Kegel Exercise

To identify your pelvic muscle:
1. While you are urinating, stop the stream of urine.
2. Tighten the muscles that are used to hold back gas when you don’t want to pass it.

How Do I Know I Am Using The Correct Muscles?
Begin by urinating. While the urine stream is flowing, voluntarily stop the stream and count to five; then begin to
urinate again. Repeat the steps twice. Never use your stomach, leg, or buttocks muscles. Exercising these muscles
will not help you regain urinary control.
To find out if you are also contracting your stomach muscle, place your hand on your abdomen. Squeeze your
pelvic muscle. If you feel your abdomen move, you are using the wrong muscles. If you are having trouble identifying
these muscles, contact your doctor or nurse.

Kegel, or pelvic floor muscle exercises are done to strengthen the muscles which support the urethra, bladder, uterus and rectum. Kegel exercises were developed by a gynecologist, Arnold Kegel, to help his patients with problems of urinary leakage. The muscles surrounding the urethra are sometimes weak, and people complained of urine leaking out. The exercises helped to improve or restore full muscle tone to the Pubococcygeus (pronounced pew-bo-kak-se-gee-us) muscle. This muscle surrounds both the urinary opening and the opening to the vagina. The “P.C.” muscle, like any other muscle in your body, responds to exercise and should be kept in good shape. What he found as an added benefit, was that patients reported their sex lives had also improved.

How do I do Kegel’s now that I found the P.C. muscle?

low Kegels:
Tighten the P.C. muscle as you did to stop urine. Hold it for a count of three. Relax it.
Quick Kegel’s:
Tighten and relax the P.C. muscle as rapidly as you can.
Pull in – Push out:
Pull up the entire pelvic floor as if you are trying to suck water into your vagina. Then push out or bear down as if you are trying to pushe the imaginary water out. This exercise will use a number of stomach or abdominal muscles as well as the P.C. muscle.
At first, repeat each exercise three times and do them 5 times a day. Each week, try to increase the number of times you do each exercise.
• You can do these exercises while driving, watching TV, sitting in class or at your desk, lying in bed, or whatever. No one will see what you are doing.
• Sometimes the muscles will start to feel tired. Not surprising—you probably haven’t used it very much before. Take a few seconds, then rest and start again.
• The more you exercise your P.C. muscle, the stronger it will become, and your control of the muscle will increase.
• To check for improvement, insert 1 or 2 clean and lubricated fingers into your vagina. Squeeze and see if there is increased pressure on your fingers.
Good luck!

Arnold Kegel, M.D, developed the Kegel (pronounced Kay-Gill) exercises. The Kegel exercise is performed to strengthen the pelvic floor muscle, which is sometimes called the pubococcygeus or PC muscle. This is the muscle that encircles the urethra, the vagina and the rectum.

Why Exercise?

Strengthening this muscle helps women deal with the problem of urinary stress
incontinence.

Urinary stress incontinence is a common problem. Due to insufficient muscle tone, urine may be lost when one coughs, sneezes, laughs, or jumps. The PC muscle, when exercised:
· strengthens urinary control
· improves the ability to experience stronger orgasms· can help prevent the uterus from sagging down into the vagina (prolapse), the bladder from bulging back into the vagina (cystocele), and similarly, the rectum from bulging forward into the vagina (rectocele).

Practiced regularly, Kegel exercises will result in increased ability to tighten and relax voluntarily, thus helping eliminate pain during intercourse, and assist in the preparation for childbearing and recovering PC muscle tone after childbirth.

How to Exercise?

Identify the PC Muscle. To locate the correct muscle, try stopping your urine flow by contracting the muscle. When urine slows or stops, you have targeted the PC muscle. You may alternatively insert a finger in the vagina or rectum and try to squeeze the muscle, which is about 1 inch
inside, around your finger. If you wish, you can place a plastic glove or a sandwich bag over your finger. This technique is necessary only to locate the muscle, not to perform the exercise.

After you have found the muscle, squeeze for 2 seconds. Do not contract your abdomen, buttocks, or thighs. Be sure not to hold your breath. Relax for 10 seconds. Concentrate as much on relaxation as you do on contraction. Do 10 repetitions twice a day.

When you have mastered the technique, you may begin to increase the length of time you contract the muscle. Increase the time by 1 second every couple of days until you get up to 10 seconds of contraction and 10 seconds of relaxation. Be sure not to hold your breath or contract other muscles.

Like any muscle, the PC muscle can be strained and become sore with overexercise. If this happens, stop the exercise for a couple days, and then resume with fewer sets per day, gradually increasing to perhaps 100 contractions per day. Kegel exercises can be continued indefinitely. Increased muscle tone results in greater sensation during intercourse for both partners. Some men report that stopping thrusting and performing several voluntary PC contractions help to maintain
erection and delay ejaculation.

Pelvic-muscle exercises called Kegels (after Arnold Kegel, M.D., the gynecologist who developed them over 40 years ago).

PC exercises, also known as Kegel exercises. strengthen the pubbocoxygennus muscle (PC muscle), a sling of muscle that surrounds your anus and prostate gland. The PC muscle is the muscle that involuntary “pumps” when you ejaculate. Strengthening - and learning to control - this muscles is may help to control ejaculation in men.

Exercising your pelvic floor muscles for just 5 minutes, three times a day can make a big difference to your bladder control. Exercise strengthens muscles that hold the bladder and many other organs in place.
The part of your body including your hip bones is the pelvic area. At the bottom of the pelvis, several layers of muscle stretch between your legs. The muscles attach to the front, back, and sides of the pelvis bone. Two pelvic muscles do most of the work. The biggest one stretches like a hammock. The other is shaped like a triangle. These muscles prevent leaking of urine and stool.

For a man who wants to learn how to perform Kegels, the first step is locating the Kegel muscle. Here’s how: Some time when he has the urge to urinate, he should sit on the toilet with his legs spread, start to urinate, then try to stop the flow. (The PC muscle is the one he squeezes to do this.) After restarting the flow, he can practice stopping and restarting the stream of urine. It may take several attempts to actually isolate the PC muscle–the buttocks muscles have a tendency to kick in if the legs aren’t kept wide.

When a man has familiarized himself with the sensation of contracting the PC muscle, he’s ready to practice holding the contractions. He should first try holding a contraction for several seconds three or four times a day. Over the next few weeks, as he continues doing Kegels, he can gradually increase the time of the contraction until he is holding it for 10 to 15 seconds. Next, he should alternate these Kegel holds with a series of short, quick contractions. Dr. Hartman recommends that men gradually work up to a daily routine of 100 quick PC contractions and five holds.

*Stop the flow of urine when you take a pee. If you have trouble doing this, you really need these exercises.

*PC clamps: squeeze and release your PC muscle. Start with a set of 20- 30, and work your way up to sets of 100-200. Do at least 300 EVERYDAY, for the rest of your life.

The Kegel Exercise builds up the PC muscles, which will help men improve: • Ejaculation Control • Prostate Health • Erection Firmness • Arousal Control • Ejaculation Strength • Bladder Control

Kegel exercise is a simple task that is easy to learn and doesn’t take long to get through the reps each day. In fact, most men can master this exercise after just the third or fourth time. For example If you’ve ever stopped yourself from urinating midstream, then you’ve used your PC muscles. If you flex your PC muscles and hold it for 10 seconds through a series of reps then you are partaking in the Kegel exercise.

After a few months of diligent practice, a man should be ready to try using the Kegel hold during intercourse to delay ejaculation. That’s why, the Kegel exercise is widespread throughout the sex industry.

The Kegel exercise has been shown to have vast improvements on the penis. But in excess, the exercise can also be very harmful. The reason is contraction of the prostate muscle triggers the prostate’s sympathetic nerve to induce an ejaculation. While men tend to contract the PC muscle to assist the erection if they feel their erection is not hard enough, a long-term practice of this exercise will make the muscle develop more testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and oxytocin receptors. These hormone receptors make men and women achieve an orgasm quicker and more easily, due to the presence of more hormones trapped in the sex organs. This is just fine and dandy for women who have difficulty achieving orgasm, as some do.

Kegel exercise also claim that performing intense Kegel exercises right after ejaculation (when your PC muscles are tired) will dramatically strengthen and tone your PC muscles in record time. If you’ve been holding back your ejaculation using the Kegel method during sex and then you used the exercise right after, then you will in turn be doubling up on your Kegel exercise. This is how a simple technique like Kegel can go from a harmless aid to a detrimental condition in no time at all. And that brief exercise right after intercourse can bring you from a moderate level all the way to abuse.

Not to overuse the Kegel exercise. Over use of  Kegel ends up being more damaging than helpful. The exercise can cause premature ejaculation for some men, as well as other sexual problems.