The Size Of Things

We all know that sex is important in our lives – and also that some of the things which go with sex can be very significant to men and women.

So for instance, men are concerned about penis size and the duration of intercourse, and women tend to focus on the presence or absence of orgasm and the emotional connection with their partner.

And one thing that interests everybody, perhaps for different reasons, is the perennial question “how long does a real man last in bed?”

Well, How Long?

You might be thinking, if sex lasts for two or three minutes for you, that you’re  just not good enough in bed, that you don’t last long enough, and that if only you could go on for longer, you’d be able to satisfy your partner in every way.

Think again!

It turns out, according to Dr Harry Fisch, that the average duration of intercourse is 7.3 minutes… wow! So long! But don’t get alarmed. He also discovered that in almost half of the times that men and women make love, the man ejaculates within two minutes.

So that means there must be a very few men who are making love for extremely long periods of time – and you have to think these guys have delayed ejaculation (about which, if you’re interested, you can read more here).

First and foremost I’d like you to put your own view of your own performance in bed into context.

If you’re lasting 2 minutes you’re doing OK – at least as compared to all the other men in the world! If you’re lasting 3 minutes you’re doing better than most of them.

And if you lasting between 7 and 10 minutes then you’re a genius lover, because you are making love for what women regard as the ideal duration of intercourse: 7 to 10 minutes.

Now I know that when you read that the ideal duration of intercourse from a woman’s point of view is 7 to 10 minutes, you’re probably going to want to be one of those happy band of brothers who can make love for up to 10 minutes.

But statistics suggest that very few men can do that, and you’re much more likely to be somewhere around the average lover mark, with a staying power of 2 to 3 minutes in intercourse.

The question therefore, rather obviously, is “how can you extend the duration of intercourse?”

That’s exactly what this website is all about, but first of all let’s look at some of the background to this finding by Dr Fisch. 

It’s not exactly news that men don’t last very long during intercourse.

As long ago as Dr Alfred Kinsey working in the 1950s, researchers demonstrated that the majority of men came within two minutes or less.

And for a long time that’s been one part of the definition of rapid or premature ejaculation.

And There’s More!

Whoops! Hold the press… News just in reveals that actually the average time of intercourse is not 7.3 minutes at all, it’s 5.4 minutes – a much more believable figure.

This comes from Dr. Brendan Zietsch, a psychologist from the University of Queensland, who asked couples to measure the time between penetration and male ejaculation using a stopwatch.

It’s about as good a method of measuring the duration of intercourse as you can get, and although it’s not very romantic, this is regarded as a reliable way of measuring the duration of intercourse itself.

So we have a discrepancy between the average time of 5.4 minutes and the ideal time in women’s minds of 7 to 10 minutes.

The question still remains, though: if you don’t match up to the average in terms of your endurance and staying power in bed, how can you manage to last longer?

One interesting study was conducted in Sweden on 152 heterosexual couples. It turned out that while women thought men wanted very brief foreplay and intercourse, the truth was that men really wanted intercourse and foreplay to last just as long as women did. (Mind you, this was Sweden, so it might not be applicable to everywhere else in the world.)

Dr. Antonio Pastore of the Sapienza University of Rome decided to do something about this: he worked with a group of 40 men between the ages of 1946 who came far too quickly for their liking (within 1 minute overall, and with an average duration of 33 seconds), and who’d been having no success in overcoming their difficulties in extending the duration of intercourse.

For a 12 week period, these unfortunate men were given exercises to strengthen their pelvic floor muscles. To start with the group came within 32 seconds on average – after 12 weeks of pelvic floor exercises, the average duration was 2 minutes 26 seconds.

Now that isn’t a massive increase, and as we’ve seen above it’s still far less than the average duration of intercourse among all couples, but nonetheless, if you are one of these unfortunate men sure it would seem like a massive improvement in intercourse duration, and you’d most likely feel very proud of the increase in your staying power.

Pelvic Floor Exercises

Well, you can read all about the pelvic floor exercises here – don’t be fooled by the fact that this leaflet talks about bladder and bowel control. If you read on, you’ll see that strong pelvic floor muscles can also prevent premature ejaculation. Hurrah!

Basically there are two kinds of exercises: slow twitch and fast twitch. You do the slow twitch first and then the fast twitch each time you do the exercises.

To perform the slow twitch exercises:
1. Close and draw up the muscles around your back passage, as if you are trying to stop passing
wind. Make sure that you do not contract (tighten) your buttock muscles while you do this.
2. Now close and draw up the muscles around your urethra, as though you are trying to stop
the flow of urine.
3. Try not to hold your breath, breathe normally. Pull upwards and count how long you can
hold the squeeze. If you can hold for a count of 10, then relax for a count of 10.
4. Repeat this until you feel tired.
5. Over time you should be able to increase the length of time you can hold for.

To perform the fast twitch exercises:
1. Pull up the pelvic floor muscles as before.
2. Hold for one second and then relax.
3. Repeat until your muscles feel tired.

Note that’s only the brief explanation of how you do it – it’s well worth looking at the leaflet to read about the other issues you need to know about to make this an effective way of extending your staying power!