How High-Impact Exercise Can Boost Your Pelvic Floor (and How to Do It Safely)
High-impact exercise—jumping, running, lifting weights—does so much more than get your heart pumping. It builds strength, supports long-term health, and boosts confidence. But if you’re navigating pelvic floor symptoms like leaks or prolapse, the idea of jumping back into these activities might feel impossible.
Good news? It’s not. High-impact workouts can be safe and effective with the right approach. In this blog, I’ll show you why these exercises matter and how to return to them confidently and safely.
How Pelvic Floor Challenges Affect High-Impact Workouts
High impact exercise challenges the pelvic floor by increasing the pressure and load through the core, bladder, vagina and bowel. The pelvic floor needs to match these increases with an equal or greater strength in order to stay continent or mitigate downward movement of the pelvic organs.
High impact exercise is often a trigger for symptoms of urine leakage and prolapse (vaginal heaviness or dragging)
Often women who experience bladder leakage or prolapse symptoms are told to avoid high impact exercise with fear of making it worse (however this information for the most part is false and in some cases harmful)
The Benefits of High-Impact Exercise for Women
Bone Health: High impact exercise is needed to strengthen bones and reduce osteoporosis risk.
Muscle strength and power: Important for overall longevity, performance in sport and physical activity as well as assist in maintaining independence as we age.
Improved pelvic floor function: Contrary to fears of pelvic floor issues, high-impact exercise can improve pelvic floor resilience when progressively loaded
Cardiovascular fitness: High-intensity, high-impact activities elevate heart rate and improve cardiovascular endurance, reducing the risk of heart disease, which is one of the leading causes of death in women.
Weight management: High-impact exercises burn significant calories and build lean muscle, aiding in maintaining a healthy weight and metabolic health.
Confidence Booster: Reclaiming physical milestones can boost mental health, and achieving new physical skills plays into many other areas of life (how we interact with other people, the story we tell ourselves about what we are capable of, what we say yes to, our confidence in the workplace and the list goes on)
Tips to Safely Return to High-Impact Exercise
Focus on foundational strength: A holistic pelvic floor muscle training program that looks at pelvic floor length, strength and endurance with graded increases over time.
Look at your form with a fine tooth comb: Leaking with skipping? Running? Whatever the movement, we break this down and make sure you are performing all aspects correctly
Start with low reps and build gradually: If you leak after the 12th rep of skipping as an example, we would peel this back and do 3 sets of 8 skips with rests in between. Before moving to higher reps grouped together.
Cross training: If running or jumping is your goal, we want to ensure you are incorporating other low impact forms of resistance training to target the key muscle groups needed to do these exercises effectively.
Manage constipation: If you are constipated or not emptying your bowel completely, you will increase the likliehood of experiencing urine leakage and prolapse symptoms with high impact exercise
Consider the impact of other factors: Thoracic tightness, weight gain, footwear, exercise surfaces (all these things have the potential to impact your pelvic floor symptoms when doing high impact exercise)
Utilise supports: Compression shorts, pessaries and other support devices can be prescribed from your physio to assist in overcoming pelvic floor dysfunction and allow you to do high impact exercise leak or prolapse free
High-impact exercise isn’t just for athletes—it’s for every woman (I feel VERY strongly about this). It’s more than just feeling feel strong, capable, and confident. High impact exercise is the key to living a long life with independence. Your pelvic floor symptoms shouldnt be the ceiling of what is possible.
👉 Want more tips and support? Follow me on Instagram @pelvicfloorwithcaitlin for daily advice (slide into my DMs with specific questions), or contact me to see how I can help you get back to what you love!