Kegels are simple squeeze-and-release exercises that strengthen the muscles forming the floor of your pelvis. They involve contracting those muscles for a few seconds, then fully relaxing, and repeating. The entire routine takes under five minutes and requires no equipment. Here’s exactly how to find the right muscles, build a daily practice, and progress over time.
Finding Your Pelvic Floor Muscles
Before you start, you need to know which muscles you’re targeting. The easiest way is to squeeze as if you’re trying to stop yourself from passing gas. You should feel muscles deep inside your pelvis pull inward and upward. That lifting sensation is the key sign you’ve found the right group.
Another method: imagine you’re urinating and try to stop the flow midstream. The muscles that tighten are your pelvic floor. Use this only as a one-time identification technique, not as a regular exercise. Repeatedly stopping your urine stream can interfere with normal bladder function. If you have a vagina, you can also insert a finger and try to squeeze around it. You should feel gentle pressure around your finger as the muscles contract.
A common mistake is engaging your glutes, inner thighs, or abdominal muscles instead of (or along with) your pelvic floor. When you contract, your stomach, legs, and buttocks should stay relaxed. If you notice your belly tightening or your thighs pressing together, you’re recruiting the wrong muscles. It helps to place a hand on your abdomen while practicing so you can feel whether it stays soft.
The Basic Technique
There are two types of contractions to practice: slow and quick.
For slow contractions, squeeze your pelvic floor muscles and hold for a count of three. Then relax completely for the same amount of time before squeezing again. That full relaxation between contractions matters just as much as the squeeze. Over the following days and weeks, gradually increase your hold time until you can sustain a contraction for about 10 seconds, with a 10-second rest between each one.
For quick contractions, squeeze and release as rapidly as you can, one squeeze per second. These train the fast-twitch muscle fibers that kick in when you cough, sneeze, or laugh.
A good starter routine for your first week looks like this: 5 quick contractions, then 10 slow contractions held for 3 seconds each, then 5 more quick contractions. That’s one set. As your endurance builds, work up to 10 to 15 repetitions of slow contractions per set, with longer holds.
How Often to Practice
Aim for at least three sets per day. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases recommends doing your exercises in three different positions each day: lying down, sitting, and standing. This trains your pelvic floor to work in the postures you actually use throughout daily life.
A practical schedule might look like this: one set in the morning while making breakfast (standing), one in the afternoon at your desk or in the car (sitting), and one in the evening while lying in bed. Because no one can see you doing them, Kegels fit into almost any moment of your day.
When You’ll Notice Results
Most people notice improvement after six to eight weeks of consistent daily practice. How quickly changes appear depends on how weak your muscles were to start and how reliably you stick with the routine. Pelvic floor training has been shown to reduce urine leakage episodes by 50% to 69% in women with stress incontinence, which is leakage triggered by coughing, sneezing, or physical activity. Those numbers come from doing the exercises regularly over several months, not from occasional practice.
If you skip days frequently, expect a slower timeline. Treat Kegels like any other muscle-strengthening exercise: consistency is what produces change.
Kegels for Men
Kegels aren’t just for women. Men have the same pelvic floor muscles, and strengthening them helps with bladder control and can support sexual function. The identification method is the same: squeeze as though you’re stopping yourself from passing gas or cutting off urine flow, and feel for that inward-and-upward lift.
Pelvic floor training is particularly effective for men recovering from prostate surgery. In a randomized trial of 60 men who had robotic prostatectomy, those who did Kegels three times a day used significantly fewer incontinence pads by the first month and continued to improve through the sixth month. By six months, men in the exercise group were far more likely to report using no pads at all compared to the control group. Starting the exercises before surgery and continuing afterward produced the strongest results.
After Childbirth
Pregnancy and delivery stretch and weaken the pelvic floor considerably. Light pelvic floor contractions (gentle squeeze and release) can be started within the first two weeks postpartum, as long as they don’t cause pain. If they’re uncomfortable, wait a bit longer.
By weeks three to four, you can begin short holds of under five seconds, coordinating the contraction with your breathing: exhale as you squeeze, inhale as you relax. This also helps retrain the connection between your pelvic floor and your deep abdominal muscles, which work as a team. Progress gradually from there, increasing hold times and repetitions as your body recovers.
Do You Need Devices or Biofeedback?
Weighted vaginal cones and biofeedback sensors are marketed as ways to improve your results. The evidence, however, is underwhelming. A Cochrane review of 33 studies found that adding a biofeedback device to pelvic floor training produced little to no difference in quality of life, cure rates, or meaningful reduction in leakage episodes. Women using biofeedback reported slightly higher satisfaction with their treatment experience, but their actual outcomes were essentially the same as those doing exercises alone.
In short, your own muscles and consistent practice are the main tools you need. Devices aren’t harmful, but they’re not necessary for most people.
When Kegels Can Make Things Worse
Not everyone should be doing Kegels. If your pelvic floor muscles are already too tight (a condition called hypertonic pelvic floor), adding more contractions can increase pain rather than relieve symptoms. Signs that your pelvic floor may be overly tight include constant pelvic, low back, or hip pain, bladder pain or a frequent urgent need to urinate, pain during sex, and difficulty fully emptying your bladder or bowels.
If those symptoms sound familiar, strengthening exercises aren’t the right starting point. People with a hypertonic pelvic floor typically need to learn to relax and lengthen those muscles first, often with the help of a pelvic floor physical therapist who can assess whether your muscles are weak, tight, or both. The treatment for a tight pelvic floor is essentially the opposite of Kegels: focused release work, stretching, and breathing techniques.