Blog Coregasm

We know exercise is good for us and yet there are days when you have to drag yourself off that big, cushy couch to do it.

Well, science has found just provided all the motivation you need to do that work out you don’t feel like doing.

Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief at io9 magazine recently wrote about a study confirming that certain types of exercise can bring on an orgasm. It’s called a “coregasm” or “exercise-induced orgasm,” or EIO  …yes, as in EIEIO (go ahead and put your own sound effect spin on it). Researchers also investigated EISP - exercise-induced sexual pleasure - but that’s not nearly as fun to say.

The study, was conducted by Debby Herbenick and Dennis Fortenberry of Indiana University found that the exercise most commonly associated with both EIO and EISP was abdominal exercise - 51.4 percent of the women had experienced EIO or EISP with that form of exercise within the past 90 days. Wouldn’t you know it? The toughest one. Next was weight lifting - 26.5% - followed by yoga at 20%, which is kind of surprising. Considering how avid yoga people are about their hobby you’d have thought there might be a little more O-O-EIO in it. At the tail end of the spectrum were biking, 15.8%, running, 13.2% and walking/hiking, 9.6%. Finally, “ab exercises were particularly associated with the “captain’s chair,” the study, which ran in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy says. The captain’s chair looks kind of like a reclined seat without a bottom - you grip onto the padded arm rests and pull your legs up at a 90 degree angle (the io9 link has a video).

You watch. Once this gets out that particular machine will never be free at your gym again.

ABC News Online’s Susan Donaldson James reports that Herbenick and Fortenberry were unsure how man women would respond to an online query looking for women who had had such experiences. They found 100 within five weeks who had experienced orgasm and more who had had sexual pleasure while exercising. One woman describes having the experience when she was biking up a hill, thinking she was starting to cramp and then realizing that wasn’t quite what was happening. Mopping or walking can bring it on in some women. I’ve definitely felt it during belly dance class workouts or on a fast walk - just the SP, not the O, but still.

"These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women's experiences of orgasm," Herbenick said in the report.

Most of the women in the study weren’t thinking about anything especially sexual when the coregasms happened, which is pretty interesting. It’s an old saying that the brain is the most important sexual organ - but it’s nice to know that it can take a rest once in awhile and let the body do all the work.