How often have you sat down (Stood up?) to do Kegel exercises, only to lose count of how many you've done? Whether the answer is "literally never" or "every single time," it might fall among those tedious tasks it's about time to outsource to our smartphones.
Exercise tracking devices and apps like FitBit and Map My Run have become essentials for tech-savvy millennials. One company used a similar goals-based approach to develop a product to track "pelvic floor muscle" exercises. Street name: Kegel exercises.
Developed by Minna Life, "kGoal" is an "interactive training system for pelvic floor exercises" promising to deliver a "personalized gym, physical therapist, and tracking system" in one device. (We'd like a referral for this gym and physical therapist, please.)
Currently, kGoal is just a prototype and not available for purchase. But a Kickstarter campaign to produce and put kGoal on the market has gathered legs among those in favor of strengthening between them. kGoal has surpassed its original fundraising goal of $90,000. As of Monday morning, they'd raised $220,116.
While agile Kegel muscles are typically touted as sexual pleasure enhancers, an entire field of physiology is devoted to "pelvic floor health" in order to alleviate lower back pain and promote bladder control.
Rather than simply concern itself with sexual rewards for you or your partner, the kGoal sincerely aims to improve women's "health and happiness" by way of -- it just so happens -- a strong vagina.
The device itself is a "squeezable pillow" inserted into the vagina, conforming to a woman's individual anatomy and using air pressure to adjust fit. But it doesn't stop there.
Apt to gamify Kegel exercises, kGoal is linked to an app that delivers real time "biofeedback" to the user, whereby sensors in the device determine if exercises are being done correctly and calculate repetitions. From there, you can "track your performance" using metrics like "average squeeze time" and "weekly improvement." Tracking progress and improvement, developers hope, will encourage women to commit to the exercises in the long term in the interest of overall health.
As lead product designer Grace Lee notes in the video above: "kGoal is fun to use" and users can "create games or other interactions to make things more engaging" and less of a "chore."
To whatever extent women may be able to use this product to improve or enhance any area of their life, we're on board. Are we as likely to share our Kegel endurance with our social networks as we would a brisk three-mile run? Probably not. Online dating profile? Maybe.
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