Common Mistakes When Doing Kegel Exercises

Also, a common mistake women make when they first start is to flex the abdominal muscles instead of the pelvic floor muscles. When you tighten your abdominals, those muscles tend to push down on the pelvic floor and push the weight out.

Flexing your pelvic floor muscles should feel like you're trying to hold back the flow of urine (we don't recommend you stop and start the flow of urine often on the toilet as this is harmful to the pelvic muscles, but you can do it once or twice to teach yourself that feeling).

We also recommend inserting the weight while performing traditional Kegel exercises as we discussed above because sometimes it's hard for a beginner to "find" their pelvic floor muscles.

It can be challenging to find the pelvic muscles to contract them properly, and because you can’t see them move, thus it can be hard to focus on the right area.

This is one reason why many physical therapists recommend pelvic floor weights for patients with poor proprioception, another term for body awareness.