Reverse Kegel: Why Your Pelvic Floor Has Three States and You Probably Only Know One
Maybe you know this: you read that you should train your pelvic floor. Then you read that doing exactly that can backfire, for example in our article on Kegel exercises. And now the term reverse Kegel shows up somewhere and you're wondering if it's simply the opposite.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: it's the half of pelvic floor work nobody teaches you. And it's the half that makes the difference with premature ejaculation.
First: what this muscle actually does
Your pelvic floor, often called the PC muscle, runs from the pubic bone in front to the tailbone in back, wrapping around the penis and anus along the way. What many men don't know: a surprisingly large part of your penis sits inside your body, anchored right in this muscle (review). That's why the pelvic floor has such a big influence on your arousal. And that's why its contraction is what carries out ejaculation.
In other words: this muscle isn't your brake pedal. It's the trigger. Clench it during sex and you pull the trigger.
The three states you can feel for yourself
The easiest place to get to know your pelvic floor is the toilet. While peeing, this muscle can do three things.
State one: you just let it flow. Nothing happens actively, the urine flows.
State two: you interrupt the stream. To do that, you clench your pelvic floor. What's interesting is when this happens involuntarily: if someone interrupts you in a public restroom, the stream stalls on its own. Fear, thoughts, tension in your head clench this muscle without you deciding to. Remember that, because this exact clenching is what makes arousal climb faster during sex and makes you come faster.
State three: you try to pee as far as possible. To do that, you relax your pelvic floor completely, light pressure comes from your abdomen above, the muscle stretches, the urine flows more easily. This is the state some people call reverse Kegel: not clenching, but letting go completely.
Most men live in states one and two. They've never consciously produced state three. And that's exactly the lever.
Why letting go is the real skill
For a lot of men who come very fast, the pelvic floor is permanently tense during sex or masturbation, clenches involuntarily again and again, or gets clenched deliberately without them noticing. Every one of these variants drives arousal up faster. For some men the reflex is so deeply ingrained that the muscle contracts automatically at every touch to the glans.
On top of that there's a mistake mostly made by men with erection problems: they actively clench their glutes and pelvic floor to force an erection. That usually achieves the opposite. The pelvic floor builds up the tension it needs on its own as an erection develops anyway. Pushing on top of that prevents exactly the letting go an erection needs. Deliberately clenching during sex is a bad idea either way, whether your issue is coming too fast or not getting hard enough. The direction is the same in both cases: relax the pelvic floor and everything around it as much as possible and let the body do the rest.
A maximally relaxed pelvic floor lowers arousal. That's why reverse Kegel is such a valuable skill: it lets you actively dial arousal down at the critical moment instead of just hoping.
Why the first attempt backfires
Now for the part that would otherwise frustrate you: when you first try to relax your pelvic floor completely while masturbating, your arousal is likely to rise instead of fall. That's normal. Just as normal is your abdomen or back tensing up instead, while the pelvic floor does nothing at all. The muscle has never learned this movement, and your nervous system defaults to what it already knows on the first attempt.
This is a coordination skill, not a switch. It improves through repetition, until relaxation reliably lowers arousal. Giving up after the first attempt because it "doesn't work" is the same mistake most training plans from the internet make.
Because those plans have a second problem. If you start strengthening your pelvic floor following a plan like that, you'll usually have an exhausted muscle for the first week or two. Result: orgasm comes faster than before, not later. Just like the gym, when you train today and again tomorrow. If you don't know that, you quit right when it's starting to work. And if you only train the clenching, without the relaxation phase in between, your pelvic floor stays permanently tighter than before. The decline after two weeks then doesn't go away on its own. Relaxation is the more important part of every training session, and it's the part that almost always gets neglected.
Does that mean strength doesn't matter?
No. There's also the other case: men whose pelvic floor is genuinely too weak. A weak muscle is hard to control and gets overwhelmed quickly, and that also contributes to fast ejaculation. Like your first time at the gym with a weight that's too heavy: the muscle fails. If you can't voluntarily stop your urine stream, that's a sign of this, and targeted strength training actually helps in that case.
But strength is the prerequisite, not the solution. If you already get a nearly full erection without any aids, you don't need extra strength training and can spend that time on other levers instead. And overrating pelvic floor training mostly builds you one thing: extra pressure. For men who've already trained the muscle well, the rule is closer to: optimize less, let go more.
What actually matters
The skill you need isn't "strong pelvic floor" or "relaxed pelvic floor." It's being able to tell all three states apart, being able to deliberately produce the third one, and then holding it during sex, while arousal, movement and excitement are all pulling at you at once. You don't learn this on the toilet or by reading. When you use it in training, at what arousal level, in what order with strength and relaxation, that belongs in a structured program.
The honest timeline
Premature ejaculation is trainable. Not with a trick, not in a week, but through conditioning your nervous system, which takes three to four months on average. Some men are faster, some need up to six months, and how fast it goes for you depends mostly on how consistently you practice. First noticeable improvements come earlier for most, though. The pelvic floor is a key piece of that, but only one piece among several, alongside your mindset, your breathing, and how you handle arousal.
And yes, that means real effort. It'll be frustrating at times. We would love to promise you something else, but this is the only approach that works long term.
That's exactly what we're building Bedfit for: structured training that teaches you step by step what actually works, and keeps you with it until it sticks. Once you've learned it, you don't lose the skill again.
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