Kegel exercises for men: how to do them right

Kegel exercises for men train the pelvic floor, the muscles you’d use to hold in gas or stop peeing midstream. Squeeze and lift them for about five seconds, relax completely for five seconds, and repeat 10 times, three times a day. As the muscles get stronger, work up to 10-second holds. Most people notice a change after six to eight weeks of regular practice. Kegels help with bladder control and may help with ejaculation control and erections, though the research on sex is still limited.

What your pelvic floor muscles do

Your pelvic floor is a sling of muscle and tissue that runs from your pubic bone in front to your tailbone in back. It supports your bladder and bowel, and your urethra and anus pass through it. When these muscles work well, you can hold things in until you decide to let go.

They also take part in sex. According to Cleveland Clinic, the pelvic floor helps control blood flow to the penis during an erection and plays a role in controlling ejaculation. That’s why men usually come to Kegels for one of three reasons: leaking after prostate surgery, erections that aren’t as firm as they used to be, or finishing sooner than they’d like.

According to Harvard Health, the exercises are named after Arnold Kegel, an American gynecologist who developed them in the late 1940s to help women stop leaking urine. They help men with bladder leaks, too.

How to find the right muscles

Finding the muscle is the hard part. Harvard Health estimates that a third or more of people who do Kegels are actually squeezing their abs, buttocks, or inner thighs instead, so they don’t get the benefit.

Try these checks:

• The gas test. Imagine you’re in a quiet room and need to hold in gas. The muscles you use are your pelvic floor. You should feel a pulling-in sensation, more at the back of the pelvis than the front.
• The lift test. Tighten the muscles that pull your scrotum up toward your body. It should feel like a tightening around the base of your penis and your anus.
• The stream test, once. The next time you urinate, try to stop the flow midway. The muscles that do it are the ones you want. Use this only to find them. The NIDDK warns that regularly stopping your stream keeps your bladder from emptying completely, which can raise your risk of a urinary tract infection.

From the outside, a correct Kegel looks like almost nothing. Your buttocks don’t clench, your thighs don’t press together, and your belly stays soft. Rest a hand lightly on your stomach the first few times so you notice if your abs join in.

Still not sure? A doctor, nurse, or pelvic floor physical therapist can check your technique during an exam. Cleveland Clinic suggests having a professional show you a proper Kegel before you start. One visit can save you weeks of squeezing the wrong muscles.

How to do Kegel exercises for men, step by step

Start lying on your back, or sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor and your back supported. Once you can find the muscle reliably, do the same exercise sitting or standing.

1. Empty your bladder first.
2. Breathe normally. Counting out loud keeps you from holding your breath.
3. Squeeze your pelvic floor and lift it, as if you were drawing the base of your penis in and up. Hold for about five seconds.
4. Let go completely and rest for about five seconds. The release matters as much as the squeeze.
5. Repeat 10 times. That’s one set.
6. If the muscles tire before you finish, stop and do the rest later.

Once five-second holds feel easy, add short squeezes: tighten for two to three seconds, release, and repeat. Harvard Health calls these “quick flicks” and recommends practicing them alongside the longer holds. It adds that if you leak when you cough, sneeze, or lift something heavy, doing a Kegel just before that moment may be enough to prevent it.

How many Kegels should a man do a day?

The major guides roughly agree. Cleveland Clinic suggests 10 Kegels three times a day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Harvard Health recommends at least 30 to 40 a day, spread out rather than done all at once. The NIDDK adds one more detail: do your sets lying down, sitting, and standing, because working in all three positions makes the muscles strongest.

Once you reach that level, don’t keep adding reps. The NIDDK warns that overdoing the exercises can lead to straining when you urinate or have a bowel movement. Cleveland Clinic notes that too many Kegels can increase muscle tension or make symptoms worse, and that doing fewer properly beats doing lots of them badly.

A sample six-week progression

There’s no proven best plan: a 2019 systematic review of pelvic floor training for erection and ejaculation problems couldn’t identify an optimal protocol. The table below is one way to put the ranges above into practice: start with five-second holds and build toward 10 seconds, the target Memorial Sloan Kettering sets.

Weeks	Position	Each set	Sets a day
1–2	Lying down	10 holds of 5 seconds, 5 seconds’ rest after each	3
3–4	Lying down or sitting	10 holds of 6 to 8 seconds, equal rest; add 10 quick flicks to one set a day	3
5–6	Lying down, sitting, and standing	10 holds of up to 10 seconds, equal rest; add 10 quick flicks to one set a day	3

That keeps you at about 40 contractions a day at most. If a stage still feels hard, stay there another week. Keep the rest as long as the hold before it; the relaxation is part of the exercise, not a break from it.

Common mistakes

• Holding your breath. Memorial Sloan Kettering notes that a headache after Kegels often means you’re tightening your chest and holding your breath. Count out loud.
• Squeezing the wrong muscles. Pain in your lower back or stomach afterward suggests your abs or back are doing the work.
• Turning your stream into a workout. Stopping urine midstream helps you find the muscle. It isn’t the exercise.
• Never letting go. A pelvic floor that stays clenched causes problems of its own (more on that below).
• Doing more and more. More isn’t better. Too many Kegels can add tension instead of strength.
• Exercising with a catheter in. If you have a urinary catheter after surgery, don’t do Kegels until your care team says it’s time. Cleveland Clinic and Memorial Sloan Kettering warn that doing them with a catheter in place can cause bleeding or bladder spasms.
• Pushing through pain. Kegels shouldn’t hurt. If they do, stop and talk to a clinician.

How long before Kegels work?

Cleveland Clinic says most people notice changes after six to eight weeks of regular practice. For bladder control specifically, the NIDDK says you may not feel an improvement until after three to six weeks. How quickly you progress depends on how weak the muscles were to begin with and how consistently you train.

The exercise itself should get easier over several weeks. Don’t treat Kegels as a course you finish, though. To keep the benefit, you may need to make them a permanent part of your routine.

What Kegels can and can’t do in bed and after surgery

Kegels may help with sex and with bladder control after surgery, but the evidence is thinner than you might expect.

Lasting longer. After going through 10 trials, the authors of the 2019 review concluded that pelvic floor training appears to work for premature ejaculation (PE) and erectile dysfunction (ED), while rating the studies as low to moderate in quality. One small study shows what’s possible. In it, 40 men with lifelong PE, who had always finished within about a minute, spent 12 weeks on pelvic floor rehabilitation. By the end, 33 of them (82.5%) had gained control of the reflex, and on average they lasted about 146 seconds before ejaculating. It was one small group of men, so treat the result as a best case rather than what to expect.

A 2026 meta-analysis brings that back down to earth. Pooling five randomized trials with 236 men, it found that pelvic floor training on its own did less for time to ejaculation than dapoxetine, a medication used for PE, or than combined approaches. Paired with diaphragmatic breathing or a masturbation training device, the training may work better than exercise alone. So Kegels are a reasonable part of learning to last longer, not the whole answer. Our guide to Kegel exercises for premature ejaculation shows how to time a squeeze as a brake and when Kegels can make things worse.

Erections. One randomized trial followed 55 men with ED. Some worked with a physical therapist who taught them pelvic floor exercises, used biofeedback, and gave lifestyle advice; the rest got the lifestyle advice alone. Three months in, the exercise group had significantly better erectile function. The men in the comparison group who hadn’t improved were then taught the exercises too, and by six months 40% of all the men had regained normal erectile function, 35.5% had improved, and 24.5% hadn’t. Keep in mind that these men were coached in person; the numbers may not carry over to a routine you do alone at home. If you can get hard but can’t stay hard, our guide to venous leak explains one possible cause.

After prostate surgery. Cleveland Clinic lists Kegels as helpful before prostate cancer surgery and after prostate procedures, to improve bladder control. The research is less clear-cut. A 2015 Cochrane review found that men’s leaking tended to improve with time however it was managed, which left the value of the different approaches uncertain. Follow the plan your surgical team gives you.

Relaxing is half the skill

Weakness isn’t the only problem. Some men have the opposite one: pelvic floor muscles that tighten and don’t let go properly. Cleveland Clinic describes this kind of pelvic floor dysfunction as muscles that keep tightening instead of relaxing. It can bring ongoing pain in the pelvis, genitals, or rectum, trouble peeing or having a bowel movement, and sometimes erection problems.

For those men, more squeezing isn’t the fix. A pelvic floor physical therapist may teach relaxation and stretching instead. Our guide to reverse Kegels for men shows how to practice letting these muscles go. It’s also why every Kegel in the routine above ends with a full release.

When to see a doctor or pelvic floor therapist

Get your technique or symptoms checked if:

• Kegels cause pain, or you have ongoing pain in your pelvis, genitals, or rectum.
• You can’t tell whether you’re using the right muscles.
• Nothing has improved after six to eight weeks of regular practice.
• You’re preparing for prostate surgery, recovering from it, or have a catheter.
• You leak urine, struggle to empty your bladder, or notice a new change in your erections or ejaculation.

A new change deserves a doctor’s visit rather than a home workout, because it can have a cause that exercise won’t address.

How The Coach approaches Kegel training

In The Coach’s Last Longer program, pelvic floor training is one of four pillars, alongside learning to relax, controlling your arousal, and breathing properly. The pelvic floor earns its place because it takes part in ejaculation, but Kegels alone aren’t enough, so they’re trained together with the other three.

The app includes a built-in six-week Kegel program with reminders and daily guided audio sessions, at about 10 minutes a day. Plan on the full six weeks at least, and keep training after that.

What changes is how you use the squeeze. During sex, your pelvic floor stays soft while breathing and arousal awareness do most of the work. A strong, deliberate contraction is saved for the moment you get close to the point of no return: stop, exhale, squeeze hard for a second or two, then release fully and let the arousal drop. Squeeze all the time and you build tension that works against you. Save it for that moment and it becomes a brake you can use on purpose.

If you’d rather follow a plan than count reps on your own, the quiz asks about your goals and sets up a personal Last Longer plan in The Coach app.

Sources

1. Cleveland Clinic (2025). Kegel Exercises for Men. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22211-kegel-exercises-for-men
2. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (n.d.). Kegel Exercises. NIDDK. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/urologic-diseases/kegel-exercises
3. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2026). Pelvic Floor Muscle (Kegel) Exercises for Males. MSK. https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/patient-education/pelvic-floor-muscle-kegel-exercises-males
4. Harvard Health Publishing (n.d.). Step-by-step guide to performing Kegel exercises. Harvard Medical School. https://www.health.harvard.edu/step-by-step-guide-to-performing-kegel-exercises
5. Myers C, Smith M (2019). Pelvic floor muscle training improves erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation: a systematic review. Physiotherapy. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30979506/
6. Pastore AL, et al. (2014). Pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation for patients with lifelong premature ejaculation: a novel therapeutic approach. Therapeutic Advances in Urology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24883105/
7. de Oliveira FA, et al. (2026). Efficacy of pelvic floor muscle training in the management of premature ejaculation: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42132359/
8. Dorey G, et al. (2005). Pelvic floor exercises for erectile dysfunction. BJU International. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16104916/
9. Anderson CA, et al. (2015). Conservative management for postprostatectomy urinary incontinence. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25602133/
10. Cleveland Clinic (n.d.). Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14459-pelvic-floor-dysfunction