Research has shown that women who exercise regularly have more active sex lives, reach orgasm quicker, and get easily aroused than inactive women. Being in better shape and having more muscle strength also makes more adventurous sex possible.
The better shape you’re in, the more different sex positions and longer sex sessions you can have. Obviously, exercise helps in having great sex. The question is, does sex count as exercise?
When it comes to the ultimate sex exercise routine, people would usually think of that scene in the movie “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie toss each other around in the heat of passion.
However, not all sex experience is that intense, and probably for good reason. However, what comes to mind is how many calories are actually burned during sexual intercourse? The rumour is that one sex session can burn around 100 to 300 calories.
People always say that sex is a great exercise, but what’s the real story? How much sex should you have before it could be considered an exercise? Will it ever be considered exercise? What are the health benefits of sex? Let’s dive in and take a deeper look.
What Do Experts Say About Sex Being Exercise?
According to a study published in PLOS ONE (2013), sex may be one of the most regularly practiced activities all throughout a person’s lifetime. Researchers found it important to examine the energy expenditure during sexual activity in young healthy couples.
They looked at each participant in their natural environment and compared it to a session of endurance exercise to calculate energy expenditure. The results of the study show energy expenditures during sexual activity is around 85 kcal or 3.6 kcal per minute for young healthy men and women.
It suggests that sex may potentially be considered a significant exercise at times. Both men and women reported that the activity was highly enjoyable, more so than 30 minutes exercise on a treadmill.
The study could have implications for future planning, like intervention programs as part of a healthy lifestyle by health care professionals. Sex as a form of additional exercise could become more motivational for people to engage in more healthcare programs too. Exercise routines to achieve better sex could result in more healthy people.
What Muscles Do You Work Having Sex?
Did you know crying involves 17 muscles, texting 38, and breakdancing 133? How many muscles are involved in our daily activities, such as early morning exercise, walking, running, cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, etc.? How about sex?
The shocking discovery is that women burn only 69 calories during an average romp, and a man’s love muscle doesn’t contain any actual muscle at all. Interestingly, squats are actually the best exercise to strengthen pelvic floor muscles for both men and women.
Muscle expert Mike Aunger helped highlight all the major muscles involved in sex, like when you’re supporting your body weight, keeping your balance or thrusting.
No matter how strong and strenuous, your skeletal muscles are important for movement. Your autonomous (involuntary) smooth muscles also play a never-ending role in digestion, respiration, circulation, and bodily function. Your cardiac muscles are essential for pumping your blood into all the designated places.
Sex is a total body exercise routine that works out each of your 657 muscles no matter how you like to do it. So the next time you miss that spinning class, don’t be harsh on yourself.
Just think how many muscles you’ve put to good use throughout the day and night, and don’t forget to give them the necessary raw materials they need to recover.
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Sex Muscle Discovery:
Women only burn 69 calories during sex and average. This is actually supported by a 2013 study from the University of Montreal. The same study used a sex equivalent to a wrist-worn exercise activity tracker and found that men burn 100 calories every session lasting 25 minutes, from foreplay to happy ending.
Another interesting discovery is that the penis is not a muscle, but there are muscles involved in the filling phase of an erection. First, the autonomous and involuntary smooth muscle relaxes. Then, nitric oxide is released into the blood to make the blood vessels dilate. As a result, there’s a dramatic increase in penile blood flow.
Credit Richard Honaker M.D. for PharmahubNG.
