How to do kegel exercises

Many of the issues we face with our intimate parts down there can be rooted back to weak pelvic muscles. Doing a few simple, short exercises can strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, which can help anything from incontinence to performance in bed.

What are kegel exercises?

Introduced by American gynecologist Dr. Arnold Kegel in 1948, this clench-and-release type of exercise was developed to help improve the function of stretched, weak pelvic muscles. The pelvis is the area between your hips where reproductive organs are located, and the pelvic floor is the sling of muscles underneath your pelvis.

There are tools available for kegel exercises, but most techniques require no equipment.

Benefits of kegel exercises

For women: Preventing uterine prolapse and postpartum effects of delivery

Many of the female reproductive pelvic organs, mainly the uterus, but also the cervix, bladder, or bowel, can slip out of the vagina. This prolapse occurs because the pelvic muscles that normally support the organs are stretched and weakened during childbirth.

Besides surgery and other methods of intervention, pelvic floor muscle exercises have been shown to improve prolapse symptoms.

For Men: Improve prostate troubles and performance in bed

Pelvic floor therapy has also been shown to help men with mild to medium urinary incontinence and prostate difficulties as a result from prostate cancer surgery. Many diabetic men also face weak pelvic muscles. Studies have suggested that exercising the pelvic floor should be the first solution young men with erectile dysfunction ought to turn to. Having stronger PC muscles has shown to be help men with premature ejaculation as well.

For both sexes: urinary incontinence

Incontinence can be the little dribble after you’ve left the washroom, or being unable to stop a few drops of urine from leaking when you laugh, sneeze, and cough, or it could just be having problems controlling your leaky bladder.

Urinary incontinence affects at least one in eight seniors, women are more likely than men to be incontinent because of the physical stresses of childbearing at a younger age. 

Women: How to do kegel exercises

Women can try to pause urine mid-flow to find the pubococcygeus (PC) muscles. Another way is to insert a clean finger in your vagina and contracting the muscles to tighten around your finger. Remember you're only looking to exercise the PC muscle, it is ineffective to squeeze your buttocks, abs, or any other muscle as well.

Once you've located the muscle, try contracting that muscle (without the finger) for three seconds, and then releasing and relaxing for three seconds. Repeat this action 10 times. It shouldn't take more than five minutes, try to make a habit of doing this three times a day. While you're sitting or standing at work, walking around, or commuting home.

Men: How to do kegel exercises

The most common way for men to try out kegel exercises is to squeeze up your PC muscles while urinating as well. To find your PC muscle, try and stop the flow in the middle of your next pee. The muscle that contracts is your PC muscle. Make sure you’re only working that muscle and not squeezing your anus, buttocks, thighs, or abs instead.

There are many ways you can exercise that muscle. One example of a rep can be clenching and unclenching your PC muscle for five seconds with five-second breaks in between; do this 10 times in a row. Keep a regimen of exercising this three times a day (morning, afternoon, and night).

Try doing this on your back at first, and eventually, you can do it discreetly while you're sitting at the computer, driving, walking, or standing and brushing your teeth.

Have you tried kegel exercises before? Did it yield any results for you? Let us know in the comments below!