A reverse Kegel is the opposite of a Kegel: instead of squeezing your pelvic floor, you gently let it go, as if it dropped a little. You’re doing it right when it feels like a release rather than an effort, with your belly, buttocks and breath staying relaxed.
Of all the things people ask about premature ejaculation, this one comes back the most, and I understand why. “Relax your pelvic floor” sounds simple until you try it and realise you have no idea whether anything is happening down there. Squeezing is easy to feel. Letting go is much harder to pin down in words, so here’s my attempt.
What is a reverse Kegel?
A reverse Kegel is the opposite of a Kegel. With a Kegel you squeeze the pelvic floor, the muscles under your pelvis that you’d use to stop yourself peeing or passing wind. With a reverse Kegel you gently let those same muscles go, as if the floor of your pelvis dropped a little, without pushing.
Why bother? Those muscles take part in ejaculation (their rhythmic contractions push semen out). The Sexual Medicine Society of North America notes that men who can relax them may be able to delay ejaculation, while an overly tight pelvic floor may lead to premature ejaculation. I go into the squeeze-or-relax question in Kegels or reverse Kegels: which one do I need?.
First, find the muscle
You can’t let go of something you can’t feel, so this comes first. Funny enough, that’s the one thing Kegels really did for me: they taught me exactly where the muscle is.
The classic way is to imagine you’re stopping the flow of urine, or holding in wind. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic say you can actually stop your stream once to identify the muscles, but not as a routine exercise, because doing it repeatedly can encourage urinary infections.
A physiotherapy leaflet from an NHS hospital in England gives two simple checks. Put a finger on the perineum (the area between the scrotum and the back passage) and you’ll feel it tighten when you squeeze. Or do it naked in front of a mirror: if your penis bobs up, you’ve got the right muscles. The same leaflet adds that nobody should be able to see you doing it, because your buttocks, thighs and belly shouldn’t be involved.
How do I know I’m doing a reverse Kegel right?
You’re doing it right when it feels like a release rather than an effort. The area between your legs softens and settles, whatever lifted when you squeezed comes back down, and your belly, buttocks and breathing stay relaxed. If you’re straining, bearing down as if you were on the toilet, or holding your breath, you’re pushing, not letting go.
The easiest way I know to feel the difference is to go through the squeeze first. Squeeze gently, notice the lift, then simply stop squeezing and let it go a little further than “neutral”. That contrast between tight and loose is the whole point.
The mistakes that come up most
These are the ones I see described again and again by men trying to learn it on their own (what people report, not what’s been measured):
- pushing hard, as if trying to empty the bowel, which is a strain and not a release;
- tightening the belly or the buttocks instead of letting the pelvic floor go;
- holding the breath without noticing;
- only practising lying down, calm, and expecting it to work by itself when arousal is high.
That last one is worth a word. A release you can do in bed on a Sunday morning is a start, but it’s a long way from doing it when you’re close to the edge. For me, letting go only really proved itself right at the edge (I tell that moment in what is the point of no return).
What about breathing?
Breathing and the pelvic floor are linked, but the sources don’t all say the same thing. MRI studies (in women, nothing has been published in men yet) show the pelvic floor moving down as you breathe in and back up as you breathe out. Yet some physiotherapy leaflets, like the NHS one above, teach letting it go on the out-breath. I’m not going to pretend the science has settled it. For me, letting go as I breathe in feels more natural (the belly fills, and the floor drops with it), and it’s what works for my body. If the out-breath works better for you, no study says you’re wrong. What everyone agrees on is that holding your breath works against you, and that slow, relaxed belly breathing makes letting go easier. I wrote more about it in can breathing help you last longer.
When to stop and see someone
To be honest, there’s a limit to what a page of text can do here. I haven’t found any controlled trial of reverse Kegels for premature ejaculation, so this rests on what pelvic floor physiotherapists do and on a plausible mechanism, not on proof.
If you have pain in your pelvis, your perineum or your testicles, pain when you ejaculate, or trouble urinating, don’t train through it. See a doctor or a pelvic floor physiotherapist. They can check in person what no website can, including whether your pelvic floor is too tight to begin with.
Sources
- How Can Overly Tight Pelvic Floor Muscles Impact One’s Sexual Health?, Sexual Medicine Society of North America
- Premature Ejaculation: From Physiology to Treatment, 2019, via PubMed Central
- Kegel Exercises, Cleveland Clinic
- Kegel exercises for men, Mayo Clinic
- Pelvic floor strengthening and relaxation exercises for men, Physiotherapy, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, 2024
- Phase-locked parallel movement of diaphragm and pelvic floor during breathing and coughing: a dynamic MRI investigation in healthy females, Talasz et al., International Urogynecology Journal, 2011
The whole theme in one read: Premature ejaculation treatments: what works and what doesn’t