You don’t need to be an architect to know that a floor needs to be pretty robust to support the weight of people walking around on it.

Think of a weak, old, wooden floor, the type you might see in a horror film, right before it collapses under the hero or heroine, sending them plummeting through one or more floors downward to an ever more terrifying area of the building.

A floor must be solid, and if it can be treated and maintained to keep its sturdiness, then we can prevent it from rotting or decaying. In the human body, we have a particular set of muscles that serve pretty much the same function as a floor. They are known as the pelvic floor muscles.

At the bottom of the pelvic girdle there is an opening, a hole so to speak. Anything that passes out from the body in this area must pass through this hole, including babies during the birthing process. If this hole was a trap door, sending malcontents to their doom, it would need to be strong enough to support the troublemaker himself and be able to open for him to pass through and fall to his fate.

The pelvic floor muscles do pretty much the same thing. Some of the things they must support, yet at some point let through, are the contents of the bladder, rectum and womb, whether it carries a malcontent or not.

A weak set of pelvic floor muscles therefore could constitute some messy problems, the most common of which is incontinence. This happens when we essentially lose control of the bladder, something that could occur in response to stress or pregnancy. During pregnancy, the weight of the womb must be supported by the floor. The muscles may therefore become weak or strained.

Strengthening the pelvic floor becomes a priority during pregnancy, during the months after birth and, for anybody who has experienced an unfortunate loss of control of these muscles on more than one occasion, specifically those responsible for supporting the bladder.

Before you can exercise the muscles, you will need to find them first and learn how to contract them. If you ever stopped urine mid-flow, then you will have already found and contracted the right muscles. Go ahead and try it; you can flex them any time, anywhere.

Now let’s go a step beyond. What normally happens when you flex this muscle group, is you stop breathing. To really learn to isolate it properly, flex it and focus on your breathing. Try to breathe normally and hold the contraction. This way you know you are not contracting the core or buttocks or any other muscle, and is the first step to an effective workout of this area: an isometric contraction or, simply put, a sustained squeeze.

In the human body, we have a particular set of muscles that serve pretty much the same function as a floor

You could perform sets and repetitions of short contractions, known as the Kegel exercise or, better still and my personal favourite method, exercise the pelvic floor while also training your core. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to do this if you are beyond your first trimester of pregnancy, but for everyone else, here’s an excellent technique you can try right away.

Lie down on the floor facing up. Bend your knees about 90 degrees, feet flat on the floor, arms by your side, nice and comfortable. You could even put a pillow under your head, if you like.

You’re going to work your core as you may have done many times before; only think slower, and more intense. Start by engaging your transverse abdominals. Imagine you are trying to button up a tiny, super-tight pair of jeans. Don’t just suck your stomach in. This has to be a contraction. In other words, try to make your tummy smaller but tighter and firmer at the same time.

If you did this right, you’ll feel tightness on either side of your abdominals; these are the transverse abdominals. Now, hold that contraction and, at the same time, flex the pelvic floor muscles as explained earlier. Just by combining these two contractions and holding them, you will already feel you are working out.

Now for the hard part. Holding those contractions, imagine there is a pea just beneath the small of your lower back between your skin and the floor. Try to crush that pea by flattening your back completely against the floor. Do it slowly and, for the cherry on the cake, exhale deliberately as you push. If you managed to do all this, well done! You have excellent muscle control. Three repetitions of this performed correctly could be as effective as 10 crunches performed loosely with less than optimal technique.

Inhale as you relax back to the start position. You can re-flex the transverse abdominals and pelvic floor muscles in between every repetition, to start out, and when they’re stronger, keep them tight for the whole duration of the set, working up to sets of 10; just three sets performed correctly should do the trick. Think quality not quantity.

To progress still further, straighten your arms and place the palms of your hands together above your chest. Don’t just stop at flattening your back totally against the floor; keep pushing the small of that back down until your shoulders up top, and hips down below, actually lift slightly up off the floor.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt