Yet Another Reason to Hit the Gym Every Day

http://blog.chron.com/momhouston/2012/03/study-finds-women-can-exercise-to-orgasm/

Study finds women can exercise to orgasm

Researchers at Indiana University say some women can orgasm from exercise alone and the reasons why might be surprising. The experience, they say has nothing to do with sexual fantasies.

The study, published in a special issue of Sexual and Relationship Therapy, sent surveys to 370 women who claimed they have experienced exercise-induced orgasms or exercise-induced sexual pleasure. The women ranged in ages from 18 to 63 and most were in a relationship or married. About 69 percent identified themselves as heterosexual.

Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, calls this an area of research that has been under-studied despite rumors circulating for years that it is possible. Most women who experienced this said they were not fantasizing sexually or thinking about anyone at the time, leading scientists to suspect female orgasm is not completely linked to sex.

“The most common exercises associated with exercise-induced orgasm were abdominal exercises, climbing poles or ropes, biking/spinning and weight lifting,” Herbenick said in a press release. “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.”

Sometimes called “coregasm” because of its association to exercises done for the core abdominal muscles, the exercise orgasm has been written about in magazines, blogs and in reports by Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues.

According to the study, about 40 percent of women who had these experiences had them on more than ten occasions. About 51.4 percent reported the experience while doing abdominal exercises, 26.5 percent while weight lifting, 20 percent in yoga, 15.8 percent in bicycling, 13.2 percent in running and 9.6 percent in walking or hiking. The ab exercise most associated with this experience is the “captain’s chair,” in which a woman uses a rack with padded arm rests and back support to raise her knees toward her chest or at a 90-degree angle. One in five women said they had no control over the experience. Most reported being self-conscious about working out in public.

The researchers are unsure how widespread the ability to orgasm while exercising is.