Pelvic Floor Exercises: A Complete Kegel Guide
You sneeze, or you laugh properly at something, and there it is. That small sinking moment where your body did something you didn’t ask it to do.
Or maybe it’s the opposite. Nothing’s leaking, nothing’s wrong, you’ve just noticed that sex doesn’t feel quite as much as it used to and you’re not sure who to ask about that.
Both of those things lead to the same place: pelvic floor exercises. They’re free, they work, and almost nobody has been shown how to do them properly. This guide covers how to find the muscles, how to train them, where kegel balls earn their place, and the bit most articles skip entirely, which is when you should stop and talk to somebody instead.
In this guide:
- What your pelvic floor actually is
- How to find your pelvic floor muscles
- How to do pelvic floor exercises properly
- Where kegel balls come in
- How to use kegel balls, step by step
- Choosing your first kegel balls
- When to skip the balls and see someone
- Frequently asked questions
What your pelvic floor actually is:
Your pelvic floor is a sling of muscle running from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back. Think of a hammock strung across the base of your pelvis.
It holds up your bladder, your bowel, and if you have one, your uterus. It’s also what keeps you continent, and it’s part of what you feel during arousal and orgasm.
Like any muscle, it can get weak. Pregnancy and birth stretch it. Menopause thins the tissue around it. Chronic coughing, heavy lifting, constipation, and simply getting older all take their turn. Weak pelvic floor muscles are the reason for that laugh-and-leak moment, and they’re one reason orgasms can start to feel muted.
It also responds to training, the same way your legs respond to squats. Slowly, but reliably.
How to find your pelvic floor muscles:
This is where most people go wrong. It’s hard to feel a muscle you’ve never consciously used.
Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor. Now imagine you’re trying to stop yourself passing wind, and at the same time trying to stop yourself weeing. You’re aiming for a feeling of squeeze and lift, drawing everything up and slightly forwards.
Three things should not happen while you do it. Your buttocks shouldn’t clench. Your thighs shouldn’t tighten. You shouldn’t hold your breath. If any of those are joining in, you’re recruiting the wrong muscles, so ease off and try a gentler squeeze.
A useful check: put your fingertips on your lower belly. If it’s pulling in hard, you’re bracing your abs rather than lifting your pelvic floor. A small amount of lower tummy movement is normal, a full clench is not.
You may have heard the advice to stop your flow mid-wee to test whether you’ve found it. Do that once, at most, and only to locate the muscles. Doing it regularly can stop your bladder emptying properly, which causes a different and more irritating problem.
How to do pelvic floor exercises properly:
Kegel exercises and pelvic floor exercises are the same thing, named after the American gynaecologist who popularised them in the 1940s. The routine has two halves, and you need both, because your pelvic floor contains two different types of muscle fibre.
Long squeezes build endurance. Tighten and lift, hold for as long as you comfortably can up to about 10 seconds, then release completely and rest for around five. Full relaxation between reps matters as much as the squeeze itself. Repeat up to 10 times, or until the muscles tire.
Short squeezes build speed. Squeeze quickly and firmly, hold for one second, then let go completely. These are what fire when you cough or sneeze. Aim for up to 10 of these.
First, you almost certainly won’t manage a 10 second hold at the start, and that’s fine. Hold for three seconds if three is what you’ve got. Second, this takes months rather than weeks. Give it three months of consistency before you decide whether it’s working.
The advantage of pelvic floor exercises is that nobody can see you doing them. Kettle boiling, red light, third meeting of the morning. Nobody knows.
Where kegel balls come in:
Kegel balls, also called love eggs, jiggle balls, or ben wa balls, are small weighted balls you wear internally. They do two jobs, and the difference matters.
The first is feedback. This is the big one. A lot of people quietly abandon kegel exercises because they can’t tell whether anything is happening. A kegel ball gives your muscles something to grip and lift, so the contraction becomes obvious. If you’ve ever thought “I have no idea if I’m doing this right”, this alone is worth the price.
The second is resistance. Once you can feel the contraction, the weight gives the muscles something to work against. It’s a very light hand weight for your pelvic floor.
Kegel balls don’t work on their own, whatever the packaging says. Wearing them passively while you do the washing up isn’t a workout, it’s just wearing them. The training happens when you actively squeeze and release around them. Anything that promises results from wear alone is overselling.
The same goes for vibration. A vibrating kegel ball is lovely, and it does help some people connect with the sensation and stay interested enough to keep going. But the vibration isn’t doing the exercise. Your muscles are.
They don’t make you “tighter”, either, in the way that word usually implies. What improves is muscle tone and control, which means better bladder control, more sensation, and for a lot of people, stronger orgasms. That’s a better outcome than the marketing claim anyway.
How to use kegel balls, step by step:
- Wash your hands and the balls. Warm water and mild soap, or a proper toy cleaner. Empty your bladder first for comfort.
- Use lubricant. Always water-based lube, never silicone, because silicone lube degrades silicone toys over time. A small amount on the ball is plenty.
- Get comfortable. Lying down with your knees bent, or standing with one foot on the edge of the bath. Whatever lets you relax.
- Insert gently, much as you would a tampon. They only need to sit in the lower third of the vaginal canal, so don’t push them high. They physically cannot get lost.
- Leave the retrieval cord outside. Never tuck it in.
- Then do the work. Squeeze and lift around the ball, hold, release fully. You should feel it shift upwards as you squeeze. That feedback is the whole point.
- Keep sessions short. Ten to twenty minutes is plenty, a few times a week to start.
- To remove, relax, bear down gently, and draw the cord out slowly.
- Clean and dry before putting them away.
Choosing your first kegel balls:
Three options, at different points on the scale. If you’re in one of our 17 stores, just ask. The question our staff field more than any other is which weight to start on, and the honest answer usually depends on things you’d rather not type into a search box.
If you’re starting from nothing: Silicone Kegel Ball Set, £22.95
This is the one we’d point most people towards first. You get two pieces: a single 42g ball to begin with, and a dual-ball trainer at 82g for when that starts to feel easy. Having the progression built in matters, because outgrowing your starting weight after six weeks and having to buy again is the most common way people fall off the routine.
Soft silicone, weighted steel cores, retrieval cord, fully waterproof. It’s also the one we’d suggest if you’re rebuilding after having a baby, once you’ve been given the go-ahead.
If plain training bores you: Textured Silicone Kegel Ball, £16.95
A single 50g ball with spiral ridges across the surface, so there’s something to feel as you move and squeeze. At 2.5 inches insertable it’s a comfortable, uncomplicated starting point, and 50g sits in a sensible middle ground: enough resistance to notice, not so much that it’s a struggle.
At 50g it’s heavier than the 42g single in the set above, so it isn’t quite the gentler option the lower price suggests. If you can already hold a tampon comfortably without thinking about it, this is a fine place to begin.
If you want vibration too: Vibrating Kegel Balls with Remote Control, £44.95
Two attached balls in body-safe silicone, 12 vibration patterns, and a single-button wireless remote. USB rechargeable. At 3.3 inches insertable and an inch across, the dual-ball design gives a fuller, more secure feel than a single ball.
It’s a vibrator that also works as a trainer, rather than the other way round. If your goal is purely rebuilding strength, the weighted sets above will do it for half the money.
When to skip the balls and see someone:
Give them a miss and speak to your GP or a pelvic health physiotherapist if you’re pregnant, if you’re recently postpartum and haven’t been cleared, if you have or suspect a prolapse, if you’re recovering from gynaecological or abdominal surgery, or if you have any kind of infection.
Also speak to someone if sex is painful, if you have ongoing pelvic pain, or if you struggle to insert anything at all. These can point to an overactive pelvic floor, where the muscles are already too tight rather than too weak. In that situation more squeezing is the wrong prescription entirely, and you need someone to teach you to release rather than contract.
Pelvic health physiotherapy is available on the NHS, and you can self-refer in many areas. It’s an underused service and it’s very good. Leaking when you laugh is common, but common and normal aren’t the same thing, and it’s treatable.
Frequently asked questions:
Most people notice a difference after around three months of consistent practice, though some see small changes sooner. Muscle takes time to build. Keep going even after you notice improvements, because the gains fade if you stop.
No. The vagina is a closed space, so they can’t travel anywhere. If the cord is out of reach, relax, sit or squat, and bear down gently as though having a bowel movement, and they’ll come down within reach.
Yes, and they work. The same squeeze-and-lift applies, using the same long and short squeezes three times a day. Men’s pelvic floor training helps with bladder control after prostate surgery and can improve erectile function and control. Kegel balls are designed for vaginal use, so the exercises are done unassisted.
Where to start:
If you take one thing from this: find the muscles first, train them properly, and add a weight once you can feel what you’re doing.
The exercises cost nothing and you can do them anywhere. Kegel balls make them easier to get right, which for most people is the difference between a routine that sticks and one that quietly stops in week two.
Start with the kegel exercisers range, where you can compare weights side by side before you commit, or browse the wider women’s sex toy collection if you’re looking at this as part of something bigger. And if you’d rather ask a person than a search bar, every one of our stores has someone who can help. It’s a conversation our team has all the time, and there’s nothing you can say that will surprise them.