Death Grip Syndrome: Why You Have it and How to Fix It

What is death grip?

Death grip syndrome is a colloquial term that describes a single symptom: the inability to ejaculate during regular vaginal sex. Though they cannot ejaculate during sex, men with death grip retain the ability to ejaculate during masturbation. The cause of death grip is the desensitization of the penis from chronic and frequent masturbation with a high-pressure grip (more on that shortly).

By its very nature, death grip only affects men. Women can’t develop it because they don’t grip when they masturbate.

Death grip vs delayed ejaculation

How masturbation causes death grip

Can death grip syndrome be reversed?

How to cure death grip

The term “death grip” is not scientific. It was coined in 2003 by a sex advice columnist to describe a very real phenomenon, which to this day medical textbooks refuse to acknowledge [1]. The official medical term closest to death grip is delayed ejaculation (DE). This describes the condition where the man either takes too long to ejaculate (>30 minutes) or cannot ejaculate at all during sex.

At the heart of death grip is pressure. A healthy adult male can generate up to about 180 mmHg of squeeze strength in his hand. Even if he’s only using a fraction of that during masturbation, the figures are still staggering: 20–30% of max grip strength works out to roughly 35–55 mmHg on the shaft. By contrast, the vagina at rest is around 5 mmHg and rises to maybe 15 mmHg during orgasm[5]. That means the average man, without realizing it, is subjecting his penis to several times the pressure it was designed to detect during sex.

Do it once and nothing happens. Do it daily for years and the nerves adapt. They raise their threshold, just as your ears would dull after constant loud noise. Clinical research confirms this. Men with delayed ejaculation, which as we saw is mostly “death grip” cases, show higher sensory thresholds in the penile shaft compared to healthy men. In other words they have literally trained their nerves to become numb. The glans (penis head), which isn’t squeezed as hard in masturbation, shows no such deficit.

This explains why men can often finish by hand but not with a partner. Intercourse never comes close to reproducing the 35–55 mmHg grip that the shaft has been trained to expect. Think of it as over-engineering a lock. If you slam the bolt into place with a hydraulic press every time, eventually only the hydraulic press can open it. That’s the trap of death grip: an ordinary human vagina can’t compete with your own hand strength.

Yes, death grip can be reversed. The damage is not permanent. Death grip is an acquired lifestyle situation, not a congenital medical disorder. Just as it’s brought about by a specific habit (excessive high-pressure masturbation), it can be undone by changing that habit.

Think of it like calluses on your hands from lifting weights. If you stop gripping the bar so hard, the skin softens again. Same principle applies here: if you stop using a crushing grip during masturbation, sensitivity returns.

Recovery time isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some men notice improvement in days, while others need weeks or even months, especially if they keep “fixing it” in ways that only make things worse.

A common mistake from men with this problem is overreacting, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Because death grip is tied to masturbation, many men lurch into abstinence movements like NoFap, convinced that cutting out masturbation entirely will “reboot” their brain. That’s a setup for failure.

NoFap is built on the fantasy that you can willpower your way out of sexual desire. But masturbation isn’t a glitch or pathology in human wiring. On the contrary, it’s a nearly universal behavior among apes and men alike. Surveys show over 90% of men do it, as well as a majority of women. Trying to treat masturbation as the problem is like trying to cure hunger by swearing off food.

The data back this up. Surveys of NoFap members show the average participant “relapses” around twenty times, with many reporting fifty or more [6]. The shame spirals that follow make things more miserable: nearly a third of those who relapse report suicidal thoughts. Rather than leading to recovery, NoFap will take a very real problem and make it worse by layering feelings of shame, guilt and failure on top of a behavior that’s as natural as breathing.

Death grip isn’t fixed by swearing off masturbation altogether. The solution is retraining yourself to masturbate in a different way. Loosen your grip, slow down and let your body relearn how to respond. This isn’t about abstinence but about changing how you masturbate.

When you retrain from death grip, the changes don’t stop at finally being able to finish during sex. You will also notice harder erections, stronger orgasms, and more sensitivity across the board. What felt dull and unresponsive now comes roaring back to life. Instead of depending on one specific motion with your hand, your body relearns how to respond to natural touch, to a partner, and to a wider range of stimulation.

The payoff is better sex, deeper intimacy, and orgasms that feel more powerful because they aren’t dulled by years of nerve adaptation. Find out more about how to reset your sensitivity and cure death grip syndrome here.

Sources

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-death-grip-syndrome-a-masturbation-myth-293/

[2] Di Sante, S., Mollaioli, D., Gravina, G. L., Ciocca, G., Limoncin, E., Carosa, E., ... & Jannini, E. A. (2016). Epidemiology of delayed ejaculation. Translational Andrology and Urology, 5 (4), 541.

[3] Perelman, M. A. (2005). 1254: idiosyncratic masturbation patterns: a key unexplored variable in the treatment of retarded ejaculation by the practicing urologist. The Journal of Urology, 173(4S), 340-340.

[4] Xia JD, Han YF, Pan F, Zhou LH, Chen Y, Dai YT. Clinical characteristics and penile afferent neuronal function in patients with primary delayed ejaculation. Andrology. 2013;1(5):787-792.

[5] Levitt, E. E., Konovsky, M., Freese, M. P., & Thompson, J. F. (1979). Intravaginal pressure assessed by the Kegel perineometer. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 8(5), 425-430.

[6] Prause, N., & Binnie, J. (2024). Iatrogenic effects of Reboot/NoFap on public health: A preregistered survey study. Sexualities, 27(8), 1608-1640.

Delayed ejaculation is an umbrella term which covers a much wide range of causes. These include [2]:

• psychological problems like sexual abuse, trauma, anxiety

• medications like SSRIs and antipsychotics

• Hormonal problems

• Neurodegenerative disorders like multiple sclerosis

Despite this diversity of causes, the majority of DE cases are related to death grip. In one clinical sample, 75% of men with DE could reach orgasm through masturbation, suggesting that they have trained their penis to only respond to their hand [3]. Thirty three percent of these men reported masturbating at least once daily, and only five percent masturbated fewer than four times a month.

Another study directly compared men with DE against age-matched controls, in other words men without DE [4]. The men with DE had remarkably higher frequency of masturbation: 66% of these men masturbated at least two times per week, compared to only 16% for the control group. Forty six percent of the men with DE also reported that they found masturbation more enjoyable than sex.