6 Small, Everyday Habits Pelvic Floor Physical Therapists Wish You’d Break

From posture quirks to bathroom behaviors, these things can do a number.

March 7, 2025

stomach and hips of woman in pink underwear in a photograph that appears ripped

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Unless you’re actively doing a Kegel, you probably don’t think much about engaging your pelvic floor. (And if you’re thinking What the heck is a Kegel? then the topic likely has never even crossed your mind.) But what’s unique about this sling of muscles running from your pubic bone to your tailbone is that it’s constantly at your service anyway, stabilizing your core and pelvic organs and routinely flexing on and off so you can pee, poop, and have sex.

That’s also why it’s so easy for things to go awry down there: Little habits affecting any of the body parts and organ systems intertwined with your pelvic floor can have a trickle-down effect on this group of muscles. “I like to describe the pelvic floor as the Grand Central Station of the body,” Riva Preil, PT, DPT, a board-certified pelvic floor physical therapist, author of The Inside Story: The Woman’s Guide to Lifelong Pelvic Health, and founder of Revitalize Physical Therapy in New York, tells SELF. “It’s a connection point between your lower extremities, your core, and your upper extremities, so it takes the brunt and burden of every move you make.”

Meaning, any not-so-great habits for your back and hips—like lifting too-heavy items with poor form, sitting for hours on end, or carrying things always on the same side—can spell trouble for your pelvic floor, too. As Dr. Preil explains, putting undue strain on any one part of your trunk can lead other areas to overcompensate. But aside from these generally bad posture habits, there’s also plenty you might be doing every day that could be setting you up for pelvic floor issues even more imminently. Below, you’ll find the common behaviors that pelvic floor physical therapists are constantly advising folks against, why they can wreak havoc down there, and what to do instead to better support this integral muscle group—so it can keep doing the same for you.

1. You suck in your stomach or tuck your butt as you go about your day.

Maybe you’ve gotten into the bad habit of constantly pulling in your belly to “suck everything in” or in an attempt to use your core muscles for good posture. Or perhaps you just clench your glutes and midsection in moments of anxiety. For some people, it’s a natural “protective” movement, Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas, PT, DPT, a pelvic floor physical therapist in Medfield, Mass., and author of Power to the Pelvis, tells SELF. But while these moves might seem similar to the supportive act of engaging your core, or firing up your torso muscles—which is great to do while working out or completing any physically demanding task—the suck-and-tuck actually throws your back out of alignment and makes your pelvic floor the scapegoat.

Chronically sucking in “collapses the canister” of your abdomen, “so your pelvic floor feels like it has to do all this extra work,” Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says. Eventually, these muscles can get stuck in this tense state and lose their ability to both flex and soften with ease.

What to do instead: Let your belly and butt be as they may while you move through your daily routine, just tightening your core and glutes—by squeezing versus sucking—only while you’re exerting yourself physically and need the support. Sure, it won’t hurt you to strike a pose for the occasional photo, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says (though we’d argue that a relaxed vibe is a more attractive look anyway). But you generally don’t want to yank your torso out of its happy natural alignment. If you find that you’ve been holding your stomach in subconsciously for a while, consider doing a few stretches at the end of each day that will naturally lengthen and loosen your pelvic muscles, like “happy baby” or “cat-cow.”

2. You push to get your pee out faster or strain to poop.

Whether you just don’t have much time to answer nature’s call at work or you’re feeling grossed-out about the stall you’re occupying in a public bathroom, there are plenty of reasons you might be tempted to rush your pee or poop. But both squeezing hard to pass a B.M. and power-peeing, or forcing your stream to flow more quickly, can negatively affect your pelvic floor muscles—sometimes to the point that your pelvic organs bear the consequences, too, Dr. Preil says.

It all comes down to the fact that you’re applying a lot of downward pressure. Specifically, bearing down while pooping can cause you to perform what’s called a “paradoxical contraction,” Dr. Preil says. So while you might think you’re helping poop move out more swiftly, you’re actually tightening your pelvic floor and closing the opening of your anus, making it tougher for stool to pass, she explains. A similar scenario can happen when you’re trying to push pee outward; it could run up against a partially closed urethra versus a relaxed, fully open one. And in either case, you’re just piling onto tension in your pelvic floor, creating a vicious cycle that makes it even harder to go.

Less commonly, straining to poop can overstress your pelvic floor muscles so much that they can no longer effectively support your rectum (or the bottom part of your large intestine), leading it to slip down and bulge out of your butt in a condition called rectal prolapse, Dr. Preil says.

What to do instead: Allow yourself the time you need on the toilet for peeing or pooping to naturally happen. While it’s true that you don’t want to dawdle there forever, you also don’t want to be in such a time-crunch that you’re forcing everything out. If it’s tricky for you to empty your bowels or get a solid stream of pee going without pushing, Dr. Preil suggests taking a few deep diaphragmatic breaths the next time you’re on the toilet—inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth for five seconds each. You’ll also want to work more water and fiber-rich foods into your daily routine if constipation is leaving you with hard pebbly stools that won’t come out without a fight.

On the other hand, if you feel like you have to push to get your flow of pee started or keep it going, you’ll want to check in with your doctor, as you might be dealing with pelvic organ prolapse (which happens when your uterus or bladder descends into your vagina) or a blockage in your bladder that’s plugging things up and requires treatment.

3. You pee “just in case” before leaving the house.

You’ve probably heard that holding your pee too long is problematic. And that’s certainly true—overfilling your bladder can stretch out the muscles lining the organ to the point where they can’t “recoil” and push pee out as effectively, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says. That could leave you with extra pee hanging around in there, upping your risk for a urinary tract infection (UTI), or unexpected leakage; as Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas puts it, your pelvic floor will struggle to sense when it should be on or off if your bladder’s signals are all crossed. But you should also know, it’s just as risky to pee too often, for instance trying to go “just in case” or when you don’t have the urge.

By emptying your bladder when it hasn’t totally expanded with pee yet, you’ll train it to feel full at smaller volumes, Dr. Preil says, until suddenly you feel like you need to pee all the time. That can obviously be super disruptive, but also, because you’re tinkling when your bladder isn’t actually at max capacity, it likely means you’re pushing to pee, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says. This can, again, put pressure on your pelvic floor and cause weakening and damage over time.

What to do instead: To be sure you’re not peeing too often or too infrequently, aim for the sweet spot of going every two to four hours, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says. Generally, that gives your bladder enough time to expand fully and maintain its true capacity.

If you feel like you’ve already gotten used to peeing more frequently than that or can’t help but pee “just in case” whenever you’re leaving your home or office, know that it’s also possible to retrain your bladder, Dr. Preil says. You can start by trying to “ride the wave,” she says, or resist the urge to go by distracting yourself (for instance, with a work task or a cognitive exercise like counting backward from 100 by seven) for a few minutes. Put this into practice each time you’re tempted to pee within an hour or less of having gone, and in time, you’ll be able to spread out your bathroom trips to that optimal two- to four-hour interval.

4. You hold your breath when you exercise or exert yourself.

Much like sucking in your belly, holding your breath to power through a challenging exercise move like a squat or deadlift has a ricochet effect on your pelvic floor: When you stop the flow of air out of your nose or mouth, you create internal pressure that, because of gravity, gets distributed downward onto your pelvis, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says.

If that happens on occasion, your pelvic floor can handle the burden. But it’s all too easy for this tendency to get ingrained in your daily life. “If every time you’re picking up a laundry basket or standing up out of a chair, you hold your breath, that’s again putting pressure on your pelvic floor,” Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas points out. Before you know it, you could end up overworking—and in turn, weakening—these muscles in a way that leaves you more susceptible to leakage, she says.

What to do instead: As Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas tells her clients: “When in doubt, breathe out”—or more specifically, exhale on exertion, or at the hardest point of any movement. So when you’re coming up from a squat or deadlift, or picking up a heavy object, make sure you’re letting the air whoosh out from your nose or mouth to “create a bit of an automatic support for your pelvic floor,” Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says. (Looking for more specific intel? Pop over to our full guide on how to breathe during any type of workout for the best result.)

5. You grin and bear it through painful sex.

Enduring painful sex really sucks…if for no other reason than the fact that sex shouldn’t hurt (unless you want it to). The idea that even good sex should be somewhat painful is an unfortunate, persistent misconception that keeps plenty of people from the pleasure they deserve. But to make matters worse, powering through uncomfortable—or downright agonizing—sex can also cause pelvic floor issues down the line, Dr. Preil says.

What happens is, with each additional unpleasant experience, your body begins to associate sex with pain, to the point where your pelvic floor can subconsciously tense up in anticipation of sex, Dr. Preil says. It’s a protective mechanism, she explains: Those muscles are bracing for impact. But the preemptive gripping just winds up making sex (particularly penetration) even more painful, she says. And the more ingrained this tendency becomes over the course of months or years of uncomfortable sex, the harder it is to drop. (For this same reason, past sexual abuse or trauma can also make sex a painful experience; if this is relevant to you, visit RAINN for help finding resources, counseling, and support.)

What to do instead: Be honest with yourself and your partner about exactly which types of sex acts hurt and when, and consider if there might be certain workarounds that could help. For instance, can you slather on some lube to alleviate that rub-and-tug feeling, opt for a position that involves less thrusting, or bypass penetration altogether?

Ultimately, you also owe it to yourself to see a doc if pain during or after sex is your norm. Your ob-gyn can help rule out certain health conditions that may be at the root of it, like endometriosis or uterine fibroids. They may also refer you to a pelvic floor physical therapist, who can help you undo the pelvic tension you may have developed by enduring painful sex and retrain those muscles so they’re less likely to tighten on reflex.

6. You constantly do Kegels.

I thought Kegels were good for your pelvic floor?! I can practically hear you thinking. And yes, that is true for plenty of people in a variety of circumstances. But they’ve gotten so much positive press in the past few years that they’ve mistakenly come to be known as the end-all, be-all of a healthy pelvic floor—when really, a Kegel is just like any other exercise, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas says: The number and the context is important. (And so is your form, FWIW; if you need a refresher, here’s our guide to doing Kegels correctly.)

On the topic of dosage, it’s certainly possible to overdo it. Kegel-ing all the damn time will have the opposite effect you’re hoping for, contributing to tension in your pelvic floor that can make it less capable of flexing and relaxing on demand. And crucially, if you have a tight pelvic floor (some signs of that include pain with penetration, a weak pee stream, and constipation), Kegels are actually not for you at all, Dr. Preil says. Trying to squeeze an already-clenched pelvis can just make the tightness and tension worse.

What to do instead: If you haven’t experienced symptoms of a tight pelvic floor, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas recommends doing up to 20 Kegels on three occasions throughout the day, maximum (unless you’ve been evaluated by an ob-gyn or pelvic floor physical therapist who’s told you otherwise). She also suggests splitting these up between endurance and power contractions—so, in each set, doing 10 quick flicks and 10 slower ones, where you squeeze and hold for up to 10 seconds each and then relax for that long in between.

But to be clear, that’s a general max: You should only do as many as you can comfortably complete while maintaining your form, Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas emphasizes. And again, if you have a tense pelvic floor or feel any pain or discomfort while Kegel-ing, definitely put those exercises on pause. In this scenario, it’s also a good idea to see a pelvic floor physical therapist for support. (You can ask your ob-gyn for a referral or use this credible PT locator to find one near you.) They can help release those clenched muscles and get you to a place where you can make easy use of them, for effective Kegels or otherwise.