Do Kegel Exercises Actually Improve Your Sex Life?
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Kegel exercises do have sexual benefits, and the honest version of that claim is smaller than the one you usually read: pooled randomized trials found that pelvic floor muscle training improved women's sexual function scores compared with control groups, and the reviewers graded their own certainty in that result as very low. Both halves of that sentence matter. There is a signal in the data, and the evidence behind it is thin and built on a handful of small trials. Most articles quote the first half and skip the second. What follows is the whole picture, including the release phase almost everyone drops and the cases where squeezing harder makes things worse.
- A 2024 review in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology pooled four randomized trials and found pelvic floor muscle training improved Female Sexual Function Index total scores by 7.67 points versus controls.
- The same review rated that evidence very low under GRADE in its results section, because the trials were clinically and statistically heterogeneous, and the wording softens to low by the time you reach the conclusion. Both wordings are in the paper. This page goes with very low, since that is the rating the GRADE assessment itself produced.
- Pelvic floor training in men rests on one small randomized trial with a positive erectile function result.
- An over-tight pelvic floor is a real problem and more squeezing makes it worse. Pain with sex, recent surgery, and the postpartum period all call for a pelvic floor physical therapist.
- NUUD is a botanical supplement built to support desire. Pelvic floor training works on muscle. Neither replaces the other.
Figures from Jorge 2024 (PMID 38191016), Faucher 2024 (PMID 38303662), and Dorey 2004 (PMID 15527607).
What the pelvic floor is, and what it does during sex
The pelvic floor is a sheet of muscle slung across the base of the pelvis, from the pubic bone to the tailbone. It holds up the bladder and bowel, opens and closes the urethra and anus, and rhythmically contracts during orgasm in both women and men. That last part is why it gets discussed in a sexual context at all. In women these muscles surround the vaginal canal and contribute to the sensation of contact and pressure. In men they sit under the base of the penis and compress the veins that would otherwise let blood drain out during an erection, which is the mechanical reason pelvic floor strength and erectile function ever got studied together.
Two properties matter and people usually hear about only one. Strength is how hard the muscle can contract. Tone is its resting state, how relaxed it sits at rest. A 2024 systematic review in The Journal of Sexual Medicine assessed pelvic floor function using measures of both (Faucher et al., 2024). A floor that cannot generate force is one problem. A floor that never lets go is a different problem with the opposite fix.
What the pooled trials actually found
The most useful evidence here is a 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Jorge et al., 2024). The team searched seven databases and included only randomized trials comparing pelvic floor muscle training against no intervention or another conservative treatment, where at least one arm aimed to improve sexual function. Twenty-one trials met the criteria.
Only four could be pooled, which tells you something about how consistently this has been studied. Across those four, training beat control on the Female Sexual Function Index total score by 7.67 points, with a 95% confidence interval from 0.77 to 14.57. By subscale, training improved arousal by 1.49 points (0.13 to 2.85), orgasm by 1.55 (0.13 to 2.96), satisfaction by 1.46 (0.14 to 2.77), and pain by 0.74 (0.11 to 1.37).
One finding rarely gets quoted: none of the included trials reported side effects. Read that as an absence of reports. It does not establish a clean safety record, and the review does not show that all 21 trials collected adverse events in the first place. It still counts for something when you are weighing a free intervention.
The measured effect, with the uncertainty left in
Measured mean differences on Female Sexual Function Index subscales, training versus control, with 95% confidence intervals. Every interval comes close to the zero line, which is the visual version of "real signal, uncertain size."
Source: Jorge CH et al., American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2024 (PMID 38191016). Plotted values are the mean differences and 95% confidence intervals reported in that paper.
Why the certainty grading matters more than the effect size
The review team assessed their pooled results using GRADE, the standard framework for rating confidence in a body of evidence. In the results section they rated the certainty very low. By the conclusion the wording has softened to low. The reason given for the downgrade was high clinical and statistical heterogeneity. Both wordings are the authors' own, and this page uses very low, because that is the rating the GRADE assessment produced.
The four poolable trials used different protocols, in different populations, over different timeframes, and produced results that scattered more than you would expect if they were all measuring the same thing. A very low GRADE rating means further research is very likely to change the estimate, possibly by a lot. The confidence intervals make that concrete. The FSFI total-score interval runs from 0.77 to 14.57. The top of that range would be life-altering. The bottom is close to nothing.
So pelvic floor training may do something for sexual function in women, and the true size of that something is not known within a useful margin. What you are signing up for is a free intervention with no reported side effects and a possible modest benefit. That is a long way from the transformation this usually gets sold as.
What pelvic floor training plausibly changes, and what it does not
The evidence-quality column reports what the source papers said about themselves.
| Outcome | What the research shows | Evidence quality |
|---|---|---|
| Overall sexual function (FSFI total) | 7.67 points better than control across 4 pooled trials | Very low certainty under GRADE; 4 poolable trials out of 21 reviewed |
| Orgasm subscale | 1.55 points better (95% CI 0.13 to 2.96) | Very low certainty; the interval nearly touches zero |
| Muscle strength and sexual function together | Moderate association, r = 0.41 across observational studies | Observational only; an association cannot establish cause |
| Erectile function in men | IIEF erectile function domain 6.74 points better at 3 months in one 55-man trial | Single small trial; participants knew they were exercising |
| Sexual desire itself | The 2024 meta-analysis reports no pooled desire result | Not established; wanting sex is a separate system from muscle capacity |
The last row is where most of the internet's promises live. Nothing in this literature says that training a muscle group makes you want sex more, and the studies were never built to answer that. Desire runs on stress load, sleep, mood, hormones, and relationship context.
How to do a kegel correctly, including the release nobody talks about
Technique quality is one reason the trial results scatter; the 2024 review noted that protocols in the included studies varied in quality against a standard exercise-reporting template. Treat what follows as the general shape of the movement and a pelvic floor physical therapist as the source of an actual program.
Read this before step 1
Skip the list below and read the next two sections first if sex hurts, if tampons hurt, if you have aching in the pelvis or low back, if you are postpartum, or if you are within a few months of pelvic or abdominal surgery. Everything that follows is contraction work, and more squeezing is the wrong move for a floor that is already too tight. Get assessed, then come back.
- Find the muscles. You are looking for a lift-and-close feeling, inward and upward, as though you were drawing the whole floor up toward your navel. Skip the old midstream-urine test. Interrupting the flow can irritate the bladder, and the lift-and-close cue finds the same muscles without it.
- Isolate. Buttocks, thighs, and abdomen stay quiet. If your glutes are clenching, the pelvic floor is doing less work than you think.
- Contract deliberately. Draw up and in at moderate effort. A controlled contraction you can repeat is worth more than a hard one you cannot.
- Hold three to five seconds, breathing normally. Holding your breath turns a pelvic floor exercise into a bracing exercise.
- Release completely, taking as long as you took to contract. This phase is missing from almost every instruction set. Let the muscles go all the way back to slack and feel the descent. A rep finishes when the muscle has fully let go.
- Rest between reps. Rest at least as long as you contracted. Ten repetitions makes a set, two or three sets across a day is a normal starting volume, and hold time builds slowly over weeks.
One repetition, all four phases
Most instructions stop after the first two. The blocks below are labels for the phases; the timing for each one is in the steps above.
When squeezing more is the wrong move
A weak pelvic floor and an over-tight pelvic floor produce overlapping complaints and need opposite treatment. That is why "just do more kegels" fails as blanket advice.
An overactive or hypertonic pelvic floor never fully relaxes. It shows up as pain with penetration, difficulty using tampons, urinary urgency, and aching in the pelvis or low back. Adding contraction work to a floor already stuck short tends to make the pain worse, which is why clinicians assess tone alongside strength.
If sex hurts, if insertion is difficult, or if you finish a set feeling sore, get assessed by a pelvic floor physical therapist. An internal exam takes minutes and answers what no article can: whether your floor needs strengthening or needs to learn how to let go. Down-training, breathing work, and manual release are real treatments for the second case and they look nothing like a kegel program. Recent pelvic or abdominal surgery and any acute pelvic pain condition are also reasons to get cleared first.
Pelvic floor training in men
The men's literature is smaller and older, and it centers on one randomized trial that keeps getting cited because there is little else to cite.
In that trial, 55 men with erectile dysfunction (median age 59, range 22 to 78) were randomized to pelvic floor muscle exercises with manometric biofeedback plus lifestyle advice, or to lifestyle advice alone (Dorey et al., 2004). At three months the exercise group scored 6.74 points higher on the erectile function domain of the International Index of Erectile Function than controls, alongside measurable increases in anal pressure and digital anal grades. Controls were then crossed into the active arm and showed similar gains. The three-month comparison is the controlled part of this trial. At six months every participant had been on the exercise program, so the numbers from that point are uncontrolled shares of one group: 40% had normal erectile function, 34.5% had improved, and 25.5% had not improved.
The proposed mechanism is plumbing: the muscles at the base of the penis compress the deep dorsal vein during erection, so a floor generating more force may hold blood in more effectively. The trial is small in every direction. Fifty-five men, one clinic, participants who obviously knew whether they were exercising, and no large replication since. The finding sits in the record. The body of evidence behind it is thin.
Men have their own reasons to get cleared before starting. Chronic pelvic pain in men often involves a floor that is already overactive, and adding contraction work to it can make the pain worse. Anyone recovering from prostate surgery should follow the program their surgeon or a pelvic floor physical therapist sets, at the timing they set.
After a baby, or if sex hurts: talk to a provider first
Postpartum is where pelvic floor exercises get recommended most and where a generic program is least appropriate. Tissue is healing, tears and episiotomies change the picture, diastasis recti may be present, and prolapse symptoms need assessment. The evidence for sexual outcomes here is weaker than the recommendation volume suggests.
A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials in the perinatal period reported a standardized mean difference in sexual function of 6.33 (95% CI 5.27 to 7.40) during pregnancy and a pooled standardized mean difference of 1.19 (95% CI 0.08 to 2.30) after postpartum intervention (Karaahmet et al., 2022). Handle that pregnancy figure carefully. A standardized mean difference of 6.33 describes a six-sigma gap between groups, which is far larger than any behavioral program plausibly delivers, and the review's own text shows where it comes from: only one trial, 82 women in total, reported sexual results during pregnancy, so there was nothing there to pool. The postpartum figure of 1.19 is a different animal with a different problem. Several trials sit behind it, so it is a genuine random-effects pool, but the authors report high heterogeneity across them at I-squared 83.0%. Those trials disagreed with each other enough that the pooled number is unstable. The authors' own conclusion describes the effect on sexual function in pregnancy and postpartum as little, while noting that it is a safe strategy that can improve postpartum sexual function. They also restrict that conclusion to primipara women, meaning first-time mothers, so it does not carry over to a second or third baby without more evidence.
So the guidance for anyone postpartum, anyone with pelvic pain, and anyone with recent surgery is the same: get an individual assessment from a pelvic floor physical therapist or your clinician first. This article is general education about an exercise. It is not a protocol, and it does not replace a person who can examine you.
How long it takes, and how to tell whether it is working
The trials that show anything ran on a timescale of months, so quitting at two weeks means the experiment was never run. Because the expected effect is modest, you also need a better measure than a vague sense that things feel different. Pick something concrete before you start: seconds you can hold a contraction without the rest of your body joining in, and whether the muscles fully release at the end of a rep. Re-check your own marker at eight and twelve weeks. Those are self-check dates you set for yourself; the trials themselves measured at three and six months.
Tried everything and nothing worked: where this sits among the levers
If you have already cycled through supplements, hormone panels that came back fine, and advice that landed as a chore, a set of muscle exercises can sound like one more thing that will not work. That reaction is fair. Pelvic floor training is a physical approach aimed at the muscle and at what you feel through it. It does not target desire and the research does not claim it does. If you want sex and something physical feels blunted, this belongs on the short list. If the wanting itself is gone, this aims at the wrong system. There is at least one randomized result pointed straight at desire: a trial of group mindfulness-based therapy in 117 women seeking help for low desire found improvements in sexual desire, arousal, lubrication, satisfaction, and overall sexual functioning against a delayed-treatment control group (Brotto and Basson, 2014). Apply the same caution here as everywhere else on this page. It is one trial, the participants knew which group they were in, and the comparison was a waitlist. Its advantage over the kegel literature is that it measured desire directly, which the pooled kegel trials never did.
The pelvic floor is worth training because it is free, carried no reported side effects in the trials, and may help a bit, with the tight-floor exception above. Desire is a separate problem with separate levers, which our piece on responsive versus spontaneous desire gets into, alongside what general exercise does for libido. If the complaint is that you want to feel something again, the material on increasing sensitivity after menopause and on natural remedies for vaginal dryness covers the tissue side that pelvic floor work leaves untouched.
Keep reading
- The orgasm gap and what actually closes it
- Does exercise improve libido?
- Responsive versus spontaneous desire
- How to increase sensitivity after menopause
- Natural remedies for vaginal dryness
The supplement question, if wanting is the missing half
Straight answer: pelvic floor training and a botanical supplement do different jobs and one does not stand in for the other. Training works on muscle capacity and control. NUUD is a botanical supplement made to support desire, the wanting side of the problem. Neither treats a medical condition, and if pain or a diagnosed pelvic floor problem is in the picture, the physical therapist is the right call regardless of what else you take.
The formula is built around NUUD Mushroom Complex™, a proprietary botanical anchor, alongside Muira Puama, Boiled Rehmannia Root, Tribulus Terrestris, and Piper Nigrum for absorption. Have a look at the women's gummy if the quiet interest is the half you are trying to solve. If the mechanics feel off, spend your effort on the exercises above and skip the supplement. We would say that before selling you the wrong thing.
Frequently asked questions
Do kegel exercises actually help your sex life?
Possibly a little, and the evidence is weaker than the popular version of this claim. A 2024 review in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology pooled four randomized trials and found pelvic floor muscle training improved Female Sexual Function Index total scores by 7.67 points versus controls. The same review graded that evidence very low under GRADE because of high clinical and statistical heterogeneity, and its published conclusion softens the wording to low. None of the 21 trials it reviewed reported side effects, which records an absence of reports; the review does not establish that all 21 collected adverse events.
How long do kegels take to work?
Months. The randomized trials that found effects measured outcomes at three and six months of consistent training, and nothing in this research supports a result inside two weeks. Set a concrete marker before you start, such as how many seconds you can hold a controlled contraction without your glutes or abdomen joining in, then re-check it yourself at eight and twelve weeks. Those are self-check dates you set for yourself; the trials measured at three and six months.
Can you do too many kegels?
Yes. An overactive or hypertonic pelvic floor never fully relaxes, and adding more contraction work to it tends to make things worse. Signs include pain with penetration, difficulty using tampons, urinary urgency, pelvic or low back aching, and soreness after a set. If any of those apply to you, get assessed by a pelvic floor physical therapist. The treatment for a tight floor is releasing and down-training.
Do kegel exercises help men sexually?
One small randomized trial says yes and it has not been well replicated. Fifty-five men with erectile dysfunction were randomized to pelvic floor muscle exercises with biofeedback plus lifestyle advice or to lifestyle advice alone. At three months the exercise group scored 6.74 points higher on the erectile function domain of the International Index of Erectile Function. By six months the control group had been transferred into the exercise arm, so the often-quoted 40% with normal erectile function at that point is an uncontrolled share of a single group. Hold that result loosely.
Are kegels safe after childbirth?
Get an individual assessment before starting a program. Postpartum tissue is healing, and tears, episiotomies, diastasis recti, and prolapse symptoms all change what is appropriate. A 2022 meta-analysis of randomized trials in the perinatal period reported a pooled standardized mean difference in sexual function of 1.19 (95% CI 0.08 to 2.30) after postpartum intervention, with high heterogeneity across the pooled trials at I-squared 83.0%. Those trials disagreed with each other enough that the pooled number is unstable. The authors described the overall effect as little while calling the training a safe strategy. They limited that conclusion to primipara women, meaning first-time mothers.
References
- Jorge CH, Bo K, Chiazuto Catai C, Oliveira Brito LG, Driusso P, Kolberg Tennfjord M. Pelvic floor muscle training as treatment for female sexual dysfunction: a systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38191016/
- Faucher S, Dery-Rouleau G, Bardin M, Morin M. Investigating the role of the pelvic floor muscles in sexual function and sexual response: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38303662/
- Dorey G, Speakman M, Feneley R, Swinkels A, Dunn C, Ewings P. Randomised controlled trial of pelvic floor muscle exercises and manometric biofeedback for erectile dysfunction. British Journal of General Practice. 2004. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15527607/
- Karaahmet AY, Gencturk N, Boyacioglu NEL. Does perinatal period pelvic floor muscle exercises affect sexuality and pelvic muscle strength? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira. 2022. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36000601/
- Brotto LA, Basson R. Group mindfulness-based therapy significantly improves sexual desire in women. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2014. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24814472/
This article is for general education and is not medical advice. NUUD is a botanical supplement and does not treat any condition. Pelvic floor exercises are not appropriate for everyone; talk with a licensed clinician or a pelvic floor physical therapist about pelvic pain, painful sex, prolapse, recent surgery, or postpartum recovery before starting a program.
