I found pelvic health because I needed it myself.
I was a physiotherapy student with pelvic pain after surgery, sitting in a placement, being handed a research project on something I’d never heard of. That was 2010. From that moment I knew this was what I’d do — as soon as I graduated and could take the training.
Madelaine GolecMScPT, McMaster 2012 · Focused on pelvic health since 2014 · Hamilton & Mississauga
How I got here.
A placement, and a word I'd never heard
My journey into pelvic health physiotherapy started while I was in physiotherapy school. I was placed at a clinic where a woman was doing pelvic health. I had never heard of it.
She had me do a research project on it, and I quickly realised this was an approach that could help me with my own pelvic pain following a surgery. Right then I knew pelvic health would be my area of focus.
Graduated, and put in the hours
MScPT from McMaster. I started working at my dad’s clinic, building a general physiotherapy caseload and getting real experience behind me before I went anywhere near specialising.
Opened my own clinic — and started the pelvic health training
I built my own multi-disciplinary clinic, from nothing, and ran it for the next decade.
The same year, I began the post-graduate pelvic health courses I’d been waiting to take since that placement four years earlier. This is where pelvic health stopped being an interest and became the work.
Became a mom — and a patient
I experienced bladder leakage after giving birth, and resolved it. I was back to my high-contact martial art, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, four to five months later, because I knew what I needed to do for my pelvic health.
Going through it myself changed what I could offer. I built a pregnancy programme to help women prepare for birth and for what comes after — the one I now run as the Better Birth Method.
a decade
The caseload changed
Slowly, over about ten years, more and more of the people booking in were men — post-prostatectomy, chronic pelvic pain, bladder symptoms nobody had taken seriously. It wasn’t a business decision. It was who kept showing up.
So I followed it, and went deep on men’s pelvic health and bladder-related symptoms, which is where most of my work sits today.
Sold one clinic, opened another
Ten years after building it, I sold the multi-disciplinary clinic. In its place, The Pelvic Health Lady opened on Walnut Street South in Hamilton — a smaller space built entirely around the work I’d narrowed in on.
Started teaching other physiotherapists
I began mentoring pelvic floor physiotherapists in men’s pelvic health — because the gap I’d spent a decade closing for myself is the same gap most clinicians are still standing in front of.
Most men have no idea pelvic health is an option for them. Changing that is bigger than one clinic.
There are men living with symptoms they believe they simply have to accept. Leaking after prostate surgery. Pain nobody has been able to explain. A bladder that quietly decides where they can go and how long they can stay. Most of them were never told a physiotherapist could help at all.
Treating the ones who find me is the first half of the job. The second half is making sure there are more of us.
I can only see so many patients in a day. There are millions of men who need this care, and the maths does not work one appointment at a time. Reaching them doesn’t take one very busy physiotherapist — it takes a whole group of us who know how to do this well.
Half one
Treat
One-to-one pelvic floor physiotherapy for men — post-prostatectomy recovery, chronic pelvic pain, urgency, frequency and the symptoms that get dismissed everywhere else.
Half two
Teach
Education and mentorship for pelvic floor physiotherapists who want to treat men and don’t yet feel confident doing it. Every clinician who closes that gap opens a door for the men in their own city.
Four months after giving birth, I was back on the mats.
I became a mom in 2016, and had bladder leakage after giving birth. I knew what it was and I knew what to do about it, so I worked through it and it resolved.
Then I went back to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu — a high-contact martial art where you spend the entire session being pinned, squeezed and thrown by someone bigger than you. Four to five months postpartum, I was training again.
“Hard to think about your bladder when someone is trying to choke you. So I needed to be ready.”
I’m in my forties now, and peri-menopause has arrived. What’s changed? I’ve simply doubled down on taking care of my body so I can keep doing all the things I love.
That is what this work is actually for. Not a stronger pelvic floor for its own sake — getting you back to the thing you stopped doing.
Brown belt, and still training.
Now you know me. Tell me about you.
Book a first visit below. Or, if you’d rather talk it through before committing to anything, book a free 15-minute discovery call — email or call to set it up.
Email madelaine@thepelvichealthlady.com or call or text 289-489-2803