Bouncing With a Weak Pelvic Floor: What to Know Before Your First Session
Short answer: every landing on a trampoline loads your pelvic floor, so if you leak when you cough, sneeze, run or jump, sort the floor first and start low. The training that sorts it is unusually well studied. Across 14 randomised trials, pelvic floor muscle training cut urinary incontinence by 14 percentage points and improved quality of life, and a Cochrane review of 63 trials, mostly in women aged 45 to 65, spells out how to do it. Below: what a weak pelvic floor means on a trampoline, what the research says about training it, how we run a first session around it, and who to see before you book.
Why a trampoline asks the question
Your pelvic floor is the sling of muscle that holds your bladder up and your urethra shut when pressure comes down from above. Coughing is pressure. So is a landing. On a trampoline you land a few hundred times an hour, which is why women who never think about their pelvic floor on a walk think about it before they book with us. Some tell us at reception. Some don't, and find out on the second bounce.
That's fine. It's a signal, not a verdict, and the muscle it points at is one of the most trainable in your body.
What the research says about training it
The anchor. A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 14 randomised trials, 2,192 women aged 18 to 80 with stress urinary incontinence, the kind that shows up with coughing, sneezing and jumping. Pelvic floor muscle training produced a 14 percent absolute reduction in incontinence compared with control groups and a significant improvement in quality of life. (Joshi 2026.) Fourteen points isn't everyone fixed. It is a lot of women who stopped leaking, from an exercise you can do sitting down.
How to do it. The 2024 Cochrane review didn't ask whether the training works. It asked which way of doing it works best, across 63 trials and 4,920 women, most of them mid-age mothers with stress or stress-dominant leakage and no prior treatment. Three findings matter for you. Direct training, meaning repeated, deliberate squeezes of the pelvic floor on its own, may do slightly more for quality of life than indirect exercises that only work the muscles around it. Doing it more days a week may help a lot, on the strength of one trial. And being supervised one-on-one or in a group probably makes little to no difference, so a class is as good as a private appointment for this. (Hay-Smith 2024.)
If you can't feel it. The most common thing a physio hears is "I don't know if I'm doing it." A 2026 review of eight trials found that adding biofeedback, a sensor that shows you the contraction on a screen, gave small extra gains in symptoms and quality of life over training alone, and a moderate gain in muscle strength. The authors suggest it for women who struggle to find the right contraction or want structure at the start. (Liu 2026.) That's a physio-room tool, and a good reason to see one.
What the training looks like
| What | Why | How sure the researchers are |
|---|---|---|
| Squeeze and lift the pelvic floor on its own, hold, let go fully, repeat in sets | Direct contractions did slightly better for quality of life than exercises that only work the surrounding muscles | Low certainty, 4 trials |
| Do it on more days of the week rather than fewer | The one trial that tested dose found a large quality-of-life difference | Low certainty, 1 trial |
| Group class or one-on-one, whichever you'll attend | Probably little to no difference in outcome between the two | Moderate certainty, 5 trials |
| Add biofeedback with a physio if you can't feel the contraction | Small extra symptom gains, moderate extra strength gains | 8 trials |
The Cochrane authors are candid that many comparisons rest on small trials, and that the one that matters most, how much to do, has barely been tested. A women's health physio will set your dose. What the evidence supports is doing the direct version, often, and not worrying about whether it's a class or a clinic.
One more line from that review is worth knowing on a trampoline. Co-ordinated training, where you contract the pelvic floor as your body moves, may add a little over squeezing in isolation. (Hay-Smith 2024.) A landing is a movement. Learning to brace before it is exactly the skill.
How we run a first session around it
Tell the coach at check-in. That's it. Sessions are adults only, groups of four, and every jump is coached, so the coach can keep you on the floor drills and the low bounces for longer while you learn to brace before each landing, and move up only when you say so. Nobody is watching except the person paid to.
Practical bits: go to the loo before you start, and if you'd rather have a liner in for the first session, have a liner in. The goal is to leave knowing what a landing feels like when you're braced for it, not to test the floor on the first afternoon.
If you're over 50 and this is one of several questions, we've looked at the research on bouncing after 50 too.
FAQ
Can I bounce if I leak a bit?
Ask a women's health physio first, then yes, with the plan above: low, braced, and up when you're ready. The physio can tell you whether your leakage is the stress kind that the trials treated and what your floor is ready for. Bring their advice to the coach.
Will bouncing itself strengthen my pelvic floor?
The trials tested pelvic floor training, not trampolines, so that's not a claim we make. The training is what builds the muscle. Bouncing is what it lets you get back to, and the brace-before-you-land habit is the training in motion.
How long before the exercises work?
The trials were programmes, not one-off sessions, and the review that tested dose favoured more days a week. Give it weeks, done most days, before you judge it, and let the physio set the numbers.
Who should I see?
A pelvic health or women's health physiotherapist. Your GP can point you to one and will want to know if leakage is new, sudden, or comes with pain or other symptoms, because those need looking at before any exercise plan. Nothing here replaces that visit.
Ready to learn the landing? Guided sessions at Run The Wall in Brookvale are adults-only, groups of four, and coached on every jump. Book a session and tell the coach at check-in, or read what else bouncing does for your body in 7 health benefits of trampolining for adults.
References
- Joshi, R., & Rathi, M. (2026). A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis on the Role of Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises on the Severity of Symptoms and Quality of Life in Women With Urinary Incontinence. Archivos Españoles de Urología, 79(5), 752-764. doi:10.56434/j.arch.esp.urol.20267905.88 (PMID 42438870)
- Hay-Smith, E. J. C., et al. (2024). Comparisons of approaches to pelvic floor muscle training for urinary incontinence in women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 12, CD009508. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD009508.pub2 (PMID 39704322)
- Liu, J., et al. (2026). Electromyographic biofeedback-assisted pelvic floor muscle training for female stress urinary incontinence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine, 13, 1789923. doi:10.3389/fmed.2026.1789923 (PMID 42445160)