PC Muscles & Incontinence: What You Need to Know

Do you know where the PC muscle is located and how it may be causing your difficulty with incontinence? What is the PC muscle, how is it related to incontinence, and how can you strengthen it to reduce incontinence? Here’s what you need to know about your PC muscle and incontinence.

What is the PC Muscle?

The pubococcygeus (PC) muscle is a muscle in your pelvic floor that stretches from your pubic bone in the front to your coccyx (tailbone) in the back. The pelvic floor contains muscles, ligaments, and tendons and acts as a sort of hammock to support your bladder, urethra, rectum, and small intestine.

When the PC muscle and pelvic floor become weak, symptoms can include anything from urinary or fecal incontinence to pelvic organ prolapse, where your uterus, bladder, or rectum can collapse into your vagina. As you can see, have a strong PC muscle is crucial for your health and quality of life – and you’ve probably been ignoring it!

How Does the PC Muscle Affect Incontinence?

Since the PC muscle is the one you use to start and stop your urine flow, a weak PC muscle allows urine to leak through when you a cough, sneeze or jump. If you’re the athletic type, dealing with bladder leakage is especially difficult and embarrassing. After all, you focus on strengthening your outer muscles – how could you not realize you were neglecting a crucial inner muscle.

What Causes a Weakened PC Muscle?

There are a variety of factors that can cause you to have a weakened PC muscle and suffer from the related incontinence issues. Things that can weaken your PC muscle include:

• Pregnancy
• Childbirth
• Aging
• Obesity
• Surgery
• Chronic coughing
• Constipation

Kegel Exercises, Kegel Balls, Kegel Weights

Luckily, there are ways you can strengthen your PC muscle and regain continence or prevent future incontinence. The traditional method for strengthening your PC muscle involves doing Kegel exercises without any equipment. This is a good method for beginners to identify their PC muscle and exercise it discreetly.

Kegel exercises are fairly straightforward. Identify the muscle you would use to stop your flow of urine. The contract that muscle for a count of five, then relax for a count of five. Repeat 10-15 times 3-4 times per day.

Once you’ve perfected basic Kegels, it’s time to make the workout a little more difficult. That’s where Kegel balls or weights come in. Kegel balls and weights work similarly, although they look and feel different.

Kegel balls are round, often come in pairs, and may include a string for easy removal. They come in varying weights, styles, and materials. Kegel weights, on the other hand, tend to be a more slender, oblong, or conical shape that’s harder to hold onto with your PC muscle, making it a more difficult workout than Kegel balls.

Whether you’re using Kegel balls or weights, you’ll want to wash, dry, and lubricate them before inserting them into your vagina while you’re lying down. Clench your PC muscle around the balls or weights, then stand up and walk around with them inside you. You should work your way up to 15 minutes at a time using Kegel weights, while Kegel balls may be comfortable enough to wear all day.

A Different Type of Kegel Device

Kegel balls and weights are good up to a point, but they only offer static resistance. When working out other muscles, you add more weight or resistance as you strengthen a certain muscle, so why wouldn’t your PC muscle be the same?

With the Gynie kegel device, you get 3 springs of increasing resistance levels so you can continuously strengthen your PC muscle to its best potential.

You simply insert the handles of the device with the easiest (white) spring first and squeeze your PC muscle until you hear a click indicating that the handles are closed. Relax and repeat. Work your way up to 3 sets of 30 reps 3 times a week.

That’s all you need to have a strong PC muscle and reduced incontinence. You won’t get a better workout for your PC muscle with any other device, including Kegel balls or weights.

Strengthen Your PC Muscle to Reduce Incontinence

As you can see, reducing your incontinence could be as simple as doing Kegel exercises daily or using the Gynie kegel device three times a week. Strengthening your PC muscle could be the exercise you never knew you needed to add to your daily routine.