Erection quality

Pelvic Floor Exercises for Men: How to Do Them Correctly

August 4, 2026 · 8 min read

Pelvic floor training is one of the few things in this whole subject area with real trial evidence behind it. In a randomized controlled trial published by Dorey and colleagues in 2004, men who trained the pelvic floor for three months reported firmer erections on a self-assessment questionnaire — there was no objective measurement of hardness. The trials supporting pelvic floor training for erection firmness are real but small, mostly unblinded, and largely dependent on self-reported outcomes like that one. The endpoints of that trial were erection firmness and bladder control — nothing beyond that is supported by it. So the evidence points in one direction — firmness and control — off a small and largely unblinded trial base. It does not make anything bigger, and this article will say that more than once.

What the clinic pages get right is the movement itself: tense, hold, release, repeat. What they leave out is everything that decides whether you actually get a result — how to find the muscle in the first place, how to progress over weeks instead of doing the same ten reps forever, how often is too often, and what to do when the problem is that the muscle is already too tight.

What the pelvic floor actually does during an erection

An erection is a plumbing problem. Blood flows in, and it has to stay in. Two muscles in the pelvic floor — the ischiocavernosus and the bulbospongiosus — sit at the base of the penis and compress the veins that would otherwise let blood drain back out. When they contract well, pressure inside the erectile tissue rises above what inflow alone can produce. That is the mechanism by which a trained pelvic floor can show up as a harder erection and a steeper angle — never as a longer one.

The same muscle group closes the urethra, which is why the bladder-control benefit and the erection benefit come from one exercise. If you want a way to track whether firmness is actually changing over the weeks, the erection hardness scale is a four-point rating used in clinical trials and it works fine as a home log.

Finding the right muscle — and the three you are probably using instead

This is where most self-taught programs fail silently. You do the reps, you feel effort, nothing changes, because the effort was in the wrong place.

Three reliable ways to locate it:

Stop the stream. Mid-urination, stop the flow without moving your legs. That is the muscle. Use this once or twice to identify it, then stop — repeatedly interrupting urination is not a training method and can irritate the bladder.
The gas cue. Tighten as if you were holding in gas in a crowded room. This targets the back half of the pelvic floor.
The mirror. With an erection, a correct contraction makes the penis lift slightly. Nothing else in your body should move.

Now the three muscles people substitute:

Abdominals. If your stomach pulls in and your breath stops, you are bracing your core. A real pelvic floor contraction is invisible from the outside and you should be able to talk through it.
Glutes. If your butt tightens and your hips shift on the seat, that is glute. Sit on a hard chair — you will feel it.
Adductors. Squeezing the inner thighs together is the most common substitute of all, and it feels convincingly like work.

The test: put one hand on your belly and sit with your feet flat and knees slightly apart. Contract. If the hand moves, if the seat shifts, or if the knees pull inward, reset and try again smaller. Almost everyone starts too hard. A correct contraction at the beginning feels like about 30 percent effort, not maximum.

An eight-week progression

Most instructions stop at “do ten a day”, which is strange, because progression is the entire principle behind training any other muscle. Here is a structure that matches how the clinical protocols escalate.

Weeks 1–2 — finding and holding. 2 sets per day. 10 contractions per set. Hold 3 seconds, rest 6 seconds between reps. Only goal: clean isolation, no substitution. If you can only manage 2 seconds cleanly, do 2.

Weeks 3–4 — building the hold. 2–3 sets per day. 10 contractions. Hold 5 seconds, rest 10 seconds. Add one set of 10 fast contractions (1 second on, 1 second off) at the end of one session — fast twitch and slow twitch are different jobs.

Weeks 5–6 — position and load. 3 sets per day. 10 contractions at 7–8 seconds, rest 10–15 seconds. Move one set from lying down to sitting, and one to standing. Standing is considerably harder, and if form collapses there, drop back to sitting for that set.

Weeks 7–8 — maintenance load. 3 sets per day. 10–12 contractions at 10 seconds, rest equal to the hold. One fast set. One set integrated into normal life — walking, standing in a queue.

After week eight the useful move is not more volume. It is holding this level. Pelvic floor gains fade when you stop, the same way any strength adaptation does.

Frequency: why more is not better

Three sets a day is the upper end of what published protocols use, and it is a ceiling rather than a target. This is skeletal muscle. It fatigues, it needs recovery, and a fatigued pelvic floor performs worse, not better — which is precisely the opposite of what you are training for. Five to six days a week with one or two off days is more productive than a daily grind.

The failure mode here is not undertraining. It is a man who reads that kegels help erections, does 200 a day for three weeks, and ends up with an aching perineum and a worse baseline than he started with.

Reverse kegels, and when they matter more

A reverse kegel is the release half of the movement: instead of lifting and squeezing, you actively lengthen and let the pelvic floor drop. The easiest cue is a slow exhale with the belly relaxed, or the sensation at the very start of urinating.

They belong in the program from week one — one set of 10 slow releases, 5 seconds each, after your contraction work. A muscle you can only shorten is half trained, and the ability to relax on demand is what actually matters during sex and during urination.

There is a point where reverse kegels become the more important half: if you sit for long hours, clench under stress, or notice tension in the perineum at rest. In those cases the pelvic floor is not weak. It is short. Adding contractions to a short muscle makes it shorter.

When the pelvic floor is too tight

This is a real and reasonably common problem, not a theoretical caveat. Signs it applies to you:

Aching or pressure in the perineum, the base of the penis, or deep in the pelvis
A frequent urge to urinate with little volume, or a stream that hesitates
Symptoms that get worse on training days and better on rest days
A flaccid penis that feels retracted, cold, and rubbery rather than soft

That last one overlaps heavily with what men describe as hard flaccid, and pelvic floor overactivity is one of the mechanisms most often discussed for it. If any of this appears, the correction is not to push through. Stop the contractions entirely, keep only the reverse kegels and diaphragmatic breathing, and give it two weeks. If nothing improves, see a doctor — muscle tone has to be assessed in person, which you cannot do from a blog post.

What this does not do

Pelvic floor training changes how firmly blood is held. It does not change the dimensions of the tissue. Nobody has published a finding that it does, and any page telling you otherwise is selling something.

For context on the dimensions themselves: in a 2015 review of 15,521 men published in BJU International, Veale and colleagues found an average erect length of 5.17 inches (13.12 cm) and an average erect girth of 4.59 inches (11.66 cm). If you want to see where a measurement lands against that distribution, the percentile calculator does it, and how to measure correctly matters more than most men expect, since bad technique moves the number by more than most training ever will.

When to stop and talk to a doctor

Stop and get it looked at if you have pain during or after the exercises that lasts more than a day, blood in urine, difficulty starting or emptying, numbness in the genitals or perineum, or a sudden change in erections over days or weeks rather than months. Sudden change in particular is worth a urologist’s attention, because erectile function is a circulatory signal and a fast decline is information about more than sex.

And the honest framing on evidence: Dorey’s 2004 trial worked with dozens of men, not thousands. That is still far better evidence than most things in this field have, which is why this article can state a benefit at all — and it is also why the claim stays narrow: firmer, better controlled, not bigger.

Questions

How long before pelvic floor exercises make a difference?

Most published protocols run for three to six months before they measure anything. In a randomized trial by Dorey and colleagues, men trained for three months before the first assessment, and the group kept improving between month three and month six. If you have done two weeks and felt nothing, that is the expected result, not a failure.

How many kegels should a man do per day?

Three short sets a day is the ceiling in most clinical protocols, not the starting point. Begin with two sets of 8 to 10 contractions and add volume over about eight weeks. The pelvic floor is skeletal muscle and needs recovery days like any other muscle, so five to six days a week beats seven.

What is a reverse kegel?

A reverse kegel is the opposite movement: instead of lifting and squeezing the pelvic floor, you actively lengthen and release it, the way you do at the start of urinating or during a slow exhale. It matters because a muscle that can only contract is only half trained, and because tension without release is what makes a pelvic floor too tight.

Can pelvic floor exercises make your penis bigger?

No. Pelvic floor training changes how firmly blood is held in an erection, which can make an erection feel harder and stand at a steeper angle. It does not change the length or girth of the tissue itself, and no study has ever reported that it does.

How do I know if my pelvic floor is too tight?

The usual signs are aching in the perineum or the base of the penis, a constant urge to urinate with little coming out, discomfort that gets worse after training rather than better, and a flaccid penis that feels retracted and rubbery. If that pattern shows up, stop the contractions, keep only the relaxation work, and see a doctor if it persists.

Sources

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