1. Lying on your back, knees bent
This is where almost everyone should start, and where you should return whenever a rep feels vague. Lie on your back, knees up, feet flat, a cushion under your head if that helps. Gravity is doing nothing against you here. The muscle only has to lift itself.
In this position you can feel more. Put a hand on your lower belly and check it stays soft. Let your thighs and backside stay heavy on the floor. If you can hold a squeeze cleanly here and let it go fully, you have something to build on.
Stay here until a set feels unremarkable — not easy exactly, but repeatable. Days or a couple of weeks, depending on where you're starting. There is no prize for leaving early.
2. On your side
Lying on your side is the quietest step up, and it's the one most men skip. The pelvis is tilted slightly, the legs are stacked, and the muscle has to work a touch differently to find the same lift.
It's also useful because it's a position you're already in every night. If you leak when you turn over in bed, practising a squeeze while lying on your side is direct rehearsal, not theory.
Try a short set on each side. You may notice one side feels clearer than the other. That's common and not a problem to solve — just keep doing both.
3. Sitting upright on a firm chair
Now gravity joins in. Sit on a dining chair rather than an armchair, feet flat, weight through both sit bones, spine tall but not rigid. Slumping shortens the whole system and makes a clean lift harder to find.
Sitting is where cheating creeps in. Watch for the backside gripping, the thighs squeezing together, the breath being held. If any of those show up, go back to lying down for that session and try sitting again tomorrow.
The payoff is practical. Most of your day happens in a chair — the car, the desk, the sofa, the pub. If you can train sitting, you can train almost anywhere without anyone noticing.
4. Standing still
Standing is a real jump, and a lot of men are surprised by how much harder it feels than sitting. That's not a step backwards. The muscle is now holding against the full weight of everything above it.
Stand with feet about hip width, knees soft rather than locked, weight even through both feet. Hands by your sides or resting on a worktop at first if you want the reassurance. Breathe normally through the hold.
Expect your hold times to drop here, maybe by half. Let them. Shorter, cleaner holds standing are worth more than long sloppy ones lying down.
5. Standing with movement
This is the bridge between exercise and life. Squeeze, then do something small while holding: shift your weight from one foot to the other, turn your head, raise one heel, reach for a mug on a shelf.
The goal is not strength here. It's keeping hold of the muscle while your attention is somewhere else. That's the skill that stops a leak when you're mid-conversation and reaching into the boot of the car.
Keep the movements small and slow at first. If the squeeze vanishes the moment you move, make the movement smaller, not the squeeze harder.
Also worth reading: What Makes One Rep Better Than Another: 6 Things to Check Instead of Counting · The Six Exercises, in Order: Building a Pelvic Floor Session That Works
6. Sit to stand, and stand to sit
Getting out of a chair is one of the most reliable leak moments there is. So train it deliberately. Squeeze before you move, hold through the whole transition, and only let go once you're settled.
Do it in both directions. Lowering yourself into a chair catches men out just as often as rising, particularly at the end of a long day when the legs are tired and the landing is heavier than intended.
A handful of these, done properly, is better than twenty rushed ones. You're teaching a sequence — brace, then move — not building endurance.
7. Loaded and unpredictable
The last stage is the messy one: coughing, sneezing, lifting the shopping, climbing stairs, bending to the bottom shelf, standing up fast because the phone rang. These are the moments that actually matter, and they don't wait for you to get ready.
You can rehearse some of them on purpose. Brace, then give a deliberate small cough. Brace, then pick up a bag of potatoes. Brace, then take the stairs two at a time if your knees allow. What you're building is a reflex that fires before the pressure arrives, not after.
This stage never really finishes, and that's fine. It just stops being an exercise and becomes something you do. Most men find the formal sets shrink over time while the bracing quietly spreads through the whole day — which is exactly the direction you want it going.
How to know when to move up
Three signals, all of them simple. You can complete your usual set in the current position without losing the squeeze partway. You can let go fully between reps, not just partly. And you finish the set without your belly, backside or jaw having joined in.
When all three are true for several sessions in a row, add the next position — but keep the old one. A good session often runs across two levels: a few reps where it's easy to feel the muscle, then a few where it's harder.
If a position stops working — a bad week, a heavy day, a cough that won't shift — drop back a level for a while. Going back down is part of the method, not a failure of it. The ladder works in both directions.