For most men, both, but not for the same reason. Kegels help you find and feel the muscle; relaxing it is what you need when arousal climbs. Strength alone isn’t the goal, and if your pelvic floor is already tight, more squeezing can be the wrong direction.
If you’ve spent any time reading about premature ejaculation online, you’ve seen the two camps. One says do your Kegels, the other says Kegels made them worse and reverse Kegels are the real answer. Both sound sure of themselves, and you’re left wondering which one to believe.
Kegels or reverse Kegels: which one do I need?
For most men, both, in that order. Kegels, squeezing the pelvic floor, teach you to find and feel the muscle. Reverse Kegels, gently letting it go, are what you need when arousal climbs. Strength on its own isn’t the goal, and if your pelvic floor is already tight, more squeezing may be the wrong direction.
What each one actually does
The pelvic floor is the group of muscles under your pelvis. It supports the bladder and bowel, helps you hold urine, helps keep blood in the penis during an erection, and takes part in ejaculation. Once semen is in the urethra, rhythmic contractions of those muscles push it out. That last part is a reflex, but the muscles doing it are muscles you can learn to feel.
A Kegel is a squeeze: you tighten those muscles, then release. A reverse Kegel is the opposite movement, a gentle letting go, as if the floor of your pelvis dropped a little. You don’t push hard, you just stop holding.
What the research says
On the squeeze side, there’s some evidence, and it isn’t strong. The study everyone quotes is a small Italian one from 2014: 40 men with lifelong premature ejaculation did 12 weeks of pelvic floor rehabilitation, and their average time went from about 32 seconds to about 146. But it had no comparison group. A 2019 review of the trials found pelvic floor training looked effective, with studies of low to moderate quality and no ideal protocol. A 2021 review of 33 trials was even less enthusiastic: it judged strengthening of little use. And a 2026 meta-analysis found that pelvic floor exercises on their own did less well than when they were combined with something else, such as diaphragmatic breathing.
On the relax side, I haven’t found a single controlled trial (as of October 2026). Relaxing the pelvic floor rests on a plausible mechanism and on what pelvic floor physiotherapists do, not on a study that tested it for premature ejaculation. So neither camp has strong proof, and anyone who tells you the science has settled it is going too far.
Can Kegels make premature ejaculation worse?
No study I know of shows that, so I can’t tell you it’s a proven risk. What is documented is the other side of the coin: the Sexual Medicine Society of North America explains that men with an overactive, overly tight pelvic floor may not be able to relax those muscles, which could lead to premature ejaculation. Men with better control, on the other hand, may be able to delay by relaxing them.
So if your pelvic floor is already tense all day, piling on hundreds of hard squeezes probably isn’t going to help. That’s also what a lot of men report online, with the usual caution that it’s what people say, not what’s been measured.
How it went for me
I used to think only women had a pelvic floor. They did one useful thing for me: they taught me to feel the muscle, to know exactly where it is and what it does. But the hard squeeze I practised to hold back? It never worked with my partner, and only rarely on my own.
What helped most was the opposite. Not long ago, in a solo session, I got right to the edge and thought: it’s going to happen anyway, why fight it? I let go instead of squeezing, and it worked. That’s my experience, not a study, but it matches what the research suggests: control isn’t the same thing as strength.
So the way I’d think about it is simple. Use the squeeze to find the muscle and learn the difference between tight and loose, then spend your energy on the letting go, which is the part that helped me most. If you want to know what that letting go feels like, I wrote about what a reverse Kegel is and how to know you’re doing it right. For the bigger picture on the pelvic floor, see can a weak or tight pelvic floor cause premature ejaculation and do Kegel exercises help.
When to see someone
If you have pain in the pelvis, pain when you ejaculate, or trouble urinating, don’t train through it. See a doctor or a pelvic floor physiotherapist: those signs can point to a tight pelvic floor, and that deserves a proper check. In the trials, pelvic floor physiotherapy was safe and well tolerated.
Sources
- Pelvic Floor Muscles, Cleveland Clinic
- Ischiocavernosus muscle, Kenhub (anatomy reference)
- Premature Ejaculation: From Physiology to Treatment, 2019, via PubMed Central
- Lifelong premature ejaculation can be treated by pelvic floor exercises, European Association of Urology, on Pastore et al., 2014
- Pelvic floor muscle training improves erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation: a systematic review, Myers and Smith, Physiotherapy, 2019
- Systematic review of trials of psycho-behavioural treatments for premature ejaculation, Kempeneers, Sexologies, 2021
- Efficacy of pelvic floor muscle training in the management of premature ejaculation: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, de Oliveira et al., Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2026
- Effectiveness of physiotherapy in male premature ejaculation: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Medrano-Sánchez et al., Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2026
- How Can Overly Tight Pelvic Floor Muscles Impact One’s Sexual Health?, Sexual Medicine Society of North America
The whole theme in one read: Premature ejaculation treatments: what works and what doesn’t