We know that pregnancy and childbirth cause a lot of damage to our core and pelvic floor, but there are a lot of other factors including constipation, coughing, being on out feet all day, heavy lifting and high impact exercise, that all weaken our pelvic floor.  We also know that as we get older out pelvic health deteriorates. 

1 in 2 ladies over the age of 50 suffers from pelvic organ prolapse, and 1 in 3 suffer from incontinence.  

Ladies, if you are in your 40s,50s, 60s, 70s and even 80’s this class is for you!

It is not just for ladies that have had babies.  It is for all women.  It is for ladies that have pelvic floor symptoms they want to improve, and it is for ladies that want to prevent symptoms in the future.  It is, however, only for ladies that have had a full assessment and pelvic floor exam with me.  I need to know you are activating your pelvic floor correctly before you are able to join.  If you aren’t activating your pelvic floor correctly, you will not improve.  

We know that unless we do anything about it, our pelvic floor will just get weaker as we get older, so even if we don’t have any symptoms now, chances are we will become symptomatic as we get older. 

The good news is, that our pelvic floor is a muscle, and like any other muscle, it can be trained and improved with the correct exercise.  

Most of my patients have done pelvic floor exercises in the past. And it hasn’t helped. The problem is, that they haven’t been exercising their pelvic floor at the correct level.  Ladies tend to get symptoms with coughing/sneezing/running/jumping, being on our feet, moving, lifting and carrying.  These are strenuous tasks for the pelvic floor.  Many people only doing their pelvic floor exercises in lying or sitting.  This is just not exercising our pelvic floor in the way we need it to work with these strenuous activities.  For example, when we cough, it puts a large amount of pressure down on our pelvic floor.  If our pelvic floor muscle is weak and we are not strong enough to counteract this pressures; we get symptoms.  Exercising the pelvic floor laying on your back does not expose the pelvic floor to the same forces that it is exposed to when we cough, so it is never going to improve symptom. 

We need to change how we think of our pelvic floor exercises.  This class will do just that. 

I will teach you to co-ordinate your pelvic floor with the key movements that we need to be able to do in day-day life: Bending/lifting/squatting/lunging/pushing and pulling.  

This Pelvic floor exercise class is led by Gemma West – a Specialist Pregnancy, Postnatal and Women’s Health Physiotherapist.

Sessions are suitable for ladies of all ages, regardless of whether you have symptoms you want to improve, or just ‘future proof’ your pelvic floor.  However, it’s vital that before attending your first class you have had a full pelvic floor assessment with Gemma.

I will have a done a full health screening form with you at Elite then I don’t need any further information from you, but if anything changes, please do let me know.

If I have assessed you on the NHS I will need you to do a screening form prior to starting the class. 

For the foreseeable future the class is being held in the comfort on your own home on ZOOM!

Initially we will be practising the ‘motions’ of lifting, focusing on the activation of the pelvic floor.  Use a light weight initially (If you haven’t got a weight then a 2L bottle of water/coke or 4pints of milk/juice bottle works well- something with a little bit of weight to it!).

Once you have mastered the technique, I will encourage you to gradually increase the weight you are using.  The weight we are aiming for needs to be relevant to the weights we are required to lift in daily life, for example the hoover, shopping bags, grandchildren etc.  These weights are often a lot heavier than we think! We need be be aiming for 7-10kgs!