Does Rebounding Make You Pee? 

The potential benefits of rebounding are becoming widely touted these days and mini-trampolines are increasingly being turned to as a fun way to boost cardiovascular fitness, lose weight, and tone muscle from the comfort of your own living room. 

But does rebounding make you pee? There are plenty of anecdotes out there of people merrily jumping on trampolines, either for personal fitness or just to play around with their kids, only to find a few minutes later that they’ve ‘leaked’ a little bit. Such stories can range from self-mocking disclosure to genuine embarrassment and concern. 

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the link between rebounding, the bladder, and the pelvic floor. If you find that mini-trampolining is sometimes resulting in you leaking urine, there may be underlying causes that are worth looking at in a bit more detail. 

There are also ways that rebounding can actually help you strengthen some of the muscles needed to ensure good bladder control. We’ll be thinking about how best to use the rebounder as a healthy, fun and safe way to keep up your fitness, whilst also helping you stay dry and free of unwanted spillage!

Finally, we’ll think about instances in which rebounding may not be ideal and when you may wish to consult a medical professional for advice around how best to manage incontinence issues and urinary problems. 

Is Rebounding Good For the Bladder? 

First, let’s stop to think about what the bladder does and how the muscles around it function. The bladder is essentially a muscular structure that rests atop your pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is a collection of muscles that work together to control and restrict the flow of urine from the bladder, via the urethra, and out into the world!

The bladder itself is a bit like a strong balloon – tough but also stretchy, capable of expanding and flattening in order to store and then expel urine. 

The muscular walls of the bladder itself are smooth and, whilst they are connected to and controlled by the brain via nerve signals, you can’t really ‘target’ these particular muscles through exercises.

However, the striated muscles that regulate and control the urethra, sometimes referred to collectively as the pelvic floor muscles, can be targeted and strengthened through certain exercises. Targeting these muscles specifically by gently contracting and then relaxing them, with the aim of improving bladder and urine control, is often referred to as Kegel exercises.

Although rebounding is not specifically a Kegel exercise, the motion of jumping, landing, and dealing with gravitational pull causes numerous muscles throughout the body to contract and relax. The muscles of the pelvic floor are no exception and, by contracting and relaxing them repeatedly, you can strengthen and improve the function of these muscles.

The contract and release rhythm of mini-trampolining can also help improve the coordination between your brain and your pelvic floor muscles, helping you maintain better pelvic (and therefore urinary!) control over all. 

Rebounding has also been demonstrated, as part of a broader fitness and dietary regime, to aid with weight loss and healthy weight maintenance. Incontinence and bladder issues of various forms have been linked to obesity and being overweight can exacerbate any pre-existing conditions that can leave you prone to unwanted urine leakage.

Maintaining a healthy weight can be an effective way of improving your overall bladder health and the rebounder can be a good weapon in your weight loss arsenal. 

Can Rebounding Cause Incontinence?

Rebounding can act as a good pelvic floor strengthener, and shouldn’t exacerbate pelvic floor weakness or incontinence if pelvic floor weakness is the root cause. 

Incontinence is often a catch-all term for any form of unwanted urinary leakage. It can range from a mild, slightly embarrassing dribble that you can laugh off amongst friends to a chronic, almost debilitating issue dissuading people from keeping active or living the life they want to lead.

Incontinence can be caused by a range of factors. Ageing, childbirth, hormonal changes, nerve problems, injury, or scar tissue left by physical trauma or surgery can all lead to incontinence in various forms. 

If your incontinence is due to a weak pelvic floor, as is often the case from people suffering from urinary leaks who have experienced childbirth, then rebounding may highlight the weakness. There’s a good chance that, had you not discovered the issue whilst using the trampoline, another activity such as sneezing, laughing, running, or even walking would likely have brought it to light at some stage.

In this sense, saying that rebounding ’causes’ incontinence is not particularly true, as it may merely highlight a weakness in the pelvic floor muscles that previously went undetected. 

Why Does Rebounding Make Me Pee? 

If rebounding doesn’t usually make incontinence worse, why might you be experiencing leakages when bouncing up and down? This is often due to something called stress incontinence.

When we jump up and down, the pressure of our downward landing and the accompanying bodyweight, plus gravity, can sometimes force urine to come through the urethra if the relative pelvic floor muscles are not strong enough or primed to keep it in check.

If you are finding that this is a chronic, highly embarrassing (particularly if you are in a rebounder class), or severely inconvenient problem when using the rebounder, it may be worth consulting a medical professional in order to diagnose a root cause of the issue and to get advice around which exercises or treatments would be best suited to helping you resolve it. It may be that there are causes other than weak pelvic floor muscles which are contributing to the issue. 

If you think it is something that you can manage whilst trying to rebuild pelvic floor strength, we recommend rebounding for short periods of time (2 to 3 minutes) whilst building up to longer sessions.

As you’re developing the confidence to bounce for longer, you can try gently contracting your pelvic floor muscles when you are rebounding. Try not to clench your buttocks or tense too much, and remember to breathe steadily!

If you gently contract your pelvic floor muscles for 30 seconds or so at a time, this can not only help develop strength in the targeted area, but should also help ‘train’ your body and mind to anticipate the pressure caused by bouncing. If your body and mind are able to stay responsive to this whilst you rebound, you are less likely to find yourself prone to unwanted spillages!

You can also look at supplements like this:

Why Do I Leak Urine When I Jump on a Trampoline? 

Leaking urine when taking part in aerobic exercise is relatively common, particularly amongst those over 45, women who have experienced childbirth, or adults who have undergone surgery relating to the bladder area.

If you find that you are regularly leaking urine when using the rebounder, and a combination of gradually building up your rebounding routine along with a set of pelvic floor exercises hasn’t helped, it’s a good idea to consult a medical professional to see if there are other underlying causes.

Some people prone to stress incontinence have found that, whilst they are in the process of strengthening their pelvic floor muscles, rebounding on mini-trampolines that use a bungee band rather than spring mechanism are preferable, as these often result in a softer, longer bouncing rhythm which puts less pressure on the bladder and pelvic region.

Similarly, avoiding double leg landings and opting instead for running exercises in which one foot is always in touch with the trampoline can help reduce urine leakage. 

When reintroducing rebounding into your fitness routine after a period of abstinence, try starting with slow, gentle, brief sessions if you are worried about incontinence, to give your body and mind time to adjust, calibrate, and respond properly to the exercise.