How can I build core strength postpartum and which exercises work best?

Core training postpartum is a hot topic, and can often feel a bit overwhelming. What can I do? What do I need to avoid? The truth is - you shouldn’t need to avoid anything. It’s not about the exercise itself per se, but how it is performed. Rather than focusing on the No’s, I invite you to say yes, and start exploring.

Where to start

If we want to build core strength after baby, address pelvic floor symptoms, and get strong for all things #momlife, we need to spend time on the basics and master the boring breathing stuff. It’s not a list of exercises per se, but rather about re-learning how to breathe, orient our bodies in space, and find a stack (more on that below). Once we get into a groove and learn the basics, we can start adding challenge and load. Motherhood takes us in all directions, so it’s important to train them and feel confident doing #allthethings.

Five Tips for Postpartum Core Strength

1. Build a Foundation

2.Learn to breathe well - 360 degree breath

When you integrate your core and breathe well, you can create intra-abdominal pressure and stability from the inside out.

3.Find your stack and build awareness for where you are in space.

4. Build endurance and challenge your core in different positions + breathe well in these new positions.

5. Full body integration: apply this to everyday life demands

Build a Foundation

The foundational stuff may be slow, but it is SO important early postpartum. While timeline varies by mama and birth, you CAN start some gentle movement to support your core reconnection and healing, even before seeing your provider. The truth is, six weeks is too long to delay the healing process, but also too early to jump into intensity workouts**. During the first six weeks I still found myself pushing a stroller, holding a baby, feeding, and tending to a toddler. Some gentle movement was so helpful for warding off aches, keeping me moving, and starting the gentle re-connection of mind and body.

**Note: EveryBODY is different. Please check in with your provider if you experience any pain, increase in bleeding, etc. All movements are meant to be very gentle.

Three areas to support your recovery:
1. Reconnect with your core and pelvic floor
2. Gentle mobility to support healing and comfort
3. Introduce core stabilization and movement when ready

The very first exercise you can do after birth is diaphragmatic breathing. Think of this breath as coordinating our diaphragm / pelvic floor and coordinating how our core functions to support us through movement. The hardest part is often feeling expansion of the rib cage vs pressure out onto a healing abdominal wall (belly breathing) or sending the air UP into our neck and shoulders. After both of my pregnancies I remember feeling very disconnected from my core and the whole breath cycle. (Re) learning how to breathe is definitely a process and a key part of returning to exercise postpartum. A Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist and coach (that’s me!) can be super helpful here.

As you begin your postpartum healing journey, I also encourage you to tune in to tension or gripping in your body (especially you glutes and abdominals) and your go-to postural positions, especially while holding baby, pushing a stroller, and holding a carseat.

Bonus: I dive deeper into how you can approach early postpartum in my FREE Guide.

What does breathing look like?

What does a breath look like?

• Inhale: Diaphragm descends and increases intra-abdominal pressure (IAP). The pelvic floor responds by lengthening eccentrically under tension.

  • Inhale are soft, controlled, and through the nose

  • Inhale to expand 360 degrees: chest, side body, and back expansion. Belly movement is ok, we just don’t want ALL belly.

  • Increase in pressure? Pressure isn’t a bad thing. It actually helps to stabilize. We just need to learn how to manage it well.

• Exhale: Diaphragm ascends into its dome shape again and abdominal wall and pelvic floor respond by shortening concentrically under tension.

  • Pelvic floor ascends / recoils back up (like a trampoline!)

  • Exhale to compress and the lower ribs come back down.

This piston effect helps regulate pressure in our bodies.

Your core is how you stabilize and makes a huge impact on how you move. When you integrate your core and breathe well, you can create intra-abdominal pressure and stability from the inside out.

I often see a huge focus on tension, bracing, and squeezing. With societal pressure to look small we’ve held our bodies tight and sucked in to fit into skinny jeans. In group fitness we are often told to “engage” all the time. But, the best way we can find stability from the inside out is to breathe well, use an optimal pressure strategy, get the rib cage moving, and then apply this to everything we do. So instead of sucking in for stability, we can let it go and learn how to naturally brace through breath.

Breathing well is probably THE biggest things I can guide you on as a coach and a HUGE part of my postpartum fitness training.

Building a Dynamic Rib Cage

Do you ever feel like your ribcage feels super sticky? Or maybe your mid-back feels pretty tight?

During pregnancy, there is an increased weight on the front side of our body (belly and breasts). As the belly pulls us forward, this impacts our ability to stabilize, balance, get a good 360 inhale and full exhale, and manage pressure. This increased weight on the front also contributes to a more anterior tilt / open-scissor postural position, placing the back muscles in a shortened position. No wonder they feel so tight. Rib cage mobility, rotation, and movement is often more limited too!

Why does this position matter? This impacts your ability to get 360 expansion AND generate tension in your core. During pregnancy the abdominals are being stretched as the baby grows. Postpartum they are then in a more lengthened position and not positioned optimally to fire/engage. We need to be able to generate tension through our central stability system (core) to support us through movement.

How can we generate tension in the core without extra “core” work? Breathing! If you cannot inhale and expand into different parts of the rib cage, the pressure will often go somewhere else, which is often OUT onto the belly or UP into the neck and shoulders.

Getting better rib cage mobility (front to back and side to side) enables us to:

• Breathe better and more fully expand on inhale

• Better movement of the scapula on the rib cage (Increase overhead mobility)

• Improve pelvic floor symptoms (check out this post)

  • Oftentimes when we’re having symptoms (e.g. leaking or prolapse) we go straight to where the symptoms are being felt: the pelvic floor. But, I encourage you to also look up at the rib cage.

  • A pregnant body often includes: lower ribs flared to accommodate a growing baby + increased abdominal contents. This position can create downward pressure into the pelvis.

• Help heal a diastasis recti (pressure can be redirected away from a healing abdominal wall)

Below are some breathing drills to assist in getting 360 expansion into ALL areas of the rib cage.

Find a Stack: Rib cage over Pelvis Position

We often talk about the STACK, which is just a handy visual for a ribcage over pelvis position. In this position our thoracic diaphragm and our pelvic diaphragm are stacked on top of one another, which allows us to breathe better and manage intra-abdominal pressure. Find a stacked position is about restoring movement options. If we are able to find a better position, it opens up possibilities in other planes of movement too!

Goal: Integrate our core and breathing and get our diaphragms nice and stacked and coordinating well.

Where to start

Awareness: We first start with building awareness for where our bodies are in space. I love beginning in a supine (on your back) position, which allows you to sense the ground for feedback. I encourage you to use head support and prop yourself up with towels so you can sense the ground. An example might be elevating the head to help the neck calm down and allow the rib cage to naturally rest in a more neutral position vs flared.

Why is this so difficult? No matter your fitness level, there is going to be a lot to try and disrupt the stack. The most common thing is that urge to come into a more extended position with the ribs flared and pelvis tipping forward.

Pelvis Position: Can you find a posterior tilt of the pelvis? Postpartum we are often in an anterior tilt, with a pelvis that is more “forward".” Being able to posterior tilt without clenching on the booty is a key piece in finding the stack. I often teach this in a supine position to start.

Your hamstrings and abdominals are a key piece to pelvis stability in the sagittal (front to back) plane. More specifically, your proximal hamstrings. Building proximal hamstring + abdominal strength is going to help us master this posterior tilt and OWN this more stacked position, even without thinking about it.

Hamstrings: On the bottom of our pelvis we have our ischium where our ischial tuberosity is located. Our hamstrings and Adductor Magnus attach here and help us to pull our pelvis into a posterior orientation.

Abdominals: On the front side our TVA, Internal and External Obliques (deep abdominals), attach to the front of the pelvis on the Ilium and Pubis and help maintain the anterior position of the pelvis, preventing our pelvis from anterior tilt (dumping forward).

Learn how to exhale fully: When we get a full and complete exhale the diaphragm is able to ascend back up to its “starting” position. Postpartum the diaphragm is often more descended.

• Inhales through the nose are soft and controlled

• Exhales are slow and controlled through an open mouth “haaaa” (generally how I would coach for moms). Envision the rib cage gently closing on the front side of the body.

Over time we’ll work up to pausing at the end of the exhalation, finding abdominal tension, holding that tension, and inhaling again with a relaxed upper body. With the inhale, we are driving air to other parts of the body and rib cage. This is how we train breathing under a brace. This is key as we progress to more advanced exercises, or just carry your toddler around the house :)

Trouble maintaining tension on a subsequent inhale? Start by taking a long exhale and add a pause. Get used to feeling and sustaining that tension for 2-3 seconds, THEN progress to maintaining tension for a subsequent inhale. 

Once you can STACK your ribcage and pelvis, we then want to challenge it in different positions and under load.

Stack Summary: We need to be able to exhale and get our lower ribs down and maintain that position during inhalation so the rib cage expands above the lower ribs. We also need abdominals and hamstrings working to help us maintain this stacked position so we don’t even need to think about it :)

Make it harder: challenge your core in different positions

Once you can STACK your ribcage and pelvis, we then want to challenge it in different positions and under load. This is a HUGE piece in building core strength and getting stronger overall.

We can add challenge over time, leveraging props to help us sense tension and maintain a stacked body position as we shift positions. I often use yoga blocks, pilates balls, bands, foam rollers, and the wall ALL the time. Give yourself references to OWN a position, sense tension, and build control.

A general positional progression would be:

• Supine (on your back)

• Side lying

• Hands and knees (bear)

• Half Kneeling

• Tall Kneeling

• Staggered stance - standing

• Standing - bilateral

• ** include different planes of motion

As you add more challenge, we want to ensure we can breathe well and manage pressure in these new positions. Inhales are expansive and side to side and front to back. Being able to breathe while while holding tension in the core (breathing under a brace) takes time and lots of practice.

A walk out (below) would be a great example of a more advanced exercise where breathing well will really help you feel your core.

Full Body Integration

Quite simply, apply the breathing and stack to other activities and more demanding positions, like carrying your toddler and putting a carseat in the car. If we are in a good position, ideally our abdominals and glutes are set up to fire, and not our low back.

Rotation and reaches:

Rotation is big part of mom life! I love incorporating movements like half kneeling rotations, high to low chops, woodchoppers, rotational med ball slams, and side planks with reaches and rotations. Not only are these great for training obliques, but they can be fun and dynamic. Rotation at the pelvis and the rib cage gets our bodies reciprocating. This is key for gait, unlocking a sticky rib cage, managing pressure, and just feels amazing. Check out this post.

I love adding more rotational work once we get a better stack, so we feel everything in the right places :)

Reaches:

Reaches allow us to both compress and expand different areas of the rib cage. Essentially by reaching high, neutral, or low we can find expansion in anterior or posterior parts of the rib cage. The reaches are also helpful when thinking about walking/running gait and a natural arm swing.

Many of my clients LOVE reaches to help free up the shoulder blades and get things moving!

Woo! If you made it this far, you’re all set for building some serious core strength :)

Core training postpartum doesn’t need to be overly complicated, but starting with the breath, getting a good stack, and then loading it over time in different ways is definitely the best place to start, and how I progress postpartum clients.

Curious where to start postpartum? Check out my FREE Early Postpartum Resource. I also offer 1:1 online coaching, a BUILDCore program, training and DIY Programs, and a free 15-minute consultation call. I’d love to chat!

Feel good mama.

xoxo,

Erica