Kegel with Vaginal Weights
Finding the right muscle. This is very important. Your doctor, nurse, or physical therapist will help make sure you are doing the exercises right. You should tighten the two major muscles that stretch across your pelvic floor. They are the "hammock" muscle and the "triangle" muscle. Here are three methods to check for the correct muscles.
1) Try to stop the flow of urine when you are sitting on the toilet. If you can do it, you are using the right muscles.
2) Imagine that you are trying to stop passing gas. Squeeze the muscles you would use. If you sense a "pulling" feeling, those are the right muscles for pelvic exercises.
3) Lie down and put your finger inside your vagina. Squeeze as if you were trying to stop urine from coming. If you feel tightness on your finger, you are squeezing the right muscle.
Don't squeeze other muscles at the same time. Be careful not to tighten your stomach, legs, or other muscles. Squeezing the wrong muscles can put more pressure on your bladder. Just squeeze the pelvic muscle.
Don't hold your breath.
Factors such as pregnancy, childbirth, aging and being overweight, and abdominal surgery such as cesarean section, often result in the weakening of the pelvic muscles. Eexercises are useful in regaining pelvic floor muscle strength in such cases.
Kegel exercises are easy to do and can be done anywhere without anyone knowing.
First, as you are sitting or lying down, try to contract the muscles you would use to stop urinating. You should feel your pelvic muscles squeezing your urethra and anus. If your stomach or buttocks muscles tighten, you are not exercising the right muscles.
When you've found the right way to contract the pelvic muscles, squeeze for 3 seconds and then relax for 3 seconds.
Repeat this exercise 10 to 15 times per session. Try to do this at least 3 times a day. Kegel exercises are only effective when done regularly. The more you exercise, the more likely it is that the exercises will help.
Your doctor may want you to try doing your exercises with kegel weights to make sure you are doing them right and to provide some form of resistance.
Think ahead, just before sneezing, lifting, or jumping. Sudden pressure from such actions can hurt those pelvic muscles. Squeeze your pelvic muscles tightly and hold on until after you sneeze, lift, or jump. After you train yourself to tighten the pelvic muscles for these moments, you will have fewer accidents.
Urinary incontinence
The consequences of weakened pelvic floor muscles may include urinary or bowel incontinence, which may be helped by therapeutic strengthening of these muscles. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that "PFMT [Pelvic floor muscle training] be included in first-line conservative management programmes for women with stress, urge, or mixed, urinary incontinence...The treatment effect might be greater in younger women (in their 40's and 50's) with stress urinary incontinence.
Sexual function
It is said that Kegel exercises make the vagina tighter. Also, after childbirth, practicing pelvic-floor contractions during vaginal
sex will allow the woman immediate feedback from her partner, who can tell her whether they can feel her muscles tightening.
A newly-postpartum woman—who has yet to return to sexual intercourse—can retrain her pelvic floor muscles to their pre-pregnancy strength and tone by placing kegel exercise weights into her vagina and squeezing them while doing her kegel exercises.