Double your pleasure: you've built the muscles for attracting the opposite sex—but are you ignoring the muscles for actually having sex? These targeted exercises will turn your body into a finely tuned sex machine

Men's Fitness, April, 2003 by Ty Wenger

In his second NBA season, Michael Jordan missed 64 games thanks to a broken ankle. Jordan--vowing to never again be injured--enlisted his personal trainer to construct a top-secret exercise regimen specifically designed to strengthen the body parts most abused in basketball. Much to the chagrin of Spike Lee, it worked: From 1986 to 1997, Jordan missed only seven games.

So what the heck does this have to do with your sex life? Well, think of yourself as the Michael Jordan of sex. (Just go with it.) You probably exercise your major muscles, so at least your physique isn't sending your partner screaming from the bed. (Indeed, a study at the University of California, San Diego, found that men who exercise three days a week have 30 percent more sex than men who don't.) But all the squats, flyes and supine cable curls in the world aren't necessarily getting you in shape for what happens in that bed.

If you truly want to be like Mike, it's time to gear your training for everybody's favorite all-time sport. Work a few of these exercises into your daily regimen and you'll soon be your partner's MVP.

BUILD A BETTER ASSEMBLY

Let's get one thing straight, so to speak: It's not a muscle, okay? Contrary to popular myth (and frequent use of the phrase "love muscle" in porn mags), your penis is actually an organ.

But that doesn't mean you can't exercise it--or more specifically, the pubococcygeus muscle that wraps around it at the base of your pelvis. And if exercised well, the PC can do wonders for your woody. "The PC is absolutely the most important muscle for a man's sexual health and performance," says Douglas Abrams, co-author of The Multi-Orgasmic Man. "It can control the strength and angle of a man's erection and the intensity of his orgasms--and that's pretty important stuff."

To find your PC, try stopping the flow while you're peeing. That muscle you're now clenching is your PC. (Don't forget to finish peeing.) Once you've located the muscle, you're ready to strengthen it with an exercise Abrams calls "PC pull-ups." While sitting down, slowly clench your PC as you exhale, hold the contraction, then slowly relax the muscle as you inhale. Make sure you're contracting your PC and not just squeezing your butt or your sphincter. (Abrams says that by contracting the muscles around your eyes and mouth, you can increase the force or intensity of your PC pull-ups. Of course, you'll also look like an idiot, but it's worth it.)

As with any new exercise, start gradually, say, two sets of 12 reps. Do this every other day and increase by one set a week for four weeks. Early on, you may experience delayed-onset muscle soreness, but as your muscle strengthens, that will go away. After several weeks, you should start experiencing stronger erections and an increase in the force of your ejaculation. With a healthy PC muscle, you might even be able to raise and lower a towel hanging from your erect penis. But save that for the second date.

60-MINUTE MAN

Now that you're packing a cannon in your pants, it's time for shooting practice. To train your artillery to fire on command, you'll need to take matters into your own hands. "Men who ejaculate quickly have learned to do so because of the way they masturbate--quickly in the shower or while watching porn," says Sandra Scantling, Ph.D., a certified sex therapist and the author of Extraordinary Sex Now. "Every time you masturbate just to 'get off,' you're training yourself to become a rapid, or premature, ejaculator."

Yikes. If this sounds like you--or, ahem, a friend of yours--try utilizing the "stop-start technique" to reeducate your reflexes. The next time you're waxing the Buick, be alert for the telltale signs of orgasm: heightened tension in your unit, the withdrawal upward of your testicles, a desire to call out your own name. Once you sense these phenomena, pull back on the throttle, pull down on your testicles, or bear down with your newly buff PC muscle. This should help ward off the muscle spasm that leads to ejaculation, unless you've waited too long and reached what sexologists call ejaculator), inevitability, meaning nothing on the planet will stop it. Assuming you haven't reached this point and, thanks to your efforts, the storm has passed, resume your waxing. With practice, you'll become adept at maintaining this non-ejaculatory "plateau phase" of orgasm--and your partner will become adept at calling out your name.

SEX-READY CORE

Nothing is more crucial to making sweet love than a solid core. It's the midsection muscle that puts the motion in your ocean. And while nobody's knocking the usual array of crunches, leg lifts, trunk twists and spinal extensions, nothing will prepare your torso to tango like Pilates.

Hold on. Isn't Pilates, well, a girly exercise? Yes, there are more women than men doing it--but it works.

"The truth is, Pilates is not only great for strengthening your core, it's also great for improving your flexibility," says Mari Windsor, author of Pilates Powerhouse. "And flexibility is also important for sexual performance. After all, you don't want to stop the flow of sex because your muscles are cramping or you're not flexible enough to get into a certain position."