What to Know About the Hinge Health Pelvic Trainer — and Should You Try It?
Learn about the Hinge Health pelvic trainer, how it works, how it can help your pelvic symptoms, and how to know if a pelvic trainer is right for you
Table of Contents
Hinge Health’s pelvic trainer is a vaginal device that offers real-time biofeedback and guidance for pelvic floor muscle strengthening.
Hold on. What’s the pelvic floor? Why would those muscles need strengthening? Let’s back up and cover the basics.
Fully Covered Pelvic Care
Our Hinge Health Experts
Kandis Daroski, PT, DPT
Tamara Grisales, MD
What’s the Pelvic Floor?
Your pelvic floor is made up of layers of muscles and connective tissues that stretch from your pubic bone in front of your body back to your tailbone. It makes up the bottom or “floor” of the bowl-shaped pelvis. Your pelvic floor supports your abdominal organs and plays a role in bladder and bowel control, stability, sexual function and pleasure, childbirth, circulation, and nerve function throughout your pelvis. It’s a big job.
The problem? If your pelvic floor muscles are weak, tight, or not working well together, you can have symptoms like pain, leaking urine or feces, urinary urgency and frequency, and more.
Exercise to Help Pelvic Symptoms
Just like the muscles in your arms and legs, pelvic floor muscles can be targeted with exercise. Pelvic floor physical therapy is a highly effective first treatment approach for many pelvic health issues. Hinge Health’s pelvic health exercise therapy sessions can strengthen, relax, and coordinate your pelvic floor muscles to improve their function and reduce pelvic symptoms.
What About Kegels?
Kegel exercises, or pelvic floor muscle contractions, may be an important part of a pelvic health exercise program. They can help improve bladder control, speed up postpartum recovery, improve your sexual response, and reduce prolapse symptoms. But Kegels can be tricky to master. And if you’re not used to tuning in to your pelvic floor muscles, you might not be able to tell whether you’re contracting or relaxing.
Meet the Hinge Health Pelvic Trainer
It’s a tool to help monitor your pelvic floor contractions and strengthen your pelvic floor. Kinda like a heart rate monitor for your pelvic floor.
Inserted vaginally (yep, it goes inside), it has two pebble-shaped force sensors that provide real time biofeedback through the Hinge Health app on your phone. In other words, the trainer and app together let you “see” how your pelvic muscles are working (that’s the biofeedback part) so you can be confident you’re performing Kegels properly and learn how to improve your strength, coordination, and control.
How Does It Work?
The pelvic trainer’s deep sensor measures your intra-abdominal pressure while the one closer to your vaginal opening detects pelvic floor muscle contractions. The pelvic trainer displays your pelvic floor muscle contractions in the app as an orb that rises and falls as you contract and relax. The results display in the app as an orb that rises and falls as you contract and relax.
Your training sessions take just a few minutes and they’re fun. It’s kinda like a video game for your vag. You squeeze and relax to capture targets and improve your score.
What About Results?
Many studies show that pelvic floor muscle training improves pelvic symptoms — and support is growing for pelvic trainer biofeedback as one of the most effective ways to perform Kegel exercises for symptom relief.
Is a Pelvic Trainer Right for Me?
Combining pelvic floor exercise with a pelvic trainer can help treat certain types of pelvic pain, stress incontinence (leaking with pressure, like coughing, laughing, or jumping), and urinary urgency and frequency, and improve symptoms of prolapse. It may be more effective than pelvic floor exercise alone. We’re talking symptoms here: as in, less pain and fewer urges and leaks.
Here’s the thing: Your pelvic trainer should be part of a holistic pelvic health approach that Hinge Health offers. This can include exercise therapy sessions, education, diet and lifestyle changes, and possibly other treatments, medications, and providers.
A pelvic trainer isn’t for everyone. Some pelvic floor problems are due to muscles that are tense or too tight, which can make relaxing your pelvic floor muscles more important than strengthening. It’s not for people who are pregnant or have given birth within the last six weeks, have had recent surgery, or who have abnormal vaginal discharge, signs of a urinary tract infection, severe back or pelvic pain, moderate to severe prolapse, pain with penetration or intercourse, and other conditions. Check with your doctor to make sure that using a pelvic trainer is right for you.
Learn More About Hinge Health for Pelvic Symptom Relief
If you have pelvic pain or symptoms that are affecting your quality of life, you can get the relief you've been looking for with Hinge Health’s online exercise therapy program.
The best part: You don’t have to leave your home because our program is digital. That means you can easily get the care you need through our app, when and where it works for you.
Through our program, you’ll have access to therapeutic exercises and stretches for your condition. Additionally, you’ll have a personal care team to guide, support, and tailor our program to you.
See if you qualify for Hinge Health and confirm free coverage through your employer or benefit plan here.
This article and its contents are provided for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice or professional services specific to you or your medical condition.
Physical therapy (PT) is for more than just recovering from surgery or injury. It’s one of the top treatments for joint and muscle pain. It helps build strength, improve mobility, and reduce pain. And it doesn't always need to be in person.
Hinge Health members can conveniently access customized plans or chat with their care team at home or on the go — and experience an average 68% reduction in pain* within the first 12 weeks of their program. Learn more*.
Looking for pain relief? Check if your employer or health plan covers our program
References
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Subak, L. L., Quesenberry, C. P., Posner, S. F., Cattolica, E., & Soghikian, K. (2002). The effect of behavioral therapy on urinary incontinence: A randomized controlled trial. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 100(1), 72–78. doi:10.1016/s0029-7844(02)01993-2
Newman, D. K., & Wein, A. J. (2013). Office-based behavioral therapy for management of incontinence and other pelvic disorders. The Urologic clinics of North America, 40(4), 613–635. doi:10.1016/j.ucl.2013.07.010
Huang, Y.-C., & Chang, K.-V. (2021). Kegel Exercises. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555898/
Espiño-Albela, A., Castaño-García, C., Díaz-Mohedo, E., & Ibáñez-Vera, A. J. (2022). Effects of Pelvic-Floor Muscle Training in Patients with Pelvic Organ Prolapse Approached with Surgery vs. Conservative Treatment: A Systematic Review. Journal of personalized medicine, 12(5), 806. doi:10.3390/jpm12050806
Hite, M., & Curran, T. (2021). Biofeedback for Pelvic Floor Disorders. Clinics in colon and rectal surgery, 34(1), 56–61. doi:10.1055/s-0040-1714287
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Arnouk, A., De, E., Rehfuss, A., Cappadocia, C., Dickson, S., & Lian, F. (2017). Physical, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine in the Treatment of Pelvic Floor Disorders. Current urology reports, 18(6), 47. doi:10.1007/s11934-017-0694-7
Weinstein, M. M., Dunivan, G., Guaderrama, N. M., & Richter, H. E. (2022). Digital Therapeutic Device for Urinary Incontinence: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey, 77(7), 406–407. doi:10.1097/01.ogx.0000852728.39014.db