Lovehoney Reviews the Elvie Pelvic Floor Trainer

At my first OB appointment a few months ago, my doctor asked me what I did for a living. “I write blogs about sex toys for Lovehoney, Australia’s biggest online sex toy retailer. No wonder I’m pregnant!” I joked, anxious about what his reaction might be. After his immediate enthusiastic response (phew!), the first thing he wanted to know was whether we sold that smart pelvic floor trainer that he had heard so much about.

Elvie’s pelvic floor trainer has seen its fair share of hype over the last few years. Aside from endorsements from Gwyneth Palthrow and Khloe Kardashian, it’s also been written about in a whole heap of respected media outlets like the BBC, Forbes and Women’s Health. And, clearly, enough Aussie women are talking about it that my OB is all over it like white on rice. So, we took it for a spin to see if it really was all that.

What Does It Do?

Simply put, the Elvie Trainer trains your pelvic floor (also known as your Kegel muscles). How, you ask? By connecting to an app that allows you to see whether you’re doing your Kegels right and how strong you’re squeezing. Pair your Elvie Trainer with your phone via Bluetooth using the app, and insert the pebble-shaped part of the device into your vagina. If it’s too small and feels like it might slip out, use the provided optional cover to increase the Elvie Trainer’s girth. Once it’s in, you can activate your pelvic floor to control a small gem icon, making it jump, hover or hit targets.

Now, this beauty isn’t your average Kegel ball. Sure, you could get a cheaper, weighted Kegel ball set and do your pelvic floor workouts analog-style like it’s 1999. But, if you’re like me and have a hard time motivating yourself to keep up your regimen, or even get started, you will probably stick to it better when you have app reminders, games to win, and a way to track your progress. It’ll also tell you if you’re doing your Kegels right. If you bear down with your pelvic floor instead of lifting up, for example, you’ll get an earful from the Elvie Trainer app. (Pro tip: At all the prenatal yoga classes I’ve been to, the advice has been to breathe out as you visualise lifting up your pelvic floor toward your head.)

Who Is It For?

At its core, it seems like Elvie is a company for people who have delivered babies. Case in point - the other main products it sells are smart breastfeeding pumps. Indeed, Elvie’s founder and CEO Tania Boler started designing the Elvie Trainer after having children and finding herself baffled by the lack of smart products that could improve the lives of women postpartum.

Under the pelvic floor trainer’s main benefits, Elvie lists: “better bladder control, faster postnatal recovery, and enhanced intimacy.” If this list is anything to go by, the target customer for this product is a woman who has a weak pelvic floor and poor bladder control due to aging or childbirth.

Having said that, there are still plenty of young vagina-owners who haven’t had children who wish to keep their lovin’ ovens tight for the great orgasms and added confidence in the bedroom. This toy works just as well for them as anyone else. As long as you have a vagina, you can use the Elvie pelvic floor exerciser.

Image courtesy of Elvie

Does It Work?

According to Elvie’s website, their little Kegel exerciser gives noticeable results in under four weeks. You’ve also got 90% of reviewers on their website saying they would recommend the product. Sounds pretty great, right? But, when you look at the reviews on the Lovehoney website, you get a slightly different story. Of the rather small number of customer reviews for the Elvie pelvic floor trainer, the majority were positive. But a couple of customers complained that the app wasn’t able to tell when they were squeezing and when they were relaxing, rendering it useless.

I can’t speak for these customers and am not sure if they called Lovehoney’s Customer Care or checked the Elvie website to try troubleshooting their issue, but the advice Elvie gives on the matter is to first make sure the device responds to squeezing when you test it out with your hands. If it doesn’t, it could be faulty. If the device responds as expected to being squeezed when it’s in your hand, they then recommend letting it warm up in your body for two minutes after insertion and using the optional cover to ensure a tight enough fit.

Personally, I found the Elvie Trainer very intuitive to use. To give you a sense of where I'm at with my pelvic floor health, I’m 30, heavily pregnant with my first child, have never given birth before, have been using it without the optional cover and have never accidentally peed while sneezing like one Lovehoney reviewer. My pelvic floor has definitely struggled to support the big load it’s been carrying but even so my initial strength level was decent. After using it just three times over the course of a week, I’ve already seen an improvement in my scores (especially when it comes to control rather than strength), which has motivated me to keep going.

By contrast, the weighted Kegel exerciser set that I got a few months ago is still unopened, simply because I’m not excited about using it. There was no app to download, no personal best to smash, no games to play, and nothing to prove. Perhaps having an app and all that tech is a bit of a gimmick, but it definitely makes it easier to keep at it than regular Kegal balls. Plus, because I now have a benchmark for my pelvic floor health, I’m motivated to keep going with it after bub comes. Watch this space for an update once I’ve had a chance to test it out after my delivery!