If you’ve already read our beginner’s guide to anal play and you’re here because you’re comfortable, curious, and ready for more, then you’re exactly who this article is written for. You know how to relax your sphincter. You know lube is non-negotiable. You know to go slowly and listen to your body. Good. Now we can have a more interesting conversation.
This guide picks up where the basics leave off. We’re talking about anatomy worth understanding properly, how to progress your toy collection intelligently, how combined stimulation works, and why smart sex toys have transformed what’s possible for both solo and partnered anal play. Whether you want deeper prostate stimulation, more satisfying fullness, or app-connected play with a partner who isn’t in the same room, there’s a logical path from where you are to where you want to be.
Understanding the Anatomy That Actually Matters Here
You probably already know the broad strokes, so let’s go deeper, literally and figuratively.
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The anal canal is roughly 3 to 4 centimetres long and bounded by two distinct muscles. The external sphincter is the one you can consciously control, tighten, and relax. The internal sphincter is involuntary, meaning it responds to slow pressure rather than deliberate relaxation. It’s the one most people need to learn to work with rather than fight against. When you move too quickly or feel anxious, the internal sphincter contracts. When you breathe slowly, stay warm, and allow sensation to build gradually, it opens. This is why arousal matters so much before you even introduce a toy.
Beyond the anal canal sits the rectum, which curves slightly (varying between individuals), and this is important to understand when you’re choosing toys with more length or a pronounced curve.
The P-Spot and Why It Matters for Everyone
For people with prostates, the prostate gland sits just a few centimetres inside the anal canal, towards the front wall of the body. Direct or indirect pressure on it produces a qualitatively different sensation from penile stimulation alone, often described as a deep, building, full body intensity. This is what the sex tech world tends to call the P-spot, and it’s why prostate massagers like the Aneros Helix Syn Trident or the We-Vibe Vector are shaped the way they are rather than simply being straight insertable toys. If you want a curved option that’s currently in stock, the Admiral Advanced Curved Probe is worth considering as a step up.
What’s less commonly discussed is the relevance of the anal canal for people without prostates. The anterior wall of the rectum is in close proximity to the posterior wall of the vaginal canal, which means that for people with vulvas, anal penetration creates indirect stimulation of internal vaginal tissue, including structures related to the broader internal clitoral network. Some people also experience stimulation of what’s sometimes called the A-spot (the anterior fornix erogenous zone, located deep in the vaginal canal) through that same indirect pressure. The anatomy varies significantly between individuals, which is exactly why exploration rather than expectation is the right approach.
Progressing Your Toy Collection Without Rushing It
One of the most common mistakes people make after moving past beginner territory is assuming that bigger is always better, or that progress needs to happen quickly. Neither is true. Anal tissue is sensitive and relatively inelastic in the short term, so comfort and pleasure come from gradual, consistent progression rather than ambition outpacing readiness.
Why Graduated Kits Make Sense
The b-Vibe Anal Training Kit is built around a very practical principle. It gives you structured progression across multiple sizes so you’re not left guessing whether you’ve truly become comfortable at one level before moving to the next. Each size is worn long enough across enough sessions that the experience genuinely feels easy and enjoyable before you move up. If the current size feels like something you’re managing rather than something you’re enjoying, you’re not ready to progress yet. That distinction genuinely matters.
A useful rule of thumb is that each size in a progression should feel genuinely pleasurable on its own terms. Anal play you’re merely tolerating is not the goal.
Shape and What It Actually Does
Straight insertable toys are fine for beginners, but once you’re comfortable with insertion and relaxation, shape becomes your most interesting variable.
Curved toys with a pronounced anterior angle, like the Aneros Helix Syn Trident, are designed specifically to contact the prostate with each movement, each rocking motion, or each muscular contraction. The Aneros range in particular is notable because it’s designed to be used without hands, relying instead on the natural movement of your pelvic floor muscles to generate stimulation. If you haven’t tried pelvic floor exercises as part of your solo practice, our guide to training your pelvic floor for stronger orgasms is worth reading alongside our guide to sex toys for people with penises, both of which touch on bringing more conscious attention to pelvic sensation during solo play.
Bulbous or graduated shapes, including toys with a larger rounded body that narrows above a flared base, create a sensation of fullness that many people find deeply satisfying. That’s distinct from the targeted pressure of a prostate massager and is more about being stretched and filled in a comfortable, controlled way.
Vibrating toys add another layer entirely. Vibration in the anal canal doesn’t just feel pleasant in isolation. It relaxes involuntary muscle tissue, which is part of why people who find insertion difficult often discover that a vibrating toy makes the whole experience significantly easier and more comfortable. This is one reason the Lovense Hush 2 is genuinely useful beyond its remote play features, even for people who aren’t interested in partnered or app-connected play.
Lube for Anal Play Specifically
We’ve covered lube in considerable depth in our lubricant guide and it’s worth reading in full if you haven’t already. Anal play deserves its own dedicated conversation here because the considerations are specific enough to warrant one.
The single most important thing to understand is that the anal canal produces no natural lubrication whatsoever. None at all. That means every session, every insertion, every moment of anal play requires lube and plenty of it. More than you think you need, then a little more.
Water-Based Lube With Silicone Toys
If you’re using silicone toys, you’ll need a water-based lubricant. The majority of quality anal toys from brands like b-Vibe, Lovense, and We-Vibe are made from body-safe medical-grade silicone, and silicone-based lubes can degrade those surfaces over time, compromising both material integrity and the non-porous quality that makes the toy body-safe in the first place. Sliquid Sassy is a water-based lube formulated specifically with anal play in mind. It has a thicker consistency than standard water-based lubes, which makes it more suitable for anal use where you want lube to stay in place rather than becoming thin and runny during a session.
Silicone-Based Lube With Non-Silicone Toys
If you’re using glass or metal toys such as the Njoy Pure Plug (a beautifully weighted stainless steel plug with satisfying heft), silicone-based lubricant is an excellent option. It lasts considerably longer than water-based lube without reapplication and that matters in anal play more than almost any other context.
Why You Should Skip Numbing Lubes
This is important enough to be direct about. Numbing or desensitising lubes are often marketed specifically for anal play and typically contain benzocaine or similar topical anaesthetics. They are not a shortcut to comfortable anal sex. They are a way of removing the feedback mechanism that tells you when something is wrong.
Pain during anal play is information. It’s your body telling you to slow down, add more lube, try a smaller size, breathe more deeply, or stop entirely. When you chemically remove that signal, you remove your ability to protect yourself from injury. Anal tissue is vascular and sensitive. Tearing, irritation, and microfissures are real possibilities when the pace or size isn’t right, and you won’t know any of that is happening if you can’t feel it. Use lube, use it generously, progress slowly, and keep the feedback loop intact.
Combined Stimulation
Once you’re comfortable with anal toys on their own, combining anal stimulation with genital stimulation opens up a significantly more complex and often more intense experience. For people with prostates, simultaneous penile and prostate stimulation can produce orgasms with a notably different character, often described as more full bodied and longer in duration. For people with vulvas, combining anal play with clitoral or internal stimulation creates layered sensation that many people find more satisfying than either in isolation.
The We-Vibe Vector is worth a mention here because it’s designed with dual stimulation in mind, combining prostate massage with perineal vibration and targeting two distinct erogenous zones at once without requiring additional toys or a free hand. The perineum, the band of tissue between the anus and the scrotum or the anus and the vulva depending on your anatomy, contains a significant concentration of nerve endings and is frequently overlooked in both solo and partnered play.
Positional experimentation matters here too. What you can comfortably access and what you can maintain without breaking your focus depends enormously on how you’re positioned. We’ve written about the value of positional variety in solo sex toy use before, and that applies even more when you’re combining anal and genital stimulation, because some positions make it physically much easier to maintain contact with both areas without awkward reaching.
Smart and App-Connected Anal Toys
Anal play in 2025 looks significantly different from how it looked when we last published dedicated coverage of this category, and the smart sex toy landscape has a lot to do with that. The category has matured considerably and there are now genuinely excellent options for solo use, partnered use, and long-distance play.
Solo Use and the Lovense Hush 2
The Lovense Hush 2 is the best-known app-connected butt plug currently available, and for good reason. It connects via Bluetooth to the Lovense app so you can create custom vibration patterns, sync stimulation to music, or simply adjust intensity during use without breaking concentration by fumbling for controls. For solo play, this level of control makes a meaningful difference because you’re not working around a physical interface while trying to stay in the moment.
The Hush 2 is available in two sizes, which is useful if you’re in a progression phase, and it’s made from body-safe silicone with a flared base. Always use a toy with a flared base for anal play. This isn’t a stylistic preference. The rectum creates a degree of suction and toys without a proper retention mechanism can become difficult or impossible to retrieve without medical assistance. This is not hypothetical.
The Lelo Hugo and Prostate-Specific Smart Toys
The Lelo Hugo is a remote-controlled prostate massager that sits in a different category from the Hush 2 because it’s shaped specifically for prostate contact rather than general anal stimulation. It has dual motors, one in the prostate arm and one in the perineal arm, and comes with a dedicated remote control as well as app connectivity. The Hugo is genuinely one of the more sophisticated products in this category, and it reflects how much the prostate massage toy market has developed.
For people who want a non-vibrating prostate massage experience with a premium feel, the Njoy Pure Plug’s solidity and weight create a different kind of stimulation entirely. It’s about pressure and presence rather than vibration, and some people find it more intense and more satisfying than motorised options.
Partner-Controlled Play and Teledildonics
App-connected anal toys open up interesting territory for partnered play, both in person and at a distance. In person, handing control of a wearable toy like the Hush 2 to a partner introduces an element of unpredictability and shared dynamic that many people find intensely pleasurable. For long-distance couples, teledildonics, the technology that lets one person control a connected toy anywhere in the world via an internet connection, means physical distance doesn’t have to mean a complete absence of shared physical experience. We’ve explored how to make the most of this in our guide to using smart sex toys to stay in touch with your partner.
Lovense’s ecosystem is particularly well developed for this. A partner with the Lovense app can control the Hush 2 from the other side of the world, adjusting intensity, creating patterns, or syncing stimulation to their voice or video. As we covered in our piece on sound-responsive vibrators, syncing to audio input adds a genuinely unpredictable dimension to remote play. The Lelo Hugo also has remote functionality, though its primary design is for in-person or close-range use.
We want to be clear about something here because it matters. Remote-controlled play of any kind requires explicit, enthusiastic consent and a clear communication framework established before any session begins. That means agreeing on what is and isn’t permitted, deciding on a clear signal for when you want stimulation to stop, whether that’s a text message, a safe word via voice, or a designated button press, and checking in after the session. This applies whether you’re in the same room or on different continents. The technology is genuinely exciting, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of how ethical, enjoyable partnered play works. Our piece on using sex tech for power dynamics covers consent frameworks for remote-controlled play in more depth if that’s the direction you’re heading.
A Note on Hygiene and Practical Preparation
Advanced anal play is the same as any anal play in terms of hygiene, except that more extensive preparation becomes more relevant as you explore toys with more length or girth. Eating well, staying hydrated, and timing your sessions thoughtfully go a long way. Some people use anal douching or enemas before more involved sessions, particularly if they’re using longer or more substantial toys. If you do, use only plain warm water and avoid anything with additives or soap. Doing it too frequently can disrupt your gut’s natural function. Think of it as a tool rather than a requirement.
Clean your toys after every session. Non-porous materials like silicone, metal, and glass can be washed with warm water and a dedicated sex toy cleaner or mild unscented soap. Metal and glass toys that are solid and motor-free can be boiled or run through a dishwasher on the top shelf without any risk of damage. Never share toys between partners without thorough cleaning or a fresh condom, regardless of STI status.
Where to Go From Here
Advancing your anal play practice is less about acquiring progressively more ambitious toys and more about developing a deeper understanding of your own body, its responses, its preferences, and its rhythms. The best sessions tend to come not from using the biggest toy you own but from being genuinely present, well-prepared, and willing to follow sensation rather than an agenda.
If you’ve found that combining types of stimulation interests you, our piece on the best sex toys for couples covers dual-stimulation products in partnered contexts that pair well with what you’ve been exploring here. And if you’re considering introducing any of this into a partnered dynamic, communication is always the toy that does the most work. Our guide to using sex tech for power play covers consent and control dynamics in useful depth if you’re heading in that direction.
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