Queefing…. You know…. vagina farts. That’s awkward stuff right? It’s especially awkward to find yourself queefing during exercise at your favorite gym.
And literally NO ONE talks about it. Which just makes it more awkward.
That is except my group of lady friends. We’ve been known to have zero filter and make other people very uncomfortable with our candor.
We know each other’s dirty secrets, embarrassing college mistakes, and far too many details of each other’s menstrual cycles. We also had a great laugh one day post Crossfit workout, heavy on the handstand push ups when one of us asked the group:
“Ummmm were you queefing during those handstand push ups or was that just me?!?”
Awkward glances exchanged and then
As it turns out, it was all of us. According to my women’s PT this a very normal thing that happens to women, postpartum or not (tends to be a little worse after you’ve had a baby though). Spending time in the postpartum chapter learning how to connect your breath to your pelvic floor can help you tremendously. I break this down a little further in my free core rehab video series which you might find helpful.
Back to the gym that day, my friends and I laughed until we cried and the conversation sounded a lot like:
“Good thing the music was loud!”
“Omg it happened to me in between songs”
“I swear the guy next to me heard it all”
I want to tell you that vagina farts are nothing to be ashamed about, but I know as well as you do that none of us want to be ripping those in the middle of our workout or yoga class (hello 3 legged dog to low lunge, that will do it every time).
But how do you make it stop!?
That’s what I was on a mission to find out so I set up an interview with women’s physical therapist Molly Lechtenberg from Breathe Des Moines to get to the bottom of this. She has a little trick called “Learning to close your fart canister” and it’s surprisingly effective (and also hilariously titled).
In this 15 minute IGTV video Molly and I talk all about queefing during exercise and how to make it stop.
The trick is to kegel and hold right before you perform the high demand movement that causes the queefing (aka right before you push out of the bottom of a handstand push up or pull your leg through from 3 legged dog to low lunge).
Molly does a great job breaking it down in THIS IGTV.
Make sure to leave a comment or tag a queefing friend.
If you’re postpartum and wondering how exactly to get back to exercise, you’ll want to get your hands on the guide I recently created.
This is your A-Z guide to your first 16 weeks postpartum and it answers questions like:
- What can you do in the first 6 weeks after birth?
- How do you strengthen your core?
- What does your return to exercise look like?
- Should you be worried about diastasis recti?
I breakdown everything I think you need to know about postpartum fitness in this guide.
