Pelvic floor vs perimenopause – the facts.

Most of you slags reading this will be mums – it's our main demographic without a doubt. But here's the thing. Some of you aren't. And pelvic floor issues aren’t just for women who’ve had babies. Thanks to haywire hormones, midlife and menopause come with their own unique and lovely set of challenges, and one of them is a weaker, slacker pelvic floor. Yay!

Let's get back to GCSE Biology for a sec. The pelvic floor is a sling-like structure that supports the bladder, bowel and womb, holding these organs in place and keeping control of the things you don’t want escaping. 

Piss. Farts. Queefs. Oh yes, we went there!

When the tissues lose their oomph, you can end up with leaking, or, in some cases dealing with prolapse – when your organs start shifting downwards into areas they shouldn't be. Lucky us.

There are two main flavours of incontinence: stress incontinence – when you cough, sneeze, jump, or laugh. Or get carried away at your kid's mate's trampoline party (just us?). And urge incontinence – when you’re running into the toilet every twenty minutes because your bladder won’t behave.

If you're suffering from either of these though, it's categorically not ALL doom and gloom. Your pelvic floor is a muscle. Which means it can be trained. Kegels are a good start (there's a great app by the NHS called Squeezy – it's not free but it's cheap and it'll remind you every day) and then you can progress to combining pelvic floor work with proper movement and strength training. With us, obv.

Let’s not pretend that randomly pissing yourself after a sneeze is just 'one of those things' that goes hand in hand with ageing. And it's great that so many women are now much more open about it. This stuff massively affects your quality of life, and we midlife women deserve better than tip-toeing round it.

And all of this is exactly why, inside FitBtch, we’ve put together a whole mini course on how to properly train your pelvic floor, with exercises, breathing drills and practical guidance.

Here's the link, if you'd like to check it out. It's also accessible via our membership!

Until next time, slags – get squeeeeeezin'!