Kegel Confusion: Kegel Balls Won't Make You Climax
Read about the author Megan Barnett
A misconception that rears its ugly head every now and then among bloggers and Women’s Magazines is that Kegel Balls, also known as Ben Wa Balls, will make you have an orgasm. This also happens to be a misconception that really gets on my nerves.
By all means, please buy and use Kegel Exercise Balls. Strengthening your pelvic floor is so important to your health and sexual pleasure, but Exercise Balls are for just that: exercise.
Kegel Balls work by toning your pelvic floor muscles; inserting the weighted balls will encourage you to clench your PC muscles to hold them in place. Having toned vaginal muscles makes the sensations during sex more intense, and your orgasms are stronger as a result because the vaginal contraction will be greater.
If articles and reviews that women read are pedaling this modern myth that Kegels will make you climax, this can be really damaging for both sexual health and esteem.
A woman might think that there’s something wrong with her physically when she doesn’t orgasm using Kegel Balls, and then may be put off using them ever again. She might even discourage her friends from using them too, saying that Kegel Balls don’t work, when in fact they do, just not in the way she was expecting.
This could have a really negative effect on women’s sexual health, as using Kegel Balls can improve your continence, meaning no urinating when sneezing, a common issue that many women think that they simply have to “put up with” after childbirth or with age.
We need to be teaching women about exercising their pelvic floors at an earlier age, as many women only learn about them after pregnancy. However, we should really be teaching younger people about Kegel Exercises during SRE or Sex Education, otherwise women will read misinformed advice in Women’s Magazines and take it on board as fact.
If women aren’t properly informed about how Kegel Balls work, and how to properly exercise their pelvic floors, then this will be incredibly detrimental to their health.
Journalists and bloggers need to properly research products before reviewing them too, as they are a mouthpiece for women and women’s health. In 2015 when manufacturer LELO released their Luna Smart Bead, several journalists claimed that they were disappointed that they didn’t orgasm when using the product.
When used internally to tone the pelvic floor, the Smart Bead is not intended to induce orgasms, as we highlighted in our video product review. The Smart Bead can be used as a clitoral stimulator, which could give women orgasms, but essentially the bead is a mini-personal trainer thanks to its in-built exercise routines.
While Ben Wa or Kegel Balls are not intended to deliver orgasms, that’s not to say you can’t incorporate them into your sex play. Some women may find the sensation of traditional Kegel Balls knocking against each other arousing, but when the pelvic floor muscles are already engaged, you could actually do some damage trying to have an orgasm at the same time.
What’s more, by practising your Kegel Exercises can help to increase your natural lubrication by promoting healthy function in the vaginal tissue. Any form of exercising can improve the blood flow to the genitals, which also helps to increase vaginal lubrication too. In this sense, a woman may feel aroused when using Kegel Balls because of her body’s natural response to using them, but she still won’t achieve an orgasm.
While the promise of stronger orgasms may have some women furiously clenching their PC muscles for hours on end, it’s important to note that overworking your pelvic floor muscles could lead to pain in the lower back, pelvic region and during or after penetrative sex.
There are products available that have in-built training programmes to help you tone your pelvic floor, such as the aforementioned LELO Smart Bead, as well as E-Stim vibrators from Mystim. Using vibrations and electro-stimulation respectively to indicate when you should clench your PC muscles, these are great products to ensure that you are exercising your muscles correctly. The added bonus of E-Stim vibrators, of course, is that after you’ve done your workout, you can turn off the training programme and use it like a normal vibrator, and it’s perfectly safe for you to attempt to have or achieve an orgasm in this way.
Perhaps the confusion around Kegel Exercise Balls comes (no pun intended) from the fact that they are sold by sex toy companies and are labelled as “sex toys”, the inference there being you should be using them for or during sex.
As we believe sexual health and pleasure go hand in hand, here at Jo Divine we clearly market Kegel Exercise Balls for health purposes, and have even included them in our specifically created Health Brochure, which is available on request.
If we encourage people of any age to talk about sexual issues in a practical, sensible way, then perhaps we can put these unfounded myths to bed.