A scientific study has now confirmed what many women have known for ages, which is that certain types of exercise can induce orgasm. Indiana University health researchers Debby Herbenick and Dennis Fortenberry have just conducted a study of hundreds of women who report "exercise induced orgasms" (EIO), or "coregasms."

Most of the women were not thinking about anything sexual when they had the orgasms — the exercise itself seems to have been the trigger. In a release about the study, published in the latest issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Herbenick said:

The most common exercises associated with exercise-induced orgasm were abdominal exercises, climbing poles or ropes, biking/spinning and weight lifting. These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women's experiences of orgasm.

Herbenick and Fortenberry also investigated the exact types of exercise that caused orgasm in their subjects:

Diverse types of physical exercise were associated with EIO and EISP [exercise-induced sexual pleasure]. Of the EIO group, 51.4 percent reported experiencing an orgasm in connection with abdominal exercises within the previous 90 days. Others reported experiencing orgasm in connection to such exercises as weight lifting (26.5 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (15.8), running (13.2 percent) and walking/hiking (9.6 percent) . . . ab exercises were particularly associated with the "captain's chair," which consists of a rack with padded arm rests and back support that allows the legs to hang free. The goal is to repeatedly lift the knees toward the chest or toward a 90-degree angle with the body.

So now we have science to prove that some women can have real orgasms without having sex. It's worth noting that there has never been a form of male orgasm — no matter how bizarrely achieved — that scientists have had to investigate for validity.