Chapter 2
The 30-Second Trick

Warning: Jack Hammers & Space

Even though, by studying this course, you can become a man who is able to provide jackhammer sex—extended, mindless, unrelenting thrusting for hours and hours and hours (and hours)—actually performing in this way every time you enjoy sex with your lover should not be your goal.

To understand sex as passion, love, and art, to know sex as dangerous strength, and sacred tenderness, listen to George Winston’s piano in his album December. This is not a rhetorical request; buy the album (preferably on vinyl); then listen to its entirety in one session, in the dark, without speaking and without allowing anyone else to speak. Notice the space between notes—the silence. Notice that Winston, on occasion, demonstrates superior finger speed. But, most of the time, when he plays, he shows no need to demonstrate speed or endurance. Instead, he often rests in silence, not to make you want the next note (although you will), but to show you silence. He demonstrates patience and connection to the music, not a need to demonstrate his skill. He gives you the next note only after making you wait longer than you expect; then, when the note comes—you more than hear it.

Here’s another way to hear why extended sex does not equate to good sex: re-listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” You likely can bring it to mind, but actually re-listen to it. That classic starts with a tinkle, gradually turns into ripping and screaming, before ending with a whispering collapse.

Artful sex and artful music (which at its best is sex) both require rising and falling, spring and fall, exertion and rest. Being able to thrust jackhammer style for hours does not mean that you should.

Conversely, to perform as a master musician, both Winston and Zeppelin must be able to play rapidly with strength and volume; we expect and demand kinetic force at the proper time—or else we put away music as impotent and bland.

Similarly, men should claim the solid mechanics of their penis and learn to maintain speed and force for hours. But such mechanics without art turns sex into a nuisance worse than a child relentlessly banging the keys of a piano.

The Anatomy and Physiology of the 30-Second Trick (They Didn’t Teach You This in High School)

You may wonder why even think about how to extend sex.

The first time that I had sex, the summer of 1978, I was 18 ; it lasted less than five minutes. The short duration disappointed me (and I’m sure my lover as well).

Because I ran cross-country track during high school (and so was accustomed to running nonstop for hours), I had endurance; but, I needed to discover how to maintain erection during exertion. But, then, before the end of that summer, after discovering the 30-Second Trick, I could enjoy sex with my lover for hours—literally hours. During those longer sexual encounters, I would see not only my lover orgasm, but also see her cry with pleasure and release: sweating, sobbing, moaning, enjoying orgasm after orgasm, and melting into bliss. So, it seemed to me that, at least on occasion, longer-lasting sex was better than brief sex.

The simple 30-Second Trick that I figured out during that summer, works based on human anatomy. And, even though I did not, in the summer of 1978, understand the anatomy, the 30-Second Trick still worked. But, years later, after better understanding the anatomy, the trick works even better. So, before you practice the trick, take a short look at the relevant anatomy of the penis and the vagina.

In developing from an embryo into an adult, both men and women develop the same parts (even the same genitalia). Like the rest of the body, the genitalia simply develop into different sizes and different (but similar) shapes based on the sex of the person. The corpus cavernosum and the corpus spongiosum develop into a penis in a man and into a clitoris in a woman—but the tissue in both men and women is of the same composition and of similar shape (but of different sizes).

As another example, the man develops a prostate gland; a woman develops Skene’s glands (also called periurethral glands): both secrete fluid identical biochemically and that tests positive for prostate-specific antigen (PSA)—yes, the woman’s Skene’s glands secrete fluid that contains PSA. Women can even develop cancer in the Skene’s glands that if the same cancer were in a man would be called “prostate cancer.”

Also, the woman’s labia and the man’s scrotum are analogous.

In the man’s embryological development, the testicles descend into the scrotum; in a female, the ovaries remain inside the abdomen; but, both testicles and ovaries serve analogous functions and share analogous anatomical connections.

Also, (and important to extending sex) in both men and women, the spinal nerves travel down the spinal column and branch into the nerves of micturition: the nerves that allow you urinate or to hold your urine in the bladder until you make it to an appropriate place. The spinal nerves (thoracic, lower thoracic, lumbar, and sacral nerves) connect to ganglion; and these nerves also branch to become the pudendal nerve, which extends to the penis and to the prostate gland.

Important: Sensations from the bladder come through the spinal nerves to tell your brain when your bladder is full so you do not urinate on yourself; these same nerves also communicate to your brain the sensations that tell you when your bladder is empty.

When a woman ejaculates (expels fluid from the urethra during orgasm), sometimes the fluid comes from her Skene’s glands; but, the fluid of ejaculation can also come from her bladder (she urinates with orgasm)—either way, the same nerves control both urination and ejaculation.

Also, (whether from the bladder or from the Skene’s glands), when a woman or a man releases fluid with orgasm, pleasure increases and emotional response deepens.

Pressure Release Causes Pleasure

Here’s a general principal that applies to both men and women: when a space in the body which has been expanded with a substance to the point of increased pressure then releases that substance to cause a sudden release of pressure, then the release of pressure brings pleasure.

Whether the pressure release is called a bowel movement, popping a zit, urinating, nose-blowing, ear wax extraction, or abscess draining—pleasure occurs with the release. All examples of pressure release do not bring the intensity of pleasure felt with orgasm; but in every case of pressure release, one feels pleasure.

With orgasm, the combination of the release of ejaculate from the Skene’s glands (woman), combined with the simultaneous release of hormones from the pituitary, and sweat from pores can be so physically and emotionally moving that orgasm can be followed by the release of tears of joy and by a change in the woman’s overall physiology—the Chinese, 2000 years ago, called this type of orgasm a “little death.” Indeed, the woman does experience with ejaculatory orgasm an emotional death to that which may be blocking her (mentally, physically, and spiritually), so that she both dies to those blocks and to her old life, and then melts into a resurrected space where she shares ecstasy and clarity with her lover and with her GOD.

The Urge to Urinate Affects the Urge to Ejaculate

I cover the details of a woman’s “little death” in another course of study, Total Surrender Orgasm with Female Ejaculation; that’s a subject for later. For now, the point is that the sensations sent to the brain with both the urge for urination and the urge for ejaculation (for both men and women) are mixed together, all connected to the brain through the same nerves; and because the sensations of both urination and ejaculation travel together to the brain through the same nerves, the dual functions of those nerves make it difficult for the brain to tell the difference between a full bladder and a full prostate gland.

Said another way: you feel the urge to urinate and the urge to ejaculate through the same neuronal pathways to the same part of your brain; therefore, anything that increases your urge to urinate will also increase your urge to ejaculate; and, anything that decreases your urge to urinate will also decrease your urge to ejaculate. In summary,

Increasing the urge to urinate increases the urge to ejaculate; decreasing the urge to urinate decreases the urge to ejaculate!

For the most control of your urge to ejaculate, decrease your urge to urinate so much so that, even if you try to urinate, nothing will come out.

Learning to apply this one concept can change your love-making abilities tremendously.

Factors that Change the Urge to Urinate

Many factors affect the urge to urinate, or even the ability to urinate. For example, some of the cold medications can cause complete urinary obstruction, where a man cannot urinate at all.

Acetylcholine, prostaglandins (some of them released with massage), and nitric oxide are a few of the factors that can affect the urge to urinate. If you study a list of all factors that affect the urge to urinate, the following principle applies: anything that causes relaxation of the bladder neck could make it more difficult to hold your urine (and easier to urinate); these same factors would make it more difficult to hold your ejaculate (or easier to ejaculate).

If something inhibits relaxation of the bladder neck, then it causes contraction of the bladder neck; if something causes contraction of the bladder neck, then it helps you hold your urine and helps you delay ejaculation—therefore helping you extend sex.

Therefore, whatever inhibits relaxation of the bladder neck will help extend sex.

Serotonin going up relaxes the muscles of micturition so you have less urge to urinate (and therefore the urge to ejaculate). Remember, from the last chapter, raising serotonin levels through exercise and light and meditation helps prolong sex; now you understand one of the reasons why.

Nitric oxide also inhibits the efferent firing of the nerves—also decreasing the urge to urinate.

Surgery

In one research study of men undergoing surgery for rectal cancer, researchers measured both urinary and sexual function and saw that with the decreased nerve function in the area, the men in the study saw the ability to prolong sex (sometimes completely losing the ability to ejaculate at all).

Aerobic Exercise

When raising serotonin levels with exercise, in the same way you cannot run only one day and then enjoy fitness for the rest of your life, with methods of avoiding the urge to ejaculate by avoiding the urge to urinate, you get benefits the day of exercise, but they do not carry over to the next day unless you repeat the exercise. The effects may, if you’re really fit, start to carry over for more than one day at a time. But usually, the best effect is the day you exercise.

For example, on the female side, there was a study showing that women who have sex right after aerobic exercise can more easily enjoy an orgasm (and they enjoy a stronger orgasm than if they do not exercise). So, part of foreplay could involve going for a walk or a jog or a swim with your lover; the result would be that the man could delay ejaculation and the woman could more easily orgasm. ¹

The runner’s high only lasts for a day, but your baseline sense of wellbeing gradually goes up when you exercise daily. In the same way, the immediate effects from exercise, from the serotonin, which lead to longer sexual encounters for you and to better orgasms for your lover, those effects are going to be short-lived until you get your baseline serotonin up with consistent daily exercise. The benefits probably peak around the 25-mile-a-week mark.

But if you go for a week or so without exercising at all, then the benefits of exercise can decrease to nothing.

Full-Bladder Sex

All of the above-mentioned ideas can help prolong sex; but, I promised you a 30-second trick that works. Now that you better understand the anatomy, you will better understand why my trick works.

One of the easiest ways to decrease the urge to urinate (and so decrease the urge to ejaculate) is to simply empty the bladder!

Try the following exercise the next time you have sex: have sex with a very full bladder. You will very quickly have the urge to ejaculate.

Empty-Bladder Sex

Then, the next time you have sex, completely (and I mean absolutely completely) empty your bladder less than a minute before you have sex. You want your bladder to be as empty as you can get it. That means that you urinate; and, then as you’re urinating, you do the shiver-Kegel where you empty out the last two or three drops. Then, when you start penis-in-vagina sex, you will find a less-than-usual urge to ejaculate.

Remember my definition of premature ejaculation: if you’re ejaculating before you (or your lover) want to ejaculate, that’s “premature.” I don’t care if you have been having sex for 30 minutes or for 3 hours; if both you and your lover are enjoying the intimacy (whether you are doing tantric sex or you are doing circus, wide-open-jack-hammer sex on your neighbor’s roof), if you ejaculate before you want to ejaculate, by my definition, that’s premature. That means that sometimes if you ejaculate after 30 seconds, that is not premature because both you and your lover wanted quick sex before leaving for work; but, sometimes, if you ejaculate after 2 hours, but you wanted to go longer, then that would be premature. Your intention, not the clock, defines premature ejaculation.

The 30-Second Trick: Empty-Bladder Sex Followed by Interruption Combined with Urination (ICU)

The next time you have sex, urinate right before you start (less than a minute before putting your penis in your lover’s vagina). Then, after making love for a time, when you feel the first urge to ejaculate (whether you feel that urge after 30 seconds or after an hour), instead of only doing the basic interruption technique, interrupt your thrusting, and urinate! You will be amazed at the difference in the urge when you start back.

Oftentimes, if you urinate immediately before you have sex (which you should if you want to decrease the urge to ejaculate), then, when you feel the first urge to ejaculate and you stop to urinate, you may only feel a few drops come out; then you start back and only a few minutes later, you might again feel the urge to ejaculate—even if it’s only been a few seconds, urinate another drop or two.

After stopping to urinate only once or twice, the urge to ejaculate will decrease dramatically. The urge that’s almost unbearable in the beginning of a love-making session will become less and less until you reach the “Safe Zone” (where you can have sex with abandon for hours at a time if you and your lover have the physical stamina)—your urge to ejaculate will quit being a limiting factor at all.

More about the “Safe Zone” can be found in my complete course, Extend Sex, but the main point of this lesson is simply this, the nerves of micturition are the same as the nerves of ejaculation and erection; at least, there’s crossover in the sharing of afferent and efferent nerve conduction for both sensation and contraction.

So if you completely take away the signal to urinate, and then you take it away again when that signal recurs, you can greatly decrease or even eliminate the urge to ejaculate.

Further Tips about the 30-Second Trick

Remember the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems we talked about in the previous lessons? The parasympathetic nervous system has to do with erection; parasympathetic becomes dominant when you relax. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in to help you move when you need to “fight or flight”—and the sympathetic system activates with ejaculation.

Here’s a key point: you can enjoy the ability to keep your parasympathetic system active—staying relaxed and avoiding ejaculation while actively having sex—when you are fit. In other words, if you are aerobically unfit (with a low VO2max), then you need to kick in your sympathetic nervous system at a lower activity level—and when your sympathetic nervous system kicks in, then you begin to have a stronger urge to ejaculate. So, being aerobically out of shape makes it more difficult to avoid ejaculation when you enjoy active sex.

Exertion Combined with Relaxation

So one of the things you can practice this week is walking or jogging (with your doctor’s permission) while simultaneously keeping your body relaxed, the muscles of your face, your arms, even your legs should stay relaxed while you walk or jog.

When I ran marathons, I would focus on keeping face, arms, even legs completely relaxed while running (talk with a marathoner to learn more about how this can be done). You can practice this while doing any work, even desk work or reading: simply notice the muscles of your body; notice now; are you contracting muscles that are not needed to do the work in progress?

Are you contracting the muscles of your neck and back now, while reading or listening to this lesson? If so, then right now, breathe in and out deeply and keep reading while letting go of the muscle contraction in your shoulders, back, and arms, and legs.

In other words, practice working your body (sitting is more work than lying supine) while simultaneously relaxing your body so that your parasympathetic nervous system stays dominant, not your sympathetic nervous system.

Then, after you practice walking, running, and sitting while keeping your parasympathetic nervous system dominant; after you practice doing your daily work while staying relaxed; then practice doing the same thing (staying relaxed even during exertion) when you next enjoy vigorous sex.

So, as you enjoy vigorous sex, the idea is that you are aroused, you are into your lover, you enjoy the sensations, you enjoy the sounds and the connection, and the emotion and you actively and forcefully thrust yourself into your lover, but your body stays relaxed while you move.

Whether the motion of you and your lover demonstrates tantric sex that is maddeningly slow, or whether you and your lover grow outrageous with screaming, sweating, panting, and the walls of your house shake so much your neighbors think you are remodeling the kitchen—either way, your body stays relaxed.

If one can sprint a hundred yards at the Olympics and stay relaxed while doing it, then you can enjoy sex and stay relaxed.

Note: If you masturbate to practice these ideas, do the same thing—urinate right before you masturbate and stay relaxed while masturbating. If you practice penis-root massage, either by you or by your lover (see Extend Sex for more details), urinate right before practice, then practice the penis-root massage in the same way, except, if you feel the urge to ejaculate during your penis-root massage, stop, urinate, and then start back.

Where do you aim it?

When you create a state where your parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant (and your sympathetic system downplayed), you will see much better erection and ejaculation control so that (with practice) you can extend sex much longer. Now, here’s the problem and why are you not going to want to do this simple little 30-Second Trick of emptying your bladder before and during sex: your lover will feel frustrated when you stop sex to urinate.

Think about it: she’s moaning, she’s moving in synchrony with your body and both of you move in synchrony with the spinning of the Milky Way, she’s on the verge of an orgasm that feels like it will become a prayer of devotion and love and screams and visions of prophecy—but now, you need to stop on that precipice so you can pee!

She’s not going to like it.

And so, you should tell her what you are doing and why; inform her that if we do this, once, twice, three times, maybe, it will become easier to prolong sex and we can find that powerful space in prolonged intimacy that is without words.

Keep the Momentum of the Music

In the meantime, when you stop to urinate, to keep from losing all the momentum (though she will usually lose some), she can masturbate while you “take a leak.” If you are outside, taking a leak (urinating) might just meaning taking a step away and aiming at the grass. Or, in your home, you maybe only need to take a few steps to the bathroom. But, when you go to the toilet, now you left the room where a woman who was on the verge of a magic space waits without you. She will not to like it. But she is going to love it when she figures out that by you taking a pause or two, now you can provide for her two minutes or two hours, or a full day of sexual intercourse—whatever she and you desire that day.

Other things you can do to help keep her from feeling frustrated when you practice the 30-Second Trick interruption combined with urination (ICU) include the following:

First, hopefully, you have made it to a psychological place where you are not jealous of a vibrator; let her masturbate with her vibrator until after you urinate and until you climb back into her love saddle. People cloister different ideas about masturbation; some men become furious that their wife might be sexually pleased by anything other than her husband’s penis; you may want to rethink that attitude if that describes you. Just give her something else to play with for the few seconds it takes you to step to a place where you can urinate.

In addition to the vibrator use, another (perhaps more outrageous) thing you can do is to go onto Amazon and buy an old-school, plastic, bedside urinal (like what hangs on the side of a bed in the hospital). Stick that urinal under the bed (it does not look too sexy sitting on the bedside table next to your olive oil and incense). Then, when you need to stop and pee, just turn your back to her, pee into the urinal and you do not need to leave the room. This strategy allows you to still speak words of arousal and to perhaps touch her with one of your hands while you urinate (assuming you like to multitask).

The simple plan that works best for most is to give her instructions (or “permission” or “encouragement” or whatever you want to call it) to keep her arousal heightened with her hands while you step away for a few seconds to the bathroom to urinate.

Remember: once you make it to the Safe Zone, then ICU becomes unnecessary and you can enjoy continuous lovemaking for as long as your VO2 max and your collective desire may allow.

Avoid the Erection Killer

One practice that will help ICU (and the other strategies that I teach) work better is if you do not drink alcohol right before sex. Remember: alcohol (when the man drinks) will kill the 30-Second Trick (ICU) in at least two ways:

First, alcohol is a diuretic; alcohol causes your body to make more urine, which makes it more difficult to keep your bladder empty, which makes it more difficult to avoid ejaculation. Not that you need to be dehydrated to have sex, but if you just guzzled a six-pack and now you go to it, it might make it harder to keep your bladder empty not only because of the extra liquids but also because alcohol causes your kidneys to make more urine (and so your bladder to fill more quickly) for the same amount of liquid consumed.

The second way that alcohol interferes with the implementation of ICU is that you simply can’t focus as well after you drink alcohol; so you have more difficulty perceiving the edge of ejaculation approaching. You need to be able to enjoy the sex with your passion or “lizard brain” while at the same time your left brain stays attentive to the beginning of the edge so that you can stop to urinate before you reach the point of no return. Using both your lizard brain (midbrain) and your left brain at the same time is much easier if you are sober.

Summary

1. Question: What’s the 30-second trick?

Answer: Interrupt penis-in-vagina thrusting for 30-seconds to urinate whenever you feel the urge to ejaculate (Interruption Combined with Urination, ICU); keep the bladder completely empty down to the last drop before and during your sexual encounter.

2. Daily, practice keeping your parasympathetic system dominant by practicing relaxed activity.

For best results, practice for at least a week all the methods described in the previous lessons in Extend Sex (all the methods, not just the walking). Then. practice ICU and aerobic exercise for the rest of your life.

3. Carefully notice: how does the feeling (in your head and in your genitals) of the urge to ejaculate change after you urinate? After you stop to urinate, and then resume sex, how does that feel to you compared to simply interrupting sex without urination?
4. Also, this week, keep your aerobic exercise going (with the goal to consistently do 25 miles a week on foot), especially try to do aerobic exercise right before you have sex. Try to do aerobic exercise at least six days a week; keep a record of miles walked per week so you keep yourself honest with yourself.
5. Continue to do the other practices we discussed in previous lessons in Extend Sex concerning the adjustment of serotonin and the parasympathetic nervous system.
6. Every time you have sex, urinate before you start your sexual encounter. Then, while you are enjoying the sexual encounter (either with penis-in-vagina, or penis-in-whatever-orifice sex, or if you’re masturbating with you or your lover), while you are enjoying sex, purposefully stop before you ejaculate, urinate, then start back; then, stop and urinate again (when needed to avoid ejaculation), and start back.
7. Do at least two cycles of ICU before you allow yourself to ejaculate; more is better when practicing.
8. Do not keep your practice a secret from your lover. Recruit her loving understanding and participation for your pleasure and for hers.

Remember: every love encounter does not need to be an all-night symphony; sometimes, a minuet is absolutely heavenly and more would be an intrusion.

But, when an all-night concert is wanted, I think you will find that my 30-Second Trick (ICU) will help deliver a private “Stairway to Heaven” for both you and your lover.

©2021 Charles Runels, MD

More resources at OrgasmCollege.com , PriapusShot.com, and Runels.com

1. I do not recommend bicycles at all. They can damage the pudendal nerves that help you feel the pleasure of sex (even with a properly fitted seat. ↩︎