Charging down the court, she jumps into the air for a layup. Her team is up by two. But as she lands, a sudden trickle of urine and feeling of embarrassment follows.
The scenario is the same for many female athletes—the volleyball player spiking the ball, the gymnast on the balance beam, the cross countryrunner or the track and field competitor. As more young women participate in recreational and competitive athletics, many are experiencing a problem that is bewildering and upsetting—stress urinary incontinence (SUI).
Pelvic floor dysfunction with symptoms of stress and urge urinary incontinence is often thought to be a problem associated with women after childbirth or with aging. However, in a study of female athletes who had never borne children, 28 percent experienced incontinence. Another study showed that 35 percent of physical education students, age 18 through 27, reported SUI.
Called the “Silent Crisis” by the American Gynecology Association, stress incontinence affects nearly 13 million people, most of whom are too embarrassed to seek medical help or to even visit with their physician regarding this issue.
Female athletes tend to be great at “managing” this problem, but not so great at “fixing” the problem. They tend to wear pads, assure each other this is normal, or cut back on fluids before a competition. These all are wrong answers and simply “manage” the issue rather than “fix” it. Incontinence is never normal—at any age.
Physical Therapists with specialty training in Women’s Health have treated pelvic floor dysfunction of women of all ages and backgrounds. Evaluation includes a complete orthopedic evaluation of the lumbar/sacral spine and the pelvis to evaluate muscle imbalance—weakness and spinal alignment.
The typical assumption that the athlete just needs to do “Kegal exercises” also isincorrect. Majority of women performing this exercise do so incorrectly and often are suffering from high resting tone or poor endurance in the pelvic floor muscles. Just as the highly trained athlete optimizes her performance with progressive and specific training, she also needs to correctly train and develop a neuro-motor reflex to train her pelvic floor muscles to contract and relax correctly with high impact exercise.
Physical Therapy Partners clients are evaluated and treated in private rooms with state of the art surface electromyography to aide them in learning the correct location of the pelvic floor muscles and how to normalize their resting tone and to increase strength. Individualized progressive exercise programs then are developed for each client. Quality assurance studies show that 80 percent of clients rate their progress at over 75 percent in just eight-to-10 visits.
For further information regarding the treatment of pelvic floor dysfunction in athletes, call Amy Kimball, MPT, ATC or Pam Wenndt, PT, GCS at Physical Therapy Partners, 319-233-6995. Physical Therapy Partners recently moved into its new, expanded clinic at 815 West Tower Park Drive in Waterloo. The clinic is located just off the Ansborough exit for Highway 20 in the Country Club Business Plaza.
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