Week 4 before: find the muscle, nothing else
If you have a month, spend the first week just locating the pelvic floor. Not training it hard. Finding it. Most men squeeze the stomach, the buttocks or the thighs and think they have done the job.
Lie on your back, knees bent. Try the feeling of stopping wind, then add the feeling of lifting the base of the penis slightly inward. Put a hand on your belly. If the belly tightens or the backside lifts off the bed, you have recruited the wrong thing. Ease off and try at a quarter of the effort.
A quarter effort that is the right muscle beats a full effort that is the wrong one. Spend the week on that and nothing more. You are building a map you will need badly later, when everything down there feels numb and unfamiliar.
Week 4 before: learn what letting go feels like
This is the half of the skill nobody mentions. A pelvic floor that cannot relax is as much of a problem as one that cannot tighten. After surgery, with soreness and worry in the mix, men clench all day without knowing it.
Practise the release deliberately. Squeeze gently for three seconds, then let go and spend six seconds doing nothing at all. Notice the drop. If you cannot feel a drop, you were probably not squeezing in the first place, or you never fully let go.
Do this a few times a day in the first week. Sitting in the car, waiting for the kettle. The habit of releasing on purpose will matter more than you expect in the weeks after the catheter comes out.
Week 3 before: short holds, built honestly
Now add structure. Short holds: two or three seconds on, twice as long off. Six to eight of them, two or three times a day. That is a real session and it takes a couple of minutes.
Count the good ones only. When the squeeze starts to fade, or you find yourself holding your breath, or the belly joins in, stop. Three clean reps are worth more than twelve that drift. Breathe normally throughout — talk out loud if that helps you prove you are breathing.
Keep a rough note of how many clean reps you managed. Not for the numbers. So that after surgery, when it feels like you are starting from zero, you have something to compare against and a route back.
Week 3 before: add one long hold a day
Endurance is a separate quality from the quick snap. After surgery you will want both: the quick one for a cough, the longer one for standing up from a chair and walking to the door.
Once a day, try holding at about half effort for as long as it stays steady. Five seconds, eight, ten. The moment it wobbles or something else tenses, let go. Then rest properly before trying again.
Do not chase a longer number every day. Some days it will be shorter and that is normal. The point is that your body learns this is a thing it does, so it is not a brand new request when you are sore and tired.
Week 2 before: train sitting and standing
Lying down is the easy setting. Gravity is not involved. But you will not be lying down when you need this — you will be getting out of a chair, standing at a sink, walking across a car park.
So move your sessions up. Do one sitting on a firm chair, feet flat, sitting tall rather than slumped. Do one standing, weight evenly on both feet, knees soft. Both will feel harder and weaker. That is the honest reading.
If standing is too much this week, stay sitting and come back to it. There is no prize for rushing. But get at least a few reps upright before your date, because that is the position your recovery will be lived in.
Also worth reading: 7 Ways to Describe the Squeeze to Yourself, and Which One Will Work for You · Getting the House Ready Before Prostate Surgery: 7 Stages, Counting Back From the Date
Week 2 before: practise the brace
The brace, sometimes called the knack, is a quick squeeze timed just before a cough, a sneeze, a lift or standing up. It is the single most useful thing you can own on the day the catheter comes out.
Rehearse it now while everything still works. Before you stand from the sofa, squeeze, then stand, then release. Before you lift a shopping bag, squeeze, lift, release. Clear your throat on purpose and brace a beat before you do it.
Done a dozen times a day for a fortnight, this stops being a decision and starts being a reflex. Reflexes survive surgery far better than good intentions do.
Week 1 before: fix the habit, not the numbers
In the last week, stop trying to get stronger. Instead, nail down where the sessions live. After the morning cup. Sitting in the car before you drive off. In bed before the light goes out. Attach each session to something that already happens without fail.
Write the three slots down somewhere you will see them. Tell your partner what they are, if you have one, so the routine does not quietly disappear in the fog of the first fortnight home.
Keep the sessions short this week. You are rehearsing the shape of the habit, not pushing the muscle. Going into surgery slightly under-trained and well-organised beats going in sore and disorganised.
The last few days, and the first weeks after
In the final days, ease right off. One gentle session a day, mostly to keep the feeling fresh. Confirm with your surgical team when you should restart afterwards and whether they want anything different while a catheter is in. Ask them plainly and write the answer down — advice varies, and theirs is the one that counts for you.
Expect the first attempts after the catheter comes out to feel like nothing is there. No lift, no sensation, no evidence. That is usual and it is not a verdict. The map you built before surgery is still in your head, and it comes back faster than it did the first time.
If you get pain, a fever, blood you were not told to expect, or you cannot pass urine at all, that is for your doctor the same day, not for a training plan. Otherwise, start small, start gentle, and let the routine you set up carry you through the weeks when motivation is thin.