Week 1: Admit the flat spot out loud
The first thing to do with a plateau is name it, without dressing it up. Say the plain version to yourself: nothing has visibly improved for a few weeks. Not a disaster, not a failure. A flat spot.
Men lose weeks here because they half-believe it's getting better and half-believe it's over. That middle state is exhausting. It keeps you training badly and worrying constantly.
So be specific. Write down today's date, how many pads you use, how wet they get, and which moments catch you out. That becomes your line in the sand. Everything in the next three weeks gets measured against it, not against how you felt last March.
Week 1: Check the reps before you change the plan
Most stalls are not a problem with the programme. They're a problem with how the reps have drifted. After a few months, a squeeze becomes a twitch. The hold gets shorter. The release gets sloppy. You still count ten, but ten of what?
Spend one session doing half the usual number with full attention. Lift properly. Hold until the hold genuinely fades, not until you reach a number. Let go completely and feel the drop. If you can't feel the drop, you weren't holding what you thought you were.
Do this before you add anything. Changing a plan that's being performed badly just gives you a new plan performed badly.
Week 2: Look for the load that changed
Plateaus often start outside the training. Something else in your week started pushing down harder on the same muscles. A chestier few weeks. More lifting in the garden. Constipation you've stopped noticing. Weight creeping back. A longer stretch of sitting than usual.
Go back over the last month and look for what got heavier. You're not looking for a villain. You're looking for the thing that cancelled out the gains you were making.
If you find it, deal with that rather than doubling the squeezes. Taking load off is often faster than adding strength. If a cough or anything painful is involved, or there's blood, that's a conversation with your doctor, not something to train through.
Week 2: Change one variable, not five
Now you adjust. Pick one thing. Move your sessions from lying to sitting, or from sitting to standing. Or lengthen the holds. Or add the quick squeezes you've been skipping. Or train at a different time of day, when you're not already worn out.
One change. Keep everything else the same for two weeks. If you change four things and something improves, you've learned nothing you can use again.
Write the change down next to your line in the sand. In a fortnight you'll want to know exactly what you did.
Week 3: Expect it to feel worse before it feels like anything
When you tighten up your technique or move to a harder position, the first week usually feels like a step back. The reps are harder. You manage fewer. You may leak a bit more on the days you've worked the muscle properly.
That's normal, and it's not a sign the change was wrong. A muscle that's being genuinely worked is tired afterwards. Tired muscle holds less well for a while.
What you're watching for is whether the tiredness eases across the week. If it does, keep going. If you're aching constantly, or you feel heavy and sore all day, you've gone too hard. Drop the volume and keep the quality.
Also worth reading: Six Months On and Stuck: What Happens Between Month 6 and Month 18 · How to Track Progress When It Feels Like There Isn't Any: 7 Things Worth Recording
Week 3: Measure the things that move first
Pad count is a blunt instrument. It changes in whole steps, so it can sit still for weeks while real progress is happening underneath.
Watch the finer stuff instead. How long you can hold a squeeze before it fades. Whether you can brace before a cough rather than after. Whether the walk from the car to the front door is now dry when it wasn't. How wet the pad is, not just how many you used. Whether the leak is a spurt or a few drops.
These move earlier than pad count and they give you something honest to look at during the weeks when nothing dramatic is happening.
Week 4: Read the four weeks properly
Now compare. Your line in the sand against where you are today. One change made, held for a fortnight, and the finer measures recorded.
Three outcomes. Something improved, even slightly, in which case keep the change and leave it alone for another month. Nothing moved at all, in which case the change wasn't the right lever, and you go back to the list and pick a different one. Or things got worse in a way that didn't settle, which usually means too much, too fast.
There's a fourth possibility worth saying plainly. You've done four honest weeks and nothing shifted, and you've been at this for months. That's the point to take your notes to your GP or a pelvic health physiotherapist. Not because you've failed, but because you now have something specific to show them, and specific gets better answers than "it's not working".
What to do with the next four weeks
Recovery doesn't move in a straight line, and it rarely moves on a schedule that suits you. It tends to go flat, then shift, then go flat again. The flat parts are not wasted; they're where the work gets banked.
Run the same four weeks again with a different single change. Over a few rounds you'll build something more useful than any general programme: a short list of what actually moves the needle for your body, and what doesn't.
That list is yours. It holds up on the bad days, when nothing feels like it's working, because it's built from what you watched happen rather than what you hoped would.