Where this advice comes from
Nobody hands you a manual for this. So the information arrives sideways. A man in the waiting room who had the same operation two years ago. Your brother-in-law, who heard it from someone at work. The chap at the bowls club who leans in and says, quietly, that he went through it too.
Most of it is kindly meant. Some of it is even half right. But advice passed hand to hand gets worn smooth, and the useful detail falls off. What you are left with is a rule that sounded sensible in one man's situation and does nothing much for yours.
Here are seven of the ones that come up most, and what holds up better instead.
1. "Just stop the flow when you're having a wee. That's the exercise."
This one is everywhere, and it has a grain of truth buried in it. Stopping your flow once, early on, can show you roughly where the muscle is. That is all it was ever meant to be: a one-off check, not a workout.
Done repeatedly, it works against you. You are training your bladder and the muscle to argue with each other at exactly the moment they should be cooperating. It can leave you emptying less completely, and it muddles the signal you want to be building.
What holds up instead: find the muscle once, away from the toilet. The feeling is a lift and a draw-in, as if you were stopping wind, with your belly, backside and thighs staying quiet. Then do your training sitting in a chair, not standing over the pan.
2. "Do as many as you can. Hundreds a day."
Men who were fit in their forties tend to like this one. More reps, faster progress. It is how you got stronger at everything else.
The pelvic floor does not behave like a bicep. It is a small, deep muscle that tires quickly and sulks when you flog it. Push too hard and you get the opposite of what you wanted: an ache in the pelvis, a heavier feeling, worse leaking in the afternoon than in the morning.
What holds up instead: a modest number of good contractions, done properly, with a full release between each one. The release matters as much as the squeeze. If you cannot feel the muscle let go completely, you have done enough for now.
3. "It'll sort itself out in three months, like it did for me."
He is not lying. It may well have sorted itself out for him in three months. The trouble is that his nerves, his surgery, his age and his starting point were not yours, and the timeline he remembers has been tidied up by two years of distance.
Recovery after prostate surgery tends to come in uneven steps rather than a smooth slope. Some men are mostly dry early. Others are still making real gains well past the first year. Both are within the ordinary range, and neither tells you much about the other.
What holds up instead: measure yourself against yourself. Pad weight, pad count, how far you get between changes, what you can do without bracing. Compare this month with last month, not with the man at the bowls club.
4. "Cut back on the drinking and you'll stay dry."
It sounds like common sense. Less in, less out. Plenty of men quietly stop drinking after lunch and spend the afternoon with a dry mouth and a headache.
Strong, concentrated urine irritates the bladder lining. An irritated bladder is a twitchy bladder, and a twitchy bladder gives you urgency you did not have before. Cutting fluids often trades a few small leaks for a more demanding bladder overall. It also does your kidneys and your bowels no favours.
What holds up instead: keep the volume roughly steady and move the timing. Drink properly through the day, ease off in the two or three hours before bed, and look at what you are drinking rather than how much. Coffee, strong tea, fizzy drinks and beer all ask more of the bladder than water does.
Also worth reading: 6 Pelvic Floor Myths That Cost Men Months, and What Is True Instead · How Long Does Pelvic Floor Training Take to Work? A Stage-by-Stage Answer
5. "Pads are giving up. Train your way out of them."
This one has pride in it, and pride is not stupid. Nobody wants a drawer full of pads to become permanent furniture. But treating protection as a moral failure leads men to wear something too small, change it too late, and then stop going out.
A pad that works is a tool that lets you keep living your life while the training does its slow work. Men who stay out in the world — walking, working, seeing people — generally stick with their exercises. Men who retreat to the house tend to stop.
What holds up instead: use the protection the day actually needs, and step down when the evidence says you can. Lighter pads on quiet days first, heavier ones kept for long trips or heavy lifting. Let the pad follow your progress rather than lead it.
6. "Hold it in as long as you can. It stretches the bladder and builds control."
The opposite version is just as common: go every time you pass a toilet, just in case, so you are never caught short. Both are attempts to take control, and both can backfire.
Going too often teaches the bladder to complain at smaller and smaller volumes, which is how toilet mapping starts. Routinely hanging on past real discomfort, especially if you then rush and strain, is not a gentle way to build anything.
What holds up instead: aim for a sensible, ordinary spacing between visits, and let the gap stretch gradually rather than heroically. When urgency hits, stand still, brace, let the wave pass, and then walk — do not run. Arriving calm matters more than arriving fast.
7. "If it hasn't worked by now, it never will."
This usually arrives from a man who tried for a fortnight, saw nothing, and stopped. It gets repeated because it gives everyone permission to quit. It is also the single most expensive thing on this list, because it costs months.
Strength changes in a deep muscle do not show up as dry trousers straight away. They show up first as small things: a cough you got ahead of, a shorter dribble on standing, a drier stretch mid-morning. Those are the early signs, and they come before the headline result.
What holds up instead: give it a fair run, keep a simple record, and judge by the trend rather than by yesterday. And if nothing is shifting after a genuine, consistent effort, that is a reason to go back to your doctor or a pelvic health physiotherapist and have it looked at properly — not a reason to accept it. Blood, pain or a sudden change belongs with your doctor straight away, whatever anyone at the club says.
What to do with the next piece of advice you get
You will get more of it. Men talk about this more than you would think, once one of you breaks the ice. That is worth something — the company is real even when the information is shaky.
A useful filter: ask what the man is actually describing. His own experience is worth hearing. A rule he has turned it into is worth less. "I found mornings were worst for about four months" is useful. "Everyone's dry by Christmas" is not.
Take the company, leave the rules, and keep your own record. The next time someone tells you how it goes, you will have something more reliable to check it against: what has actually been happening to you, week by week.