Exercise Professionals Improve Their Poor Skills in Contracting Pelvic-Floor Muscles: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT

A quick, well-timed pelvic-floor muscle contraction during physical effort is recommended for active women to prevent urine leakage. Purpose: We address two research questions: how well do future female exercise professionals contract the pelvic-floor muscles, and whether the biofeedback session is necessary to train them to contract pelvic-floor muscles? Method: Participants were 84 nulliparous future exercise professionals (age 23 ± 3 years, mean ± SD), randomly allocated into biofeedback (n = 27), usual-advice (n = 26), and control (no advice, n = 21) groups. Contraction of pelvic-floor muscles on a 4-point scale (1 = incorrect through 4 = correct) was assessed in all groups by surface electromyography (sEMG) with a vaginal probe before and after 6 weeks of intervention. Results: In pretest, almost one in five participants (17%) could not activate the pelvic floor and less than half of them (45%) presented correct technique. The technique score for the three groups was 3.1 ± 1.1 (mean ± SD). After training, both intervention groups presented better technique score by 0.6 (90% confidence limits ± 0.5) relative to the control group, and two-thirds (65%) of the intervention groups presented the correct technique. Conclusions: Future exercise professionals displayed poor skills in contracting pelvic-floor muscles. Both training interventions (with and without biofeedback) were effective for this study group.

KEYWORDS:

• Pelvic floor muscle training
• motor learning
• biofeedback
• electromyography

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge all the exercise professionals who volunteered for the study and the authorities of Tourism and Recreation Department, Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport for financial and organizational support.

Additional information

Funding

The study was financed from the statutory research funds of the Faculty of Tourism and Recreation of the Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.