1. The letting go, not the squeeze
Most men judge a rep by how hard they can pull up. The release is what decides whether the next rep is worth anything. If you let go halfway, the muscle never returns to its full starting length, and the next squeeze starts from a shorter, more tired position.
Do this: after each squeeze, let go deliberately and wait until you feel the muscle has settled completely. It often takes longer than you think. If you cannot tell whether you have let go, put a hand on your lower belly and breathe out slowly. The drop usually becomes obvious.
A set of six squeezes with clean releases does more for you than twenty with none. Quality here is measurable by feel, and you are the only one who can measure it.
2. Whether the lift goes up, or just tightens
A good rep has a direction to it. There should be a sense of something drawing up and forward, towards the base of the penis, as if you were stopping wind and stopping the flow of urine at the same time. A poor rep is a general clench with no direction — the buttocks grip, the thighs stiffen, and nothing much moves in the middle.
Do this: sit upright, feet flat, and try one slow squeeze. Ask yourself where the movement happened. If it happened in your seat and your legs, reset and go much gentler. Half the effort, aimed properly, beats full effort aimed at nothing.
Direction is the single thing most worth checking when you have been training for a few weeks and progress has flattened out.
3. Whether you held your breath
Holding your breath makes a rep feel stronger than it is. What you are actually doing is bearing down with your abdomen and pushing the pelvic floor the wrong way. It is the same pressure that makes you leak when you cough.
Do this: talk or count out loud during the hold. Say the numbers. If you cannot speak, you are holding your breath, and the rep is working against you.
Breathing normally through a squeeze feels weaker at first. It is not weaker. It is the version of the movement that will actually help when you stand up from a chair.
4. Whether the last rep looked like the first
This is the honest test of a set. If rep one was a clean lift and rep eight was a vague tighten, then the set should have ended around rep four or five. Everything after the drop-off is teaching your body a sloppier version of the movement.
Do this: pick a number you can finish well rather than a number that sounds respectable. Stop the set at the first rep that feels noticeably worse than the one before it. Write that number down. Next week, see whether it has crept up on its own.
Men often find their real number is smaller than the one they had been doing, and that progress starts again once they respect it.
Also worth reading: 7 Signs Your Pelvic Floor Reps Have Gone Sloppy, and How to Fix Each One · Am I Squeezing the Right Muscle? 4 Checks You Can Do at Home
5. Whether you rested long enough between reps
The pelvic floor tires quickly, and it recovers more slowly than you would like. Stacking squeezes back to back with a second's gap means each one borrows from a muscle that has not recovered. The set gets longer. The reps get worse.
Do this: rest at least as long as you squeezed, and longer for the strong holds. A three-second squeeze wants three or more seconds off. If you are doing long holds, give yourself a good pause and do not fill it with a half-squeeze.
Rest is not the gap between the work. In this kind of training, it is part of the work.
6. Whether you can still find the muscle at the end
At the end of a good session you should feel worked but still in control — you should be able to produce one more clear, deliberate squeeze if asked. If you genuinely cannot find the muscle any more, you have gone past useful and into fatigue, and fatigue is where leaks tend to turn up an hour later.
Do this: make the last rep of every session a deliberate test rather than a finish line. If it is clean, the session was sized well. If there is nothing there, cut the volume next time.
Some heaviness is fine. Aching, or a session that leaves you leaking more for the rest of the day, is a signal to do less and do it better.
What to do with these six checks
You do not need to run all six every session. Pick one for the week. Watch the release this week, the breathing next week, the last rep the week after. Checking one thing properly is the whole point of the exercise.
Then let the numbers take care of themselves. When the reps are clean, the count tends to climb quietly on its own, and you will notice it in a cough or a lift long before you notice it in a total.
If something hurts, if you see blood, or if your control changes suddenly, stop the guesswork and speak to your doctor. Training questions are yours to solve. Those ones are not.