back to ba(sex): sexercise

If you’ve ever trawled the internet for information on how to lose weight (read: lose your mind), I’d wager you’ve come across at least one article claiming sex improves your fitness. If not, here’s one from the BBC. This is because sex is, technically speaking, exercise. That’s right! Your muscle aches after vigorous rounds of rumpy-pumpy are not in vain!

The advertising maxim “sex sells” is applied to many business sectors. Well, now the fitness industry is looking to cash in as it diversifies its products to capture consumer dollars. Whether it’s a means to increase physical fitness via sex or fetish workshops or improve sexual function, there’s something for you to buy, friend.

For those interested in BDSM, dominants are now acting as fitness instructors. In Sydney, one dominatrix has recently been featured in the media for her ‘forced fetish fitness boot camp’ classes. These lessons can be in fetish wear or normal gear and combine (what they may well perceive as) sexy submission with not so sexy exercise.

‘At the beginning of the class the subs are made to kneel before me while I collar them and ask them about their various misdemeanours,’ Mistress Anna wrote on Daily Life.

‘During the class I push their limits as I demand them to work harder.’

Boot-kissing, spankings and being sat on are added as discipline during push-ups, planks and other exercises.

Look, there’s method to Anna’s madness here. As she points out in her essay, exercise is generally not considered not to be fun by a large portion of the population. This preference for a sedentary lifestyle is said to trigger many adverse health outcomes, especially when combined with poor nutrition or drug and alcohol use. While fetish boot camps may not strictly be a sex act, it is sexualised behaviour invoking excitement for what was once considered mundane. It’s killing two birds with one stone.

BDSM boot camps have a total body workout approach. If it’s a more specific – ahem – muscle you want toned, there’s devices and apps for that now. Located in your nether regions is the pelvic floor muscle. This beautiful thing stops you weeing yourself when nature calls. But its toning responds to more of nature’s screams. Contracting and releasing the pelvic floor muscle – known as Kegel exercises, after a man in a lab coat who realised the things need toning – can improve the following things: libido, vaginal tightness and premature ejaculation.

But wait a minute, you’ve gotta do it right, okay? Enter the kGoal, a product set to retail for USD$175 to give women some good vibrations when you do it right. You’ll be able to download an app to track your progress with it too. Sounds a bit more tech savvy than Ben Wa balls or other plain ol’ plastic and metal exercise tools marketed for tightening, right?

Again, where there’s added incentive of pleasure to the pain of exercise, I can’t see a problem with it. These are but two examples of sexercise on sale. You do have options if you want to fork out for sexy fitness, but I will say this: you don’t have to.

I’m no fitness instructor and I certainly don’t consider myself to even be a fit person. Nonetheless, here are some suggestions for the cash-strapped or unwilling consumer:

• Be more active in sex for a cardio workout
• Hey, you could even be more vigorous in your solo sex because there’s a string of health benefits to be had there
• Tone your pelvic floor muscles the au natural way like your ma and grandma did (sorry-not-sorry for any mental images)
• Or even work out a sexy workout routine with a consenting partner.

Cue Olivia Newton-John’s Physical.