If you browse long enough on social media and you are in the motherhood realm, you will likely come across an ad saying that this new belly binder or band will heal your diastasis and close your abdominal gap!
In theory, it makes sense: if I bring the abs closer together, it must be healing it, right?
Eh… not really. Physically bringing your abdominal separation closer together does not actually increase the density of the tissue, or prompt it to stay closer when not wearing the belly band.
And, if you wear the band TOO much, it can even weaken your core when you are not wearing it since we tend to only get as strong as the demand we put on our bodies. If you are wearing a band around 24/7, your core may only heal to a point where it relies on the band for support.
Let’s explore what actually helps to heal a diastasis so we can improve our function postpartum!
2 Ways to *Actually* Heal a Diastasis Postpartum
Here are two ways we can actually focus on healing our diastasis after birth:
- Lift weights
- Move beyond heel slides on the floor
There are more complexities than we will break down in this blog, such as your postural tendencies, breathing patterns, and movement patterns that all contribute towards a healing or lingering of a diastasis.
But, in this blog we will be focusing on how increasing the density of tissues supports a healing from diastasis more so than wearing a belly band for the rest of your life.
1) Lift Weights: Increase the density of your tissues, muscles, and bones = more resistant to changes in pressure
When something is thin, it is more easily manipulated by changes in pressure.
Think of a balloon. It is fairly thin, and really easy to change its shape with some changes in pressure. I press one half of the balloon, and the form is completely deformed.
If the connective tissues of our core are fairly thin (thanks to pregnancy), they are more easily manipulated by changes in pressure within the abdominal cavity.
Our thoracic and abdominal cavities both manage pressure between the two in order to optimize the function and stabilization of our spine and core.
When something is thicker or denser, it can still change shape to respond to changes in pressure, but it is not as easily deformed.
This is our goal postpartum: we want to increase the density of our connective tissues and muscles so that they can meet increased demands and changes in pressure.
How do we increase the density of our tissues, muscles, and bones? We lift weights.
When the connective tissue of our core is thicker, it will bring the abdominal separation closer and heal a diastasis.
2) Move beyond supine heel slides: increase the challenge of your workouts!
If you are in a rehab focused program, either an online or in-person, you will likely do some heel slides or some variation of a floor-based exercise.
It is important to start with the basics as we rebuild postpartum, but we do eventually want to advance our movements to more upright movements.
Afterall, we do tend to live more of our life upright as opposed to flat on our backs.
If you are finding that your diastasis is not healing, or you are seeing a plateau in your progress, it could be that you are not challenged enough as opposed to doing too much!
Here is a general progression you could make with your exercises to support healing from pregnancy and birth:
- Supine or floor-based movements
- Seated movements
- Half Kneeling movements
- Standing movements
Diastasis Healing Exericse Progression Example
Let’s look at how we progress some cross-body movements in our postnatal programs!
We love to incorporate cross-body movements to support postpartum recovery since it generates tension both horizontally and diagonally across the core. This tends to support healing from diastasis!
At first, we can start with some floor-based opposite knee presses. We have the option to keep the hips on the floor or advance the movement by elevating the hips into a bridge.
This is one way to advance our core exercises to increase the demand = increased density of the tissue.
Then we can add some weights to increase the challenge of the movement. We will have a cross-body action, but now we have more resistance to the movement. We are still floor based, but increased the difficulty (and complexity) of the movement.
Eventually, we will progress to upright movements, such as step-ups or reverse lunges. This would be towards the end of our progression, where we are doing a reverse lunge with a knee press as we stand up.
Adding to the complexity of the movement, we can add a banded row.
Having multiple components to an exercise can increase the neuromuscular connection and coordination, but we don’t want to do too much too soon otherwise it can be confusing!
Heal your diastasis by lifting weights!
Wearing a belly band or forcing your abs closer together will NOT heal a diastasis. We need to increase the demand on our core to ultimately heal it!
Lifting weights and progressing our exercises from the floor to more upright movements will increase the density of our tissue, muscles, and bones. Which in turn will heal a diastasis!