If you’ve never thought about your pelvic floor before, don’t feel bad. Most people don’t even realize they have one. It can be shocking to discover that this little-known part of your body has a long list of extremely important functions, including a few that directly impact your sexual health and pleasure. 

Without a pelvic floor, you not only couldn’t hold in pee or poop, you also couldn’t have pain-free sex, or experience an orgasm. Oh, and without your pelvic floor, some of your internal organs (like your uterus or rectum) would slip right out of your vagina or anus. Yeah, it’s that important. 

Before we take a deeper dive into how your pelvic floor impacts your sex life — and how it can even improve it — let’s pause for a quick anatomy refresher.

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Wait, what exactly is the pelvic floor?

Your pelvic floor is a bowl-like network of muscles and connective tissues that make up the base of your pelvis. These muscles run from your pubic bone to your tailbone, and span between your sit bones.

Check out the diagram below to see how complex your pelvic floor really is — it includes several layers of muscle that encircle the vagina, rectum, and urethra.

When you think about everything that happens in and above your pelvic area, this complexity makes sense. There’s a lot going on down there!

Your pelvic floor muscles lift and squeeze to:

• Help hold up your pelvic organs (bladder, bowel, uterus)
• Keep your urethra and anus closed 
• Provide stability and support to your core

Your pelvic floor muscles open and release to:

• Let out poop and pee
• Allow for vaginal penetration
• Create room for a baby to pass

Your pelvic floor also supports normal breathing patterns and helps maintain blood floor and circulation through this area of your body. 

How your pelvic floor impacts your sex life

In order for pain-free vaginal penetration to happen, your pelvic floor muscles have to be able to lengthen and release. But that’s not all. The pleasurable throbbing you may feel before and during orgasm? That’s your pelvic floor muscles squeezing and releasing. These muscle contractions are also likely to increase blood flow and arousal, and help with engorgement — by compressing blood vessels, these contractions may keep blood in the clitoris and other pelvic structures — resulting in greater sensitivity. 

If you’ve never tried to actively contract your pelvic floor muscles (aka do a kegel) during sexual activity and orgasm, we highly recommend it. Doing so can significantly enhance these natural contractions and boost your pleasure.

How to kegel during sex

One basic way to learn how to contract your pelvic floor muscles is to squeeze them as if you’re trying to stop the flow of urine. 

Some alternate methods:

• Insert a vibrator, toy, or finger into your vagina or anus, and see if you squeeze your pelvic floor muscles around it.
• During penetrative sex, try using just your pelvic floor muscles to pull the dildo or your partner’s penis further inside of you.

Keep practicing until you can kegel at will. Then try kegeling during sex and especially during orgasm to see how it feels. 

What if you can’t kegel — or if kegeling or sex hurts?

Not everyone can engage with their pelvic floor muscles and make them contract. You may not even feel any contractions during orgasm. This could be the result of a weak or dysfunctional pelvic floor. 

If kegeling with or without sex causes any amount of pain, or if sex is painful at any point, it could also be due to pelvic floor dysfunction. Common forms of pelvic floor dysfunction include vaginismus (pain with any kind of vaginal penetration), dyspareunia (pain with penetrative sex), and vulvodynia (pain that occurs anywhere in the vulva). 

If you think pelvic floor dysfunction might be negatively impacting your sex life, don’t wait to get help. Talk to your doctor or gynecologist or book a visit with a pelvic floor physical therapist. Pelvic floor PTs are experts at getting to the bottom of pelvic pain and helping you find the right treatment so you can have the best sex life possible.