Do you NEED to do kegels?

I was talking with a fitness pro who I really respect recently. She told me that she always tells her clients and classes to just not do kegels. My ears always perk up when I hear recommendations like this, but instead of getting defensive, I got curious. Her reasoning is that she’s found more of her clients have tight pelvic floors, and aren’t having symptoms anyway. So all that tightening they’re doing may be doing more harm than good.

Well when you put it that way, I can say the same for a lot of my patients.

So that got me thinking: does EVERYONE need to do kegels? That’s kind of been the going narrative, right? If you’re a lady, do your kegels. If you had a baby, do your kegels.

And that leads to more questions:

How many do I need to do?

Do I need to do them for the rest of my life?

Am I even doing them right?

Let’s address the initial question at hand: Who needs to do kegels (aka pelvic floor exercises)?

You might need to practice pelvic floor exercises if:

-       You leak when you cough or sneeze

-       You know you have a prolapse

-       You leak urine or stool with exercise

-       You feel heaviness in your pelvic floor after a walk or run

-       You have trouble controlling urges (bladder, bowel or gas)

If you said yes to any of those, you might need to strengthen your pelvic floor. However, if you’ve tried and haven’t been successful, I 100% recommend you get in to see a Pelvic Floor PT to make sure you’re doing them correctly and that there’s not something else going on. If you want to check yourself, download my Guide to a Proper Pelvic Floor Contraction.

If you answered NO to all of the above questions, and have an active lifestyle, you probably don’t need to do kegels. Say what? Yep, you’re off the hook.

More importantly, you should not do kegels if:

-       You have pain with sex

-       You have discomfort wearing tampons or menstrual cups

-       You have tailbone pain or pain with sitting

-       You have trouble emptying your bladder

-       You have frequent UTI’s

If you fall into the latter category, you probably already have a tight pelvic floor. Trying to do 100 kegels a day will only make things worse.

Can you relate to symptoms in both lists? Is it keeping you from doing what you want to do, like run or hike or pick up your kid? Get yourself to a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist! We can help you determine what’s going on with your pelvic floor muscles and how they can work better for you. Hop on the phone with me for a Free 15-minute phone consult, or find a PT near you.

As with most things in life, all of this is not black and white. You can leak even if your pelvic floor is strong. You can have painful sex if your pelvic floor is weak. You can have all of the symptoms above! And most importantly, you can overcome them all.