Speaking as a women's health physio, there is a lot of reseearch which disputes the claims re squats. You can have long, strong muscles (think ballet dancer - just because they're flexible doesn't mean they're weak), long weak muscles, tight strong muscles (muscle bound bodybuilder) and tight, weak muscles (eg, spasticity following brain injury). There is not enough mobility between the sacrum and the os nominates (the other 2 bones of the pelvic ring) to significantly alter the length of the pelvic floor muscles. The anatomy of the pelvic floor is not the simple forward/back line people imagine, either, it is actually quite broad and has fibres that lie diagonally and almost transvere across the body as well. IF it worked that lengthening the pelvic floor by contracting the gluts caused continence, then how could you pee while standing up (as standing uses gluts)? And when you tried to allow your pelvic floor to stretch for birthing, your sacrum would have to move forward to allow the pelvic floor to stretch widthways, and that sacral positionitself would reduce the space available in the pelvis!

In fact, the pelvic floor is dynamic - it changes according to the demands placed on it, and like all muscles it can contract to shorten and stretch to lengthen. Having a strong pelvic floor almost never limits it's ability to stretch, and this is borne out by the many women with strong pelvic floors who birth their babies vaginally. It can tear and heal, and like all injured muscles, often need exercise to regain it's previous strength, length and functional abilities.

Many, many high trained clinicians and researchers all ovder the world have 'bothered to examine it' and the current findings are not hard to find if anyone is interested in looking into things further (use google scholar.) My understanding is that 'Hold it mama' is written by a well-trained Aussie womens health physio, is based on recent research findings from all over the world, and is excellent.

'10 long and 10 quick squeezes', the 'elevator' method favoured in yoga, and various other protocols have all been advocated, and there is not one single set of parameters that is suitable for everyone, as it depends on what your abilities are to start with, and what your problems/goals are. Just like muscle training in the gym, everyone's on a different program. The woman who leaks when she squats and lifts will have different needs to the woman who leaks when she sneezes or laughs, or the one who leaks on long hikes, which is completely different to the one who floods when she gets the key in the door, or who dribbles constantly through the day without knowing it!

If your type of leakage is on cough, laugh, sneeze, with a small volume and you are aware of the leak as it happens, then 10 'long and strong as you can' and 10 quick, 3-4 x/day, is a good general starting place. Count how many seconds you can hold a stong contraction to start with, and then see how many reps in a row you can do of those number of second hold, and aim at one second more and one rep more, until you get to 10x10secs. It might be, for example, that you can do a 7 second hold, but only repeat it 4 times before your 5th hold fades out at 6 seconds. So your 'program' to start would be 5 reps (ie, the 4 you can do plus the 1 you can't) of a 7 second hold. Then do as many quick ones as you can, up to 10, and the number to do is one more than you can do effectively to start with. As you get better, you should see the number of seconds or the reps or both, increasing by one or more, every couple of weeks.