Tweet
Thought I'd do a little write up as I think all beginners should avoid Kegels unless they've tried Reverse Kegels first.
The three main conditions people are generally trying to treat are Premature Ejaculation, Erectile Dysfunction or Erection Quality and Hard Flaccid - I've personally never looked or bothered with Penis Enlargement so I won't touch base on that here at all.
Kegels
PE: Kegeling can help PE but the most it can do to help PE is holding ejaculation at the PONR and generally doesn't do much for those serious cases of PE unless you can hold a 5+ minute Kegel throughout sex (very unlikely).
ED: Again can help although I feel for the vast majority of people there are other issues to tackle first and foremost which will much more likely be necessary for ED
Hard Flaccid: Personally not seen Kegels indicated as treatment for HF
Reverse Kegels:
PE: Heavily indicated as a treatment for PE. Most PE seems to be caused by involuntary kegels and/or a persistently tight, overactive and unrelaxed pelvic floor. Reverse Kegels should be your first port of call for PE. Kegels should generally only be introduced later once you have some level of control over your pelvic floor, the pelvic floor is relaxed and you can last at least 5+ minutes.
ED: Kegels indicated for this quite often but its far more likely that people have an overly tight pelvic floor that doesn't allow great blood flow.
HF: Personally only ever seen Reverse Kegels, deep squats and stretching indicated for HF - Kegels very likely to make it worse - stretching and relaxing has been reported to produce a large flaccid that hangs lower.
Pelvic Floor Muscles:
I don't know every single pelvic floor muscle so I won't go into a great amount of details but generally pelvic floor are overly tight due to postural muscles being weak and therefore leading to the pelvic floor muscles to tighten up and bare the load that core muscles should be dealing with.
Posture:
Posture in my eyes is the most important thing everybody should look at before starting a kegel routine. Pelvic floor muscles are extremely small muscles and they're weak, tight, overactive, too strong or inhibited because of some of the biggest movers and most important muscles in the body being too weak, tight or stretched. Why would you focus on tiny muscles but neglect large very important muscles like the Glutes, Hamstrings or Abdominals.
The incorrect postures below are extremely common and would put a significant amount of stress on the pelvic floor;
Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT)
My year or two of poor progress:
I had very slight APT - in all honesty my pelvic tilt wasn't that bad but my Glutes were very weak and my hamstrings have been incredibly tight since a child, my abdominal strength left a lot to be desired. I didn't have huge APT but the weak glutes and abs, alongside tight hamstring were definitely putting a huge amount of undue stress on my pelvic floor which wasn't hard flaccid but did have ED and PE symptoms.
I focused the last year working on my core (glutes, abs and hamstrings) and was having some progress but not good enough for the amount of time I put in. My glutes were definitely getting exercised but except post workout burn I could feel and nor did I activate them well enough with walking, running or everyday activity - this was not good for nearly two years of dedicated workouts towards posterior chain.
My Hamstrings were still tight despite doing Romanian deadlifts and a vast array of other exercises to strengthen them.
My abdominals were improving but mainly my upper abs that attach to rib cage - I had that 4 pack ab look but no lower abs despite focusing on them with lower ab exercises and posterior pelvic tilt to ensure ab activation rather than hip flexors.
Deflated - slow progress
Success - where it all changed:
Like I say, I had been working incredibly hard on my key core muscles and witnessed some progress with my upper abs. Where it all changed is I ended up noticing that my posture was similar to a lot of body builders despite being a far lower weight. I had this almost inflated chest and upper body with strong abs immediately below my sternum that kind of protruded a little bit despite ensuring I exhaled during any concentric contraction of abs. My upper abs and chest were strong despite not training chest once in two years but my lower abs were neglected and weak.
The link to this imagine from physiopedia is the closest image I could find to describe this posture - https://www.physio-pedia.com/images/8/82/Drawin.jpg
Looking at mainly the 2nd and 3rd image - when my abdominals were relaxed I had this lower belly pooch but more importantly after what I considered a great ab workout my posture looked similar to pic number 3. Very strong contraction of upper abs - lower abs actually caved in rather than the perfectly straight and flat abs you see from YouTube trainers like Athlean X.
I think this is a very very important postural issue in itself, likely caused by unconsciously sucking in the stomach to appear thinner and chest breathing. The main issue being an inhibited diaphragm that doesn't descend fully.
The things I noticed that improved it - cardio (5km+) runs, long walks, playing golf for 4 hours (walking for 4 hours). Yet I still couldn't work out what part of those exercises actually improved it and thus I carried on doing training lower abs more, kegeling and stomach vacuums to activate the tva, oblique work, glute and hamstring work - everything to fix it but still it didn't. I theorised that the only reason those cardio type exercises were helping was because the diaphragm was eventually resetting to deep breaths but still I couldn't replicate that in weight training or postural work. Stomach vacuums and kegeling helped train the lower abs and cinch in the lower belly but this never lasted post workout and didnt improve anything else.
Then enter Reverse Kegels
Note: two types - 1) subtle reverse kegel and relaxation of pelvic floor, like an isolated relaxation. 2) large reverse kegel, a large inhalation inflating the lower belly to create intra abdominal pressure on the pelvic floor.
These went against a good portion of my theory and is probably why things took so long to improve. I wanted the lower abs to be stronger and have a better resting contraction so doing a reverse kegel went against everything I thought would work as the increased intra abdominal pressure and belly expansion would relax the abs if anything as they're not contracting... right? (nope wrong).
I noticed after doing half hour, hour or two hour sessions of reverse kegels with belly expansion that my lower abs, transverse abdominis and obliques were actually tighter and much more activated than before. It makes sense, the core is like a canister, when you reverse kegel, expand the belly and let the diaphragm contract much lower your other core muscles like the abdominals are actually tightening to provide stability from the increased pressure of the diaphragm contraction and large inhalation - otherwise your belly would just carry on expanding outwards.
After doing these I noticed my posture was better, my breathing stayed naturally deeper and full and I had the perfect flat abs from pelvis to sternum that I thought only stomach vacuums, TVA work and Kegels would give me. Wrong they were just stopping my diaphragm from taking deep breaths and making my pelvic floor tighter.
Routine
Now before every exercise I do reverse kegels and fully expand my belly for like 20 minutes before I exercise. Alongside deep/hindi squats too as well.
I then do the superman exercise laying on my belly where I focus on fully breathing into my belly and expanding it as much as possible to aid in the extension of my glutes and thoracic spine. After do this for 10 minutes laying on your stomach, forcing yourself to breathe into your belly I notice my abs are incredibly flat and aligned alongside glute contraction.
Once I'm in the position of having perfectly flat contracted abdominal that allow my diaphragm to breathe deeply and as low as possible then I begin doing my workout of various other exercises.
Benefits
This improves my posture immensely, it allows for proper pelvic alignment and my glutes and abdominal become engage alleivating any apt or postural issues. My erections are improved hugely back to teenager levels, my flaccid is larger and my control during sex is amazing post workout and better the days that follow - I no longer get out of breath and can thrust extremely hard and fast for 5 minutes without even stopping or changing positions. My PE is non existent and can last 20+ minutes - double whammy of relaxed pelvic floor stopping ejaculating too soon and breathing much much better allowing for longer sessions.
Stop doing Kegels
In my eyes Kegels in most cases should not be used at all if you're a beginner unless you know you have good glute, hamstring and core strength. Run 5km or walk 10km's a day. Don't work a desk job. Have good posture.
In many cases posture or the large muscles in the chain are far more important first, kegels should probably only be implemented if you have good posture and core strength (Glutes and Abs), you can then isolate the pelvic floor to delay ejaculation or allow you to shoot further. Other than that, you're likely doing more damage than good as a beginner.
The three main conditions people are generally trying to treat are Premature Ejaculation, Erectile Dysfunction or Erection Quality and Hard Flaccid - I've personally never looked or bothered with Penis Enlargement so I won't touch base on that here at all.
Kegels
PE: Kegeling can help PE but the most it can do to help PE is holding ejaculation at the PONR and generally doesn't do much for those serious cases of PE unless you can hold a 5+ minute Kegel throughout sex (very unlikely).
ED: Again can help although I feel for the vast majority of people there are other issues to tackle first and foremost which will much more likely be necessary for ED
Hard Flaccid: Personally not seen Kegels indicated as treatment for HF
Reverse Kegels:
PE: Heavily indicated as a treatment for PE. Most PE seems to be caused by involuntary kegels and/or a persistently tight, overactive and unrelaxed pelvic floor. Reverse Kegels should be your first port of call for PE. Kegels should generally only be introduced later once you have some level of control over your pelvic floor, the pelvic floor is relaxed and you can last at least 5+ minutes.
ED: Kegels indicated for this quite often but its far more likely that people have an overly tight pelvic floor that doesn't allow great blood flow.
HF: Personally only ever seen Reverse Kegels, deep squats and stretching indicated for HF - Kegels very likely to make it worse - stretching and relaxing has been reported to produce a large flaccid that hangs lower.
Pelvic Floor Muscles:
I don't know every single pelvic floor muscle so I won't go into a great amount of details but generally pelvic floor are overly tight due to postural muscles being weak and therefore leading to the pelvic floor muscles to tighten up and bare the load that core muscles should be dealing with.
Posture:
Posture in my eyes is the most important thing everybody should look at before starting a kegel routine. Pelvic floor muscles are extremely small muscles and they're weak, tight, overactive, too strong or inhibited because of some of the biggest movers and most important muscles in the body being too weak, tight or stretched. Why would you focus on tiny muscles but neglect large very important muscles like the Glutes, Hamstrings or Abdominals.
The incorrect postures below are extremely common and would put a significant amount of stress on the pelvic floor;
Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT)
- Symptoms - Weak glutes, tight and weak hamstrings (picking up the slack from weak glutes), weak abdominals and tight hip flexors. If your pelvic is tilted forward your pelvic floor muscles stretched and tighten up massively to aid the glutes. I think this posture is common amongst both PE and ED sufferers.
- Treatment - Relax the pelvic floor via Hindi squats and reverse kegels to stop involuntary kegels, PE and ED due to reduced blood flow. Strengthen Glutes and Hamstrings alongside abdominals to bring pelvis into Posterior Pelvic tilt which will stop the pelvic floor muscles from stretching and becoming weak and tight.
- Caused by weak abdominals - If your abs are weak your core is very likely not to be functioning properly this will effect pelvic floor.
- Sometimes caused by bone structure and not muscles strength.
My year or two of poor progress:
I had very slight APT - in all honesty my pelvic tilt wasn't that bad but my Glutes were very weak and my hamstrings have been incredibly tight since a child, my abdominal strength left a lot to be desired. I didn't have huge APT but the weak glutes and abs, alongside tight hamstring were definitely putting a huge amount of undue stress on my pelvic floor which wasn't hard flaccid but did have ED and PE symptoms.
I focused the last year working on my core (glutes, abs and hamstrings) and was having some progress but not good enough for the amount of time I put in. My glutes were definitely getting exercised but except post workout burn I could feel and nor did I activate them well enough with walking, running or everyday activity - this was not good for nearly two years of dedicated workouts towards posterior chain.
My Hamstrings were still tight despite doing Romanian deadlifts and a vast array of other exercises to strengthen them.
My abdominals were improving but mainly my upper abs that attach to rib cage - I had that 4 pack ab look but no lower abs despite focusing on them with lower ab exercises and posterior pelvic tilt to ensure ab activation rather than hip flexors.
Deflated - slow progress
Success - where it all changed:
Like I say, I had been working incredibly hard on my key core muscles and witnessed some progress with my upper abs. Where it all changed is I ended up noticing that my posture was similar to a lot of body builders despite being a far lower weight. I had this almost inflated chest and upper body with strong abs immediately below my sternum that kind of protruded a little bit despite ensuring I exhaled during any concentric contraction of abs. My upper abs and chest were strong despite not training chest once in two years but my lower abs were neglected and weak.
The link to this imagine from physiopedia is the closest image I could find to describe this posture - https://www.physio-pedia.com/images/8/82/Drawin.jpg
Looking at mainly the 2nd and 3rd image - when my abdominals were relaxed I had this lower belly pooch but more importantly after what I considered a great ab workout my posture looked similar to pic number 3. Very strong contraction of upper abs - lower abs actually caved in rather than the perfectly straight and flat abs you see from YouTube trainers like Athlean X.
I think this is a very very important postural issue in itself, likely caused by unconsciously sucking in the stomach to appear thinner and chest breathing. The main issue being an inhibited diaphragm that doesn't descend fully.
The things I noticed that improved it - cardio (5km+) runs, long walks, playing golf for 4 hours (walking for 4 hours). Yet I still couldn't work out what part of those exercises actually improved it and thus I carried on doing training lower abs more, kegeling and stomach vacuums to activate the tva, oblique work, glute and hamstring work - everything to fix it but still it didn't. I theorised that the only reason those cardio type exercises were helping was because the diaphragm was eventually resetting to deep breaths but still I couldn't replicate that in weight training or postural work. Stomach vacuums and kegeling helped train the lower abs and cinch in the lower belly but this never lasted post workout and didnt improve anything else.
Then enter Reverse Kegels
Note: two types - 1) subtle reverse kegel and relaxation of pelvic floor, like an isolated relaxation. 2) large reverse kegel, a large inhalation inflating the lower belly to create intra abdominal pressure on the pelvic floor.
These went against a good portion of my theory and is probably why things took so long to improve. I wanted the lower abs to be stronger and have a better resting contraction so doing a reverse kegel went against everything I thought would work as the increased intra abdominal pressure and belly expansion would relax the abs if anything as they're not contracting... right? (nope wrong).
I noticed after doing half hour, hour or two hour sessions of reverse kegels with belly expansion that my lower abs, transverse abdominis and obliques were actually tighter and much more activated than before. It makes sense, the core is like a canister, when you reverse kegel, expand the belly and let the diaphragm contract much lower your other core muscles like the abdominals are actually tightening to provide stability from the increased pressure of the diaphragm contraction and large inhalation - otherwise your belly would just carry on expanding outwards.
After doing these I noticed my posture was better, my breathing stayed naturally deeper and full and I had the perfect flat abs from pelvis to sternum that I thought only stomach vacuums, TVA work and Kegels would give me. Wrong they were just stopping my diaphragm from taking deep breaths and making my pelvic floor tighter.
Routine
Now before every exercise I do reverse kegels and fully expand my belly for like 20 minutes before I exercise. Alongside deep/hindi squats too as well.
I then do the superman exercise laying on my belly where I focus on fully breathing into my belly and expanding it as much as possible to aid in the extension of my glutes and thoracic spine. After do this for 10 minutes laying on your stomach, forcing yourself to breathe into your belly I notice my abs are incredibly flat and aligned alongside glute contraction.
Once I'm in the position of having perfectly flat contracted abdominal that allow my diaphragm to breathe deeply and as low as possible then I begin doing my workout of various other exercises.
Benefits
This improves my posture immensely, it allows for proper pelvic alignment and my glutes and abdominal become engage alleivating any apt or postural issues. My erections are improved hugely back to teenager levels, my flaccid is larger and my control during sex is amazing post workout and better the days that follow - I no longer get out of breath and can thrust extremely hard and fast for 5 minutes without even stopping or changing positions. My PE is non existent and can last 20+ minutes - double whammy of relaxed pelvic floor stopping ejaculating too soon and breathing much much better allowing for longer sessions.
Stop doing Kegels
In my eyes Kegels in most cases should not be used at all if you're a beginner unless you know you have good glute, hamstring and core strength. Run 5km or walk 10km's a day. Don't work a desk job. Have good posture.
In many cases posture or the large muscles in the chain are far more important first, kegels should probably only be implemented if you have good posture and core strength (Glutes and Abs), you can then isolate the pelvic floor to delay ejaculation or allow you to shoot further. Other than that, you're likely doing more damage than good as a beginner.
Admin of the Month Mar 2015
Comment