Rubber Band Kegels (RBKs) - Explained

[beavertaffy]

Note: I'm putting this in the "PE Science and Theory Forum", because it's pretty early on in my experimentation with these, and I wrote this in a kind of science-heavy way.

Rubber Band Kegels (RBKs)

Why RBKs Should Work Way Better Than Standard Kegels:

• The muscles that are exercised by kegels are skeletal muscle, and there is a lot of information out there on training skeletal muscle (and what works and what doesn't). It responds the fastest and plateaus the latest with dynamic, progressively resisted exercise that give the body biofeedback (generally about force production). The standard "flex your pelvic muscles as if you were trying not to pee" method of trying to train these muscles flies in the face of what we already know about strengthening skeletal muscles.
• I've seen at least one study that tested isometric, unmeasured exercise (by having people pinch blocks as hard as they can as a training method for pinch-grip strength) and it's effects on strength development. It found that for the first 2 weeks or so, a small strength increase occurred, but after that continued training in this method (without motion, resistance, or biofeedback) yielded almost no results. It severely plateaued - and it did it early. This is what the old-school standard kegels are like.
• Your body needs to know how much force it is producing to learn to produce more. When you are doing a kegel and you contract with 5% more force on one rep than you did on another rep, your body needs to know it! This is how it learns to progress; after experiencing differences in outcome, it starts sending nerve signals that are more similar to the attempts that had better outcomes. If you're body has to no feedback about which attempts worked the best, progression grinds to a halt. It's like trying to learn to play darts in the dark.
• The muscle building response follows the neurological learning response. As your nervous system learns to send electrical signals that tax the muscle more, the muscle finally finds itself doing things that are stressful enough on it that it must reorganize, adapt and grow.
• Fun fact: Dr. Arnold Kegel didn't encourage doing the kind of exercises that are most often attributed to him today (having women just squeeze nothing). His method actually involved having women squeeze a device called perineometer which measured and gave biofeedback to the women about how much pressure they were producing.
• I've focused on the biofeedback aspect of this because I think it's the part people are the least likely to already be familiar with. If you're unfamiliar with the concepts of progressive overload in weight training or the importance of concentric and eccentric (positive and negative) loading versus just isometric (stationary) loading, feel free to search for those on the internet if you're interested.

The Rubber Band Kegel (RBK) Exercise:

• There is potentially a lot to gain through having a way of exercising these muscles that fits the above criteria. If the effects that men have experienced with standard kegels could be exaggerated to several times that effect size, with less time spent on them, this could help PE a lot.
• One way of doing that is through RBKs. I've experimented with a couple other ways of targeting these muscles, but this method appears to be the simplest and most effective.
• All you need is a rubber band of appropriate strength that is flat so it will not roll up or down your shaft as you do the exercise. Examples that might work are the ones that come around broccoli, celery or lobsters at the super market.
• To do the exercise you just position the rubber band around your shaft while you are fully erect, then hold the other end of the rubber band to your stomach. Holding it to your stomach helps standardize how stretched the rubber band is to help you be able to notice progress. As you kegel your penis will move down/away from your stomach, stretching the rubber band.

Reps/Sets:

• My recommendation is 5 sets of 12 reps, approximately every other day. As the entire point of this is being able to progress the resistance instead of excessively progressing the training volume, I don't recommend trying to do huge amounts of volume. Do each rep so that you squeeze up (slowly or explosively, both have their benefits), pause at the top for 2 seconds, then try to control the movement back down. By the later part of a 12 rep set, if you have the rubber band positioned to be an appropriate resistance, the last few reps will be really difficult, and you'll soften a little bit. After a minute or two of edging, looking at porn, or whatever you will be doing to encourage your erection, it will bounce right back to full hardness. Then you start the next set.

Adjusting the Resistance:

• The main way to adjust the resistance is to change the position of the rubber band along your shaft. The higher towards the tip you put it, the more difficult it will be. The further down towards your base you put it, the easier it will be. As you become stronger, progress to moving the rubber band up the shaft.
• Every now and then look down at your penis and pay attention to how far your contraction is moving it forwards. This helps you gauge if you are using the right resistance; you should be going through a good range of motion, but it should not be easy. Also as you look down pay attention and fight to get the tip to move forward/down that extra tiny bit; this kind of focus and mentality is a lot of what makes weight training work.
• If the only flat rubber band you can find is so strong that it is too difficult even with it positioned near your base, you can weaken a rubber band by cutting a thin sliver along the edge off of the band.

Doing Standard Kegels in Addition to RBKs:

• I don't recommend doing many standard kegels in addition to the RBKs. If you choose to do some - do them minimally. I don't think doing 50 quick squeezes while you're sitting at work will cause a problem, but you don't want to tire yourself out too much with the less effective version.

If you decide you give these a try for a couple/few weeks, please be sure to report back about how well it works for you in terms of hardness, ejaculation distance, orgasm intensity and progress with the exercise itself (and anything else you feel like mentioning). So far I've only tested them out on myself. As of now, I've been doing these for about 3 weeks and I'm noticing significantly more hardness, significantly increased ejaculation velocity and somewhat more intense-feeling orgasms. Throughout my life I've very rarely actually shot it out, and since I started doing this I'm consistently flinging it on par with the best shots I've ever had before doing this....And I've done plenty of regular kegels.

[beavertaffy]

Also, on a side note (and I apologize for my bad timing) I will be on a business trip where I may not have the privacy to check back on this for the next couple weeks. So I won't be able to respond to this thread for a while. I apologize if this stirs up a lot of discussion and then I disappear as soon as I post it. Have a good couple of weeks everyone!

P.s. I will be bringing the rubber band I've been using on the trip though and will continue working with these to see if the effects keep increasing to higher levels.

[Gator]

Thank you much for this information beaver, rep points for sure! I also gave this thread a sticky.

I know I had been meaning to ask you about this. Thanks for posting it. This seems like a fantastic way to do kegels and who can argue with the results you've been seeing. I know I am going to get started on these as well.

[sacc]

This is a brilliant idea, beaver! I'll try these out and report back. Thanks!

[lelouch]

This method..how would people with a high angle erection go about doing this?

Say the rubber band is holding the penis up while stretched and the other end is at the stomach and then do a kegel, it wouldn't 'resist' would it as when i kegel it would bob up rather than away from my stomach?

Would i have to stretch the band down abit then do kegel? This would definitely give resistance i think..this sounds like an excellent way to do kegels by the way, rather than try and hold 50-100 quick kegels as i do every other day.

Thanks for the post, will give it a try once i get a response on my enquiry.

[kakarotto]

This method..how would people with a high angle erection go about doing this?

Say the rubber band is holding the penis up while stretched and the other end is at the stomach and then do a kegel, it wouldn't 'resist' would it as when i kegel it would bob up rather than away from my stomach?

Would i have to stretch the band down abit then do kegel? This would definitely give resistance i think..this sounds like an excellent way to do kegels by the way, rather than try and hold 50-100 quick kegels as i do every other day.

Thanks for the post, will give it a try once i get a response on my enquiry.

I second the question, my erection has a very high angle (about 11 o´clock) so I think it won´t create enough resistance if I pull it upwards. I think downwards will do the trick for me since my erection will want to go up

Regards

[Gator]

Reverse the positioning of the rubber band. Hold the band underneath your unit down by your balls and kegel.

[beavertaffy]

About the questions regarding high erection levels and doing these so the rubber band pulls the penis down, rather than towards the stomach: I suspect that contracting against a rubber band that's pulling your penis towards your stomach is better than having the rubber band pulling your penis down (although we can't really know unless someone tries it).

Here's why:

• 1st mechanical job done by the muscle: Because of the alignment and position of these muscles, they work in a sort of levering fashion around your pubic bone while you are doing these the way I'm suggesting them. At the angle I'm describing the exercise, (with the rubber band pulling the penis towards the stomach) these muscles pull the crura (extreme base) sort of back/inwards, which levers the rest of the penis forwards (away from the stomach), around the pubic bone as an axis.
• 2nd mechanical job done by the muscle: In addition to performing the levering action, these muscles must also pressurize the blood in the penis hard enough that the penis will not bend back around the axis. (otherwise it would be sort of like a rubber crow-bar)
• Doing these at the opposite angle (so the rubber band pulls the penis downwards), as I think you guys are describing, would still involve the muscles performing "job 2" as described above, but would basically factor out "job 1". I think "job 1" is the bigger part of what makes this exercise work. Because of this, I think doing them the opposite way won't do as good of a job at having the muscles contract against resistance through a range of motion. I think the motion that would be seen would have pretty much entirely to do with taking an erection that has normal-erection pressure in it, bending it down a little, then pressurizing it a little more to make it rebound back into position.
• That in itself might also work very well even though it's mechanically a different thing.
• I actually have a pretty high erection angle also; when I lie down with an erection, it is lying almost flat on my stomach. However, when I contract the muscles, it lifts up away from my stomach about 30-40 degrees. This is all the range of motion I need, and honestly, so far as I've been doing these, I've only been getting about 20 degrees of motion as I contract against the rubber band as hard as I can. It's way harder doing it against the rubber band than it is just laying down and lifting your penis against gravity, so I'm not able to contract and lever my penis asfar away from my stomach.
• My recommendation: If when you lay down and kegel nice and hard, it lifts away from your stomach enough to stretch a rubber band, I think doing them as I describe them would be best. If you have such a high erection angle that this is not an option, I say give the alternate positioning a shot. It may work just as well and still be significantly better than standard kegels.
• I hope this helps. In the end I'm sure there will be enough experimental PEers (probably myself included) who will try out both eventually and be able to speak from personal experience about the differences between how good of a workout each gives your pelvic floor muscles.

PS: I also push the rubber band into my stomach to some degree. This stretches the rubber band more and should make more room for people with high erection levels to effectively perform the exercise.

[Pegasus]

Towel lifts work and can be progressive. You could of course do them laying down, pushing your penis away from your body ,though I have never tried(may do so soon). The standard method ,which is well proven, is to stand up and put an object such as a washcloth, over your dick and move it up and down ,over time increase the weight of the object.

[Radiohead]

Excellent post.

There is also another exercise:
1) do 5 super light kegels..you are barely contracting the muscles
2) do 5 light kegels..you feel the contractions, but they are light
3) do 5 medium strength kegels...you feel the muscles working
4) do 5 somewhat powerful kegels
5) do 5 powerful kegels
6) do 3 SUPER strong kegels and hold them for 3 seconds each
7) escalate down, one step at a time, until you reach 5 super light kegels

This is a fantastic kegel exercise. You can have anywhere between 0 and 10 seconds rest between each set of 5 reps.