BRYONY GORDON: I kept my shameful gym secret to myself. Then I discovered the truth about the coregasm

The first time it happened, I was doing one of the most boring exercises known to humankind: the calf raise. So dull is this movement that I had resisted it for years, reasoning that the backs of my legs could become strong enough through other, more interesting types of exercise: reformer pilates, perhaps, or something actually useful, like cycling. 

Anything other than the monotonous act of standing with the balls of my feet on a step, lifting onto my toes, then slowly dropping back down, over and over again, as if I had nothing better to do with my time. But then I hit middle-age, and it turned out that if I wanted to keep up my favourite hobby – running – and prevent my knees from collapsing in on themselves, then calf raises were exactly what I had to do.

It was a quiet Tuesday morning, and I was at home, alone, thank God. I moved on to the bottom step of the staircase in the hall, and I took a deep, weary sigh of resignation, feeling like a bariatric ballet dancer trying to eke out another vaguely mobile day. Then I wobbled onto my toes, lowered myself slowly back down and… ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The tingly, burning sensation travelled from the bottom of my feet up the back of my taut calves, through my thighs, into my pelvis, up my spine, on towards the crown of my head. Then as I raised myself back up onto my toes, it travelled back down my body again. My calves burned but so did other parts of my body – parts that shouldn’t be at 9.15am on a Tuesday, as I stood in my gym kit trying to increase my core strength as I trained for a half marathon.

It was pain, but it was also, unmistakably, pleasure. It was – and I apologise if you’re eating your breakfast as you read this – an orgasm, though not as I knew it. It wasn’t sexual, or erotic, or arousing. It was just incredibly enjoyable, in a way that made me think I shouldn’t have been so hard on calf raises. I was definitely going to keep them up, especially as they could be done safely, in the privacy of my own home.

But a few weeks later, I was at the gym, using the leg curl machine for the first time. And as I clenched my core and lifted the weights off the floor, it happened again. Mortified, but aware I could pass my blushing off as the exertions of weightlifting, I realised this was the first time I had experienced an orgasm in a room full of muscled men wearing Lycra.

I kept my shameful gym habit a secret, not even telling my husband (did this count as cheating?) Friends marvelled at the motivation I kept finding to build my calves and hamstrings and core, and I wondered if I was some sort of pervert because, as far as I knew, nobody else seemed to be finding this sort of pleasure when they worked out – quite the opposite, in fact, with most people I knew complaining about the gym. It wasn’t exactly something I could ask my personal trainer about and, while I knew all the normal etiquette about cleaning equipment and putting it back in the right place, there was nothing about what to do if you found yourself having an orgasm every time you engaged your core.

And then I heard former Made In Chelsea star Sophie Habboo talking about her experience of a ‘coregasm’ on her podcast, Wednesdays, where she talks about life with her best friend Melissa Tattam.

‘I definitely remember doing an ab workout in the gym in Newcastle and being like, “What the f**k just happened?”’

‘It’s very common,’ she continued. ‘Google it. I promise you. It was, like, a different type of orgasm, but it was something going on. You’ve just got to go hard for the core exercises. Give it a go, guys, let me know if it works out for you. I think you’ve got to be, like, really relaxed.’

On TikTok, the comments section was flooded with people wanting to know more. One person joked: ‘I’ve been looking for a sign to go to the gym and I think this is it.’ Another added: ‘Well that’s one way to get me to the gym.’

‘Coregasms are the best,’ wrote another TikTok user. ‘Discovered them years ago, still going strong.’

A lightbulb went on in my head – this was what I was experiencing in the gym! Encouraged that I was not a terrible deviant, I did as Sophie suggested and Googled the term ‘coregasm’. I discovered that this was a catchy term for what is medically known as an exercise-induced orgasm (EIO). It is different from a ‘normal’ orgasm because it requires no sexual stimuli to occur, instead taking place due to movement and intensity during a workout.

It was first discussed way back in 1953 by the famous sexologist Dr Alfred Kinsey. A 2014 study in the US, called the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behaviour, found that as many as ten per cent of women and men had experienced an EIO, with far more experiencing pleasure ‘stopping just short of orgasm’.

Meanwhile, a 2012 study from the Kinsey Institute found that the most common source of an EIO was abdominal workouts, followed by weightlifting (26.5 per cent), yoga (20 per cent), cycling (15.8 per cent), running (13.2 per cent) and even walking (9.6 per cent).

Dr Debby Herbenick, the director of the Centre for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, who co-authored the study, is an expert in EIOs. She first began covering the subject in her 2012 book, Sex Made Easy, which featured stories of women who had experienced them. A 41-year-old described having her first ever orgasm… while cycling up a hill.

‘I had to really grind into the pedals,’ she said. ‘This must have caused me to rub on the seat in just the right away. I thought I was starting to cramp, but soon realised it felt great. [I] thought I should stop, but chose not to… I never admitted to what had actually happened and I have tried to replicate it ever since – with no luck!’

Meanwhile, a 23- year-old told Dr Herbenick: ‘If I engage my lower stomach muscles… I get a sharp increase in pleasure, perhaps leading to orgasm. This is particularly true if I sit in a straddle position and reach forward. Also, if I lie on my back and stretch one of my legs up, pulling it towards me, I’ll probably orgasm after a minute or two.’

Dr Herbenick’s interviews were so popular that she went on to publish an entire book dedicated to the subject of the EIO, and how to have them: The Coregasm Workout, The Revolutionary Method for Better Sex Through Exercise. In it, she argues that sex and exercise have far more in common than you’d think, and that one couldn’t really exist without the other. Indeed, she has found that many women have increased the pleasure they get from sex by learning about their bodies in the gym.

‘Fitness is something we all have to practise or work at,’ she writes in the book. ‘In addition, the way we become fit changes with age and life circumstances. We can think of sex like this too: in terms of what comes easily, what we work at, and what changes with the seasons of our lives.’

Perhaps this explains why, in my mid-40s, I am experiencing coregasms for the first time in my life: having always been too lazy to bother with strengthening my core, middle-age is now forcing me to if I want to stay healthy. Whatever the case, I know I’ll never look at the humble calf raise in quite the same way again.