The 'Buzz' Says The kGoal App Makes Kegel Exercises Fun and Rewarding

Concerned about your pelvic floor muscles? The creators of kGoal, a revolutionary new Kegel training system, are on the final week of their Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for its creation.

"These are generally involuntary, subconsciously controlled muscles. So when someone tells you to squeeze your pelvic floor muscles or crunch them it's not intuitively obvious at first how to do that," Jon Thomas, the vice president of manufacturing for Minna, the sexual health products company that designed kGoal, told Fast Company. "Our product tells you how you're doing."

The body-safe silicone device tracks your progress and gives you feedback via iOS devices and Android, much like Fitbit or Jawbone UP. If you do the exercise correctly, kGoal gives you a little buzz. If you need incentive, you can turn the vibration up. If you don't like it, you can turn it off.

This "personal trainer for your ladybits" tracks your progress over time via the app, and helps make sure you're doing your Kegels correctly; studies say 30 percent of women aren't doing them right.

"Pretty much everything else that's out there right now is passive," explains Jon Thomas, VP of manufacturing for Minna, the sexual health products company that designed kGoal. "You don't have any feedback or any transparency into whether you're doing the exercise correctly or how you're actually progressing."

Strong pelvic floor muscles are important during and after pregnancy, to control the bladder and prevent incontinence, to provide musculoskeletal stability and support abdominal organs, and to add to a woman's healthy sexual response.

KGoal's Kickstarter campaign currently has 2,004 backers and has raised more than $240,000. The creators believe that the campaign will help give them user feedback, and help cover their manufacturing costs, especially for the up-front manufacturing capital expenditure costs.

kGoal is scheduled to begin manufacturing in August, immediately after the Kickstarter campaign. They expect to ship the first units by December, and will fulfill backers' orders first. Their design is at an advanced stage; what remains is to settle on a color for the device.

When they are finished, they hope to improve women's health by motivating them to do these exercises correctly, and to continue when they might otherwise have quit.
"It's a short-term reward for exercises with long-term benefits," Thomas added. "We're making something that's traditionally very boring fun."