Crossfit and the Pelvic Floor
Recently, there was a study looking at pelvic floor strength in women who participated Crossfit activities and compared it with those who performed lower impact exercise routines.
Now don’t mistake my comments for hate - I love some plyometrics, powerlifter in college and love explosive style training. I played volleyball in college and feel that through those style activities, I see the most change in my body and feel the most burn. With that said, we don’t realize often what this can do to our bodies.
This study performed in 2019 (Neurourol Urodyn. 2019 Feb;38(2):749-756. doi: 10.1002/nau.23912. Epub 2019 Jan 8.) looked at stress incontinence (peeing on yourself from increased pressure through the belly). There were 105 Crossfit athletes were compared to 44 women who just did “aerobic” exercises.
The top three CrossFit exercises associated to leaking were:
double-unders (47.7%),
jumping rope (41.3%),
box jumps (28.4%).
CrossFit women who had given birth had significantly more episodes of incontinence with box jumps, jumping rope, double-unders, thrusters, squats without weights, squats with weights, and trampoline jumping.
The top preventative strategies were
emptying the bladder before workouts
wearing dark pants
performing Kegel exercises during workouts.
I am all for women being active. I want everyone to LOVE their workouts and there is definitely a personality for the Crossfit world.
I just also want women to know that there is help.
If you are experiencing leaking - it may not be a weakness thing. There are a lot of newer conversations where the intra-abdominal pressure is so high it’s overpowering the pelvic floor. It’s just a matter of poor timing and not always weakness. Coordination and control often seem to be more of the issue than pure strength. There are also studies that show that despite the amount of strength in general terms women have throughout their body from working out and Cross-fitting - their pelvic floor is no stronger than the general public.
I believe that bringing an awareness to this scene is more of the goal. Women should know that their leakage is a sign of a system that’s not working optimally. AND - physical therapists are the best option to help teach and allow the person to recognize where in that system they’re weak or where there is some poor control.
If this sounds like you - If you are constantly running to the bathroom during, before or right after your workouts - get help! SO much can be done if its in a more preventative mindset and if we can undo a shorter time of bad habit patterning of movement than years worth of that bad habit.