Kegels Aren’t the Whole Story — Why Over-Tightening Your Pelvic Floor Is Also a Problem

If I had a pound for every time someone told me “I do my Kegels every day” as if that alone should have fixed their leaking, heaviness or pain, I could probably retire early.

Kegels (the classic pelvic floor squeeze-and-lift exercise) have become the default answer to almost any pelvic floor symptom.

Leaking? Do more Kegels.

Prolapse? Do more Kegels.

Pain during intimacy? Still, somehow, do more Kegels.

But here’s the thing I want every mum reading this to understand: a pelvic floor that is too tight can cause exactly the same symptoms as one that is too weak. And if you’re doing endless Kegels on top of a pelvic floor that’s already over-tightened, you could actually be making things worse.

Let’s talk about the half of the pelvic floor story that rarely gets airtime.

Your Pelvic Floor Needs to Do Two Jobs, Not One

We tend to talk about the pelvic floor purely in terms of strength — squeeze, lift, hold, repeat. But a healthy pelvic floor isn’t just strong; it’s functional, meaning it can do two equally important things:

• Contract — to support your organs, control your bladder and bowel, and provide stability during effort like lifting, sneezing or exercise
• Relax and lengthen fully — to allow you to empty your bladder and bowel properly, to move without restriction, and (for many women) for comfortable intimacy

A pelvic floor that can contract but can’t fully release is not a healthy pelvic floor, it’s simply dysfunctional in a different direction. This is often called an overactive, hypertonic, or non-relaxing pelvic floor, and it’s far more common than most women realise, particularly after pregnancy, birth, or periods of high stress.

What Does an Overactive Pelvic Floor Look Like?

This is where it gets confusing, because many of the symptoms of a tight pelvic floor overlap almost exactly with the symptoms of a weak one:

• Urinary urgency or leaking — a pelvic floor that’s chronically tight can actually become fatigued and less responsive, leading to leaks
• A feeling of heaviness or pressure, even without prolapse
• Constipation or a sense of incomplete bowel emptying, because the muscles won’t fully let go to allow a full, relaxed emptying
• Pain during intimacy, or difficulty using tampons
• Lower back, hip or pelvic pain, particularly around the tailbone or pubic bone
• A persistent feeling of tension in the pelvic area, even at rest

If any of this sounds familiar and you’ve been diligently doing Kegels without any improvement (or your symptoms have actually got worse) an overactive pelvic floor could well be part of the picture.

Why This Happens So Often After Birth

There are a few common reasons a pelvic floor becomes overactive, especially in postnatal women:

• Guarding after birth trauma or tearing: if you’ve experienced pain, stitches or a difficult delivery, it’s completely natural for your body to unconsciously “brace” the area, and that protective tension can become a habit that lingers long after healing.
• Compensating for a weak core: when your deep abdominals aren’t pulling their weight, your pelvic floor and back muscles often over-grip to compensate for the missing support.
• Chronic stress and holding patterns: many women unconsciously clench their pelvic floor the same way they might clench their jaw, especially during periods of anxiety, exhaustion or “always on” motherhood mode.

Doing Kegels as a default without ever addressing relaxation: if every pelvic floor exercise you’ve ever been given is a squeeze-and-hold, and you’re doing dozens of them a day, you’re training strength without ever training release.

So Should You Stop Doing Kegels?

Not necessarily, but you shouldn’t be doing them blindly, either. The honest answer is that more Kegels is not automatically better, and for a significant number of women, they’re not even the right starting point.

This is exactly why I always recommend a pelvic health physiotherapy assessment before diving into a generic pelvic floor programme. A physio can assess whether your pelvic floor muscles are actually able to fully relax as well as contract, and tailor your plan accordingly. Doing the wrong exercises for your particular pelvic floor pattern can delay your recovery, or mask the real issue.

What Actually Helps an Overactive Pelvic Floor?

If tightness and tension are part of your picture, the focus needs to shift from squeezing harder to releasing well and restoring rhythm to the whole system. In my classes, this often includes:

• Diaphragmatic breathing: learning to breathe in a way that allows your pelvic floor to fully lengthen on the inhale and gently lift on the exhale, rather than staying gripped throughout
• Full-body relaxation and mobility work: particularly through the hips, glutes and lower back, since tension here is closely linked to pelvic floor tension
• Down-training exercises: deliberately practising letting go and releasing the pelvic floor, not just contracting it
• Addressing the whole “canister”: working your deep abdominals, diaphragm and pelvic floor as one coordinated system, rather than isolating the pelvic floor with endless squeezes.
• Nervous system support: because chronic tension is so often linked to stress, slowing down and creating deep rest matters just as much as the physical exercises.

This is the whole-body, breath-led approach I bring to every class at Centred Mums because pelvic floor health was never really about one muscle group doing one movement over and over. It’s about the whole system working together, in both directions.

The Bottom Line

Strength matters, but it’s only ever half the story. A pelvic floor that can grip but never let go is just as much a red flag as one that leaks, and piling on more Kegels without understanding which pattern you actually have can leave you stuck — or make things worse.

If you’ve been doing “all the right things” and still aren’t seeing progress, it might be time to look beyond the standard advice. Please know: nothing is TMI here.

The best first step is a proper assessment with a women’s health physio or osteopath to understand exactly what your pelvic floor is doing — and then I can help you build the right movement plan around it. Explore my in-person Pilates classes in St Albans, join The Centred Mums Collective online, or grab my free pelvic floor health download to get started today.