How To Increase Your Sex Drive Part 13
Would you do a 20-minute workout if you knew it would dramatically improve your sexual desire? Break out your gym clothes because some breakthrough studies have shown that an exercise I call “20/70” makes men locked, cocked, and ready to rock.
There are stunning new developments in our understanding of how exercise affects sexual functioning. The findings directly contradict the scientific assumptions of the last forty years and may offer a radically different treatment protocol for men with low sexual desire.
This promising revolution started when a team of researchers led by Dr. Cindy Meston at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered, almost by accident, that a specific type of exercise can significantly increase sexual desire even in men with low libido.
For the last forty years, clinicians, researchers, and theorists assumed that the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which governs erectile response in men, was also responsible for sexual response in men. There was no real empirical evidence for it. They just had no reason to think otherwise.
Thus treatment of sexual dysfunction centered around activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System. For example, anxiety-reduction techniques (breathing, progressive muscle relaxations) activate the Parasympathetic while inhibiting the Sympathetic Nervous System. They facilitate sexual response by decreasing negative thoughts that divert the processing and experiencing of erotic cues, but these techniques do nothing to stimulate arousal.
Dr. Meston asked a startling question: Could the Sympathetic Nervous System actually be the mechanism that triggers sexual response in men?
Both systems work in complementary ways to keep the body running properly. For example, the Parasympathetic Nervous System contracts the urinary bladder while the Sympathetic Nervous System relaxes it.
Sympathetic is responsible for excitement; Parasympathetic for relaxation. Sympathetic accelerates the human body while Parasympathetic decelerates it. These are important distinctions in the study of sexuality because treatment protocols that activate one system inhibits the other.
Exercise Was The Key
What Dr. Meston needed to test her hypothesis was something that would activate the Sympathetic Nervous System. She chose exercise, which in moderate-to-high intensities generates the amount of Sympathetic Nervous System activity necessary for testing.
Her test subjects were divided into an exercise and no-exercise group. The exercise group spent 20 minutes on a stationary bike pedaling at 70% of their maximum heart rate. Both groups were then shown an erotic film.
As you’d expect, both the exercise and non-exercise groups experienced an increase in sexual arousal during the film, characterized by increased genital blood flow.
But the men who exercised had significantly, sometimes dramatically, higher levels of sexual arousal than men who did not, even though they watched the same erotic film.
Now, the natural inclination is to conclude that exercise causes sexual arousal. Not true. Exercise sets the stage for it. Without an erotic stimulus, there is no sexual arousal.
What makes this study especially significant is that it’s been replicated over and over with the same results across different groups of men, even with men taking anti-depressants. Especially notable is a study on men who struggled with low libido. That study represented the first empirical evidence that men with low libido can be sexually aroused through the activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System.
Again, it’s easy to misinterpret these studies and think that exercise increases sexual arousal. It does not. Exercise followed by an erotic stimulus creates arousal.
Many of Dr. Meston’s fellow scientists believe these studies herald a revolution in the treatment of low libido in men. For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the Sympathetic Nervous System inhibited sexual arousal in men. But now there is strong evidence to the contrary.
How Exercise Gets Your Body Ready For Sex.
We know what exercise does to improve your sex life–it increases blood flow, which improves sensation, arousal, and the intensity of orgasm. But exactly how does exercise do that? By strengthening the most important muscle in your body–the heart. Exercise, especially aerobic exercise (anything that elevates the heart rate for a sustained period of time–running, swimming, aerobics, etc), builds a bigger, stronger heart that can forcefully pump blood and make it circulate faster through the body, including the pelvic region where increased blood flow is critical to arousal.
Increased circulation means faster delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body while speeding up the exit of waste and toxins.
Over time, the walls of the heart grow thicker and stronger, allowing it to pump more blood with less effort. It also increases the number and size of blood vessels in the tissues thus increasing the blood supply to all parts of the body.
Exercise isn’t a ‘good idea’ for improving sex; it is the single best thing you can do for it. Without exercise, you are endangering the restoration of your love life.
Putting The 20/70 Workout To Work For You
Simply having sex after you finish the 20/70 workout isn’t going to help. You need to prepare an erotic stimulus after the exercise, which will then make you more receptive to sex. Remember, exercise does not cause sexual arousal, it sets the stage for it. It’s the wood in the fireplace waiting for a light.
The instrument for ignition doesn’t matter. Erotic stimuli are defined as anything that makes you weak at the knees. It could be a film, a book, a poem, a memory, a picture, or anything else that would light up your tree.
Capitalizing on the 20/70 discovery requires a bit of planning: Schedule a romantic interlude with your partner ahead of time, pick your ‘erotic stimuli,’ do the 20/70 workout, take a quick shower, spend time with the erotic stimuli and let the games begin.
The type of exercise you do (stationary bike, running, swimming) is irrelevant as long as it produces high levels of activation in the Sympathetic Nervous System.
The studies defined a high level as 20 minutes of sustained exercise at 70% of your heart rate maximum. To put the level of exertion in perspective, you should be able to carry on a conversation during the exercise. It’s a 7 on the 1-10 scale of difficulty. Still, always consult your doctor before starting any new exercise regimen.
The Problem
The real challenge isn’t the exertion (it’s moderately easy to do–test subjects were healthy, but not necessarily fit) but of making sure that you stay within 70% of your heart rate capacity. The studies suggested that anything significantly below it doesn’t produce enough Sympathetic Nervous System activity and anything significantly above it may actually inhibit sexual arousal.
The easiest way to determine whether you’re staying within your 70% capacity during exercise is to buy a heart monitor. Costs have come down considerably–you can buy them for $50-$100.
If you don’t want to spend the money, you can make your own calculations with an age-predicted maximum heart rate formula by the American Heart Association:
226 minus your age= Maximum heart rate x 70%= target heart rate (beats per minute).
Make sure you maintain the pace by checking your pulse regularly during the exercise. You can feel your pulse by placing your fingers lightly but firmly over the inside of your wrist or on your neck just below the angle of your jaw. Count for 10 seconds using your watch and then multiply by 6.
Sex After A Workout?
Understandably, making love immediately after exercising isn’t a particularly pleasant thought to many men. If you work out at a gym, where are you going to do it–in the locker room? In the car? Smelling like a petting zoo?
Obviously, working out at home is advantageous. But what if injuries or other factors require you to use the gym? Will the time it takes to get home, shower and prepare decrease the 20/70’s effectiveness?
The studies tested the presentation of the erotic film at 5, 15 and 30-minute intervals after the exercise ended. The results held for the 15 and 30-minute intervals. The big question, unanswered by the studies, is how long the Sympathetic Nervous System activity stays high enough to set the stage for sexual arousal.
No one knows, thus the call to study the treatment implications. But it stands to reason that if you’re going to try this route you should plan a love-making session as close to the end of the exercise as you can. Without rushing yourself. Putting pressure on yourself will neutralize the physiologic effect of the exercise.
Experimenting With The 20/70
The 20/70 studies are so promising that they justify experimenting with their findings, even if they cause some inconvenience. At the very least, you should consider a few self-pleasuring sessions after getting back home from a 20/70 workout.
Always make sure to pre-plan your erotic stimuli–a video, a book, an engaging fantasy–anything that makes you, ahem, blink faster than normal. Remember, exercise does not cause sexual arousal–it accelerates it in the presence of a turn-on.
Incorporating the results of these studies into your sex life doesn’t mean that you have to do the 20/70 every day or that you should only have sex after you exercise.
The thing about exercising is that the more you do it, the better your blood flow will become, strengthening not only your libido but your ability to feel more. Exercise has been proven to rejuvenate nerve-endings that heighten sensitivity to touch, all the while revving up your hormones.
The great news is that you don’t have to exercise for very long to get the benefits. The 20/70 workout takes 20 minutes. That’s less time than watching a sitcom. Hell, you’ve waited in line longer than that!
If 20/70 seems daunting, work up to it over the course of a month by starting with a “5/50 workout”–5 minutes at 50% of your heart rate–and gradually increase the time and the intensity.
Next week: How to exercise when you don’t feel like it.