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Kegel exercises for women after childbirth. How can you avoid many delicate problems and restore your body with the help of exercises?

Woman after pregnancy and childbirth: changes in the body and figure

In the process of bearing a baby, as its weight increases, the load on the pelvic muscles also increases. By the end of pregnancy, the weight of the child and amniotic fluid can reach 10-15 kilograms or more, and under this weight not only the deep muscles of the abdominal wall are stretched, but also the muscles of the perineum, the upper part of the vagina and other muscles of the pelvic floor.

In everyday life they often go unnoticed, but it is due to these muscles that the pelvic organs occupy a normal – anatomical – position. If muscle tone weakens and ligaments become less elastic, problems arise that older women often face - prolapse and even prolapse of the walls of the vagina, uterus, urinary incontinence and hemorrhoids.

Kegel exercises were developed to prevent these problems. After childbirth, they acquire special importance, since it is during this period that the risk of complications increases. Therefore, as soon as the mother’s well-being returns to normal, the stitches (if any were applied) are removed, then you can begin to master the complex.

As soon as the mother’s well-being returns to normal, you can begin to master the complex.

Many questions arise for those who decide to perform Kegel exercises after childbirth:

• How to perform them if you don’t feel your pelvic floor muscles?
• How often should they be performed?
• What does efficiency depend on?
• Will there be any harm if hemorrhoids have already developed after childbirth, or an episiotomy has been performed, and many others.

As a rule, the answers come on their own, during the course of study. It is enough to know that there are no contraindications to this complex, and to feel the necessary muscles, it is enough to imagine that for some reason you are deprived of the opportunity to use the restroom, but it is simply necessary at the moment. By squeezing those muscles that will help you endure until the bathroom is free, you will feel what you should feel during the training process. As you work on the muscles, they will feel more and more vivid.

Kegel exercises for diastasis:

After giving birth, some women cannot understand why their stomach does not want to go away. They exhaust themselves with diets and sports training, but their belly still hangs like a bag. Unfortunately, this often means that the abdominal muscles have become stretched during pregnancy. This phenomenon is called diastasis. By removing subcutaneous fat, we still do not get a flat, toned stomach, since there is no strong muscle corset.

With very complex forms of diastasis, there may even be talk of surgery. However, you can try to cure mild and moderate forms of diastasis yourself with the help.

Kegel exercises:

So, what are Kegel exercises for women? Exercises after childbirth are as follows:

• Retraction of the muscles of the perineum and anus. It is performed with a deep breath, the retracted muscles are held in this state for at least ten seconds, breathing remains free during this time. The muscles relax as you exhale.
• Retraction of the lower abdominal muscles (pulling the navel towards the back). It is performed according to the same principle as the first exercise.
• A combination of the first and second exercises.

Then the breathing technique changes: exhale for effort, inhale for relaxation. In the future, each exercise is repeated as many times as possible, but for the first lessons one or two repetitions will be enough.

Efficiency will be determined, first of all, by the degree of tension the muscles need, and secondly, by the total time they are held in a tense state. Therefore, the more often and more carefully you work through each exercise, the better the results will be.

Glute bridge for training internal and external muscles

An excellent exercise for training the muscles of the internal organs is the gluteal bridge. With its help, you can tighten your internal organs and also tidy up the muscles of your legs, buttocks and abdomen.

How to restore muscles after childbirth without harming a weakened female body? While the process is ongoing, a woman cannot perform complex physical exercises. And you definitely need to watch your diet. It must be balanced. While breastfeeding, you should never go on a diet or restrict yourself in food in order to lose weight. The baby's nutrition should be complete and safe. If you have a belly fat, trying to lose weight is pointless, because you won’t be able to regain it quickly and without hassle.

You should not strive to restore muscles as quickly as possible after childbirth with the help of intense training. Postpartum recovery of muscles and all organs in the female body takes time, so everything must be done very carefully and carefully; heavy loads immediately after childbirth are strictly contraindicated. The recovery period after childbirth can be long.

In principle, it is necessary to do gymnastics. Under favorable circumstances, you can start exercising within 2-3 days after birth. If the birth took place without injuries, tears or incisions, then you can begin gymnastics much more boldly.

If they were performed through a section, then before starting gymnastics you must obtain a doctor’s permission.

If the woman’s health allows, then 2-3 days after birth you can begin, for example, Kegel exercises. They are aimed at giving tone to the muscles of the pelvis and anus. These exercises promote faster healing of sutures in the perineum, and also train the muscles of the pelvic floor and anus (which is especially important for women after childbirth), and are a good prevention of constipation and hemorrhoids.

Principle of Kegel exercise

In a lying position, you need to tense the muscles of the perineum and anus, and keep them tense for about 10 seconds, then relax. You need to do 30-50 repetitions.

Breathing exercises

While the recovery period after childbirth has not passed and you cannot do serious physical exercise, you can give your abdominal muscles a relaxed but effective workout. Special breathing exercises also help calm the nervous system.

In a lying position, place your hands on your stomach. Slowly draw in air through your nose, taking a very deep breath, strongly drawing your stomach in. After this, exhale slowly through your mouth. In this case, the main muscle movements in the body should be in the abdominal area, and not. This exercise should be repeated up to 80-100 times a day.

Some young women of childbearing age cannot decide to have a child. Their fear is not based at all on the fact that they will have to bear responsibility for a new life. The biggest problem for them seems to be a change in their figure, not for the better. In fact, these problems are mostly groundless and far-fetched. If you follow your doctor's recommendations and lead a healthy lifestyle, including proper nutrition, walks in the fresh air and physical activity. We will try to cover the last point in today’s article.

Kegel exercises after childbirth, which are recommended for almost all women giving birth, will help restore your figure in the shortest possible time.

Before starting classes, you need to obtain permission from a gynecologist. If there are no contraindications, and the birth went well, without complications, you can start classes by the end of the month after giving birth. Do the first exercises for a short period of time, gradually increasing it and the load on all muscle groups.

The exercises are done an hour and a half after eating and, if you are breastfeeding, then after emptying your breasts, feed the baby.
All physical exercises certainly have a positive effect on metabolism and muscle tone, allowing the body to recover faster.

There is a special set of exercises that any woman can do, regardless of whether the birth was natural or whether obstetric assistance was required. The only caveat is that if the woman in labor had stitches placed on the perineal area, she must wait until they heal and only then start exercising. Any painful sensations should be a reason to stop exercising and subsequently consult a doctor..
These exercises are called Kegel exercises; their effect has long been proven by more than one generation of women.

The point of the exercises is to consistently compress and relax the muscles of the perineum.

First, try squeezing the muscles of the anus, holding them in this position for several seconds, and do several repetitions. Later you can increase the duration of the exercise.

Then we learn to squeeze the vaginal muscles. To understand which muscles need to be trained, try holding the stream for a while while urinating, then release it again. The muscles involved in this process are the vaginal muscles, which will be the focus of the training.

Exercising these pelvic floor muscles is beneficial in many ways. They are recommended for pregnant women to avoid unnecessary pain during childbirth. By learning to control your pelvic muscles, you will expand the range of pleasant sensations during sexual intercourse.

The pelvic floor muscles are used during pregnancy and childbirth, they are subject to great tension and are stretched and weakened during the postpartum period. This can provoke ailments such as urinary incontinence, uterine prolapse, etc. Kegel exercises after childbirth will help improve muscle tone. Start doing them, and the effect will not be long in coming.

Kegel exercises after childbirth:

1. "Pauses". When urinating, hold and release the flow of urine five times. Once you learn to control these muscles, without the participation of other muscles, you will begin to succeed in the next exercise.
2. "Squeezing". Squeeze and relax your pelvic muscles. You can increase or decrease the frequency and strength of the compressions.
3. "Fixing". Squeeze the vaginal muscles and release after five seconds. Do this exercise for 10 times. Gradually increase the fixation time.
4. "Elevator". The most difficult of these exercises, but the effect is amazing. The vagina is a hollow tube of muscles consisting of several “floors”. Try to gradually tense and relax each “floor”, moving first up and then down. Perform the “fixation” exercise between the “lifts” up and down.
5. "Storm". Alternately contract the pelvic floor muscles from front to back, and vice versa.

The originality of Kegel exercises is that you can perform them anywhere and at a time convenient for you, absolutely unnoticed by others: while walking, standing in line, while driving a car, etc. Make these exercises a regular part of your daily exercises , and you will be pleasantly surprised by the results.

A person has muscles whose condition does not affect the appearance of his body, but can cause a number of diseases and disorders. These are the pelvic floor muscles. Figuratively speaking, they represent a hammock stretched between the pubis and tailbone. The function of these muscles is to maintain the pelvic organs (bladder, urethra, vagina, intestines), ensuring their proper functioning. It is impossible to pump up your pelvic floor muscles in the gym, and it is not necessary! A woman can perform exercises that strengthen them in a comfortable home environment.

You can read about who needs to strengthen this muscle group, the technique of performing exercises, as well as contraindications to such training in our article.

Historical reference

It is known that women of Ancient India, China, Egypt and other countries trained the muscles of the pelvic floor. For this purpose, they had special simulators in the form of a stone egg suspended on a thick, strong thread. Women were required to push this egg with the muscles of the vagina, preventing it from falling out. Of course, not all women did this - mostly strong pelvic floor muscles were needed by women of intimate professions - priestesses and geishas. Unfortunately, since the knowledge of this area was considered secret, most of it has been lost today.

In the first half of the 20th century (more precisely, in 1932), the American doctor D. Davis was the first to suggest using exercises that strengthen the muscles of this group to treat urinary incontinence. A little later, in 1948, A. Kegel, a scientist from the same country, finalized the complex proposed by his colleague, scientifically substantiated the mechanism of its action, and even proposed a special simulator that increases the effectiveness of training many times over. It was then that exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles became popular and were named after the author - “Kegel exercises.” They have not lost their significance to this day.

Who should train the pelvic floor muscles?

As we said above, the training of these muscles is extremely important, because they support all the pelvic organs, ensuring their normal functioning. Muscles can be weakened from birth, but more often their condition changes for the worse during a woman’s life, especially after pregnancy and childbirth. This is fraught with urinary incontinence, prolapse and even prolapse of the vagina, a decrease in a woman’s sexual desire and sensitivity during intimate relationships.

So, in what situations should you strengthen your pelvic floor muscles?

1. Girls planning pregnancy. Strong muscles will provide good support to the uterus and reduce the likelihood of pelvic organ prolapse after childbirth.
2. Pregnant women (in the absence of contraindications, which we list below). Such training will make the muscles more elastic, which will facilitate the birth process and reduce the risk of vaginal and perineal ruptures.
3. The period after the birth of the child. Childbirth leads to stretching of these muscles, which entails all the above unpleasant consequences. Daily exercises in a month or two will return the muscles to normal tone and all the troubles associated with this problem will disappear.
4. Women over 30 years of age. During this period, the risk of pelvic organ prolapse gradually increases. This significantly worsens both the woman’s quality of life and her sexual relationship with her partner. Regular muscle strengthening exercises will prevent the development of this pathology.
5. If the omission has already happened, do not be upset. Exercises will help strengthen weakened muscles and improve the anatomical position of prolapsed organs.
6. If you have an increased risk of developing urinary or fecal incontinence, or this disorder has already occurred, exercises will again come to the rescue to help prevent this problem, reduce its manifestations, or completely eliminate it.
7. Weakened pelvic floor muscles can cause stagnation of blood in the pelvis, leading to various diseases, including inflammatory ones. Regular exercise to strengthen the muscles of this group will reduce the risk of developing these pathologies.
8. A woman's reduced sex drive has ruined the lives of many couples. Kegel exercises help increase a woman's libido and sensitivity, as well as make sensations during intimate relationships more vivid, sexual intercourse longer, and orgasm more powerful. This moment is extremely important for a full life for both young women and those who are approaching menopause or have already entered this period. For the latter, regularly performed Kegel exercises help to live a full intimate life for many years to come.

Summarizing what was written above, we conclude that healthy, strong pelvic floor muscles are necessary for a woman of any age. If for some reason they are weakened, you need to put in a little effort and bring the muscles to the desired tone.

Contraindications

In some cases, it is not advisable for a woman to strengthen her pelvic floor muscles, since such training can cause a number of complications that aggravate her condition. Contraindications are:

• acute or chronic inflammatory diseases of the pelvic organs in the acute stage (cystitis and others);
• benign and especially malignant neoplasms of the reproductive or urinary system;
• acute or chronic bleeding (gastrointestinal, uterine), as well as a high risk of their development;
• acute inflammatory diseases of any localization, occurring with fever and other symptoms of general intoxication of the body;
• diseases of the vascular system leading to severe;
• recent surgery;
• during pregnancy - increased uterine tone, gestosis, spontaneous termination of pregnancy or a history of premature birth.

In any of these situations, exercise should be postponed at least until it is eliminated, and it is better to obtain the approval of the attending physician before the planned start of training.

How to tell if the right muscles are working

When you exercise on sports equipment, the muscle groups currently working are visible to the naked eye. It’s more difficult with the pelvic floor muscles - their work is invisible to us. That is why, before starting to perform exercises, it is important for a woman to understand which muscles should function during exercise - this will help increase the effectiveness of the workout. To determine this, she should hold the stream of urine during the act of urination, but not by squeezing her legs or tensing her gluteal muscles. We will train the muscles that held back the flow.

Exercise technique

Any woman can do Kegel exercises, regardless of her fitness level. They can be practiced at any time of the day, on an empty stomach or after a meal, in any body position - lying, sitting or standing, in absolutely any environment - at home, in the office, on the bus or standing in line. Don’t worry, no one will point a finger at you, because those around you won’t know or notice anything that you’re doing gymnastics. However, many women feel comfortable training at home, alone with their thoughts, emotions and sensations.

You should exercise with an empty bladder and intestines.

There are only 3 methods of exercise - compression (when the muscles contract for a few seconds and then relax), contraction (quick alternations of compression and relaxation), pushing (almost every woman is familiar with this technique - it is similar to straining, pushing during childbirth). These techniques should be alternated during training.

So, the exercises:

• tense the muscles of the perineum for 3-5-10 seconds (depending on individual fitness), then relax them for the same period of time; repeat exercises 10-15 times; as the muscles strengthen, increase the time of its contraction to 60-90 seconds;
• a very effective exercise with the code name “Elevator”; you should slightly contract the muscles of the lower “floor” of the perineum, holding them in this state for 5-10 seconds, then strain them a little stronger for the same period of time, using higher located muscles - rise to the next “floor”; then even stronger and higher, and again - in total, our elevator should “climb” 4-5 floors; having reached the top, to the very cervix, when the muscles are tense as much as possible, you should relax them in the reverse order - gradually, lingering for 5-10 seconds on each “floor”;
• as quickly as possible, you should alternately contract and relax the pelvic floor muscles; do this in “steps”, doing the exercise for 5 seconds, then give the muscles a rest for the same amount of time; 1 workout should include at least 3-5 such steps;
• strain the muscles of the vagina and anus alternately for 5-10-20 seconds; at the initial stage of training, repeat 5-10 times; this exercise is called “Wave”;
• perform moderate-intensity straining, such as when trying to recover or during childbirth, holding the muscles in this position for 5-7 seconds; The minimum number of repetitions of the exercise is 5.

To achieve the expected result, training the perineal muscles should be done daily, 4-5 times a day. The number of repetitions of each exercise at the initial stage of training is minimal - 5-10. Gradually they should be increased to 30-40 times in 1 approach. The time for which the muscles are tensed is also small at first - 3-5 seconds, and it should also be gradually increased as much as possible.

By doing the exercises day after day, after only 3-4 weeks, in some cases after 2-3 months, you will feel the desired effect.

Other ways to train the perineal muscles

There are special vaginal simulators - cones made of plastic, which a woman must insert into the vagina and hold them in it with muscle strength. The weight of these exercise machines varies. You should start with a small weight and gradually increase it.

The effectiveness of such gymnastics can be determined with a special device - a perineometer - a sensor is inserted into the vagina, the woman squeezes its muscles as much as possible, and the device records the force with which she does this. Of course, such devices are not widely available. As a rule, they are used by specialists in physiotherapy departments.

special instructions

If you want to achieve the result expected from the training described above as quickly as possible and prevent the development of undesirable consequences, you should follow these recommendations:

• during exercise, breathe evenly deeply, do not hold your breath (this is especially important for pregnant women, since improper breathing of a pregnant woman can cause oxygen starvation of the tissues of her body, including the uterus and fetus);
• use exclusively the perineal muscles in the exercises; the buttocks, abdominal and thigh muscles should not participate in the process;
• conduct training regularly, without skipping, repeat the complex several times a day, gradually increase the intensity of the load on the muscles;
• Loads are certainly necessary, however, overexertion is contraindicated; the number of repetitions of each exercise per day should be no more than 200 times;
• when it’s not difficult for you to perform what seems like the highest load, think about purchasing a simulator - this will increase the effectiveness of the workout; Be sure to consult your doctor before purchasing.

Conclusion

Strong, trained pelvic floor muscles provide reliable support to the pelvic organs, preventing their prolapse, prolapse, dysfunction (for example, urinary incontinence), and also maintain a woman’s sexual desire at a high level, are the key to her sensuality, and make orgasm more vivid. If for some reason the muscles of this group are overstretched and relaxed, special gymnastics - Kegel exercises - will help restore their elasticity and tone. By doing them day after day, week after week, you will be pleasantly surprised by the positive results within a few months. The main thing is to show willpower, be persistent and not indulge yourself for a day or two.

However, although these exercises are practically safe, in some situations it is not advisable to perform them. That is why, in order to avoid complications, we strongly recommend that you consult a doctor before starting classes.

Other exercise options for training the pelvic floor muscles are presented in the video: