Webinar Bill Taylor: Can Strength Training Cause Pelvic Floor Dysfunction?: On demand webinar

Strength Training and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction: Do You Leak When You Lift? | CPD for Pelvic Health and Sports Physiotherapists

Join specialist physiotherapist Bill Taylor (MSc) for a myth-busting, evidence-based webinar exploring the relationship between strength and conditioning and the pelvic floor muscles (PFMs).

This session is grounded in clinical expertise and the latest evidence — essential for anyone who wants to understand how strength training, intra-abdominal pressure, and pelvic floor function interact in both athletic and everyday settings.

What You’ll Learn

• How intra-abdominal pressure (IAP), bracing strategies, and ground reaction forces influence pelvic health
• Why effective pelvic floor training must go beyond Kegels
• What the latest research says about lifting, jumping, and the risk of incontinence
• How to integrate pelvic floor muscle training into real-world strength programmes
• What health professionals and athletes need to know about safe lifting during pregnancy and postpartum

Why Do Patients Leak During Weightlifting - and How Can You Help Them?

Stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse are common in physically active patients who lift weights or participate in high-impact sports. In this webinar, Bill Taylor - pelvic health physiotherapist from Edinburgh and PhD candidate at Oxford Brookes University - explains how intra-abdominal pressure and ground reaction forces load the pelvic floor, and why isolated Kegel exercises are insufficient for patients with high physical demands.

Applying Strength and Conditioning Principles to Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation

The pelvic floor muscles are skeletal muscles and respond to the same training principles as any other muscle group: specificity, overload, and progression. Learn how to apply these principles in clinical practice, use the repetition maximum continuum for dosing, and monitor progress - including the clinically practical 'load them til they leak' approach for determining individual training thresholds.

Evidence for Combined Resistance Training and PFMT

The Cochrane Review (Dumoulin et al., 2018) provides Level 1a evidence for PFMT. Virtuoso et al. (2019) demonstrate that combining resistance training with PFMT produces significantly better outcomes after just 4 weeks compared to PFMT alone. Prevett et al. (2023) show that heavy lifting during pregnancy can be safe and is associated with lower rates of incontinence postpartum.

Squat, Deadlift and Lunge - Pelvic Floor in Functional Movement

The pelvic floor lengthens relatively during the descent phase of the squat and contracts during the ascent (Wiebe et al., 2019). Crawford et al. demonstrate that functional movements generate greater pelvic floor motor unit recruitment than isolated Kegels. Practical guidance on stance width, breathing patterns, and load modification is provided.

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Male Athletes

PFD in male athletes is frequently missed or misdiagnosed as adductor tendinopathy or osteitis pubis. Taylor discusses how to recognise PFD in male athletes, which symptoms to screen for (urinary urgency, erectile dysfunction, groin pain), and how to integrate S&C principles into rehabilitation for this population.

About the Speaker

Bill Taylor (MSc) is a specialist Orthopaedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist with over 40 years of clinical experience. He integrates elite sports performance principles with pelvic health expertise, and delivers talks across the UK and internationally.

Bill is the Clinical Director at Taylor Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Clinic, and teaches pelvic health to students, clinicians, and performance professionals. He is currently a Doctoral Research Candidate at Oxford Brookes University, focusing on the effect of movement and exercise on the lived experience of men with chronic pelvic pain.

Learning goals

Upon completion of this course, the participant will be able to

• critically analyse the biomechanical loading of the pelvic floor (intra-abdominal pressure, ground reaction forces, and muscular co-activation) during resistance and high-impact activities, integrating evidence-based knowledge from exercise physiology and training science with individual patient factors to inform complex clinical decision-making.
• systematically apply the principles of strength and conditioning (specificity, overload, and progression) to the design and dosing of an individualised pelvic floor training programme, engaging in critical evaluation of the gap between traditional Kegel protocols and functional resistance training in the light of current scientific evidence.
• translate clinical dosing concepts from training science (repetition maximum continuum, one-repetition maximum approach, acute:chronic workload ratio) to pelvic floor rehabilitation in a methodologically sound manner, using real-time ultrasound and surface EMG as clinical tools for prognostic and treatment-related decision-making in complex cases.
• systematically screen risk factors for pelvic floor dysfunction in athletes and weightlifters (age, parity, BMI, training frequency, Valsalva technique) and strategically integrate these findings into a multidisciplinary management approach, independently determining when referral to or collaboration with a pelvic health physiotherapist, S&C coach, or psychologist is indicated.
• critically reflect on the functional anatomical relationships between the pelvic floor, hip complex, diaphragm, and core during athletic and daily activities, and on this basis design a personalised, progressive rehabilitation programme aimed at return to sport and functional recovery, contributing to the further development of evidence-informed practice in pelvic health and sports physiotherapy.