[You can follow me on Twitter @creatorvilla.] Steve Jobs and Muhammad Ali have reputations that precede them. Jobs co-founded and presided over Apple for decades before his passing, a company that is now worth $1 trillion dollars, over 5% of the GDP of the United States. Ali was a world champion heavyweight boxer when the sport was in its heydey. Nikola, for his part, pioneered breakthroughs in the production, transmission, and application of electric power. Tesla, the famous electric car brand named in his honor, is valuated at more than $100 billion dollars.

What do these titans share in common besides the extreme wealth and celebrity they acquired during their lifetime? A peculiar habit known as semen retention. For those unfamiliar with the term, retention refers to the conscious decision of a man not to climax. It is based on the belief that climax releases powerful energy that can otherwise be rechanneled in other areas of life. Steve Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan had this to say about his peculiar habit.

“Our birth control method up to that point was Steve’s coitus interruptus, also called the pull-out method, which for him was about his conserving his energy for work.” She added he didn’t want to climax to build “power and wealth by conserving [his] vital energies.”

In Muhammad Ali’s autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story, he narrates a quote from Olympic boxing coach Harry Wiley.

There’s a kid just come down here named Cassius Clay. If you bet on him every time he fights, you’ll be a rich man, ‘cause he won’t lose a single fight. I believe his thing is sexual control. And he’s got it. . . Any kid who can control [it] can with the title. I believe it.

Ali would reportedly go up to 2 months without climaxing in preparation for a fight. Retention prior to a fight, in fact, has been standard operating procedure among many boxers. David Haye, former British Heavyweight Champion, articulated the logic of the practice as follows.

I don’t [climax] for six weeks before the fight. . . It releases too much tension. It releases a lot of minerals and nutrients that your body needs, and it releases them cheaply. Releasing weakens the knees and your legs. Find a lion that hasn’t had some food for a while, and you’ve got a dangerous cat. So there won’t bet a drip from me. Even in my sleep — if there are girls all over me in my dream, I say to them, “I’ve got a fight next week, I can’t do anything. I can’t do it.” That’s control. I’ve been doing that since I was fifteen and its part and parcel of my preparation now. That’s why I am who I am today — it’s down to all those little sacrifices. Find me another boxer who makes that sacrifice, and you’ll find another champion

Nikola Tesla was an inventor and had his own reasons for practicing the habit. He had this to say in the article “Tesla Opposed to Marriage,” published in the Electrical Journal in 1896.

I do not believe that an inventor should marry, because he has so intense a nature and so much in it of wild passionate qualities that in giving himself to a women he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

The late Napoleon Hill was one of the most successful self-help authors of the 20th century. His famous book Think and Grow Rich is among the top 10 best-selling self-help books of all time. In it, he has a chapter entitled “The Mystery of Sex: Transmutation.” Transmutation is about redirecting the energy innate in powerful sexual urges into other creative pursuits. Napoleon Hill said it best himself.

Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.

Other celebrities have commented on this same alleged power. Music mogul and fashion designer Kanye West had this to say.

I have, like, nuclear power, like a superhero, like Cyclops when he puts his glasses on. . . People ask me a lot about my drive. I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex—to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 a.m., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic. . .

Stephen T. Chang, Master of Taoist Philosophy, illustrated his belief that climaxing has a draining effect on a man’s mind and body.

When the average male [climaxes], he loses about one tablespoon of semen. According to scientific research, the nutritional value of this amount of semen is equal to that of two pieces of New York steak, ten eggs, six oranges, and two lemons combined. That includes proteins, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, everything… [Climax] is often called ‘coming’. The precise word for it should be ‘going,’ because everything — the erection, vital energy, millions of live sperm, hormones, nutrients, even a little of the man’s personality goes away. It is a great sacrifice for the man, spirituality, mentally, and physically.

Going even further back in time, Proverbs 31 of the Bible recounts the advice that the mother of King Lemuel (possibly King Solomon himself) gave him. She had this to say in verse 3, an injunction potentially relevant to the topic.

Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings.

Proverbs 31:3

Retention has an ancient pedigree and there are many people today who swear by its benefits. I have read countless testimonials online of users who claim to have experienced a myriad of benefits with this discipline. Reported benefits include clarity of mind, increased female attraction, decreased anxiety, higher energy levels, greater resilience, a stronger immune system, more charisma, sharper creativity, and better masculinity.

For further reading, check out

• A Scientific Explanation For the Benefits of Semen Retention
• 100 Days of Retention (7 Fascinating Observations)
• Sunlight is the Key to Testosterone and Athletic Performance in Males.

In a previous post, I discussed how Steve Jobs, Muhammad Ali, Nikola Tesla, and other celebrities were known for practicing a lifestyle of retention. The benefits of retention as reported by its online proponents are vast. They include clarity of mind, increased female attraction, higher testosterone levels, decreased anxiety, better energy, greater resilience, a stronger immune system, more charisma, sharper creativity, and a more developed masculinity. I have come across very few scientific studies that have direct implications for the conversation. Retention seems to be one of those things you have to experiment with yourself and arrive at your own conclusions regarding its effectiveness. With that said there is one avenue of research that I did come across that may be an exception to the rule of there being little scientific research on the topic. It has to do with male fertility.

Many experiments have been conducted with the goal of optimizing male fertility. Anywhere from a day to a few days of abstinence is preferred by many fertility clinics. This study from 2017 analyzed 2,458 semen samples. The study categorized the samples into three groups based on length of abstinence: less than 2 days, 2-5 days, and greater than 5 days. The study found that “the duration of abstinence had a statistically significant positive influence on sperm concentration and volume, the number of leukocytes and a statistically significant negative influence on sperm motility and vitality.” In other words, the body continued to produce sperm but overall sperm quality decreased over time.

This review confirmed the results of other studies on sperm quality, like this study conducted in 1994. The researchers, who analyzed semen after various abstinence periods ranging from 2 to 18 days, found that “Semen volume and concentration and total sperm count showed significant increases, whereas motility and normal morphology decreased significantly with duration of abstinence. Significant changes in the percentage of normal sperm forms were observed after more than seven days’ abstinence.” These findings mirror those of the previous study.

Another study in 2005 analyzed 9,489 semen samples according to periods of abstinence lasting up to two weeks. The researchers similarly discovered that sperm quality decreased over time. They concluded with a recommendation for men seeking to maximize their fertility: “Our data challenge the role of abstinence in male infertility treatments and suggest that to present the best possible semen samples, patients with male factor infertility should collect the semen after just 1 day of abstinence.”

The scientific data makes it abundantly clear that sperm quality and fertility tend to decrease as the period of abstinence increases. Could it be that the mind redirects the powerful energy purposed for procreation in other constructive ways? This would make sense from an evolutionary perspective. When a man frequently climaxes, he is signaling to his brain that he is balling from a reproductive standpoint. The brain responds by channeling energy and resources into his fertility. After long periods of abstinence, the brain may judge that the man is a reproductive failure and redirect that energy in ways that increases his future likelihood of achieving reproductive success. This progression may explain some of the powerful benefits experienced by retainers that I outlined in the opening paragraph.

Other scientific studies have confirmed that there is a trade-off involved between male reproductive health and secondary sex characteristics. This study discovered an inverse relationship between voice pitch and concentrations of sperm. Men with deeper voices tended to have lower concentrations of sperm in their ejaculate. The authors concluded that the data was more “consistent with a trade-off between sperm production and male investment in competing for and attracting females, than with the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis.” The phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis contradicted by the data proposed that there was a positive relationship between male secondary sexual characters and semen quality.

All human beings have a limited amount of energy which the brain must allocate judiciously to maximize the organism’s chances of survival and procreation. One of the ways it does this is by taking cues from our behavior. There is evidence that climaxing negatively affects sperm quality. I have speculated that this decline in sperm quality may be a piece of the puzzle of why retainers experience such powerful energetic benefits. While the jury is still out until more scientific data is in, there is plenty of food for thought to digest in the meantime.