Kegel exercises for men: how to do them, step by step

This page is the whole method in one place, from your first squeeze to a routine you can keep. Each step links to a longer guide if you want more. Kegels, Kegel exercises and pelvic floor exercises all mean the same thing here: squeezing and releasing one muscle. No equipment needed.

What a Kegel is

Your pelvic floor is a sling of muscle across the base of your pelvis. It runs from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back, and it sits between your scrotum and your anus. A Kegel tightens that sling so it draws up and in. When you let go, it drops back down.

Men have a pelvic floor too. Two of its muscles sit at the base of the penis: squeezing them raises the pressure inside an erect penis, and they contract in rhythm during ejaculation. Erections start with blood flow, not with these muscles.^3,4,5

The movement is small. Done well, nobody watching you would see a thing.

Before you start

Lie on your back with your knees bent and apart. That is how the home exercise sheet in the best-known UK trial of pelvic-floor exercises for men set up the lying position.¹ Breathe normally and let your belly go soft.

Go gently. About half of your strongest squeeze is plenty for the first week. Strongest always means your strongest comfortable squeeze, never a strain.

Read the stop rules once before your first session. If you have pelvic pain, new urinary symptoms or recent surgery, see a doctor before you start.

Step 1: find the muscle

Tighten as if you were in a quiet room and needed to hold in wind. An NHS physiotherapy leaflet uses the same cue: tighten your back passage as if stopping yourself passing wind.² You should feel a small grip draw up and in, between your scrotum and your anus.

Then check it. In a mirror, you should be able to see the base of your penis move nearer to your abdomen and your testicles rise.¹ Check what shouldn't move, too. The trial's cue was to try to avoid holding your breath, pulling in your abdomen or tensing your buttocks.¹ The NHS leaflet adds your thighs to that list.²

Felt nothing? That's normal at first. Squeeze lighter, not harder, and try again tomorrow. Our guide to finding your pelvic floor has three checks, a labelled diagram and a 20-second first try.

Step 2: squeeze up and in

Breathe in. As you breathe out, tighten the muscle. Then go back to normal breathing while you keep the squeeze. That pattern comes from the NHS leaflet.²

Think lift, not clench. A Kegel happens inside you. If your whole lower body tenses, you're squeezing too hard, so drop back to about half effort and try again.

Step 3: hold, and keep breathing

Hold for 3 seconds to start. Then rest for at least as long as you held, so the muscle has fully let go before the next squeeze. Over the following weeks, build toward 10-second holds, the length the NHS leaflet aims for.² Add time only while you can still breathe through the whole hold.

A quick test is to count out loud during a hold. If you can count, you're breathing. If you can't, shorten the hold or make it lighter. How long to hold a Kegel has a full hold ladder and a way to time your own starting hold.

Step 4: let it go all the way

Letting go is half of the exercise. The NHS leaflet asks you to feel the muscle relax and soften each time you let go.² Let it drop right back to zero, and rest there before you squeeze again.

End each session with a short relax set. Take 4 slow breaths, in for 4 seconds and out for 4, and let the area between your scrotum and anus go soft and heavy. Don't push. That is a reverse Kegel, and every GoBeast session ends with one. Our guides to reverse Kegels for men and breathing and your pelvic floor go further.

Quick squeezes

Slow holds are one kind of Kegel. The NHS leaflet pairs them with fast ones: tighten quickly and let go straight away, about one a second, 10 times.² Keep them light and even. The muscle should drop fully between beats. In the GoBeast app this move is called Quickfire.

A beginner routine for week one

This takes about two minutes. Do it once a day, lying on your back with your knees bent.

Train 6 days a week and take 1 day off, the same default as the GoBeast app. Missed a day? Just carry on.

How much is enough? Nobody has settled that. A systematic review of pelvic-floor training trials in men found no best programme.⁶ The NHS leaflet builds up to three sessions a day.² In the best-known UK trial, the home routine was 3 strong squeezes lying, sitting and standing, morning and evening, after coached sessions with a physiotherapist.¹

Week one starts lower than both, on purpose. Our printable 4-week Kegel plan (PDF) takes it from there, and the free Kegel timer counts a beginner session out loud in your browser.

How to progress

Move up only when every rep at your current step has felt clean for several sessions in a row. Clean means you kept breathing, your belly and buttocks stayed soft, and the muscle let go fully each time. Then change one thing at a time, roughly in this order.

1. Longer holds, a second or two at a time, toward 10 seconds.
2. More squeezes per set, toward 10.
3. A new position: sitting, then standing.
4. Light lifts while you walk, at about half effort. The trial's home sheet included these.¹
5. A second session in the day, once the first feels easy.

When you change position, shorten your holds again and build back up. If a step feels hard, stay on it or go back one. Nothing is lost. Our guide to Kegels lying, sitting or standing takes you through each position, with a table for moving between them.

Holding longer isn't the goal in itself. We don't push holds past about 10 seconds in our plans, and the NHS leaflet doesn't ask for more.²

Am I doing Kegels right?

Run through this after any set. If every line is true, your technique is right.

• You felt a small lift between your scrotum and your anus.
• In a mirror, the base of your penis moved nearer to your abdomen and your testicles rose.¹
• You could breathe, or count out loud, through every hold.
• Your belly, buttocks and thighs stayed soft.
• The muscle dropped all the way back after each squeeze.
• Nothing hurt.

If a line fails, our list of 7 Kegel mistakes men make shows the usual cause and what to do instead.

Where and when to do them

Anywhere, once you can do them cleanly lying down. Seated Kegels are invisible at a desk or on a train, and Kegels at your desk has a 3-minute seated routine. Standing ones work in a queue.

The easiest way to keep going is to tie your session to something you already do every day, like waking up or making the first coffee. A session with no set time is the one that gets skipped.

One place not to practise is the toilet. The NHS leaflet says not to practise stopping the flow of urine midstream,² and the GoBeast app has the same rule.

Do Kegels work for men?

Nobody can honestly promise you a result. Here is what the research says, in the wording we use across this site.

Pelvic-floor training has been studied for erection problems. The trials were small, mostly supervised clinic programmes with biofeedback, and their results were mixed. No guideline recommends training for erection problems, so treat it as one tool alongside a check-up with your doctor.^1,6,7

Pelvic-floor training has also been studied for early ejaculation, mostly in small clinic studies of supervised rehab that included electrical stimulation and biofeedback. Not everyone improved, some lost ground over the following years, and where it was compared with a medicine, the medicine did better on average. Guidelines don't recommend training on its own.^8,9,10,5

Nothing has tested GoBeast. What you can check yourself is the skill: finding the muscle, squeezing it cleanly and letting it go. Our guide to whether Kegel exercises work for men goes through what the studies tested and what they didn't, and how long Kegels take to work explains why we won't give you a date.

When to stop

In studies, pelvic-floor training caused few or no reported side effects, but men with pelvic pain weren't included. Pain isn't normal: stop.^8,11

Think your pelvic floor may be tight rather than weak? Read tight or hypertonic pelvic floor in men before you train.

See a doctor before you train if

• You have new or changing urinary symptoms, like a weak stream, straining, peeing more often or at night, or new leaks. See a doctor before starting pelvic-floor training.¹²
• You have had prostate or pelvic surgery or radiotherapy. Follow your care team's plan first. GoBeast isn't designed for recovery after surgery.¹³
• There is blood in your pee. Ask for an urgent doctor's appointment.¹⁴
• You can't pee at all. Get urgent medical help today.¹²
• You have erection problems that keep happening, or no erections at all, including on waking. See a doctor. Erection problems that keep happening can be an early sign of heart or blood-vessel problems, and that matters even if you're young.^15,7

Every Kegel guide, by question

How GoBeast helps

GoBeast is a voice-guided Kegel trainer for men. It does the counting and the reminding, so you can follow the steps on this page with your eyes closed.

• Your free plan starts with the same find-the-muscle cues and a guided first squeeze, before you pay anything.
• Ten Kegel levels, including reverse Kegels. After 5 sessions at a level you move up, as long as the last 2 didn't feel too hard. Miss a few days and your level holds.
• A calm voice and haptic cues for every squeeze, hold and release, with the screen locked in the phone apps. The web app has the same voice cues and keeps the screen on.
• A release at the end of every session, and a Pain button that stops the session and switches you to a relax-first path.

Weighing up apps first? Here's how the main Kegel apps for men compare, or read how the GoBeast app works.

Questions