muscles, many assume “strength” is the end goal for all the muscle groups we’re working on. When it comes to pelvic floor therapy, however, the issue is often too much tension or “hypertonicity”—difficulty in properly relaxing pelvic muscles in a controlled, synchronized manner.
A hypertonic (too tight) pelvic floor can cause pain and discomfort, poor core coordination, weakness in other core muscles, and over- or under-compensation elsewhere in the body. So, instead of just working on “strength”, pelvic floor physical therapy focuses on breathing, practice, and awareness of how the muscles function, and the sequence in which they function. In other words, getting your pelvic muscles to operate “in sync” with other core muscles by contracting and relaxing in the right sequence to support overall core function.
Signs Your Pelvic Floor Might Be Out of Sync
If your pelvic floor is out of sync, you might experience some of the following symptoms:
Unexpected bladder leaking when you sneeze, cough, run, or lift something.
Lower back or hip pain with no obvious cause.
Discomfort when attempting to breathe deeply, work on posture, or do abdominal work.
Feeling “disconnected” from your core during regular movement
Taken separately or together, these signs can indicate that your pelvic muscles aren’t firing in the right order. In other words, they may be tightening when they should relax, or relaxing when they should tighten. Either way, pelvic floor therapy can help you get these core foundation muscles working in sync. This can improve your breathing, balance, posture, and stability, fine-tuning your overall movement patterns to relieve pain, stabilize core function, and prevent future injuries.
What is Pelvic Floor Therapy? What Therapy Looks Like at A Life In Balance
At A Life in Balance, pelvic floor therapy is part of the overall roadmap we create for patients because it’s so foundational to core functions like full-body movement, breathing, and posture. These core functions are connected to literally every other issue you might have, from knee and foot pain to neck pain and headaches, and everywhere in between. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Evaluation and roadmap—We evaluate how you move, from head to toe, focusing on everything from how you breathe to how your posture works. This movement road-mapping shows us where imbalances exist, so we can create a comprehensive plan to bring your body into balance.
Exercise plan—We coach you, through exercise and breathing, on how to engage and release your pelvic floor as part of the full picture of core control, not in isolation, but as part of your core musculature system.
One-on-one therapy may include:
Breathing exercises
Movement re-education
Posture training
Manual therapy, if appropriate
We help you integrate pelvic floor physical therapy into your life so that it becomes part of your everyday practice, not just as a one-off activity to eliminate isolated symptoms. This gives you important tools for improving your core function for life!
A Functional Core Starts with Pelvic Floor Therapy
The muscles of the pelvic floor create the foundation for every movement you make, so they need to work in harmony with each other and the rest of your body. If you’ve been doing all the “right” exercises and still feel off balance or have any symptoms of an out-of-sync pelvic floor, schedule an appointment with us here at A Life in Balance. We can help you at our Flemington, NJ physical therapy office, and now, also, once a week, Dr. Paula provides physical therapy in Manchester VT, too! We are also available for virtual physical therapy sessions if you are out of town or have a hectic schedule. Make time for pelvic floor physical therapy: we can help you reconnect, rebalance, and move with more ease every day.
