How to Do Kegel Exercises Correctly and Safely

Kegel exercises strengthen the pelvic floor muscles.

Women typically do Kegel exercises to strengthen their pelvic floor muscles and prevent these muscles from dropping too low into their vaginal region. Coughing chronically, pregnancy, and excessive weight gain can cause these muscles in the pelvic region to drop. Fortunately, doing Kegel exercises can be quite effective in helping women to prevent this from happening. If you are interested in learning a step by step program for doing these exercises correctly and safely, please read this article.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. The first step is to figure out which muscles you are trying to exercise. You do this by urinating and then stopping midway through the process. In other words, any time you deliberately stop urinating, you are working the muscles in your pelvic region. (Do not make a habit of doing this, however, as it is not healthy to interfere with the urination process on a regular basis. You are just doing is for the very first time in order to figure out the precise movement you need to be making to perform your Kegel exercises correctly.)

2. Once you have completed step one by figuring out exactly what the movement actually is, your second step, on an empty bladder, is to make this movement for three second intervals and then relax for three seconds in between each contraction. Health experts advise repeating this movement ten times in a row.

3. After you have mastered these three-second contractions (with three-second relaxation breaks in between each contraction), as described in Step Two, experts advise you to keep increasing the number of seconds per contraction until you are able to complete ten ten-second contractions in a row (with ten-second relaxation periods in between each one).

Tips & Warnings

• Kegel exercises are a great way to keep your entire pelvic region in shape, so consider doing them on a daily habit. They also don't take very long to do, which makes them quite easy and convenient to incorporate into your days. (Some women like to do them in the car while driving, for example.)

• Remember not to do your Kegel exercises when you have a full bladder, because this is not good for you. In fact, you will always want to be sure that your bladder is totally empty before beginning these exercises for health and safety reasons.