How to Know When You Are Overdoing Kegel Exercises
Kegel exercises are exercises designed to strengthen your pelvic floor. This fairly simple exercise can benefit your bladder and bowel control as well as your sexual enjoyment. If you are pregnant, over-weight, recovering from surgery or experiencing incontinence, your care-giver may instruct you to do Kegel exercises. However, anyone can benefit from doing Kegel exercises. Find out how to determine if you are doing them correctly and how to know if you are overdoing your Kegel exercises.
Instructions
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How to Know if You Are Overdoing Kegel Exercises
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Make sure you are doing your Kegel exercises correctly. The easiest way to find the correct muscles is to locate them while urinating. The muscles you use to stop your urine stream are the pelvic floor muscles, the same ones you contract in order to do Kegel exercises. Get used to contracting and releasing them while urinating by stopping and starting your urine stream.
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Empty your bladder and lie down or sit comfortably to do your Kegel exercises. The first several times you do them, contract your pelvic floor muscles for only three seconds and then relax them for three seconds. Do this ten times in a row and stop. Do another set once or twice more in the day for a total of three sets a day of ten Kegels each. As you get used to them increase the time to five seconds contracted and five seconds relaxed. Work your way up to contracting your pelvic floor muscles for ten seconds and relaxing for ten seconds. Do this ten times in a row. Do one set of ten Kegel exercises three times a day, as recommended by MayoClinic.com. You may choose an alternate workout of two five-minute sets of Kegels a day--one in the morning before getting out of bed and one at night before falling asleep, as recommended by KegelexercisesForWomen.com. Do them until you have reached your goal and then cut back to three five-minute sets a week.
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Stop if you experience any muscle soreness or discomfort while doing your Kegel exercises. Make sure that the muscle soreness is in your pelvic floor, not inside your vagina. Kegel exercises should not cause any vaginal pain. If your pelvic floor muscles are sore or uncomfortable, you are overdoing your Kegels and need to let these muscles rest. Dr. Ruth Westheimer says of muscle soreness while doing Kegels, "Like with any exercise, you have to start off slowly and build the muscle before adding more repetitions. It's certainly possible to overdo Kegel exercises, and if that's what you've done, then it's not surprising that you would feel sore."
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Once your pelvic floor muscles are no longer sore, start your Kegels again. Examine your technique to make sure you are not doing more than two five-minute sets a day or three sets of ten Kegels at a time per day. If you are not doing more than this recommended amount and still becoming sore, shorten the number of seconds you contract your pelvic floor muscles. Go back down to three seconds contracted and three relaxed. Relaxing the muscles is just as important as contracting them in the Kegel exercise so make sure you are completely relaxing between Kegels. Shorten the sets to three to five seconds and just do five Kegels in a set until you feel comfortable increasing. Do not do more than three sets a day.
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See a doctor if you are concerned that you are using the wrong muscles or if you continue to experience muscle soreness. A doctor or physical therapist can do biofeedback training by using a monitoring probe and electrodes to isolate the correct muscles. This can also determine if you are completely relaxing those muscles in between Kegels.
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Tips & Warnings
While doing Kegel exercises, you should isolate the pelvic muscles and not be tightening your abdomen, buttocks, or thighs, and remember to breathe. Vary your techniques while doing Kegel exercises. Try doing quick, one second Kegels for a count of ten or twenty (one Kegel per number as you count). Only do a set or two a day. Another variation is the elevator technique where you imagine an elevator and each floor is a slightly tighter contraction of your pelvic floor muscles. The fourth floor is the tightest. Then take the elevator back down, relaxing it a little more with each floor until you reach the basement and completely relax your pelvic floor. Do not do this more than ten times in a row, and not more than once a day. In general Kegel exercises are recommended for women, but men can benefit by doing them as well according to Kegel-Exercises.com.
Do not make a habit of doing Kegel exercises while urinating. MayoClinic.com instructs, "Doing Kegel exercises with a full bladder or while emptying your bladder can actually weaken the muscles. It can also lead to incomplete emptying of the bladder, which increases your risk of a urinary tract infection."
