Your kegel muscles, more accurately called pelvic floor muscles, sit at the very bottom of your pelvis. They form a bowl-shaped sheet of muscle that stretches from your pubic bone in front to your tailbone in back, creating a supportive “hammock” that holds up your bladder, rectum, and (in women) the uterus. There are 14 individual muscles that intertwine and layer together to form this structure, and a kegel exercise contracts them as a group.
What the Pelvic Floor Looks Like
Picture a wide, shallow bowl made of muscle fibers sitting inside the ring of your pelvis. The bulk of it is a muscle called the levator ani, which itself is made up of three smaller muscles that fan out in slightly different directions. One component loops around the rectum like a sling. Another stretches from the pubic bone to the tailbone. A third reaches from the side wall of the pelvis inward. Together they create the main platform of support.
Behind the levator ani, closer to your tailbone, sits a smaller muscle called the coccygeus. It fills in the back portion of the pelvic floor. These muscles don’t just sit flat. They form a gently sloping surface that angles downward from front to back, and they can rise and descend as they contract and relax.
Two Layers, Two Jobs
The pelvic floor has a deep layer and a superficial layer, and they serve different purposes. The deep layer, which includes the levator ani and coccygeus, acts as the structural floor. These muscles physically hold your pelvic organs in place and control the elevation and descent of that muscular platform. When you do a kegel, you’re primarily engaging this deep group.
The superficial layer sits below the deep layer, closer to the skin. It includes the external anal sphincter and muscles around the perineum (the area between your genitals and anus). These muscles are more involved in closing off the anal canal and supporting the openings of the urethra and vagina. Both layers work together, but the deep muscles do the heavy lifting when it comes to organ support and bladder control.
How to Find Them in Your Own Body
These muscles are internal, so you can’t see or touch them the way you would a bicep. But you can feel them working. The simplest way is to imagine you’re trying to stop passing gas. That squeezing sensation deep in your pelvis, a slight pulling feeling near your rectum, is your pelvic floor contracting.
For women, another method is to insert a clean finger into the vagina and squeeze as if holding in urine. If you feel tightness around your finger, you’ve found the right muscles. For men, think of pulling in and lifting up your genitals. You may notice a slight upward movement at the base of the penis when you engage these muscles correctly. Both of these cues point to the same group of muscles, just felt from slightly different angles depending on anatomy.
Where People Feel Them Wrong
One of the most common problems with kegel exercises is engaging the wrong muscles entirely. Many people clench their glutes, squeeze their inner thighs, or brace their abdominal muscles instead of isolating the pelvic floor. This is easy to do because the pelvic floor is hidden and unfamiliar, so the brain recruits nearby muscles it knows better.
The problem isn’t just wasted effort. Squeezing your stomach muscles during a kegel actually pushes down on your bladder, which is the opposite of what you want. If you notice your buttocks lifting off the chair, your stomach pulling inward, or your thighs pressing together, those are signs you’re using accessory muscles instead of the pelvic floor. The correct contraction feels internal and relatively subtle. Nothing visible should move on the outside of your body.
Why Location Matters for Both Sexes
People sometimes assume kegel muscles are only relevant to women, but the anatomy is nearly identical in both sexes. Men and women both have a levator ani and coccygeus forming the same bowl-shaped floor. In women, the pelvic floor has three openings passing through it: the urethra, vagina, and rectum. In men, there are two: the urethra and rectum. The muscles wrap around all of these openings, which is why they play a role in bladder control, bowel control, and sexual function regardless of sex.
The pelvic floor also works constantly without you thinking about it. These muscles maintain a low level of tension throughout the day to keep organs in place and prevent leaking. They contract reflexively when you cough, sneeze, or lift something heavy. When they weaken from pregnancy, surgery, aging, or chronic straining, that baseline support drops, and problems like urinary leakage or a feeling of pelvic heaviness can develop. Knowing where these muscles are is the first step toward training them effectively, because you can’t strengthen a muscle you can’t find.