The pelvic floor is the foundation of your pelvic health. It supports your bladder, stabilises your body under pressure and helps you move with confidence.
You might notice subtle leaks, hesitation before movement, or a sense that your body isn’t responding in quite the same way. These changes are common and often linked to life stages like pregnancy and menopause, or to gradual shifts in muscle and tissue strength over time.
Despite how central it is to everyday function, the pelvic floor is still widely misunderstood. In a survey of 1,000 women, a quarter didn’t know what the pelvic floor does, and one in six didn’t know where their pelvic floor muscles are. That gap isn’t about awareness or effort. It reflects how little most of us were ever taught about pelvic health.
Here’s our Pelvic Floor 101, designed to help you understand your foundation and support strength from the floor up.
What the pelvic floor actually is
The pelvic floor is a broad, layered structure of muscles and connective tissue that sits at the base of the pelvis. It runs from the pubic bone at the front to the tailbone at the back, forming a supportive foundation beneath the pelvic organs.
Rather than a single muscle you squeeze, it’s best understood as a system. Muscle fibres create lift and closure. Connective tissue provides structure and elasticity. Nerves coordinate timing, sensation and control. All three need to work together for the pelvic floor to feel strong and reliable.
What it does every day
Your pelvic floor supports the pelvic organs and helps prevent prolapse. It plays a central role in bladder and bowel control and manages pressure when you cough, sneeze, lift or exercise.
It also contributes to sexual sensation and comfort, and adapts during pregnancy and recovery after birth. It’s part of your core strength.
The pelvic floor and bladder control
The urethra, vagina and anus pass through the pelvic floor. At rest, the muscles maintain a gentle tension to keep everything supported and closed.
When you go to the toilet, those muscles need to fully relax. Afterwards, they tighten again to restore support. They also react automatically to sudden pressure, contracting quickly when you laugh, jump or lift.
If the pelvic floor loses strength, endurance or coordination, bladder control can become less reliable. This can show up as leaks with movement, or as sudden urges to wee that feel difficult to ignore.
These changes are common after pregnancy, during perimenopause and menopause, and following surgery or injury. Common doesn’t mean inevitable.
Why problems are so common
Most of us were never shown how to identify, relax or strengthen the pelvic floor. Add in hormonal changes, repeated strain, chronic tension and habits like “just in case” wees, and it’s easy to see why this system can lose confidence over time.
Pelvic floor muscles can become weak, overstretched or overly tight. All three can interfere with bladder control and comfort, which is why symptoms can feel unpredictable or confusing.
Pelvic floor exercises for bladder control
The pelvic floor plays a central role in bladder control - but it’s more complex than we’ve been led to believe.
For decades, women have been told that pelvic floor health begins and ends with Kegels: squeeze, hold, repeat. While these exercises were originally developed as a non-surgical way to support bladder leaks, they represent only one part of how the pelvic floor actually functions in everyday life.
“A survey of 1,000 women found that a quarter of those surveyed don’t know what the role of the pelvic floor is.”
Pelvic Floor Exercises: Are they for everyone?
Kegel exercises focus on contracting and holding the muscles that control urine flow. When done correctly, they can help improve symptoms for some women - particularly those with genuine muscle weakness.
Here's how to do basic pelvic floor exercises:
Start by relaxing your thighs, abs and glutes.
Squeeze the muscles around your anus and vagina at the same time. Try to envision these muscles lifting up into your pelvis.
Hold the squeeze for as long as you can (around 5-8 seconds), then let them go and relax completely.
Rest for about 10 seconds, then repeat a few more times.
Do these once a day.
While doing pelvic floor exercises, remember to keep breathing normally and keep your glutes and thighs relaxed.
But it's important to remember that many women don’t have a weak pelvic floor. Some have muscles that are already overactive, tense, or poorly coordinated. In those cases, repeatedly squeezing can make symptoms feel worse rather than better.
A pelvic floor that’s always “on” isn’t necessarily strong. Like any muscle, it needs to be able to contract and relax in order to respond when it’s needed - during moments like laughing, lifting, running, coughing, or reacting quickly.
Why coordination matters more than squeezing alone
The pelvic floor doesn’t work in isolation. It coordinates with your breath, deep core, hips, glutes, and nervous system. Real bladder control depends on how well these systems work together - especially under pressure.
That’s why modern pelvic health guidance now focuses on:
Learning to feel and connect with the pelvic floor
Training both relaxation and contraction
Integrating breath, posture, and movement
Practising control in positions and movements that mirror real life
Pelvic floor exercises can still play a role - particularly short, reactive squeezes - but they’re only one piece of the puzzle.
A guided way to get started
If you’re beginning pelvic floor exercises - or unsure whether squeezing alone is right for you - having structure can make a difference.
That’s why we developed The Strength Method: a free, guided programme designed to help women understand how their pelvic floor works as part of the wider body. It goes beyond isolated contractions, combining breathwork, coordination, and gentle functional movement to support control in everyday life.
The aim isn’t to “do more” or push harder. It’s to help you learn how to connect with your pelvic floor, relax it when needed, and engage it effectively during movement — so any strengthening work, including squeezes, is better supported.
Supporting pelvic floor strength from the inside
Exercise is one part of pelvic floor health. But muscles rely on healthy tissue and clear nerve signalling to respond and adapt.
Over time, pelvic tissues can lose hydration, elasticity and energy. That’s why Jude takes a whole-system view. PelviTONE is designed to support the muscles, connective tissue and nerve pathways involved in pelvic floor function, complementing the physical work you’re already doing.
It’s support for your foundation, not a shortcut.
Strength builds over time
Pelvic floor strength isn’t about pushing harder or aiming for perfection. It’s about understanding how your body works and supporting it consistently.
If bladder symptoms persist, worsen or feel painful, it’s important to speak with a GP, menopause specialist or pelvic health physiotherapist for personalised advice.
Your pelvic floor is not a weak link. It’s a foundation. And when it’s supported properly, everything built on top of it feels steadier.
