For women with continence issues, going to the gym can be daunting, leading many women to avoid the gym altogether. However, new research offers a solution by helping women uptake resistance training to reduce the risk of stress urinary incontinence.
The exercise routine involves a Kegal exercise program that tightens the pelvic floor muscles before they commence resistance training. When both exercises are combined, they can help to prevent and control urinary incontinence.
Urinary incontinence affects up to 70% of women worldwide, with stress urinary incontinence reported as the most prevalent sub-type.
Donelle Cross, from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, says her research has identified that some incontinent women who continued to perform resistance training experienced an improvement in their daily continence.
“Physically active women tend to have stronger pelvic floors, and this is thought to contribute to a successful continence mechanism when there is an increase in their intra-abdominal pressure,” says Ms Cross.
The new research published in the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health demonstrated that resistance training reduced stress urinary incontinence to a significantly greater extent, only if proceeded by Kegel exercised and maintained over time.
A positive correlation was found between the average strength of pelvic floor muscles and stress urinary incontinence. In addition, participants in the group doing Kegel exercises before their resistance training demonstrated a significant increase in muscle mass and concomitant reduction in fat mass.
“A dedicated program of Kegel exercises preceding a resistance training program improved average pelvic floor muscle strength and was effective in reducing stress urinary incontinence among incontinent women,” says Ms Cross.
The results of this study strongly supported the notion of pelvic floor assessments and supervised Kegel exercises before performing resistance training.
