Woman on Top - Sex in the "Cowgirl" Position

I love being on top.  As I've mentioned before, the "cowgirl" position is pretty close to a standard for a lot of couples after the yab-yum stage during tantra, but I also love it for regular sex.  My partner and I tend to begin that way more often than not.  But after getting several private questions and a plaintive one on another website, I've begun to realize that a fair number of women are scared to try it, so I thought I would share some tips.

This was the question:

How do you support yourself as a woman when you are on top during sex? Do you move up and down or do you rock back and forth? Are you sitting completely upright?  Besides being shy about "being on top," I don't really know the logistics of how to do it.  Any tips?

My reply:

I started to mentally catalog the variations we use and lost track at 6 or 7.  Let me try to list them.

To begin with, you can be either kneeling or sitting astride your partner - that is, you can have your knees down with your feet extended behind you, or you can have your knees up with your feet under you in a squatting position, the so-called "Asian cowgirl" position.

> For classic cowgirl in the most vertical positions, you can balance upright with your hands on your thighs or wrapped around your shins, depending on whether your knees are down or up.  Knees down (kneeling) works better if you want to post up and down without holding onto anything for balance.

> You can lean back, holding onto your partners outstretched arms for balance.  Usually, you are rocking slowly back and forth from an upright position to a leaning back position, which creates a sharply angled thrusting motion that is very strong on the g-spot for you, but not as intense for him.  Unless you are VERY limber, you need to have your knees up.  Since you are pivoting on your own butt muscles, how far back you can lean without him popping out depends on the size of your rear end as much as the length of his penis, so be careful until you figure out how far back is safe.  (Note:  leaning back too far can cause discomfort or pain for your partner if he has a very tight, vertical erection.)

> You can have your weight more forward, pulling yourself forward by holding onto your partner's arms.  In this case, your knees are raised, your weight is over your feet, and you're using his arms as your pivot anchor as you post up and down.  It's easy to alternate between this position and the previous one.

> With your knees down, you can lean forward and rest some of your weight on your hands, which can be on your knees, his arms or chest, or the surface on either side of him.  (That's actually three different positions.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_on_top

In these positions you can: 

• Lift your whole body up and down.  Try lifting up slowly. Pause for a second and tighten your vaginal muscles in a kegel, then sit down hard and fast on his penis for maximum effect. Lift up slowly and relax your muscles as you near the top. Be careful not to lift too far!  (This takes a lot of effort; it provides strong sensation for him, maybe less for you.)
• Rock forward and back, grinding your clit on his pubic bone and creating a small stroking motion internally. (Less effort; you get moderate sensation from two sources, clit and internal, while there is less stimulation for him, so this is a good motion to use when you're behind and need to catch up.)
• Slide forward and back, rubbing your clit on his pubic bone and creating a moderate stroking motion internally. (More effort; strong sensation for you from two sources, moderate for him, so this is also good for playing catchup.)
• Lift up about one inch and then move your whole body forward and back.  It's hard to describe the motion, but instead of internal stroking, it makes the head of his penis push alternately against the front and back walls of the vagina while the shaft pushes alternately on the back and front of the vaginal opening.  (Moderate effort; feels nice but strange for both of you; some people really like it.)
• Same thing but move your hips sideways or in circles. It's like stirring paint, but upside down.  (Considerable effort and concentration; feels nice but very odd; some people really like it.)

> Outercourse is like standard cowgirl, but without having his penis inside you.  With his firm, well-lubed penis lying on his abdomen, you straddle him, press your vulva down on the shaft of his penis, lean forward so that your clit is pressing firmly on the shaft, and then slide forward and back.  This creates much more clitoral stimulation for you but still feels great for him, and you can always switch to regular penetration when you're ready to finish.

> Reverse cowgirl is just like the upright sitting or kneeling positions, but with you facing his feet.  It's a great position for you to give him some ball play with your hands, but for the most part it has the head of the penis pushing hard against the back wall of the vagina, which you may not care for as much.  If you're into anal fingering, you can lean forward in this position and grab his knees to give his fingers access to your rosebud or to a buttplug or other anal toy.  However, be careful and don't lean forward if your partner has a tight suspensory ligament that limits the angle of his penis! Not all men can go past the vertical and some can't even bend to 90 degrees.

> The pole position is a variant on reverse cowgirl where your partner raises one knee and brings that heel up against his butt.  You turn about 30 degrees to that side and straddle his raised thigh.  Grip the raised leg for leverage and balance so you can post up and down on him while rubbing your clit on his thigh:

Source: Menshealth.com 

The positions of the woman's right foot and the man's left foot in this image look wrong to me.  When we do it, my partner's foot is closer to his butt and his thigh is more vertical, but that may just be because of our proportions.  Experiment until you find what works for you.

If you try this position, start carefully and make sure you aren't going to squash his balls.  Also, you have to angle his thigh and your pelvis just right.

This works well for people with a wide range of physical proportions, but the extra-close contact also makes it an especially big favorite for some larger couples who have trouble with chest-to-chest positions like missionary.  However, there are also some couples who just don't seem to fit together right in this position, regardless of build, so it may or may not work for you.

> Finally, inverted missionary is probably the simplest "woman on top" position.  Start in normal cowgirl and then lie down on his chest with your knees astride his waist or with your legs extended back.  In either position you can slide forward and back or lift your butt up and down, or let him do most of the work.

In fact, coordinating his thrusting with your motions is a whole 'nother subject.  Some positions are better if he's passive and he lets you do all the work.  Some are better if he's doing at least half the work by flexing his hips and thrusting from below.  With some you need to be in synch, with others he can do quick, short thrusts while you're doing something slow.  When you're both in motion, you need to be careful about him popping out if you both get too vigorous at the same time in opposite directions.

Tip:  Some beds are too soft and make an unsteady base for the more erect positions.  We're more likely to use those positions on our massage table or our nice thick gym mat on the floor.

Tip:  Some of these positions can give your thighs a real workout.  Doing squats every other day can really improve your stamina.  It helps to be in shape!

Tip:  Having great Kegel tone and control can make all of these positions better and more intense for both of you, so do your Kegel exercises religiously!  (See "Do Your Kegels!" about a third of the way down this page:  Getting Ready for Tantra.)

Tip:  In any of the more erect positions, like the one in the first picture, either of you can use fingers or a vibrator to stimulate your clit.  If he's close to coming and you're lagging behind him on the arousal curve, some clit stimulation can work wonders as a way for you to get caught up.  And if you're feeling greedy or he's feeling like giving you extra treats, that's a great way for you to have a bonus orgasm or three before he finishes!

A final caveat:  I'm fairly limber.  Also, I'm about 100 lbs dripping wet and my partner is around 175 and well-muscled, so I don't have any problem sitting on him or leaning my weight on him, or using him for an anchor when I lean back.  However, in my interviews with tantric couples I noticed that the woman's weight and flexibility can definitely be a limiting factor for some of these positions, so be careful when you experiment.

Edit:  A reader asked me to clarify what I meant by "internal stroking motion" in two of the descriptions above:

• Rock forward and back, grinding your clit on his pubic bone and creating a small stroking motion internally.
• Slide forward and back, rubbing your clit on his pubic bone and creating a moderate stroking motion internally.

When you slide or rock, you create pressure and friction externally on your vulva and clitoris.  At the same time, you are moving your hips with respect to his penis, which creates a sensation of movement of the penis inside your vagina in addition to the external sensations.  Even though the movement of the penis may not be as long or strong as it would be if you moved vertically, the combination of the two sources of sensation is often stronger and better than even the strongest internal stimulus alone.

At the starting point of the motion, your introitus (your vaginal entrance) is as close as it can get to the base of his penis, so his penis is inserted all the way.  When you rotate your body forward over your clit and pubic bone, that lifts your vagina upward, so it makes it feel like the penis is withdrawing partway.  When you rotate your body back to the vertical, you are sitting down on the penis again.  So it feels like he is thrusting, but it's not as long or strong a thrusting motion as the one you can get by moving vertically instead of rotating.

Sliding produces a more complicated motion, but it basically does the same thing except that there is much more friction at the entrance, because the angle of the penis in the vagina is changing sharply while the penis is sliding in and out.  

Many women find that the combination of the internal and external stimuli from these motions is stronger and better than even the strongest internal stimulus alone, but not everyone agrees, so you'll need to experiment and find out what works best for you.

Whether you will prefer to post straight up and down depends on how well you respond to vaginal stimulation by itself.  Most women like it, but find that it is not enough for an orgasm, so something like the sliding or rocking motions I described, which provide a combination of both vaginal thrusting and clitoral pressure or friction, can be a better, more reliable way to have an orgasm.

Some women are also more sensitive to pulsating pressure inside the vagina and relatively less sensitive to the kind of gentle friction created by in-out penile thrusting, so those women tend to like sliding and grinding variants more for that reason too.  If that describes you, you should also definitely try circling your hips in addition to the other two.

When you lift your body up just a bit and then move your whole torso forward an inch or two without tilting yourself forward, it makes his penis slant sharply inside your body, with the tip pressing hard against the G-spot on the front vaginal wall.

If you now move your hips in a circle horizontally, just above his hips, you will make the head of his penis make a circle inside you, pressing first against the front wall of your vagina, then against one of the sides, then against the back wall, and so on. At the same time the lower shaft of the penis is pressing against the opposite side of the vaginal entrance, stretching and rubbing the tissues there in the other direction.

This circular stretching and pressure on the kegel muscles at the entrance is different from the usual vaginal sex and feels very good. The pulse of pressure across the G-spot every cycle adds an extra spike to it. Meanwhile, he gets very little friction, just the rotating pressure, so it helps him last longer.  

Some women really love this, some like to do just a few circles for variety, and a lot never quite get the knack or don't think it's worth the effort.

So... that's a lot of things to try!  Start with basic cowgirl and then, when you are comfortable with the balance, try out as many variants as you can.  It's one of the best and most versatile positions for sustaining vaginal sex and for managing any differences in your arousal level.

Have fun!