‘Power Peeing’: What It Is and Why You Should Avoid It

On busy days, you may not feel you have the time to sit on a toilet and wait for your bladder to empty, so you “power pee” — you bear down to expel urine faster. “Power peeing is a really common habit that we see a lot of folks getting into because they're rushing — they're in a hurry to get out of the bathroom,” says Caitlyn Tivy, DPT, a physical therapist in private practice in Carbondale, Colorado.

• Support your urethra, bladder, vagina, uterus, intestines, rectum, and anus
• Help you control when you pee, poop, or pass gas
• Contract during sex and orgasm
• Assist in vaginal childbirth

And pelvic floor damage doesn’t just affect your bladder. “If [these muscles are] weak, overly tight, or out of sync, it can show up in all kinds of ways: leaking when you sneeze, pain with sex, constipation, a heavy feeling down there, or just a constant urge to pee,” says Dr. Goodrich.

• Infections like urinary tract infections (UTIs)
• Narrowed urethra
• Severe constipation
• Pelvic organ prolapse

“It's always important to consult with your healthcare provider, such as a pelvic physical therapist, a urologist, or a urogynecologist who specializes in this area, to make sure we're ruling out other contributors that are more serious,” says Tivy. But once you eliminate other causes, you can focus on retraining your pelvic floor.

Retraining Your Pelvic Floor

To help your pelvic floor muscles get coordinated when it’s time to pee, Tivy and Goodrich recommend these tips.

• Get comfortable. Sit on the toilet seat with your feet on the floor and lean slightly forward. Hovering over the toilet seat won’t let you fully relax your pelvic floor muscles, so sit whenever possible.

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• Connect with your breathing. Focus on belly breathing while you try to relax: Let your stomach and pelvic floor expand as you inhale, and imagine everything melting on the exhale. Take a few moments to really expand your breath — to find deep, full inhalation (which helps the pelvic floor relax the most), and slow exhalation.

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• Use visualization. As you inhale, imagine the pelvic floor — the space between the upper inner thighs and the front and back of the pelvis — expanding and opening slowly, almost as though a hole is getting wider and wider at the opening and allowing fluid to come out. Then relax on the exhalation and let everything go.
• Practice off the toilet. When you practice relaxing away from the bathroom, it can take some stress out of the equation. Try lying on your bed or the couch and place your hand on your perineum: the area behind the vaginal opening. As you inhale, relax your pelvic floor and feel for a subtle drop against your fingers, which is your pelvic floor muscles relaxing.

“Sometimes just taking a few moments to truly relax makes all the difference,” says Goodrich. “If that doesn’t help, a pelvic floor PT can assess what’s really going on.”

• Pelvic pain or pressure
• Straining to pee
• Needing to pee often or urgently
• Pain with peeing or sex
• Incontinence (unable to hold your pee)
• Difficulty with sexual arousal and orgasm
• Constipation and bloating

1. Tighten your pelvic floor muscles (which feels like holding in your pee) and hold for 10 seconds.
2. Relax your muscles for another 10 seconds.
3. Repeat steps one and two 10 times, 3 to 5 times per day.

• The next time you pee, start to go, then stop. Try to notice which muscles helped you do that, and tighten them even more.
• After washing your hands, insert a clean finger into your vagina and try tightening your pelvic floor. You should feel the muscles contracting around your finger, moving up with contraction and moving down during relaxation.
• While you tighten your pelvic floor, keep all other muscles relaxed, including your abdomen, buttocks, and thighs. You will feel your anal sphincter contract, but the muscles in your buttocks should stay loose.

“This is exactly what we specialize in: this coordination element,” says Tivy. “Your PT, if you see them, may have you first focus a lot on relaxation — what we call ‘down training’ those muscles — so they're not constantly tight, before you then turn around later to learn about strengthening.”

A lot of things can disrupt urination, so it’s important to get screened for medical conditions that may cause these symptoms, says Tivy, who points out these red flags that warrant evaluation by a healthcare provider:

• You've developed the problem recently with no particular cause and you can't empty your bladder at all.
• Even if you're pushing, almost nothing comes out.
• You experience any type of pain with urination.
• Your urine is a different color than normal.

“When in doubt, talk to your physician,” says Tivy. “In general, even if you don't have any of these red flags, problems urinating are not something you have to live with.”

• Power peeing (pushing to pee) is a habit some use to urinate faster, but it can have unintended consequences.
• Pushing to pee can make pelvic floor muscles and bladder muscle lose coordination, which can make it difficult to completely empty your bladder, and cause other problems like pelvic pain and constipation.
• You can strengthen your pelvic floor with Kegel exercises, but it’s best to tell your healthcare provider if you have trouble peeing without pushing, so they can rule out other problems and recommend treatment like pelvic floor physical therapy.