How Can I Stop Peeing with Jumping, Running, Etc?
Disclaimer.
Peeing during exercise is called Stress Urinary Incontinence and there is no one size fits all approach to managing it.
This guide will help with some common strategies and tips to becoming Leakproof.
This should be used ALONG WITH consulting with a Registered Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist for more individualized assessment of your symptoms.
Pelvic Health Symptoms.
Be aware of any other messages from your body that you may experience along with leaking: heaviness, a feeling of your organs 'falling out', pelvic pain, or abdominal pain.
How Would a Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist Treat This?
We will help you coordinate and manage your pelvic floor muscles and deep abdominal wall muscles activation with your breathing in order to build a solid pressure management system and manage the stress of high impact exercise, like double unders.
We can evaluate your readiness and help you determine how had you can push youself, suggesting alternatives or strategies for leakproof exercise.
Breathing
When we INHALE, our diaphragm drops, our ribcage expands outwards and our pelvic floor relaxes to make room in our trunk for the incoming air.
When we EXHALE, our diaphragm and pelvic floor snap upwards and our deep core (transverse abdominis) gently contracts to help push the air back outwards.
When we double under (or do any high impact movement) an exhale BEFORE landing is helpful to create a stable trunk with low pressure to help accept impact.
Counting OUT LOUD will help us ensure you are doing an exhale prior to each landing.
Posture
Stack the ribcage over the hips.
When we try to stay tall during jumping, we can thrust our breastbone and ribcage to the sky. This puts our abdominal wall under a lot of stretch tension and makes it harder for us to exhale using our diaphragm for bracing.
Instead, try to lean forwards while sliding ribcage down towards front hip bones.
You can envision how you would stand while looking over a cliff or poising to go off a ski jump with a slight forward lean of the entire body, 'controlled falling forwards'.
Find a point on the wall at eye level and keep gaze here throughout exercise.
Tongue should be pressing behind top front teeth to keep jaw soft.
Try to soften chest and neck, imagine holding an egg gently between chin and chest.
Clenching through the jaw, neck, chest and shoulders can exert downward pressure to pelvic floor.
Volume
Increase volume in SMALL manageable increments at a time (i.e. 1-5 rep increases)
You should be able to do a block of work not sacrificing position or strategies you're trying to implement, if you lose your new strategies then STOP, rest, reset and go again.
Your block of work can look like chunking up 50 double unders into 5's or 10's with intentional breaks in between, even if you feel like you 'could do more'.
We're not trying to keep going until we leak but keep our chunks successful AKA leakproof.
Progressions
You can manipulate one of these training variables AT A TIME to improve endurance and coordination with your new breathing strategies and position.
A. SPEED OF JUMPING
B. VOLUME OF PRACTICE (how many reps in each chunk of work, how many times per week)
C. PAIRING WITH OTHER MOVEMENTS (double unders practice on its own will be less taxing than pairing it with other movements within a workout).
Automaticity
Trust that you CAN build new strategies even if you've been doing this movement with leaking for days, months or years.
Don't be discouraged by leaking during performance - take a step back, evaluate, reset and build back up with your leakproof strategy.
Plateaus in performance are NORMAL - leaking can be affected by our hormonal profile, diet, stress, or previous muscle fatigue.
Use this guide as a reference and knowledge to GET STARTED with your leakproof journey. A pelvic floor physiotherapist can help you identify your movement tendencies to help resolve the root of the symptoms.
Common Tendencies
A. GRIPPING/SQUEEZING
Athletes may squeeze their upper ab muscles, butt muscles or jaw/neck/chest to brace for impact and with exertion.
When we squeeze our upper abs and jaw/neck/chest, we send all of our abdominal pressure downwards for pelvic floor to cope with, with each inhale there is extra pressure that the pelvic floor must manage along with the impact of jumping.
When we squeeze our butt muscles, we are most likely also holding a Kegel in our pelvic floor muscles. These muscles are designed to contract AND relax, by holding them in a constant contraction they will fatigue and 'let go'=leaking!
B. SUCKING IN
Let the belly go soft as we inhale between jumps, muscle relaxation is JUST as important as contraction when performing high impact work. Those mini rest periods is when our core and pelvic floor relax and reset for the next jump.
C. BREATHE HOLDING
Practice exhaling with each jump, this may mean you have to slow down FOR NOW, but not forever.
