This article was written by Paisley Gilmore with contributions by Colin Richards for Cosmopolitan Magazine August 30th 2017 Click here to read original article
Ever heard people banging on about ‘coregasms’ (climaxing while exercising) and wondered if this is even a real thing? Like women having orgasms in their sleep, it’s hard to separate rumour from fact.
Sex and relationships mentor, and founder of Intimacy Matters, Colin Richards, explains what coregasms are, if they’re even a legit thing and why some women might have them.
The Internet abounds with personal accounts of women feeling all sorts of pleasurable sensations – often in surprising, unusual and occasionally embarrassing situations – connected to doing strenuous activity. These sensations are known as coregasms and they do exist.
Coregasms or ‘exercise-induced orgasm’ (EIO) were first noted by US sexologist Alfred Kinsey in his 1953 book Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female. As well as personal accounts, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that recognises it as a real biological phenomenon. According to a series of studies from Indiana University and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, one in 10 women experience a coregasm at some point in their life.
Why do coregasms even happen?
Recently there’s been talk about the coregasm, particularly about ‘how’ it can happen but not necessarily on ‘why’. It seems to be a state of nirvana that only women can achieve and although men often say they feel a high when performing intense exercise, I am not aware of any who have actually experienced an orgasm.
Here are two possible reasons why the coregasm occurs:
1. Anthropological. It makes sense that nature would want fertile females to remain fit and healthy mothers. It also makes sense that to encourage females to remain healthy, nature would develop a mechanism that would reward the female when keeping fit. In primitive society, childbirth and child-rearing required the woman to have a high level of fitness… so you could say coregasms give another reason to exercise.
2. Physiological. Women who have experienced a coregasm reported it happened when exercising the abdominal muscles. Others have reported climaxing while weight lifting, doing yoga, cycling and running.
The most common way women have coregasms, through abdominal exercises, is particularly associated with the ‘captain’s chair’s knee raise’ exercise. This is where you repeatedly lift the knees towards the chest or at a 90-degree angle to the body.
Again nature may have a strategy. Since pregnancy requires the female body to undergo massive physiological changes, making the exercising of the abdominal area pleasurable might ensure the mother would continue to do it, and will remain fit and able to carry a growing foetus as well as continue to forage for food.
Should you feel ashamed if you experience coregasms?
The worrying thing is that women often feel embarrassed about having coregasms. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about something that happens naturally, so drop the guilt and get working those abdominal muscles. Having another incentive to keep fit can only be a good thing.
