Part of Men's pelvic health: pelvic floor dysfunction in men, and where to start
Pelvic floor exercises for men, or Kegels: how to do them properly
Warning signs, and when to get help
Before your first squeeze
Before you squeeze anything, check two things. Either one can make this the wrong page for you.
Surgery first. If you have had prostate or other urological surgery, Continence Health Australia's advice is to wait until your surgeon has checked your healing before starting pelvic floor exercises, and the timings and the program come from the team that operated. If your catheter is still in, that check has not happened yet, so none of the holds or counts below is yours to start. The surgery section further down explains why nobody publishes a date for a man still carrying one.
Then the opposite problem, the one this page can make worse. Some men come to it with a pelvic floor already working too hard rather than too little, and for them squeezing is the wrong instruction. Continence Health Australia lists what you may notice when these muscles are tight or overactive: pelvic pain, pain during or after sex, urgency, frequent or painful urination, and constipation or difficulty emptying the bowel. If any of that is your main complaint, get assessed before you start a strengthening program, because overactivity is treated with activation and relaxation together rather than with more squeezes. Male pelvic pain sets out that fork, and tight or weak pelvic floor has a men's section on telling the two apart.
Male pelvic floor exercises, step by step
Sit on a firm chair with your knees slightly apart, or lie on your back with your knees bent. Lying down is easier for most men at the start, and POGP suggests beginning in sitting or lying.
Now the squeeze, in the order the two sources written for men describe it. Lift from the front first, as though you were trying to stop the flow of urine, or, in POGP's description, to shorten and draw the penis up and inwards. Then lift from the back, as though you were holding in wind. Then do both together, which is the exercise itself.
Breathe out as you lift. POGP puts it as lifting the pelvic floor on your out-breath. The commonest fault here is the opposite: holding your breath and pushing down while you believe you are lifting.
Keep your shoulders, tummy, bottom and thighs relaxed, as Continence Health Australia asks. A slight tightening low in the tummy or in the buttocks alongside the squeeze is normal, and deliberately clenching the buttocks is not the exercise. If you have high blood pressure, breathe steadily through every hold and never hold your breath.
Then let go, all the way, and notice that it has let go. The release is half of this and it is the half that gets dropped.
How do you know you are using the right muscle?
Two checks, both specific to men.
The perineum check comes from POGP. Rest your fingertips on the perineum, the area between the scrotum and the back passage, and squeeze. You are feeling for a lift away from your fingers, not a bulge pressing into them. A bulge means you are bearing down, the opposite of what you want.
If you get that bulge, or if you feel nothing move at all, stop rather than squeezing harder. Bearing down repeatedly is straining, and POGP lists straining among the things that weaken a pelvic floor, not build one, so more effort in that direction is worse than none. Continence Health Australia's instruction is to change position and try again, so if you were sitting, try it lying down instead, and breathe out as you lift.
Then put a limit on how long you keep trying alone. POGP tells a man who cannot feel a definite tightening in these muscles to seek professional advice. Continence Health Australia names not being able to feel the muscles tighten or relax as a reason to get help. Neither source attaches a waiting period.
The mirror check comes from Continence Health Australia. Stand in front of a mirror and squeeze while you watch. The penis draws in slightly toward your tummy and the testicles lift. Nothing dramatic happens and nothing needs to. Judge the direction, not the size.
The wrong result is no movement at all, or movement in the opposite direction: down and out instead of in and up. That is the same bearing-down fault as above, and it wants the same answer. Watch the letting go as well: Continence Health Australia says there should be a feeling of release when you relax, and if you cannot find it, your hold was too long for today.
Then the one everybody tries first. Stopping the stream midstream does find the muscle, and it is not the exercise. Continence Health Australia says to try it only once or twice, because doing it regularly can interrupt the bladder's natural rhythm and make it harder for the bladder to work. POGP's leaflet does not use the test at all. It asks you to imagine stopping the flow while you squeeze, which reaches the same muscle without involving your bladder, and checks the squeeze at the perineum or in the mirror.
The perineum check and the mirror check are the ones to use from day to day, and if you already have any difficulty emptying, leave your stream alone and read the emptying paragraph under "When squeezes are the wrong exercise" further down.
If you have not had prostate or urological surgery and you find you cannot stop the stream at all, that is a reason to get assessed. Continence Health Australia names not being able to stop the stream of urine among the signs that these muscles need help. Testing it again is the one thing not to do.
Two men should leave the stream check alone completely. If you have had your prostate removed, that operation takes out the valve at the bladder's outlet and leaves the second one, below where the prostate was, to do the whole job. In the early months many men cannot stop the stream however good the squeeze is, and failing the test tells you nothing except that you have had the operation. And if a catheter is still in, there is no stream to stop, and squeezing against the tube is not a check. In both of those, use the perineum check and the mirror check, and read the surgery paragraph further down before you start anything at all.
How many, how long, and how often
Before the numbers, one gate. If you have had prostate or other urological surgery, do not start from these figures: the start date and the program come from the team that operated, and if your catheter is still in, that date has not arrived.
Two national sources write a dose for men and they do not write the same one. Worth knowing before you decide one of them is wrong, because a man handed one of them in a clinic sometimes finds the other online and stops trusting both.
Continence Health Australia hands you numbers. Hold for 3 seconds at first and build to 5 to 8 seconds as the muscle allows. Rest for as long as you held. Do 3 to 5 squeezes in a set and build toward 8 to 10, and aim for 3 sets each day, with 3 to 5 quick squeezes as an option, building toward 8 to 10 of those as well.
POGP starts from the other end, and it tells you how to find your own figure. Lift, and count the seconds you can hold comfortably. Then count how many holds of that length you can repeat before the muscle tires. Those two numbers are your program for today, and POGP's own worked example is a man who holds for 5 seconds and manages 6 of them, so he starts on 6 holds of 5 seconds. Count your quick lifts the same way, by how many you can do before they fade.
From there POGP asks you to build over the next few weeks toward a target of as many as 10 long squeezes, each one held as long as 10 seconds, and then as many as 10 quick ones, at least 3 times each day. Rest at least 5 seconds between the long ones.
Both sets of figures are ranges, and in both the upper numbers are a destination rather than a starting line. If your hold collapses at two seconds, two seconds is your dose today. Follow one source or the other rather than mixing them, and if a clinician has already handed you a program, that is the one: taking the longest hold from one and the highest count from the other builds a dose neither of them wrote. More is not better here either, because both doses are built around the rest between squeezes. Your physio will adjust this, and after an operation the surgical team's instructions come ahead of either source.
That last point is a gate, not a preference. If you have had prostate or other urological surgery, neither of these doses is yours until the team that operated has checked your healing and told you to start, and if your catheter is still in, that date has not arrived. Nothing on this page is a reason to begin earlier, or to do more, than the date and the numbers you were given. The long squeezes and the quick ones improve separately, so dropping the quick ones because they feel too easy is a mistake: a cough needs a fast squeeze, not a long one.
One extra technique is specific to men, and nothing else on this site covers it. For dribbling after you finish passing urine, POGP describes tightening the pelvic floor muscles strongly afterwards to clear the last drops. It is a different move from the daily exercises and does not replace them, and if the dribbling comes with a weak or stop-start stream, read the emptying section below first.
What are the benefits of pelvic floor exercises for men?
Search results on this phrase promise a great deal more than any of the documents do, so stick to what the two sources for men actually list.
POGP's leaflet lists the symptoms the exercises may help in men: stress urinary incontinence, urgency and urge incontinence, bowel or anal incontinence, dribbling after passing urine, erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. Continence Health Australia's men's page covers leaking, urgency, bowel control and sexual sensation and function. The exercises are offered for bladder and bowel control first, and that is where the published evidence sits.
The strongest trials of pelvic floor muscle training for bladder control were done in women. In men, almost all of the bladder research was done after a radical prostatectomy, and there the picture is mixed enough to need its own page: pelvic floor exercises after prostate surgery sets out the European recommendation, its Weak strength rating and the trials on both sides. For men who have not had surgery, the technique and the dose are professional guidance, not trial results.
The benefit worth expecting is better bladder control, and better awareness of a muscle you had never consciously used. A few minutes a day buys that, and it is not the same claim as a cure.
Do they help erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation?
Both of the national sources written for men say they can, and there are trials behind it, though none that settle a number.
POGP's leaflet states that good pelvic floor muscles help maintain an erection and may prevent premature ejaculation, and it suggests tightening the pelvic floor muscles during intercourse to maintain the quality of an erection. Continence Health Australia stops a step short of that: it names sexual sensation and function, including erection and ejaculation, among the jobs the pelvic floor muscles do, and reduced sexual sensation among the signs of a weak one.
Neither of them attaches a trial reference, so the trials have to be read separately, and they are worth reading carefully. A systematic review of 10 trials in men with erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation concluded that pelvic floor muscle training appears effective for both. It said in the same breath that the studies were of low to moderate quality, that they varied too much in protocol for the results to be pooled, and that no best protocol has been identified (Myers 2019). Those trials excluded men who had had major urological surgery, so none of it describes the man reading this after a prostatectomy.
For premature ejaculation on its own, a 2026 meta-analysis of 5 randomized trials covered 236 men, 216 of them in the pooled figures. It found the exercises alone doing less for the time to ejaculation than a drug (dapoxetine), and less than the exercises combined with breathing work or a device, with wide variation between the trials (de Oliveira 2026).
So pelvic floor training here is a real line of treatment with trials behind it. Nobody can tell you the size of the effect in you. And for premature ejaculation, the exercises on their own look like the weaker of the options that have been compared. Presenting any of that as a settled effect would be overclaiming, which is what the popular pages on this phrase do.
If you have had your prostate removed, read all of that as being about somebody else, because the review above excluded men who had had major urological surgery and the picture after this operation is a different one. Trouble getting an erection is expected in the early months and has causes, chiefly the nerves that run along each side of the prostate, that a pelvic floor squeeze does not reach. And once the prostate and the seminal vesicles behind it are gone there is no fluid left to ejaculate, so a dry orgasm is the normal result of the operation, not a new symptom.
Plenty can still be done, and the people to ask are the team that operated, who have treatments for both. The warning lines on this page about a new change in erection or ejaculation are written for a man whose surgery is behind him and who has noticed something change since. If you cannot tell whether what you have is the expected early change or something new, go by the warning list and not by this paragraph.
If you are already doing the exercises for bladder control, two national sources give you reasons to keep going. If sexual function is your main concern, that is a medical conversation, not an exercise program. New trouble getting or keeping an erection, or new trouble ejaculating, deserves an appointment in its own right. If it arrives with back pain, leg symptoms or numbness around the genitals and back passage, read the first two lines of the warning list on this page now.
How long before you notice a difference?
Use the figure written for men, not the general one.
POGP tells men to expect an improvement in 3 to 6 months and says in its own words that pelvic floor exercises are not a quick fix. That leaflet is dated 2021 and its own footer set 2025 as the year it was due for review. We use it for its technique and for the figures it states, not as an up-to-date reading of the evidence. Continence Health Australia is more encouraging about the early weeks and says many men see results within weeks. It treats symptoms that have not started to improve after 3 weeks, or that are getting worse, as a reason to get assessed, not a reason to stop.
Three weeks is a checkpoint, not a deadline: if nothing has shifted at all by then, book the assessment and keep practicing while you wait. Three to six months is the horizon for judging whether the program has worked. In clinic, the men who give up usually stop somewhere in the first month, which is before either source expects anything to have happened.
What changes first is rarely the leaking. Usually it is that the squeeze is easier to find, then that the last few in a set stop fading, then that the leaks get smaller and need a bigger effort to produce. The ones that go last are the efforts you cannot prepare for.
The mistakes that waste the effort
Most of the wasted months come down to four faults, and none of them is willpower.
Holding your breath turns a lift into a brace and loads the floor from above. Pulling the tummy in hard does the same. Clenching the buttocks and thighs means something is certainly happening, but not where you wanted it. And starting the next squeeze before the last one has let go is why set after set feels progressively weaker.
The fifth is quieter: doing them only in bed. Lying down flatters almost everybody, so the squeeze that feels solid under the duvet is usually much weaker upright, and upright is where men leak. Carrying the same squeezes from lying into sitting and then into standing tests whether the muscle works where you actually need it. If the lift disappears as you get to your feet, that is the position to work in.
Lifting under load is the same question with weight on it. Lifting weights with a weak pelvic floor covers that side, and our pelvic floor exercise lying down page carries the video and its own stop signs. Take your numbers from the dose section above rather than from that page: the general figure there, 8 to 10 three times a day, is where Continence Health Australia's build finishes and close to where POGP's finishes, rather than where either of them starts.
Letting go matters as much as squeezing
A muscle that never fully releases is not getting stronger, it is getting tired.
Time the lift with your breath out and the release with your breath in. Our pelvic floor exercise lying down video is built that way, so the release gets a breath of its own. If you cannot feel the muscles drop back to rest, your hold was too long for today. Shorten it instead of pushing through, and the whole set will be stronger.
Some men arrive at this page already unable to let go, and for them the squeezes are the wrong instruction entirely. Tight or weak pelvic floor sets out that fork, and it has a men's section.
When squeezes are the wrong exercise
In three situations the answer is somewhere else on this site, not a program.
Pain. If your main complaint is ache in the pelvis, the perineum, the testicles or the back passage, pain during or after sex, or a sense that you can never fully relax down there, the likely pattern is an overactive floor rather than a weak one. Strengthening is the wrong direction. Go to male pelvic pain before you start, and read what a guideline-level answer to that pattern actually looks like.
Emptying. A weak or stop-start stream, waiting for the stream to start, dribbling after you thought you had finished, or a bladder that never feels empty is a flow problem rather than a closure problem. The causes are a different set, and men's pelvic health sets them out with the NHS as its source. Squeezing does not move a blockage, and in a man who is struggling to empty it can make things harder. That is a doctor's appointment, and signs of a weak pelvic floor sets out the male symptom list and this distinction in full. Straining and difficulty emptying the bowel belong on pelvic floor weakness, constipation and bowel control, where the answer is coordination rather than squeezes.
Surgery. If you have had prostate or other urological surgery, Continence Health Australia's advice is to wait until your surgeon has checked your healing before starting pelvic floor exercises, and the timings and the program come from the team that operated. If your catheter is still in, that check has not happened yet. The only timing figure we have found in any guideline counts from the day the catheter comes out rather than from the day of the operation, so nobody publishes a date for the man still carrying one. Whether anything at all should be done before then is a question for the unit that operated, and not one this page can answer for you. The holds and the counts further up are written for a man who has already been cleared to train.
After that, the program staged for you is pelvic floor exercises after prostate surgery, and what the first weeks and months usually look like is on life after prostate surgery.
When to get assessed
Book the assessment if you cannot feel the muscles working at all, if nothing has started to improve after about 3 weeks of honest practice, if squeezing hurts, or if leaking is deciding where you go and what you do. Ask for a pelvic health physiotherapist, or a pelvic health physical therapist in the USA, or a continence nurse specialist.
Take two things with you. What your bladder is actually doing, including the stream and when the leaks happen, and what you have already tried and for how long. The sentence "I have squeezed three times a day for four months and nothing has changed" is the most useful thing you can say in the first minute.
Everything in the warning list below comes ahead of this section, and nothing on it is managed with exercises. Red flags in physiotherapy explains why we keep that list separate, and men's pelvic health is the map for the rest of this topic.
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: numbness, tingling or altered feeling around or under your genitals, between your inner thighs, or around your bottom (anus), for example it feels different when you wipe after using the toilet. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a sign of pressure on the bundle of nerves at the base of the spine (cauda equina syndrome), which needs emergency treatment.
- Emergency: you suddenly cannot control your bladder or bowels at all. The same applies to new leaking of pee or poo, new trouble starting to pee, not being able to feel yourself peeing, not noticing when you need to poo, a new change in how your genitals feel during sex, new trouble getting or keeping an erection, new trouble ejaculating, or new trouble reaching orgasm, if it comes with back pain, sciatica, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in one or both legs. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can also be signs of cauda equina syndrome.
- Emergency: you cannot pee at all, especially if your lower tummy feels full and painful. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: sciatica in both legs, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs. The same applies if you lose feeling in one leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: if you have an artificial urinary sphincter, the device with a pump in your scrotum that you squeeze when you want to pee, and you cannot pee at all, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. Say that you have an artificial urinary sphincter as soon as you arrive, and say it again before anyone passes a tube (catheter) into your bladder for any reason, because the cuff around the tube that carries your urine out (the urethra) has to be switched off first. Passing a catheter through a cuff that is still closed is one of the recognized causes of the cuff wearing through that tube (erosion), and the staff in front of you will not know the device is there unless you tell them. If you were given a card or a letter about the device, show it, and if you are not sure you have been understood, ask for a urologist or the urology team on call to be involved before any catheter goes in, because a catheter placed by someone not trained in the device is one of the listed risks for that erosion.
- Emergency: sudden, severe pain in a testicle, testicle pain that comes with feeling sick, being sick or pain in your tummy, or testicle pain that has lasted more than an hour or carries on while you rest. Go to an emergency department straight away or call emergency services, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: since any operation in your pelvis, including an operation for prolapse or for leaking, removal of the womb (hysterectomy) or removal of the prostate gland, you have pain in your tummy or pelvis that is severe or came on suddenly, a wound from the operation that opens up, bleeding that suddenly becomes much heavier or that soaks a pad within an hour, or you feel faint, dizzy or breathless, your heart is pounding, or you feel very unwell. Stop your pelvic floor exercises and call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: you have had cancer, now or in the past, and your back or neck pain feels like a tight band around your body, or you have new or worsening pain spreading down an arm or leg, weakness, numbness, pins and needles or a loss of feeling in your arms or legs, trouble walking, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Those symptoms count on their own, with or without back or neck pain. Call your cancer team's emergency number straight away, or go to an emergency department if you do not have one or cannot get through, and do not drive yourself. This can be cancer pressing on the spinal cord (metastatic spinal cord compression), which needs treatment straight away.
- Emergency: leaking that starts suddenly in an older person who is also newly confused or agitated, very drowsy, or has trouble speaking. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. This can be a sign of a serious infection or another illness that needs urgent treatment.
Get help today
- Pain or burning when you pee together with a high or very low temperature, feeling hot or cold and shivery, or pain in your back just under the ribs. Get medical advice the same day, as this can be a kidney infection. If you also become confused, very drowsy or have trouble speaking, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away.
- Same day: since an operation for leaking, such as a sling or an artificial urinary sphincter, you have a fever or feel hot, cold or shivery, bleeding or a discharge that smells from the wound, a wound from the operation that is oozing or whose edges are coming apart, new or worsening pain or swelling around the operation site, including in your scrotum, or pain in your pelvis that is new or getting worse quickly. Stop your pelvic floor exercises and contact your surgical team, or the ward you went home from, the same day, and if you cannot reach them get medical help the same day anyway, for example at urgent care or an emergency department. These can be signs of an infection or of bleeding from the repair. If the pain becomes severe or comes on suddenly, a wound from the operation opens up, the bleeding suddenly becomes much heavier, or you feel faint, dizzy, breathless or very unwell, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away rather than waiting for a call back, and do not drive yourself.
- Same day: since an operation in your pelvis for any other reason, for example removal of the womb (hysterectomy) or removal of the prostate gland, you have a fever or feel hot, cold or shivery, heavy bleeding, discharge that smells, a wound from the operation that is oozing or whose edges are coming apart, or pain in your pelvis that is new or getting worse quickly. Stop your pelvic floor exercises and contact your surgical team, or the ward you went home from, the same day, and if you cannot reach them get medical help the same day anyway, for example at urgent care or an emergency department. These can be signs of an infection or of bleeding. If the pain becomes severe or comes on suddenly, a wound from the operation opens up, the bleeding suddenly becomes much heavier, or you feel faint, dizzy, breathless or very unwell, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away rather than waiting for a call back, and do not drive yourself.
- Same day: since any operation in your pelvis, a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness. Stop your pelvic floor exercises and get medical advice the same day, because surgery in the pelvis raises the risk of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis). If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
- Blood in your pee, which may look pink, red or dark brown, even a small amount, even once, and even with no pain. Get medical advice the same day. It needs checking even if it goes away.
- Same day: aching or discomfort in a testicle that worries you, a lump or swelling in a testicle, a change in its shape or in how it feels, or one testicle that has become bigger than the other. Get an urgent appointment with your doctor the same day.
- Same day: leaking that starts suddenly or gets much worse over a few days in an older person, without any of the signs above. Get medical advice the same day, as this can be caused by a urine infection or a medicine.
- Same day: new back, hip or pelvic pain and you have had cancer, now or in the past. Get medical advice the same day and mention your cancer history. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
- Pain at night or at rest that keeps getting worse. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
- Same day: pain at night or at rest that keeps getting worse. If you have had cancer, now or in the past, get medical advice the same day and mention it, even if the pain is not getting worse. Do the same if you have back, hip or pelvic pain and are losing weight without trying, even if it does not hurt at night.
Book an appointment
- Pain at night or at rest that keeps getting worse. See your doctor within a few days.
- Routine: since an operation for leaking, such as a sling or an artificial urinary sphincter, the leaking you had it done for has come back or is getting worse, or you have new pain, new bleeding, or new trouble peeing or pooing. Stop your pelvic floor exercises and book an appointment with your surgical team rather than waiting for your next routine review. A repair can give way and a device can stop working, and after mesh surgery these are also the symptoms a specialist checks the mesh for. Which of those it is takes an examination, and it is not something this page or a physiotherapist can tell you.
- Routine: new trouble emptying your bladder or your bowels, a weak or stop-start stream, dribbling after you think you have finished, or a feeling that you have not emptied. Book an appointment with your doctor rather than doing more pelvic floor squeezes, because a flow or emptying problem has its own causes. If you are passing only small amounts and your lower tummy feels full or swollen, or you are leaking all the time without feeling the need to go, get medical advice the same day.
- Routine: pain in your pelvis, perineum, testicles or back passage that squeezing brings on or makes worse, or a feeling that you can never fully let go down there. Stop the squeezes and book an appointment with a pelvic health physiotherapist or your doctor, because an overactive pelvic floor needs the opposite treatment from a weak one.
Common questions
How do I know if I am doing Kegels correctly?
You should feel a lift and a squeeze inside, not a push down, and then feel the muscles drop back to rest. Continence Health Australia describes the mirror check: the penis pulls in slightly toward the tummy and the testicles lift as you squeeze. POGP describes feeling the perineum, between the scrotum and the back passage, lift away from your fingertips. Keep your buttocks, thighs and tummy fairly relaxed and keep breathing: if you can talk or hum through the hold, your breath is not doing the work for you. If you cannot feel a definite tightening at all, POGP's own instruction is to seek professional advice, which is a better use of the next few weeks than squeezing harder.
How many Kegels should a man do a day?
The two sources written for men answer this differently, and both answers are legitimate. Continence Health Australia gives a starting point and a target: a 3 second hold to begin with, rising to 5 to 8 seconds, with 3 to 5 squeezes per set rising to 8 to 10, three sets daily, and a rest between squeezes as long as the hold itself. POGP begins from whatever you can manage today, asks for at least 5 seconds of rest after each long squeeze, and sets the target at 10 long squeezes of 10 seconds and 10 short ones, three or more times a day. Use the one your own clinician gave you, start at the bottom of it, and your physio will adjust this.
Should I stop my urine midstream to find the muscle?
Once or twice at most, and then leave it alone. Continence Health Australia allows it as a one-off check and warns that doing it regularly can interrupt the bladder's natural rhythm and make it harder for the bladder to work. It is also the only one of the two sources written for men that mentions the test at all: POGP's leaflet uses stopping the flow purely as something to imagine while you squeeze, and gives the perineum check and the mirror check instead. So use it to find the muscle if you must, never as the exercise itself, and if you already have trouble emptying, leave the flow completely alone and get the emptying looked at first. Two readers should skip it altogether. A man who has had his prostate removed, because that operation takes out the valve at the bladder's outlet and most men cannot stop the stream at all in the early months whatever they do, and a man whose catheter is still in, who has no stream to stop. Both of those use the perineum check and the mirror check, and both wait for the team that operated before starting the exercises at all.
Do Kegel exercises help erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation?
Two national sources say they can help, and there are trials behind that, although they cannot tell you how much. POGP's leaflet for men states that good pelvic floor muscles help maintain an erection and may prevent premature ejaculation, and it lists erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation among the symptoms the exercises may help. Continence Health Australia names sexual sensation and function, including erection and ejaculation, among the jobs the pelvic floor muscles do. A systematic review of 10 trials found that training appears effective for erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation, with the studies too varied and too small to pool and no best protocol identified, and it excluded men who had had major urological surgery (Myers 2019). For premature ejaculation on its own, a 2026 meta-analysis of 5 trials found the exercises alone doing less for the time to ejaculation than a drug, or than the exercises combined with something else (de Oliveira 2026). New trouble getting or keeping an erection, or new trouble ejaculating, is worth a doctor's appointment in its own right, and the warning list on this page explains when it needs one urgently.
Can you do too many pelvic floor exercises?
More is not better, and both published doses are built around rest. Continence Health Australia asks you to rest the muscle for as long as you held the squeeze, and POGP asks for at least 5 seconds between long squeezes, because a muscle that never fully lets go stops lifting and the last few in a set are then weaker than the first. Pain in the pelvis during or after a set, harder emptying afterwards, or no sense of release at all means the pattern wants assessing rather than more repetitions, and it may be the opposite problem from the one this page is written for.
References
- Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy (POGP). Pelvic floor muscle exercises and advice for men. 2021. https://thepogp.co.uk/Resources/122/pelvic_floor_muscle_exercises_for_men/
- Continence Health Australia. Pelvic floor exercises for men. https://www.continence.org.au/living-with-incontinence/pelvic-floor-exercises/pelvic-floor-exercises-for-men/
- NHS. Urinary incontinence: causes. Page last reviewed 15 June 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/urinary-incontinence/causes/
- European Association of Urology. EAU Guidelines on Management of Non-neurogenic Male LUTS. Update April 2024, section 5.6.3.2.3. https://d56bochluxqnz.cloudfront.net/documents/full-guideline/EAU-Guidelines-on-Non-Neurogenic-Male-LUTS-2024.pdf
- Anderson CA, Omar MI, Campbell SE, Hunter KF, Cody JD, Glazener CM. Conservative management for postprostatectomy urinary incontinence. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2015;1(1):CD001843. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD001843.pub5
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- de Oliveira FA, Lima LB, da Costa MO, Uchoa SMM, Lenzi J, Gouveia GPM. Efficacy of pelvic floor muscle training in the management of premature ejaculation: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. 2026;23(6):qdag131. doi:10.1093/jsxmed/qdag131
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Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-03.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.