4 Kegel Exercises for Men that are FALSE and even DANGEROUS - Don't Be Fooled!（原声文稿）

Some Kegel exercises for men that are currently shown online are absolutely not Kegel exercises or what's also known as pelvic floor exercises.

These exercises won't solve your pelvic floor problems despite their claims to the contrary and in fact in some cases they can actually make your pelvic floor problems worse.

Hi, I'm Michelle and today I'm guiding you through four exercises that you can currently you find online and these exercises claim to be kegel exercises that will actually promote strengthening and also help men to overcome some of the common pelvic floor problems such as erectile dysfunction, bladder control problems and after prostate surgery.

Now I really wanted to present this information to you so that you can make an informed decision about choosing the correct exercises for your condition and so that you can critically analyse exercises that you see online and know whether they're going to be beneficial for your condition and for strengthening your pelvic floor or whether they're really going to be just a waste of time.

So in starting this video I've gone through how to do pelvic floor exercises or kegel exercises in numerous other videos you can check above if you if you'd like that information but just very briefly if this is the the pelvis the male pelvis.

Your pelvic floor muscles sit underneath here. They're actually inside the body.

That's a really important thing to know. They're not on the outside. Your glutes would be outside here.

They're actually on the inside in and around the area where you sit.

Now that's a critical thing to remember so that when you're strengthening these muscles or exercising these muscles, the action happens on the inside.

Now for men there's two things you might notice on the outside and two things only.

That is a retraction or drawing in of the penis and lifting upwards and also to a lifting of the testicles and then a lowering down of the testicles.

Those two things only you'll see with a correct kegel exercise.

So let's get into the exercises that are currently shown online.

I'm not going to mention where they're coming from. You can find them yourself if you'd like to.

But I'd just like you to take a look at these particular exercises and note what they're actually strengthening and see because they're actually some of them are really good examples of what not to do and then I also want to show you one in particular and that's that will be the last one that it can actually be really detrimental for your pelvic floor muscles if they're already weak or if you suffer from pelvic floor pain.

So our first exercise and you can see it here being shown on screen now and this is the bridge exercise it's also known as a hip raise or a glute bridge this is one of the most common so -called kegel exercises and this is a really a great exercise for training your buttocks or your gluteal muscles but it does not specifically exercise or train your pelvic floor muscles so it's not a kegel exercise.

In fact during physiotherapy training or pelvic floor physiotherapy training we actually discourage men from contracting the buttocks during the pelvic floor exercises because doing this actually might give you the impression that you are doing a correct kegel exercise when in fact you're not doing the kegel exercises at all.

Remember when I just showed you the model the buttock muscles are actually on the outside of the pelvis they're not here on the inside underneath where you sit.

Alright so let's move on to our second exercise now.

Now the second exercise that's commonly claimed to be a pelvic floor or kegel exercise is the plank or hover exercise and you can see it being demonstrated here.

Now it's obviously performed through the elbows or sometimes through the hands and bearing most of the weight on the toes so that the trunk muscles have to work.

Specifically the outer abdominals also and some of the inner abdominals have to work as well.

So this is really a core training exercise but not specific to the pelvic floor muscles again.

The pelvic floor muscles might contract during this exercise but they're not being specifically trained if you're trying to strengthen them.

Now the muscles that are being trained are the outer abdominal muscles or particularly the upper abdominal muscles.

Now again in pelvic floor physiotherapy we actually discourage patients from contracting these upper abdominal muscles because what these do is actually press down on the pelvic floor and when the pelvic floor is trying to lift upwards these muscles actually create pressure within the abdomen that pushes downwards working against pelvic floor strengthening exercises.

So again, this is not a Kegel exercise.

The third exercise that I'd like to present to you today is the hip adductor exercise.

Now again, I've seen a number of this exercise being presented a number of times.

There's only one 30 that I've found and this was done on postnatal women comparing it to a Kegel exercise and it wasn't even a correct Kegel exercise and I'll put that reference down below if you'd like to check it but it's a very poor study.

So that's the only study that I can actually find supporting this this particular exercise as a Kegel exercise.

So this exercise as you can see is performed lying down.

There's a block used either a yoga block or a ball a Pilates ball perhaps between the legs as you can see here and this This exercise involves squeezing the thighs together, using that block or ball for resistance.

Now while this exercise might feel as though it's working your groin, which it is, it's actually not specifically exercising or training your pelvic floor muscles.

And once again, the adductor muscles, these hip adductor muscles, these large muscles that you can see on screen, are muscles that we try to discourage patients from using again because of that misconception that men might think that they're contracting their pelvic floor when they're actually not doing that during this particular exercise.

Now our final exercise and this is an exercise I'm actually quite disturbed to see being recommended as a pelvic floor strengthening exercise because in fact doing this exercise if your pelvic floor muscles are weak or if you're suffering pelvic floor pain can actually make your condition much worse.

Now you can see the exercise being demonstrated here, you can see this is a really deep squat but I think some of this information also applies to general weighted squats as well because as physios we often see men suffering from hemorrhoids, rectal prolapse as a result of doing really deep weighted squats and particularly with waist with weight belts on as well.

So what this particular exercise strengthens is your glutes and again your thigh muscles and again holding it in that sustained manner that you can see up here is actually going to put pressure down the pelvic floor.

Your abdominal contents are actually being forced down onto the pelvic floor which will actually stretch downwards as a result.

So stretched muscles, particularly if they're overstretched, can actually weaken.

So if you've actually already got tight, overly tight pelvic floor muscles associated with pelvic floor pain.

A prolonged squat like that is actually going to put that pressure down on those very tight muscles and actually increase pain and stretching the muscles out in that manner.

So it's definitely not something we recommend in terms of pelvic floor physiotherapy treatment or also to the kegel exercises.

So I think you can see there are some real common misconceptions online and I'd love to hear your comments and your feedback below about these particular exercises or other exercises you might have found as well or noticed as well.

The issue is they'll waste your time and also to some men will actually think their Kegel exercises are actually ineffective if they're doing these exercises when in fact they're not doing the correct exercise at all.

So if you'd like to know how to do your Kegel exercises correctly, stay with me now.

I've got a Kegel exercises video coming up to show you correctly how to do your correct kegel exercises using the correct technique.

And as always, if you found the video helpful, I'd really be grateful if you can leave it a like below because then YouTube will recommend the video, will be more likely to recommend the video to other men that might benefit from this information too. Thanks so much for watching today as always.

I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye for now.