Pelvic floor muscles are a critical component of the human body, providing support for the bladder, bowel, and, in women, the uterus. These muscles stretch like a muscular trampoline from the tailbone (coccyx) to the pubic bone (front to back) and from one sitting bone to the other (side to side). While much emphasis is placed on the weakening of these muscles, leading to conditions such as incontinence and prolapse, less attention is often given to the opposite issue: high tension pelvic floor muscles. However, understanding and addressing this condition is just as important for maintaining pelvic health and overall well-being.

What are High Tension Pelvic Floor Muscles?

High tension pelvic floor muscles occur when these muscles become too tense, leading to a range of uncomfortable and sometimes painful symptoms. Unlike weak pelvic floor muscles that fail to provide adequate support, tight pelvic floor muscles are overly contracted, which can disrupt the function of the bladder, bowel, and sexual function.

 

Causes of High Tension Pelvic Floor Muscles

The causes of high tension in the pelvic floor muscles can vary, including but not limited to:

– Chronic stress and anxiety: Constant tension in the body can lead to the pelvic floor muscles tightening up as part of a broader stress response.

– Postural stress: Sitting or standing in ways that put unnecessary pressure on the pelvic region can contribute to muscle tension.

– Overuse or misuse: Engaging in excessive high-impact exercise or incorrect pelvic floor exercises can lead to over-tightening.

– Trauma or surgery: Past injuries, surgeries, or traumatic events can lead to protective tightening of these muscles.

– Holding patterns: Some individuals may subconsciously hold tension in their pelvic floor as a response to pain or discomfort elsewhere in the body.

 

Symptoms of High Tension Pelvic Floor Muscles

Symptoms can vary widely but often include:

– Chronic pelvic pain

– Pain during or after intercourse

– Difficulty with bowel movements or constipation

– A frequent need to urinate

– Unexplained lower back pain

– Discomfort or pain when sitting for long periods

 

Diagnosis

 

Diagnosing high tension pelvic floor muscles typically involves a thorough medical history and a physical examination by a healthcare provider, often a specialist in pelvic health therapist. This examination may include an internal assessment to check the pelvic floor muscles for tension, trigger points, contraction, relaxation and coordination. 

 

Management and Relief Strategies

Managing high tension pelvic floor muscles often requires a multidisciplinary approach, including:

 

Pelvic Physical Therapy

Pelvic floor physical therapists specialize in assessing and treating conditions related to these muscles. Therapy may include techniques to relax the pelvic floor muscles, improve posture, and reduce stress on the pelvic floor, manual therapy for lumbar spine, hips and attaching muscles that contribute to pelvic floor muscle tension. 

 

Relaxation Techniques

Since stress and anxiety can contribute to muscle tension, practices such as yoga, mindfulness, and meditation can be beneficial in promoting relaxation of the pelvic floor muscles.

 

Proprioceptive feedback– with your brain

This means, do you have awareness when you are clenching your pelvic floor muscles? In the case of pelvic floor muscle tension, awareness of your pelvic floor muscle tension can help patients learn how to relax their muscles effectively.

 

Collaborating Providers

In some cases, pelvic health therapists may refer a client to a pelvic pain specialist physicians or nurse practitioners to help with medications and/or suppositories to help with pain.

 

Lifestyle Modifications

Adjusting daily habits can also play a crucial role in managing symptoms. This may include dietary changes to prevent constipation, altering exercise routines to reduce pressure on the pelvic floor, adopting ergonomic practices to improve posture, and self care routines throughout the day to help with stress reduction and resilience. 

 

Conclusion

High tension pelvic floor muscles can significantly impact quality of life, but with the right diagnosis and management strategies, individuals can find relief. It’s essential for anyone experiencing symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction to seek the guidance of healthcare professionals who can provide personalized treatment plans. Remember, addressing pelvic health is a crucial step towards overall well-being.

So I hope this blog post helps you realize that you definitely are not alone AND there are EFFECTIVE solutions. 

When considering seeing a Pelvic Physical Therapist, know that we always start with the evaluation and lots of talking, and you are in control of your session with us. We want to see changes within 3-5 visits, which is something we take pride in here at ReGenerate Physiotherapy!

We give you time and space to talk about your story (offering full one-on-one hours sessions), so we can get to the root cause of your pain and problem. We offer FREE Phone consultations, book a call here!  Set up a call to see if you are good fit for Pelvic Physical Therapy! 

 

I have had this question so often… how do I know if I need to relax my pelvic floor muscles?

So, let’s talk about what that means and who needs to be doing that.

First, the pelvic floor muscles again support organs, control sphincters (pee, poop), they stabilize the spine/pelvis and everything that attaches to the pelvis and spine, they help with healthy sexual function, they allow for good circulation through the pelvis. The pelvic floor muscles don’t just do the lifting contraction also known as a kegel.

So, you may have found on social media and through Google searches that it’s important to relax the pelvic floor muscles. What does that mean?

Relaxing the pelvic floor simply means that you know how to lengthen or elongate the pelvic floor muscles so that you can have good bladder emptying and bowel emptying, allow for penetrative intercourse, good stability of the spine and pelvis, and allow for a delivery of baby vaginally.

The reason why this is so important is otherwise you might struggle with constipation, urinary leakage and pelvic pain, including pain while sitting, walking, moving, and pain with penetrative intercourse or the use of tampons or menstrual cups.

Women and men alike struggle with overactive or hypertonic pelvic floor muscles.

Who needs to relax the pelvic floor muscles?

The people that need to relax the pelvic floor muscles are struggling with some of these problems:

Pain prior to bowel movements and relief of pain after

Constipation, which means firm stools almost like pebbles, difficulty getting out your stool.

Urinary leakage or urgency of having to use the bathroom and frequency.

People with interstitial cystitis

People with vulvodynia,

Tailbone pain

Pain in the testicles, penis or vulva.

It’s so important to get assessed by a pelvic physical therapist when you’re struggling with any of these issues. Again, a pelvic physical therapist is one that assesses the entire body, and assesses the pelvic floor muscles internally and externally.

If you see a general orthopedic physical therapist that does not assess these muscles, you are not going to fix the problem efficiently. It may take longer and you may not get full resolution.

If you don’t struggle within these problems, lengthening the pelvic floor is still important to do.

First to avoid any of the above problems from happening.

How do you lengthen the pelvic floor muscles?  

Some of the ways to do that are going through different types of exercise. Squats are phenomenal for strengthening but also lengthening or relaxing the pelvic floor muscles. So I always tell clients to squat!

Exercising the body is a great way to not only exercise your heart, your brain, your bones, and joints, but also a really great way to maintain great pelvic floor, health and strength. And do not focus on doing “Ab work”.

Another key thing is always to stay hydrated, drinking enough water. Making sure to drink half of your body weight in fluid ounces.

Certain hip opening and rib cage mobility exercises found in yoga, pilates or stretching programs can help.

In conclusion… 

If you have ever been told to just relax the pelvic floor muscles, it may not be something you can control and resolve on your own, and is just poor advice!!  So trying to do these things at home without getting an assessment, again can lengthen the duration in which it might take to resolve your symptoms. A pelvic physical therapy can give you better answers to what is causing your tight pelvic floor muscles.

So, we offer free consultation to see if you’re a good fit for pelvic physical therapy here with us. We would love to hear from you!

It’s so deep rooted that we just accept painful sex, it all starts in sex education in school (if that was even something you had as child) and that periods are painful, sex STAY AWAY (do not get pregnant) and the friends you spoke with said “Yeah, sex hurts for me too”. If you even dared to ask. The sense of you feeling broken because of your experience with painful sex.  

You are not broken, and sexual intimacy is not just penetration; and if any of it is difficult for you, you are not alone. 

If you have been told to drink wine, wait to have babies, or just deal with painful sex, that is just crap advice. And I’m sorry for that, as our health care providers are not well educated on sexual health themselves, yes, even if they are OB/GYN. 

If you are having a hard time, there are several factors that could be contributing to this! So hear me out. 

Low back or hip pain

Pelvic Floor Muscle Dysfunction

Sex Drive & Arousal

Hormonal Imbalances

 

Here are TOP 5 Myths: 

 

Myth #1: 

Sex is painful. False. 

If you are having low back pain, hip pain, or pelvic pain this can really contribute to painful sex. Pelvic Physical Therapy helps with addressing the nerves, joints, muscles to help ease pain to also help with arousal of the clitoral organ and natural lubrication leading to an enjoyable orgasm. If you have pain, it may be difficult to for an orgasm to occur, for comfortable palpation of the skin/tissue outside of the vagina called the vulva. 

 

Sex can also enjoyable!  So, that myth debunked. 

 

Myth #2

I should have an orgasm as quickly as my partner. False.

 

Women in particular, have a different type of sexual arousal and personality than men, and from each other. And in general, we all have a different sexual personality, meaning, what helps us have our arousal to allow for good lubrication of the vulva & vagina and stimulation of the clitoral organ. Arousal can vary on the day, stress level, past experience (if sex has been painful, in general), there are a lot of factors that feed into what can create a longer time to have arousal and orgasm. Again, if you are dealing with an irritated vulva, your clitoral hood (skin the covers the clitoral organ), then trying to stimulate the clitoral organ may be difficult and arousal not possible. Pelvic Physical Therapy assessment of the external pelvic floor muscles definitely helps identify if there is any factors contributing to arousal with the muscles, skin, and nerves. 

 

Myth #3 

We all have a G spot in the same place. This is also false. 

We do not all have the same spot internally that can help stimulate the clitoral organ.  In fact orgasms are very difficult to explain to another person, friend, because we all have a different experience. But, if you reach climax of an orgasm typically there will be rhythmic spasms of the vaginal canal and pelvic floor muscles. So when we discuss this with friends, or you listen to things on television, or good ol’ Netflix, when you’re trying to find your own G spot, you cannot base it off of somebody else’s experience, because we are all uniquely different. And in fact, you may not have a G Spot internally. It is all about exploration.  If you are having Pelvic Floor Muscle Dysfunction, and the muscles are hypertonic or overactive and painful, trying to explore the G spot internally could be challenging for you, and is definitely something we help women with frequently here at ReGenerate Physiotherapy. 

 

Myth #4:

I should be able to have an orgasm internally. False. 

This is not a gold standard for women to have orgasm. Eighty-five percent of women have external orgasms only. The most important organ in our body to create orgasm is the clitoral organ. The tip of the clitoral organ, that you’ll refer to as the clit just the tip of it is what is exposed externally. Most women need to stimulate that part of the organ in order to get arousal and engorgement of that clitoral organ, and therefore allow good natural lubrication. So penetrative intercourse is not the gold standard to create an orgasm. Could penetration help stimulate the clitoral organ better? Absolutely. But penetrative intercourse isn’t the way that majority of females have an orgasm. 

 

Myth #5

I am the only one with painful intercourse and broken. False. 

One out of five people have pelvic pain and the vast majority of clients we see here at ReGenerate Physiotherapy are clients that struggle with pelvic pain with sex and painful orgasms/painful penetrative intercourse. You are not alone. The problem is we are not talking about this enough and when we do get the courage to ask a health care provider we are given  very poor advice.

 

Pelvic Physical Therapy is a very successful way to help with painful sex. A true pelvic physical therapist, if you’re dealing with any type of pelvic pain will evaluate what’s going on with the pelvic floor muscles internally and externally. 

 

There are lots of factors that we need to consider including, but not limited to:

• lumbar spine, hip, ankle, thoracic, and ribcage.
• vulva health, external skin, the health of the tissue, it’s heavily influenced by hormones. 
• Nerve health – the joints or muscles that could be contributing to nerve irritation or entrapment.
• Pelvic floor muscle dysfunction–  are the muscles able to lengthen? Range of motion of the muscles? The muscles need to relax and lengthen to allow for good bowel movements, emptying your bladder, and allowing for comfortable & enjoyable penetrative intercourse. If you contract these muscles, and let’s say your pelvic floor is already overactive, high tone, and then we squeeze those muscles aka Kegels. You could see how this can be such a poor solution to painful sex. 

So I hope this blog post helps you realize that you definitely are not alone AND there are EFFECTIVE solutions. 

When considering seeing a Pelvic Physical Therapist, know that we always start with the evaluation and lots of talking, and you are in control of your session with us. We want to see changes within 3-5 visits, which is something we take pride in here at ReGenerate Physiotherapy!

 

We give you time and space to talk about your story (offering full one-on-one hours sessions), so we can get to the root cause of your pain and problem. Check out our Google Pics so you can see our office! AND we offer FREE Phone consultations. Set up a call so we can see if we are a good fit for you.