The Best Exercises to Stop Bladder Leaks
A leak during a workout, a laugh, or a sneeze is one of those things that can quietly chip away at your confidence. You start scanning for the nearest bathroom before you even need one or skipping the workout class you used to love because you don’t trust your bladder anymore. The good news is that a weakened pelvic floor, which can be a root cause behind most of this, responds well to targeted exercise. Here’s exactly what to do.
Understanding Bladder Leaks and the Pelvic Floor
Stress urinary incontinence, leaking triggered by physical pressure like coughing, sneezing, laughing, or exercise, can happen for many reasons. One common reason is when your pelvic floor muscles aren’t strong enough to counteract that pressure. These muscles form a sling-like support system underneath your bladder, uterus, and rectum, holding everything in place and controlling the opening and closing of your urethra.
Several common factors can weaken this muscle group over time: pregnancy and childbirth, pelvic surgery, the general muscle loss that comes with aging, chronic constipation (repeated straining), and carrying excess weight, to name a few. When these muscles weaken enough, they can no longer hold against sudden spikes in pressure, and leaking is the result.
Why Exercise Helps Stop Sudden Leaks
This is the part that makes the whole topic encouraging: pelvic floor muscles respond to exercise the same way any other muscle group does. When you incorporate targeted exercise into a regular routine, these muscles strengthen, and that can translate directly into less frequent and less severe leaking.
It’s not only about the pelvic floor in isolation, either. Your core and hip muscles work closely with your pelvic floor to manage pressure throughout your torso, so strengthening them supports pelvic floor function as a side effect of exercises that aren’t even pelvic-floor-specific. Pressure management plays a role as well. Learning how to reduce downward pressure during activities that cause you to leak means less pressure pushing down on your pelvic organs, which gives your pelvic floor an easier job to do.
The Kegel Foundation
Kegels are the most well-known pelvic floor exercise, and when done correctly and in the right context, they’re usually effective. A Kegel is simply a voluntary contraction and relaxation of the pelvic floor muscles; the same muscles you’d use to stop the flow of urine mid-stream or to keep yourself from passing gas in a crowded elevator.
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Benefits of Kegels include improved bladder control, faster reflexive response to sudden pressure, and for , many women, a meaningful reduction in how often they leak after weeks of consistent practice.
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Finding the right muscles is the part most women get wrong without realizing it. The easiest way to identify them: try to stop your urine stream mid-flow (just to identify the muscles, but don’t make this a regular habit, since doing it often can interfere with normal bladder function). The muscles that engage during that action are your pelvic floor.
Step-by-step Kegel guide:
1. Get into a comfortable position, sitting or lying down.
2. Contract – or squeeze and lift - your pelvic floor muscles without squeezing your thighs, glutes, or abdomen. Here’s a cue that can help you exhale. Imagine you are sipping a smoothie up through a straw in your vagina. (We know. Just try it.)
3. Hold the contraction for 1-5 seconds, then fully release for the same length of time. Imagine your pelvic floor muscles gently returning to their original resting position.
4. Focus on quality over quantity. Once you feel confident, you’re doing them correctly, repeat 10-12 repetitions, working up to three sets a day.
5. As your strength improves, gradually increase your hold time toward 10 seconds.
Tips from our Flyte Pelvic Health Experts: Quality and consistency beat intensity here. Doing a smaller number of correctly executed Kegels every day will get you further than an occasional marathon session done with the wrong muscles. And the relaxation piece is just as important as the contract (squeeze and lift).
Kegels and Beyond: Other Exercises
Kegels are the foundation, but they work even better alongside exercises that engage the surrounding muscle groups. Here’s a rundown from our Flyte Pelvic Health Experts:
Bridges: Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor. As you exhale, engage your glutes as you lift your hips toward the ceiling, hold briefly, then lower with control.
Squeeze and release: A simple standing or seated variation of the Kegel, squeeze your pelvic floor for a few seconds, release fully, and repeat. If you can, pair your gentle belly exhale with your squeeze and your inhale with your relaxation. If that’s too hard to begin with, just aim to breathe normally and gently, belly rising on the inhale and falling on the exhale.
Squats: Done with proper form; squats engage your core, hips, and pelvic floor simultaneously, building functional strength that carries over into everyday movements like lifting and bending.
Belly and hip exercises: Exercises that engage your deep core (like the transverse abdominis) and hip muscles support your pelvic floor indirectly by improving overall pressure management through your midsection.
Low-impact exercises: If you’re managing joint pain, recovering from an injury, or simply prefer gentler movement, low-impact options like mat abdominal work or seated pelvic floor work can still build meaningful strength and control without the strain of higher-impact exercise.
Tips to Reduce Leaks During Activities or Workouts
A few technique adjustments can make a real difference while you’re actively rebuilding strength:
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Breathe correctly. Holding your breath during exertion increases intra-abdominal pressure and works against your pelvic floor. Exhale during the effort phase of an exercise (the lift, the push, the rise) rather than holding your breath through it.
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Maintain proper form. Poor form, especially during lifting or high-impact movement, increases unnecessary pressure on your pelvic floor. Slow down and prioritize form over speed or weight while you’re building strength back up. Poor form even impacts a sneeze – instead of bending over when you sneeze, stay in an upright posture to allow your trunk and pelvic floor muscles to manage pressure better.
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Engage before you exert. A light pelvic floor contraction right before a cough, a jump, or a lift can help your muscles meet the pressure spike instead of getting caught off guard by it. Just remember to breathe and fully relax your pelvic floor muscles afterwards – you don’t want to keep them squeezed all the time.
Urinary Incontinence Treatment: When Is It Necessary?
Exercise helps many women significantly, but it’s not a universal fix on its own, and many women struggle with knowing what exercises are right for them, if they are doing them correctly, and how to progress to make real, measurable improvements in their symptoms. Here are some tips from our pelvic health experts:
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We recommend seeking help as soon as you notice a consistent pattern, rather than waiting to see if it resolves on its own.
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Watch for symptoms like leaking that’s getting more frequent or any sense that something doesn’t feel right.
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You don’t have to let your leaks get “bad enough” for you to do something about them. Conservative treatment options for urinary incontinence exist – but one 2016 study found only 3% of conversations on incontinence were initiated by healthcare providers asking their patients about leaks; you may not find out about treatment options until you ask.
Ask your doctor about Flyte at-home treatment for female urinary incontinence. Clinically proven to deliver surgical-level results in 5 minutes a day for 6 weeks. Learn more about how to request Flyte from your doctor HERE
If you’re not sure about whether urinary incontinence treatment is right for you, Flyte or not, use our Ask an Expert tool to help figure out your next step. Or Take the FREE Quiz now and see if Flyte is right for you.
Considering Lifestyle and Long-Term Success
Exercise works best as part of a broader approach, not a standalone fix:
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Maintain a healthy weight to reduce baseline pressure on your pelvic floor.
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Manage contributing conditions like chronic constipation or a persistent cough, both of which repeatedly strain the pelvic floor, regardless of how strong it is.
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Combine pelvic floor exercises while strengthening the muscles in your core and hips for better overall pressure management.
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Stay consistent. Pelvic floor strength, like any muscle strength, takes time to build. Focus on quality over quantity first, and if you’re not sure of what you’re doing, reach out for help.
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Ask your doctor about Flyte to treat your urinary incontinence from the comfort of home – a clinically proven and effective way to eliminate or reduce leaks that doesn’t depend on a perfect at-home technique every single time.
Conclusion
Our pelvic health experts put this list together because consistent, correctly done pelvic floor exercise and exercise that supports the pelvic floor and surrounding muscles genuinely can improve the quality of life of most women dealing with bladder leaks. Start with what’s manageable today, stay consistent, and talk to your doctor about conservative treatment options like Flyte.
Take the Next Step Toward a Leak-Free Life
Start by understanding your pelvic floor health.
Take the Free Incontinence Quiz – it takes less than 1 minute and is designed to distinguish between stress, urgency, or mixed urinary incontinence. You can also use it to start a conversation with your doctor and help determine if Flyte is right for you.
Leaking urine when you exercise is common, not normal, and it is treatable.
References
Mayo Clinic Staff. (2024, October 8). Kegel exercises: A how-to guide for women. Mayo Clinic.
Lompoc Valley Medical Center Staff. (2022, November 17). 5 exercises that can improve urinary incontinence. Lompoc Valley Medical Center.
Godman, H. (2025, April 1). Exercises that go easy on the bladder. Harvard Health Publishing. Harvard Health Publishing
Duralde ER, Walter LC, Van Den Eeden SK, Nakagawa S, Subak LL, Brown JS, Thom DH, Huang AJ. Bridging the gap: determinants of undiagnosed or untreated urinary incontinence in women. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2016 Feb;214(2):266.e1-266.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.ajog.2015.08.072. Epub 2015 Sep 5. PMID: 26348382; PMCID: PMC4830485