CrossFit South Bend

Things people don’t discuss often part 1!

How do I stop peeing during double unders?!
(or really any other exercise for that matter)

This is most common phenomenon with female athletes, that’s not to say issues of incontinence can’t happen with males.

I’ve also seen this issue – not only in women who have given birth, but women of all ages and levels of athleticism.

There are a few contributing factors to this – and to really suss it out, it’s best to grab a professional.

( click here to check out the person we refer our clients out to! )

But in the meantime, what are some reasons you may be peeing during double unders or heavy contractions?

You’ll see people very often revert to the assumption that it is pelvic floor issue, and to work on Kegel and pelvic floor exercises – which could very well be the case.

Postpartum women WILL have to resolve weakness in the pelvic floor- but they may still keep peeing even after regaining strength.

In some of the stronger athletes it’s unlikely that the main problem is a weak pelvic floor, but an issue in coordinating their diaphragm with their pelvic floor

The diaphragm goes down when you inhale and pushes down on internal organs. If the pelvic floor does not respond by relaxing and moving down, all internal organs will continually be under too much pressure and push on a weakened abdominal wall preventing healing and push on internal organs (bladder included) which causes incontinence.

One thing that could help is a different breathing and alignment strategy for the women where the strength itself isn’t an issue.

Julie Wiebe has some amazing work on the concept of piston breath, I’ve heard it termed “blow before you go” as well – if you’ve never checked it out, it’s worth a look
So the main idea here is inhale-relax pelvic floor, exhale-contract to match the task.

You should start by learning to coordinate the diaphragm with the pelvic floor by itself – without the added complexity of movement. A professional can help with this

(again, click here for the person we refer to!)

Once you’ve mastered it by itself, you can get an individual design coach to write progressions for you and note when it becomes unconscious and natural before moving on and progressing

Some simple rules of thumb are to master the concept of coordinating the diaphragm and pelvic floor in…

controlled before dynamic movements
sustainable before unsustainable formats
simple before complex movements
paces of endurance before power

After birth – very often I’ll see women in a hurry to return to their old maxes, back to a specific style of training or exercises. The speed you’re able to return depends on a lot of things.

If you’re breastfeeding
How the birth went
How any scars are healing
How your lifestyle is; sleep, stress, digestion, etc
Amongst other things

However, If you’ve never been pregnant but experience incontinence – a professional can definitely help and the progression looks very similar.

In the end we always prefer our postpartum ladies get cleared by a professional before returning because of the specificity of returning to training after birth. The online body back culture you see on instagram of women posting 3 week postpartum weight loss and training videos can make it feel like you should be going faster than you are comfortable with – what happens there is a lot of skipped steps leading to potential injury, a lot of compensating, and some peeing during movements that can’t be all that fun 🙂