5 Stages for Introducing Impact Postpartum
Are you ready to return to jumping, running, and higher level impact activities?
I remember stepping foot on a treadmill for the first time after my first pregnancy, excited but also nervous about my new body, and the ability to handle the additional impact and challenge.
Have you experienced leaking during your workouts or everyday mom activities? While leaking can be common postpartum, it is not normal. Moms should feel empowered to move their bodies in all the ways without fear of leaking, pelvic pain, or prolapse symptoms. That is where I come in as a coach.
My goal as a Postpartum Fitness Coach is to help you return to the activities you love and enjoy via full body strength training and progressively loading the pelvic floor. Over time, we will get to the sprints and jump squats, but building awareness for the pelvic floor and how it integrates with movement is key for getting started. My hope is to keep symptoms at bay, help you get strong, and feel ready/confident to do #allthethings.
5 Steps for Impact Introduction Postpartum
Breathing and Coordination
Being able to breathe down into the pelvic floor and initiating an exhalation from the bottom up. Breathing and pressure management is key for managing pelvic floor symptoms and progressing to more dynamic activities. In the first phase of a program, I work with clients on sensing different quadrants of the pelvic floor, releasing tension, inhaling DOWN into the body, and initiating the exhalation from the bottom up. Can we start building a more dynamic ribcage (360 expansion) and facilitate pressure down and up?
Before advancing to more dynamic activity it’s important we understand the role pressure management plays in keeping pelvic floor symptoms at bay/sense this in our own body, and build up our tolerance for additional impact.
2. Isometrics
Learning how to lengthen and contract the pelvic floor under load without compensation. Isometrics are a great way to “own” a position and feel muscles working. From experience I’ve also found that if muscles like the glutes, hamstrings, quads, etc. are working and showing up, the pelvic floor may better be in a position to chill.
Isometrics are great to integrate in warm-up drills or as an accessory to your main lifts. Examples would include an isometric assisted squat or a wall bear plank hold with good breathing. Can we maintain the position and breathe well without overtucking, arching, or clenching on the butt/pelvic floor?
3. Controlling Force/Yielding
Here we focus on the ability to control force and “yield” into a movement, or absorbing force. You can also think of “yielding” as the descension part of a squat.
For yielding activities I like to think of them broken down into two categories:
A. Yielding: facilitating a pelvic floor contraction as you yield into a movement. An example would be a heels elevated goblet squat. As we descend we can think of the ability of the pelvic floor to respond. I can manipulate speed/tempo here as well. Think of dropping into a movement quickly.
Here are a few examples from Katie St. Claire:
Yielding ISO Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat
Yielding ISO Squat with Heel Rocker
B. Yielding / Absorbing force: being able to absorb force with a responsive pelvic floor to prepare for more jumping / impact activities. In this scenario we can think more of the “catch.” An example would be elevating onto the toes in standing and then quickly dropping to the heels with an exhalation. We can progress and drop into a squat position, focused on landing with some stiffness and responsive pelvic floor. Here I like to think about storing energy and prepping to propel forward .
4. Propulsion
Being able to propel forward and generate power / force production with a responsive pelvic floor. From personal experience I found this more challenging. Being able to push pressure up, and generate the power to explode. This is where “overcoming” work can be helpful. Think the concentric/standing up portion of a squat and propelling against gravity.
Being able to propel forward is helpful for activities like sprinting, jumping on a box, throwing something in front of you, etc.
Example: I would consider a squat jump a mix, as you need to be able to generate force production to get out of it too!
5. Advance it
Once you’ve build the foundation and feel comfortable with both landing and propelling, we can add challenge in a few different ways:
Travel laterally and add a change of direction: moving out of the sagittal (front to back) plane of motion. Example: skaters or lateral shuffles.
Rebounding: Landing and then adding a jump again. We need to control force on the way down, and THEN create the power back up.
Example: Jump down off a surface, then jump again
Continuous jumping or jumping to a higher surface: Continuous jumping/higher jumping could look like pogo jumps, pogo jumps with switches or a higher box jump.
Combinations of skills from above. Example: pogos to a yielding split squat. Great opportunity for continuous jumping and being springy, and then yielding and “catching” into a split squat position.
Add challenge with load
Once you’ve progressed to more advanced options, ideally we aren’t thinking so much about what the pelvic floor is doing. The pelvic floor is working in a more automated way.
Moving through these progressions within your strength training program will be key to building strength and confidence during higher level activities. Like any muscle, we can train the pelvic floor muscles in a variety of ways to respond to changes in direction, running, jumping, etc.
Ready to rock your workouts and return to running postpartum? I got your back! I offer 1:1 coaching in San Diego + Small Group training. More DIY programs coming soon.
Feel good mama.
Xoxo,
Erica