On October 27, 2026, La Vanguardia published Anna Calpe’s article on pelvic-floor symptoms around menopause, presenting specialist advice and three exercise approaches intended to help women identify and coordinate these muscles.
Beyond blanket strengthening
The approach under question is strengthening by default: treating pelvic-floor symptoms as a sign that more contractions are needed. The experts quoted by La Vanguardia draw a distinction between muscles that may benefit from strengthening and muscles with excessive tension that may need help relaxing.
This is a change in emphasis rather than an announcement that an established medical standard has been replaced. The useful question is not simply whether pelvic-floor exercise belongs in menopause care. It is whether the goal for a particular person should be strength, relaxation or coordination.
Symptoms need context
The article brings together concerns that can feel separate in daily life. Its specialists connect the following symptoms with possible pelvic-floor dysfunction while making clear that they do not necessarily share the same cause:
- Leakage with coughing or sneezing. La Vanguardia identifies these everyday situations as examples of when urinary leakage may become noticeable. The practical point is to describe the leakage rather than assume it is something that must simply be accepted around menopause. The article supports individualized assessment when incontinence is present. It does not make an exercise list the starting point for every person with this symptom.
- Vaginal pressure or heaviness. The article describes pressure and a feeling of vaginal occupation among the symptoms worth discussing. A sensation is useful information for an assessment, but it is not a diagnosis on its own. When prolapse is present, the specialists recommend individual guidance rather than applying the same routine to everyone. Pressure therefore belongs in the conversation alongside leakage rather than being folded into a general assumption of weakness.
- Discomfort during sex. Pelvic-floor function is one possible part of this picture. The Merck Manual Consumer Version also explains that menopause-related hormonal changes can contribute to vaginal dryness or tissue thinning that may cause pain during sexual activity. This leaves room for the relationship between dryness and comfort, rather than treating every painful experience as a muscle problem. A useful assessment needs room for more than one contributor.
- Changes that become more noticeable at menopause. La Vanguardia reports that menopause-related tissue changes may bring previously unnoticed pelvic-floor problems into view. It also describes pregnancy and childbirth as possible influences. Repeated strain and some high-impact sports are other influences discussed in the article. This is a broader account than saying that menopause alone explains every new pelvic symptom.
Three exercise ideas
The article’s contributors include pelvic-floor rehabilitation physiotherapist Laia Blanco Ratto and psychologist and physiotherapist Inés Ramírez García. Their exercise suggestions focus on identifying muscle activity and coordinating it with breathing and movement.
These are descriptions of the approaches they discuss, not a home routine prescribed here:
- Practising contraction and release. The first approach involves learning to contract the pelvic floor and then relax it fully. Release is part of the exercise rather than an incidental pause between efforts. Read alongside the specialists’ warning about excessive tension, this makes the article more nuanced than a simple message to squeeze harder. The aim described is awareness and control of both actions.
- Linking muscle activity with breathing. The second approach coordinates a gentle contraction with exhalation and relaxation with inhalation. In the article’s framing, breathing provides a way to practise coordination rather than treating contraction as an isolated effort. This is a practitioner suggestion for people who may benefit from training. Whether that is the right goal belongs within an individual assessment when symptoms are present.
- Coordinating activity with a squat. The third approach uses a squat to connect pelvic-floor activity with movement. The experts describe coordinating a gentle contraction with standing from the squat. Its relevance is the relationship between muscle activity and a broader movement rather than contraction alone. The article also says that training frequency should be adapted to the individual.
The shared theme is coordination, with relaxation explicitly included. That distinction matters for how the advice is understood: pelvic-floor training is not being presented solely as an effort to produce a stronger contraction.
Reading the evidence
The newspaper feature provides expert advice rather than a trial-tested treatment protocol. Separate preliminary research offers some clinical context: a secondary report describes a 2026 randomized trial involving 58 women that compared supervised pelvic-floor muscle training plus education with education alone over eight weeks. The report describes greater improvement in vaginal and urinary symptoms in the training group.
That report notes a small single-centre sample, a short study period and no long-term follow-up. Its findings should not be generalized to every pelvic-floor symptom or treated as confirmation of the newspaper’s particular exercise sequence. Together, these sources do not establish a definitive exercise treatment for all causes of painful sex or prolapse.
Merck provides a useful clinical distinction: pelvic-floor muscle training can include learning conscious relaxation, sometimes with biofeedback. That helps explain why training need not mean strengthening alone. The practical next step is to establish what a person’s symptoms call for rather than select a routine by its label.
An assessment conversation
For readers with persistent symptoms or concerns that affect daily life, La Vanguardia’s most useful recommendation is individualized guidance. Its advice can be translated into a clearer conversation with a qualified clinician or pelvic-floor physiotherapist without turning the article into a self-treatment plan:
- Describe the concern itself. Leakage, pressure and pain are more informative starting points than a conclusion that the pelvic floor must be weak. The article supports noticing and describing these experiences. Refemina’s coverage of why recurring discomfort needs a targeted assessment offers related context for moving beyond guesswork.
- Clarify the intended goal. The distinction to discuss is whether care should focus on strengthening or relaxation, or on coordinating muscle activity. This keeps the conversation tied to the person’s needs rather than to a familiar exercise name. It also makes space for the article’s central point that excessive tension and insufficient strength are not interchangeable concerns.
- Include the effect on daily life. Blanco Ratto says pelvic-floor symptoms can influence social activity and work alongside exercise and sexuality. These are practitioners’ observations rather than quantified population findings. They still provide a useful reason for an assessment to address what the symptoms mean in someone’s life, not just which symptom is present.
- Keep comfort within sexual wellbeing. Ramírez García’s perspective in the article extends pleasure beyond sexual activity to everyday comfort such as sneezing without leakage. That framing gives bodily ease a place in the conversation without making sexual performance the measure of progress. It also allows a broader understanding of intimate wellbeing to sit alongside clinical questions.
The editorial value of this approach is that it neither dismisses symptoms nor turns every change into a hormone problem. It allows someone to seek an explanation without accepting that her body is failing or that one exercise must be the answer.
The care ahead
The most useful direction for clinical practice is assessment-led pelvic-floor care that distinguishes strengthening from relaxation and coordination rather than prescribing the same routine to everyone.
How Refemina helps
Treating leakage or intimate discomfort as evidence that a changing body is failing can turn a health concern into a loss of confidence. Refemina connects sexual wellbeing with the wider experience of midlife identity, offering research-led explanations that help readers understand physical change without pressure to look younger or accept a single answer.
Explore Resources
Sources
- Pelvic floor training for genitourinary syndrome of menopause: a new trial explained
- Painful Sex in Women - Women's Health - Merck Manual Consumer ...
- Muchas mujeres normalizan las pérdidas de orina en la menopausia, porque a su madre y a su abuela les pasaba, pero pueden prevenirse': tres ejercicios para fortalecer el suelo pélvico
