Funny, I'd written half of a post on this subject to another thread last week, had to run out, and then later on (after writing the other half) it said the 'session cookie' expired and it ate my post. Nom Nom Nom. <
Was too pissed to re-write it at the time..
A regular Kegel will accomplish a little more tone and power in the muscle, but really it's only 'flexing' the muscle ... no increasing added resistance, no range of motion. It's better than nothing, but only because nothing is a poor competitor.
Picture trying to make to make your biceps muscle any bigger, or much stronger, by just 'flexing' it. -- It'd be better than nothing, but only just.
[For bodybuilding competitors for example, 'flexing' is a finishing move ... not an
exercise]
There's nothing special about the pubococcygeus that makes it better at this. Usual muscle rules apply:
- Force/activation and recruitment of 'motor units'.
- Range of motion.
- Muscle confusion (don't do the same thing all the time)
- Progressive overload.
There are three parts to the Levator Ani diaphragm, the pubococcygeus (PC Muscle) only being one of those .. and probably the transversus perinei is also involved. The whole thing forms a sling or hammock between the legs, weaving in and out of all the interior and exterior bits down there (along with five or six other muscles that seem to not be involved for our purposes). Further, the front of the hammock series is the really relevant bit .. and that's not the same in everyone, there's even arguments to name the forward section its own thing called the Levator Prostatae. If we develop PC work to another level here, we might want to adopt those more specific nomenclatures.
Back to the limitations of just flexing a muscle .. Now there's another problem that you supposedly can't automatically know in what hip position your version (because they can be different) of all the those muscles is going to be best-activated.
ie - Standing (or lying down), .. Sitting, .. or Squatting. So the argument is to do PC exercises in
all three positions.
This might be useful as well and it's similar to the above positional info. There's an additional safety measure I use when doing squats at the gym (or deads, or lifting anything heavy randomly outside of the gym) -- that's 12 plates with no wraps, no belt, no spotter, so this isn't beginner info -- and that's to activate
as much of the pelvic diaphragm as I can .. and to hold that through the entire range of motion. ie - Flex the PC muscle while standing .. and then hold that flex while moving to the low squat position, and then back up as well, for all reps of the entire set .. which generally (for neurology reasons - of the whole body, not the 'PC' per se) should not exceed 45 seconds of total contraction time per set.
So ^ doing this over the course of a couple of decades I have a pretty strong PC, and testing it separately in the three positions this is what I personally find:
Standing - strong preferential activation of the forward (anterior) portion
Sitting - preferential activation of the middle ('medial') portion
Squatting - preferential activation of the 'rear' ('posterior') portion
... of the anterior Levator/PC diaphragm
I suspect everyone would find the same thing, but try it and see how it turns out.
The difference, for me, in the activation of the sections coinciding to how the hips are positioned is very obviously different. From that, I think I would definitely either train separately in all three of the positions .. or else determine which one or two positions might be primary in the desired effect and concentrate on it/them.
It would seem offhand that anyone 'doing kegels while driving' (etc) - ie sitting down .. are probably only really activating the middle section, and [again] only in a 'flexing' manner.
Adding a shirt or a towel across the top of the erect penis affords the ability to add a variable (and therefore also progressive) resistance. Start with whatever weight of item you can move without much effort, and then add reps, and then in a week or two increase the weight slightly, and then add reps, and repeat this process. You might find you have to be Very erect for this. If your penis is just bending under the added weight then you'll need to address your EQ before making any real gains with it.
There's also a way to add a range of motion, through a preloaded deflection of the 'hammock series' .. which would then move through a slight range of motion when activated as it resists this deflection and returns to being straight/taut. I'd looked around the web for such a thing the first time I wrote all this and found this contraption -
The Kegelpad - . It's a bit pricey, but most things are. One might try to get the same effect from a tennis ball glued to -something-, or from a modified/reshaped 'yoga brick', etc ... but the kegelpad is bigger than it looks and pretty specifically shaped, so if you're trying to approximate it with kludgery then keep its size and shape in mind.
