You deserve to get more from your Kegel Exercises

It is over 60 years since Arnold Kegel recommended a series of exercises to treat the very common health condition of Urinary Stress Incontinence (USI) that plagues so many new mothers and women who have gone through the menopause.

USI is that embarrassing situation when you leak urine when you cough, sneeze, laugh or exercise. For many women it is an inconvenience. For some it is a lifelong misery. In the vast majority of cases USI can be cured quickly and effectively using exercises based on Kegel's recommendations.

The principles of the exercises are, on the face of it, very simple and straightforward, and consistent medical reports over the years have confirmed that 85% of cases can be cured with the exercises. So why do half of all women still suffer the consequences of pelvic floor weakness following childbirth and the menopause?

The case for Better Kegel Exercises

Arnold Kegel was quite clear in his recommendations and he stressed that his exercises should follow three principles:

it is essential that the exercise should involve squeezing the pelvic floor muscles against a mild resistance
it is absolutely necessary that there should be some form of feedback to confirm that the correct muscles are being squeezed
it is essential that the effort expended, in terms of numbers of squeezes and the resistive force, should increase as the muscles become stronger

The essential principles you need to follow can be summed up with 3 words: resistance, feedback and progression

The means you must squeeze against something with the confidence that you are squeezing the correct muscle and as you improve your exercises must be capable of increasing in terms of effort.

There is no better way to achieve these goals than the PelvicToner™ Progressive Resistance Vaginal Exerciser. It sounds complicated but it is the simplest and most effective way to make sure you are exercising correctly and effectively

Women have been let down

It seems that many health professionals are completely unaware of Kegel's principles and there is a considerable amount of evidence that pelvic floor exercises are often poorly taught by health professionals. Women are advised to squeeze 'thin air' instead of the fundamental requirement of squeezing against a resistance and, typically, women are advised to perform just 5 or 10 squeezes each day. Kegel recommended a program of 300 squeezes.

As a result, the exercises attempted by most women fail to deliver any noticeable improvement over any sort of time frame. Therefore motivation is low and most women give up.

It is also evident from clinical research that a third of women are unable to identify and squeeze the correct muscles without considerable direction.

For the majority of women the pelvic floor is probably the most under-exercised muscle in their body but Urinary Stress Incontinence is particularly prevalent amongst 25 - 60 year women who should be perfectly capable of undertaking a regular, effective exercise program.

The PelvicToner™ Progressive Resistance Vaginal Exerciser has been designed to address all of the failings that clearly exist and is guaranteed to help you perform Better Kegel Exercises.

The sexual benefits of Kegel Exercise

In addition to curing Urinary Stress Incontinence, Arnold Kegel also demonstrated that improving the pelvic floor muscles could have a dramatic effect on the sex lives of women. So it surprising that, irrespective of the risk of Urinary Stress Incontinence, many more women do not make efforts to restore their pelvic floor strength and tighten their vagina after childbirth.

“Observations in [more than 3,000 women,] both parous and nulliparous..., ranging in age from 16 to 74 years, have led to the conclusion that sexual feeling within the vagina is closely related to muscle tone, and can be improved through muscle education and resistive exercise."
“78 of 123 women complaining explicitly of sexual deficits achieved orgasm following the training”.
Arnold H. Kegel "Sexual Functions of the Pubococcygeus Muscle "Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynecology, 60, pp. 521-524, 1952

Surveys involving thousands of women have consistently shown that women with stronger pelvic floor muscles have more orgasms more often and of greater intensity. The ability to achieve multiple orgasms is often linked to the tone of the pelvic floor.

How do I know if I am squeezing the correct muscle?

The first step towards a stronger pelvic floor is to make sure that you are squeezing the correct muscles. When you are doing your 'Kegels' you should not be moving or tensing your thighs, your buttocks or your abdomen.

All the effort should be focused on the main muscles in the pelvic floor - the Pubo-coccygeal (PC) muscle - which stretches like a hammock between your pubic bone and your coccyx at the base of the spine. The PC muscle is sometimes referred to as the Kegel muscle or 'love' muscle.

Before you start Kegel muscle squeezing, it is most important that you locate the exact muscle involved. Women can delicately place an index and/or middle finger in the vagina and squeeze. You should feel vagina grasp your fingers, perhaps quite firmly. It may even push them out. The PC muscle itself can be felt in the vagina as a ribbed muscle about one and a half inches in.

Another way to find your PC muscle is to stop and start as you urinate or to pretend you've got to hold back a bowel movement or avoid breaking wind and tighten your anal muscles. Do not use the stomach muscles to do this. You may need to keep the legs open wide so that the muscles in the buttocks don't add confusing signals.

When you are using the PelvicToner™ Progressive Resistance Vaginal Exerciser you can be absolutely confident that you are squeezing the correct muscle for the simple reason that the PelvicToner will not close if you are not!

The PelvicToner exercise program is quite straightforward, just read the page on Sexercises for the full detail.