The effect of circumvaginal muscle (CVM) exercise

Circumvaginal muscle (CVM) home training based on principles of exercise physiology were tested on 48 healthy reproductive-age women. The effect of CVM exercise with a resistance device in place, CVM exercise without a device, and no exercise with device in place was studied. After random assignment to home training, CVM assessment was carried out prior to and after 6 weeks of CVM training at home. Each subject served as her own control and change scores of the three groups, on CVM variables were subjected to analysis of variance. Peak maximum pressure (PMP) was significantly different for the three groups. F = 4.56, df = 2.45, p = .016. PMP of exercise without a device was significantly different from the no exercise group (Dunett's test). Analysis of measurement error between- and within-subjects showed that the inherent variability between women was approximately four times larger than the measurement error. The results support the prescription of CVM exercise to hypertrophy the CVM, and indicate that further investigation of the large variance found in the pressure data is needed.