Why do I lose my erection when I relax or slow down?

You finally manage to slow down, or to let your pelvic floor go, and instead of feeling in control you feel your erection fade. It’s discouraging, and from what men write online it’s one of the main reasons people give up on training altogether. I think it’s worth understanding what’s going on before deciding something is wrong with you.

Why do I lose my erection when I relax or slow down?

Mostly because two things that hold an erection up drop at the same time. When you slow down or pause, you’re deliberately bringing arousal down, and the erection tends to follow it. And when you relax your pelvic floor, you release muscles that help keep the penis firm. It’s common when you start, and it usually isn’t a sign of a problem on its own.

What the pelvic floor has to do with it

The pelvic floor isn’t only involved in ejaculation, it also plays a part in erections. One of its muscles, the ischiocavernosus, wraps around the roots of the penis. When it contracts, it pushes blood toward the shaft and squeezes the veins that drain it, which keeps the penis firm.

A physiotherapy leaflet from an NHS hospital in England sums up the two sides nicely. Strengthening the pelvic floor contributes to maintaining an erection, and relaxing it allows blood flow to the genital region and helps you get an erection in the first place. A 2019 review of the trials also found that pelvic floor training helped erectile dysfunction as well as premature ejaculation.

So if, for years, you’ve held yourself back by clenching (a lot of men do, often without noticing), part of your erection may have been riding on that clench. Let go of it, and the erection softens a bit. That’s my reading of the mechanism, not something a study has measured directly in men training for premature ejaculation, so take it as a likely explanation, not a certainty.

Why slowing down does it too

That part is simpler. An erection follows arousal. If the whole point of a pause is to bring arousal down, you shouldn’t be too surprised when the erection drops with it, especially if the pause is long or your mind wanders off to “is it going down?”.

And that question is a trap of its own. The International Society for Sexual Medicine lists erectile dysfunction among the problems linked to performance anxiety, along with premature ejaculation. Watching your erection anxiously is a good way to lose it.

What I’d take from it

First, it doesn’t mean the training is failing. Losing some firmness when you relax or pause is common at the start, and men who’ve been through it often say it got better once relaxing felt familiar rather than strange (that’s what people report, not what’s been measured). I can’t give you a timeline, because I haven’t found research on it, and bodies differ.

Second, a soft moment isn’t the end of the session. Arousal comes back, and the erection often comes back with it. If you treat every drop as a disaster, you add exactly the pressure that makes it worse.

Third, if relaxing feels like pushing or straining, you may be doing it too hard. I go into what letting go should feel like in what is a reverse Kegel, and how do I know I’m doing it right.

When it’s a reason to see a doctor

Here I’d be careful. Premature ejaculation and erection problems often travel together: in a Taiwanese study of 2,376 men seen for one or the other, about a third had both. When that’s the case, doctors usually treat the erection problem first. Erectile dysfunction can also show up a few years before a heart or blood vessel problem, which is one more reason not to brush it off.

So if you have trouble getting or keeping an erection outside training too, during sex, in the morning, or with your partner, see a doctor before you keep going. The same goes for pain, or if it started suddenly after a time when everything was fine. More on that link in is premature ejaculation the same as erectile dysfunction? and on which doctor to see.

Sources

• Ischiocavernosus muscle, Kenhub (anatomy reference)
• Pelvic floor strengthening and relaxation exercises for men, Physiotherapy, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, 2024
• Pelvic floor muscle training improves erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation: a systematic review, Myers and Smith, Physiotherapy, 2019
• Pelvic Floor Muscles, Cleveland Clinic
• What is sexual performance anxiety, and how can one manage it?, International Society for Sexual Medicine
• A Cross-Sectional Observational Study on the Coexistence of Erectile Dysfunction and Premature Ejaculation, Chin et al., Sexual Medicine, 2021
• Can We Consider Erectile Dysfunction as an Early Marker of Cardiovascular Disease?, review, 2024, via PubMed Central