Rigorous romping: improving sex with science
Are you motivated to improve your sexual experience? Everything from arousal to longevity, performance and confidence can move a notch up the bedpost with one simple habit. It probably won’t surprise you to find the beneficial habit must be undertaken with consistency and vigor! What can help us get hot, hard, wet, ready and sustainable in bed you ask? Science says rigorous exercise will get you there.
Not only do we feel more confident in our body when exercise is part of our daily habit, we can stay the course and meet the demands a romp can inspire. A good lover has stamina. Stamina is built by taxing our system for a fixed period of time. Don’t want to be a two minute lover? Work on exciting the body during exercise for longer and longer timed events. Choose an activity that moves you out of easy chatting and into short answer work levels. If you can still talk about last night in long paragraphs, you’re not working out vigorously enough. Buckle down for bursts of work. Practice performing well in higher demand situations for longer bouts of time.
A great lover has staying power and knows their body well. While you’re in the friction zone, feel your muscles contracting, the sweat trickling, the heat building. Get in touch with your skin and your heartbeat. Begin to pay attention to yourself and learn your body. Knowing what feels good and what doesn’t feel good makes you better in bed. Discovering where flexibility and mobility are lacking in your body (hello hip happiness!) can make sex more comfortable, less embarrassing and more varied. Listening to yourself will help you tune in to your partner and pick up on how their body responds. Good sex is hot because it is intimate and vulnerable. Practicing honesty and communication with your body while you exercise will be a foundational relationship for sessions with yourself and those with partners.
We look to our scientists to ask the questions and find the answers. This group did just that when studying the effects of exercise on sexual function. The take away from the study was this, “Men and women at risk for sexual dysfunction regardless of physical activity level may benefit by exercising more rigorously.” (Fergus KB, Gaither TW, Baradaran N, Glidden DV, Cohen AJ, Breyer BN. Exercise Improves Self-Reported Sexual Function Among Physically Active Adults. J Sex Med. 2019 Aug;16(8):1236–1245. doi: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.04.020. Epub 2019 May 31. PMID: 31155388.) Those involved in the study were ages 31–55, a time when many individuals begin to see their first signs of sexual dysfunction.
What kind of exercise is best you ask? Nothing beats moving your body to music. Dancing has long played a role in courtship and bonding. The beat outside your body marrying the beat of your heart. Moving through space with very few rules bar keeping yourself and those around you safe. Creativity and free expression are ignited and we begin to play with gravity. No shade to line dancing, but I am not talking about anything rote nor structured. Free form and free spirited movement. Open yourself to moving in many directions simply for the pleasure of it. Sound like something else we enjoy? Connecting like this can move us out of habituated sex. Away from the every Tuesday night, I do this and they do that sex, that dulls instead of shines the soul. So lower the blinds and turn up your favorite song. Move your body to the music and re-member yourself.
This study and others before it empower us with agency. Our daily choices can guard against a middle age libido slump. Taking 20 of our 1440 minutes a day to dedicate to our health through exercise has sweeping benefits. Celebrate being alive and connecting to yourself or a partner. Our partnerships are stronger, stress is lower, bonding increases, depression decreases, serotonin and dopamine increase in the brain, sleep improves and contentment goes up when we engage in regular rigorous romping.
