Online Self-Paced
Get 4 hours of expert content including live Q&A with the extraordinary therapist, educator and researcher Monika Leitner.
Why This Course Matters
Many active women experience pelvic floor symptoms during running, jumping, or high-intensity exercise. Too often, the advice they receive is simply to avoid impact.
But what if the real issue is not impact itself — but whether the pelvic floor has the capacity to manage it?
In this seminar, you will learn how to understand and address pelvic floor symptoms in physically active women by looking beyond traditional strengthening approaches. You’ll explore the mechanisms behind stress urinary incontinence during impact, why voluntary pelvic floor contractions alone are often insufficient, and how reflexive pelvic floor responses and load management influence symptoms.
Most importantly, you’ll learn how to assess pelvic floor capacity, progress impact safely, and coach clients through a confident return to running, jumping, and sport — helping active women move beyond fear-based restrictions and back to the activities that matter to them.
About The Seminar
Impact activities such as running, jumping, and high-intensity training are often described as harmful for the pelvic floor. But is impact really the problem?
This seminar invites participants to reconsider common assumptions about pelvic floor function and stress urinary incontinence in physically active women. Rather than viewing impact as inherently harmful, the course explores a different question: does the pelvic floor have the capacity to manage the load placed upon it? When appropriately prepared, impact may not only be tolerated but may also act as a beneficial stimulus for adaptation.
Drawing on current research, the seminar examines the role of intra-abdominal pressure, pelvic floor displacement, and eccentric muscle action in response to impact forces. Participants will review the scientific evidence surrounding pelvic floor function during dynamic movement and explore whether traditional distinctions between “good” and “bad” exercises are helpful—or whether they may unintentionally create unnecessary fear or limitations for clients and athletes.
The seminar also highlights the importance of reflexive pelvic floor responses. While voluntary pelvic floor contractions are commonly emphasised in rehabilitation, they are often too slow to respond to sudden stressors such as impact, coughing, or sneezing. Instead, the pelvic floor must be able to pre-activate and respond rapidly, requiring not only strength but also speed of contraction and rate of force development.
Participants will learn how to analyse the demands of impact activities and how to progressively build pelvic floor capacity in physically active women. The course emphasises practical application, helping clinicians and coaches translate scientific concepts into meaningful strategies for clinical practice and athletic training.
Ultimately, this seminar aims to provide a clearer framework for understanding pelvic floor function in sport and exercise, enabling practitioners to support women in returning to impact activities safely and confidently.
Course Objectives
- Develop an understanding about the prevalence of pelvic floors disorders in physically active women, especially in stress urinary incontinence (SUI)
- Explain the multifactorial mechanisms of SUI during impact activities
- Understand why voluntary contractions alone are likely insufficient as they cannot respond quickly enough to sudden stressors like impact, coughing or sneezing
- Analyse how to improve the capacity of the pelvic floor to manage the load
- Enhance your ability to coach clients with or despite impact activities and to communicate in a meaningful way
- Apply the innovative treatment approach with involuntary stimuli to female athletes with prudent support
- Enhance pelvic floor health in physically active women and raise awareness in the sports setting
After this course, you will:
Think differently about impact and stress urinary incontinence in active women
Confidently prescribe and progress impact — without fear-based restrictions
Move beyond “good vs bad exercise” thinking
Understand why strength alone isn’t enough — and how to train reflexive capacity
Spot red flags and progress load intelligently
Integrate innovative reflexive training principles into real-world practice
Communicate with clarity, authority, and confidence
You won’t just gain more information — you’ll gain a clearer framework for helping active women return to impact safely and successfully.
What's included
- 4 hours recorded live seminar including Q&A
- Handout of all the slides
Who should take this course?
This course is ideal for
- Physiotherapists and other therapists, interested or involved in women’s health, or
- Physiotherapists, specialised in pelvic floor therapy/rehabilitation, wanting to dive deeper into the pelvic floor therapy for physically active women or female athletes
- Coaches/trainers for female athletes who want to enhance their understanding of stress urinary continence; and/or get a differentiated understanding about impact and possibly harmful and beneficial exercises.
Hear more about the course from Monika Leitner
What people are saying about this course
“Thank you for such a thorough presentation both in the research and in the nuance of it all” Melanie
“This has been so incredibly informative!” Bailey
“This was brilliant Monika, thank you for being personally available to help understand this research and all your experience. Your thoughts and how you got there are so interesting and have provoked much thought in how I can apply these principles. I look forward to hearing more as more research comes through” Claire
“Just brilliant thank you” Paula
“Thank you so much for the great presentation!! Lots to take away even as a pediatric practitioner” Angus
“Thank you, Monica and Antony, for this wonderful presentation.” Marina
“Lovely presentation and your slides are fabulous! Loved it! Thank you” Teresa
“This was amazing Monika thank you!!!” Olja
“Thank you so much for providing this informative program! I’ll be waiting to re-watch the recording and think through these concepts more.” Arielle
“Thank you for the excellent information and interesting perspective” Michaela
Continuing Education Information
US Physical Therapy CEUs
California: This course is approved for 4.5 hours in CA. My PT Education is an approved provider of continuing education for Physical Therapists and Physical Therapist Assistants in California (CA) by CEUapproval.com, LLC, a recognized approval agency of the Physical Therapy Board of CA.
Florida: This course is approved for 4.5 hours in FL. My PT Education a rule-approved CE provider of the PT Board of Florida (# 50-49571).
Arkansas: This course is approved for 4.5 hours by APTA Arkansas.
Courses approved by other state boards in the following jurisdictions are likely accepted for licensure credit based on the state regulation.
AL | AK | CO | CT | DE | GA | HI | ID | IN | IA | KS | KY | ME | MA | MI | MO | MT | NE | NH | NC | ND | OR | PA | RI | SC | SD | UT | VT | VA | VI | WA | WI | WY
Courses approved by other APTA chapters in the following jurisdictions are likely accepted for licensure credit based on the state regulation.
AZ | DC | MD | MS | NM
Please reach out to your state licensing board to confirm the currency and accuracy of this information. If you have a specific question about CEU approval for this course in your state, please direct your inquiry to [email protected].
The following states are not pre-approved: LA, IL, MN, NV, NY, NJ, OH, OK, TN, TX, WV
Participants licensed in states not pre-approved may file for individual approval using the instructions on this document.
Map of CEU Approval:
What is Monika like as an educator?
“Monika Leitner has deep and broad knowledge. Her courses and scripts are of high quality and accuracy. She conveys the content passionately, humorously and with obvious great pleasure. She is approachable, human and authentic. You can sense her broad horizons of thought. It’s wonderfully beneficial. I was very enthusiastic about her courses, which offer a great mix of theory and practical relevance.”
Priska Volgger, Physiotherapist, Bern
“I would like to thank you for your outstanding contribution to the teaching in the “Pelvic floor & sports”-MSc course at the University of Applied Sciences in Bern. Your topics were not only very valuable on a subject-specific level, but also in terms of methodology and didactics. I was never bored for a minute. I benefited greatly! Your research is well-founded. That is why your findings and transfers are logical and comprehensible in practice. I am grateful for the practical examples from your publications and explanations, which I can now ‘build on’ and adapt well for my patients.”
Lukrecia Maspoli, Physiotherapist, Zurich
