Here Is The Right Way To Do Kegel Exercises

So you did your squats, your planks, and your push-ups. But have you toned your vag today?

Kegel exercises strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which surround your vagina and urethra and support your bladder. Having a strong pelvic floor is primarily important for preventing incontinence in older women and women who are pregnant or have recently had a baby.

But working the pelvic floor—in particular, the pubococcygeus (or PC) muscle—has another benefit any woman can enjoy: better orgasms. Stronger muscles contract harder, and more contraction means more intense sensation.

The first step in doing Kegel exercises is to learn to flex your pelvic floor muscles.

The most common way to locate, isolate, and exercise your PC muscle is to stand over the toilet, start peeing, then stop midstream. (Standing makes it easier to recruit the muscles than sitting down.) If the pee stops flowing, you’ve nailed it. Remember that feeling.

This doesn’t come naturally to all women. If you’re not sure whether you’re doing it right, you can work with your gynecologist to learn. Just ask—gynos find this question totally normal.

“I like to have my patients do it during an exam,” Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale Medical School, tells SELF. “I put my finger in the vagina and say, ‘Squeeze my finger. OK, you’ve just done a Kegel exercise.’”

Standard Kegels use the squeeze, hold, release method. Minkin says she thinks of it like buzzing the elevator: Elevator goes up, hold the elevator, elevator goes down. There is also the “Knack maneuver,” which is a 2-second clench you use at critical times to prevent accidentally peeing a little, like right before you sneeze.

Then, you can start to work up your Kegel regimen.

Leah Millheiser, M.D., clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University School of Medicine, tells SELF that she usually has her patients start by doing a quick Kegel workout once a day: