Coregasm: A catchy, funny term for a very real phenomenon.
It’s when you experience a spontaneous orgasm while doing intense exercises that engage (or perhaps overtax) the core.
For people who’ve never experienced this, it may sound great. Who doesn’t want to have orgasms at the drop of a hat?! Well, picture this happening while you’re at the gym surrounded by dozens of people, or when you’re just trying to get through a workout session, and you might understand why it’s usually unwanted.
This situation is a lot more common than you might think (we’ve gotten many emails about it, and I experienced it myself as a teenager), so if you’ve gone through this before, we’ll help you learn to navigate it.
Why Do Coregasms Happen to Some People?
For most people who experience coregasms, they only happen with certain exercises that involve an intense contraction of the core muscles.
L-Sits and hanging tuck exercises (from rings or a bar) are common culprits, but even pull-ups have been known to cause these issues (in fact, pull-ups were the culprit for me when I was younger).
Coregasms can happen in both men and women (the little research that exists on this issue focuses on women, but men can absolutely experience this, and we’ve heard from quite a number of male clients who’ve had some pretty embarrassing episodes while exercising).
But why does this happen in some people and not others?
Truthfully, we don’t really know. Just like we don’t know why some people can live totally pain free with “bad” imaging of their spines, while others experience chronic pain with a clean bill of health.
As much as we know about the body, there’s still a lot that’s unknown.
Coregasms likely occur with core exercises due to the combination of pelvic floor contraction along with pressure from surrounding muscles, pressing down on the pelvic floor.
It’s possible there is a hormonal aspect as well, so for men, it may be more common in their younger years when hormones are surging, while for women, there may be a connection to the menstrual cycle. At different points in the cycle this may be more likely to occur than at others.
How Can You Avoid Exercise-Induced Coregasms?
Having just one exercise-induced coregasm is enough to make you rush to the Googles in search of ways to prevent it from happening again. Hopefully, you found this article early in your search, so you don’t have to spend too much time looking for answers 😉
In most cases, coregasms happen when you push yourself too hard. That “just one more” pull-up rep or leg raise is likely the culprit. So, the simple answer is to back off before you think you need to.
There are a couple of things that will help you approach this more easily:
1. Reframe How You Think of Sets/Reps
We’ve all fallen prey, at one time or another, to the mindset of doing as many reps as you possibly can, pushing yourself until you are fully exhausted. By the end of a set of this style of training, your last few reps probably barely resemble the first few reps of the set.
In another article, we addressed the benefits of taking a different approach to your training, focusing on making every rep count, rather than on counting every rep.
Particularly if you’re dealing with unwanted coregasms as you approach failure in your training sessions, you would do well to forget about how many reps you are doing, and instead, make every rep count, but back off well before you would have otherwise.
2. Take a Mindful Approach to Your Training
This is related to the previous point, but it’s an essential part of getting what you want from your training (and avoiding things you don’t want).
Being mindful in your training will help you learn what, specifically, induces coregasms for you. You can start to pay attention to how certain positioning, muscle contractions, and other factors impact your body. Without a keen awareness of all that, it will be much harder to back off in time.
You’ll start to learn your body’s signals, so that you’re not blindsided. You’ll know when you’re on the verge of a coregasm, and that’s your signal to either take a break and do some deep breathing, or call it a day.
Gaining mindful control over your body is the first step in stopping exercise-induced coregasms in their tracks.
One way to improve your mindful awareness of how your body feels and responds to various movements and actions, is by working on our free Strength & Mobility Kickstart course. It’s designed around mindful training, and many of our clients have told us how it’s helped them overcome all sorts of physical challenges.