It has been told, but only recently been explored further in a study: without partners, toys, or any direct sexual stimulation, a survey found 124 women have had orgasms at the gym, LiveScience reports.

Alfred Kinsey and his research team in 1953 said that about 5 percent of women they had interviewed linked orgasm to physical exercise. However, the researchers were unable to give the actual prevalence because most of the women volunteered the information without being directly asked.

Researcher Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, says the recent study adds qualitative and quantitative data to a field that has not been studied much.

"Despite attention in the popular media, little is known scientifically about exercise-induced orgasms," the researchers write in a special issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy released in print this month.

Herbenick and her colleagues used online surveys and got answers from women 18 to 63 years old, with 30 as average age. The survey found two groups: 124 women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms, and 246 women who had exercise-induced sexual pleasure.

The women in the first group said they were not thinking of anything sexual during the exercise.

Most of the women were in a relationship or married and 69 percent said they were heterosexual.

The researchers found that about 40 percent of both groups of women had experienced exercise-induced pleasure or orgasm on more than 11 occasions in their lives.

Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running; the rest of the experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon, LiveScience reports.

On exercise-induced sexual pleasure, urologist Jennifer R. Berman, director of the Berman Women's Wellness Center in Beverly Hills, had told Cosmopolitan magazine that crunches that target the lower abs strengthen pelvic muscles, which contract during climax.

"Fit pelvic muscles can result in more powerful orgasms," she said.

Australian Psychology Professor Marita McCabe, a sex researcher from the Deakin University, had previously said about 55% of women have difficulty with sexual satisfaction and are too stressed for sex.