Pelvic Floor Muscle Tightness?

The pelvic floor muscles are a group of muscles that sit between the pubic bone, coccyx (tailbone) and sit bones. They are like slings, and they hold organs like the bladder, uterus, and prostate up. The urethra, rectum, and vagina are wrapped by these layers of muscles. These pelvic floor muscles must be able to contract to maintain the continence of bladder and bowel movements and to relax allowing for urination, bowel movements, and penetration.

Hypertonicity of pelvic floor muscles may contribute to pelvic pain, urgency, and urge incontinence. Also, hypertonicity or tightness of pelvic floor muscles can cause painful intercourse, pelvic pain, urinary hesitancy, incomplete emptying, constipation and straining, and unexplained pain in your lower back, pelvis, and hips.

Pelvic health Physiotherapists use gentle internal and external manual therapy (hands-on) techniques to assess your ability to contract and relax these muscles and also they check if there are any tender points in the pelvic floor muscles. Pelvic health physiotherapists also assess breathing patterns.

Learning how to relax the pelvic floor muscles is important. The pelvic health physiotherapist gives you the appropriate exercises along with deep breathing to relax the hypertonicity of the pelvic floor muscles. They can also use gentle manual therapy techniques to help with reducing the hypertonicity and/or tenderness in pelvic floor muscles.

If the pelvic floor muscles are tight and weak, it’s important to first treat the tension/tightness before the weakness. Once the muscles have reached a normal resting tone, their strength is assessed/reassessed. If you need to improve the strength of the muscles, the appropriate exercises will be given to you.

Persistent pain education is important in treating pelvic floor muscle problems as well since we often hold our stress in the pelvic floor area. Understanding how the pain system works in our body is effective in decreasing the threat of ongoing pelvic floor problems. See a registered pelvic floor physiotherapist today!