Core Training During Pregnancy and Postpartum: Safe Practices and Healing Diastasis Recti

[00:00:00] Gina: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be answering all of your questions about core training during pregnancy and the postpartum, because this is an area that we get a ton of questions on. So I’m going to be answering what is safe to do during pregnancy and the postpartum, can you even train your core during pregnancy, how do you prevent diastasis and then also heal diastasis? So I’m going to answer all of those in this episode.

[00:01:14] Gina: When it comes to the core, typically we’re thinking of the six pack abs, those really aesthetically pleasing muscles that are on the front of all the magazines that everyone’s showing off in their before and after pictures, but we really need to expand our mind with what we mean by “core”, and what exercises are core exercises and reframe that, because it’s not just those six back abs, it’s so much more than that. Your core is essentially your entire torso. So everything from your neck down to the bottom of your pelvis, wrapping all around both the abdominal wall, your back musculature, and even muscles in your legs and your arms. And so we really need to expand our mind when we think of core, and then think of exercises beyond crunches and sit ups and floor based ab exercises as core exercises.

[00:02:02] Gina: When we think of the core, there are three different layers to it, and a lot of the muscles that are incorporated with the core may be surprising to you. So the deepest layer of our core is our local stabilization system. This is going to help with deep, postural control, it’s going to attach the muscles directly to the spine and help with postural stability. This layer of our core also helps to manage pressure within our abdominal cavity and our thoracic cavity, which is going to help with stabilization. Being able to properly use our deep core is going to help protect our core and our pelvic floor during pregnancy, and then to heal it after birth.

[00:02:37] Gina: Within the deep core system, we have five muscles. Some folks consider there to be four muscles, but it can go either way. The top of that core canister is going to be the diaphragm, so this is at the bottom of our rib cage. This muscle is going to move up and down to help decrease or increase pressure within our thoracic cavity to either pull air in or to push air out. This is also going to change the pressure within our abdominal cavity, and all of the other muscles of our core canister and our deep core system should respond to that. We have our transverse abdominis that’s wrapped around also known as your corset abs. These are going to be the ones that you commonly hear as “TA muscles,” or “activate your TA” whenever we’re doing these deep core exercises. On the very back of your spine you have your multifidi, so these are going to help with that vertebrae to vertebrae stability. And then on the front we have the internal obliques which may or may not be considered to be a part of this deep system. Some folks consider that to be a part of the next system.

[00:03:32] Gina: At the very bottom of our core canister is our pelvic floor. So this sits at the bottom of the pelvis, and all five of these muscles work together to manage pressure within that abdominal cavity and to help with that spinal stability. And so all of these muscles need to work well together and they need to be coordinated with one another.

[00:03:50] Gina: So when we’re doing our deep core exercises, we’re typically not focusing on isolated movements like just kegels, or just TA activation, we’re thinking about how the entire system works together because that is what’s helping with that stabilization. It’s not just how hard can you squeeze your pelvic floor, or how hard can you activate your TA, it’s more about how does your pelvic floor work with the other muscles within this core canister to help manage and change pressure within the abdominal cavity to help with spinal stability.

[00:04:19] Gina: The deep core system is also our anticipatory core. So this is going to turn on before movement actually happens. And so you see someone’s about to throw a ball at you. This deep core system is going to turn on to brace and help to stabilize you before you actually catch the ball, which is really cool. And so this is why it’s really important that we start with that deep core system when we’re doing core exercises, both during pregnancy, postpartum, any other time in our life, because we want a really strong foundation for the rest of our core and our extremities to anchor from. And so whenever we do movement, our core canister, our torso, our core, are all maintaining its position as our arms and legs do things. So our arms and legs are going to anchor onto our torso, which is going to allow movement to happen without compensation.

[00:05:08] Gina: The next layer of our core is the global stabilization system. This is going to be our reactive core, so it’s going to turn on during or after the movement has actually happened. So when someone throws a ball at me, that deep core system is turning on before the movement happens, and then the reactive core turns on after that deep core, in response to the actual movement. The global stabilization system are going to be muscles that attach the spine to the pelvis and some of them might be muscles that you don’t consider to be the abs or the core as well. So this is where those rectus abdominis or those six pack abs are going to be, our external obliques. As we move to the back side of the body we have our QL muscles which is the lower back musculature, we have our glutes, and then on the legs we actually have our adductors and our hip flexors that are helping to provide that spinal to pelvic stability. These muscles are going to be really important to maintaining our hip and spine position as we start to integrate more movement with our legs and our arms.

[00:06:03] Gina: The next layer of our core are definitely going to be muscles that you don’t consider to be the abs or the core, and these are going to be muscles that attach your arms and your legs to your pelvis or to your spine, and this is going to be our movement system. So this system helps with dynamic movement and a lot of those functional movements like walking or jumping or running, and this is where a lot of like our myofascial sling movements are going to be incorporated as well to help with that pelvic stability. The movement system is going to include muscles like our lats, our quads, our hamstrings, all of the muscles that are attaching, again, our arms and legs to our core and to our torso.

[00:06:40] Gina: And so as you can see, with these different layers, it’s going to be really important that we start at that deepest layer to learn how to strengthen and to stabilize before we add on from there. Because if our deepest core is not turning on to anticipate, or before the movement actually happens, the other muscles that are anchoring on top of them are going to have to compensate along the way.

[00:07:03] Gina: And so the three layers of our core is: the local stabilization system. This is going to be the deepest layer of our core, this is going to help with spinal stability, all of these muscles attached directly to the spine, and this is also going to help with pressure management, which is a key player in spinal stability. The next layer of our core is the global stabilization system. These are going to be muscles that attach our spine to our pelvis. They really aid in upper to lower body transfer of force, so movement from the upper body down across the pelvis into the lower body. And these muscles are a part of our reactive core, so they’re going to help us stabilize during and after the movement has been initiated. The final layer of our core is our movement system, filled with muscles that you may not even consider to be a part of your core. And these are going to be the muscles that attach your arms and legs to your pelvis or to your spine. The movement system is vital to helping with a lot of dynamic movements such as walking, running, and jumping. All three layers are going to work together to help you stabilize, and so you can already see how much more that you can do when it comes to core training, as opposed to just crunches and sit ups.

[00:08:07] Gina: But when it comes to core training, it’s important to know whether or not this exercise is safe for you or not. And now I do want to start with, there’s no inherently dangerous exercise that you can do other than maybe one that has like a really high fall risk or a risk of like the barbell or some piece of equipment harming you in some way. But in general doing exercise, especially like body weight exercises or exercises with like bands are not inherently dangerous. Now, some exercises may not be optimal for you or appropriate for you anymore and it may be causing more damage, but not necessarily like harm or it’s not dangerous perhaps.

[00:08:44] Gina: Ways that you can tell whether or not an exercise is “safe” for you during pregnancy or the postpartum- just to use a word that seems to resonate with a lot more folks- or how to tell that an exercise is still appropriate or optimal for you, is to notice whether or not you’re compensating during the exercise. And so if we’re doing a core focused exercise or just movements in general, and we’re noticing any sort of coning- so this is when the center of the ab pushes out further than the rest of the abdominal wall, this is known as coning, and so if you look down and you see a pyramid or a tent like appearance with your abdominals, this is known as coning, which would be a pressure management issue. Another pressure management issue that you may notice that is common with compensation is pelvic heaviness or bearing down. So you feel increased pressure down into the pelvic floor during the movement. Both coning and pelvic floor heaviness are going to be signs that we’re not managing pressure within that abdominal cavity, and if we remember what level of our core helps to manage pressure, it’s going to be that deep core system. So if our deep core system is not working well, we’re going to see those pressure management issues such as that coning and that heaviness. And so if you are experiencing either of those things during your movement, we don’t necessarily have to stop the movement immediately and never do it again. We can re-approach it with some different ways to see if we can set ourselves up better to stabilize to keep this movement a little bit longer.

[00:10:09] Gina: Now there will be a point that certain movements may or may not serve you anymore during your pregnancy and we may want to omit them and it may take a little bit longer to get back to them in the postpartum, but that’s okay. It’s not a forever thing by any means. If you’re experiencing coning, or you’re experiencing pelvic floor heaviness, or feeling the sensation of bearing down or pressure down into the pelvic floor, what we want to do is first start with that deep core system. Can we adjust our breathing? And can we adjust our position? Now, which one you should start with really varies depending on your opinion. I personally think that you need to start in a good position so then we can breathe in, but some folks feel that you should breathe first and that will bring you into a better position. But you can also do both together.

[00:10:54] Gina: So if we are lifting weights or we’re doing some sort of exercise and we’re experiencing a lot of coning or heaviness, we first want to look at our posture. If we are in a more arched back position, so belly is falling more forward and we have more of a curvature in our back, this is going to be stretching the front side of our abdominal wall a little bit more, where that linea alba is, which is the connective tissue between your two six pack abs, and that tissue is what’s being pushed out whenever we experience abdominal coning. In addition, in this arched back position, there’s more pressure being put into the front half of the pelvic floor, where if you’re feeling pelvic heaviness or bearing down, it’s going to be targeted typically to the front half of the pelvic floor. And so if we’re in this more arched position, we’re setting ourselves up for failure in a way, and so we want to find that more neutral spine position where rib cage is stacked more over the pelvis. You may also find success with finding a little bit more of a rounded position as we do your exercises as well, but not super rounded, like we’re not trying to find a cat position, just a little bit neutral or maybe a little rounded just to counter the tendency to be super arched in our backs.

[00:12:03] Gina: Let’s take a break from this week’s episode to hear about our podcast sponsor, Needed. Needed is a nutrition company that specializes in optimizing nourishment for the perinatal time frame. It is a brand that I have utilized throughout my pregnancy and now into my postpartum. One of my favorite products from Needed is their collagen protein. Our protein needs increase during pregnancy and they increase in the postpartum, and while I love to get most of my nourishment from whole foods, sometimes it’s really hard to meet that demand. And so adding a collagen protein to my daily diet has been really helpful for me. I like to add the collagen to my morning oatmeal to have a higher protein breakfast, but you can also add it to things like your coffee, your orange juice, your smoothies to help increase your protein intake. Needed is very intentional with their ingredient sourcing, and so you can know that their products are safe and clean for you to consume. You can check them out as thisisneeded.com and use code MAMASTEPOD to get 20 percent off your first order or first month of subscription.

[00:12:57] Gina: So now that we are set up to manage pressure better, we can then focus on our breathing. And so we want to think about inhales are down, and then we’re going to exhale to lift up in the pelvic floor to pull belly to spine during exertion. So whenever you’re doing the harder part of the movement, such as extending your leg or you’re pressing weight overhead, or you’re doing the part that feels more challenging, we want to be exhaling, and typically this is going to be when we’re moving against gravity. So when I inhale, and you could put your hands on the sides of your ribcage to feel this, when I inhale I want my ribs to expand out and my back to expand back So take a big inhale for your ribs expand and if you’re sitting in a chair you should feel your back kind of push into the chair. You may also feel more pressure to the back half of your pelvic floor as you inhale, or targeted more to the back half. The reason being is the back side of our body and the back half of our pelvic floor has more structure to it, so it can withstand increased pressure a little bit more than the front half of our pelvic floor and our belly. So we’re going to inhale to feel that ribcage expand. Diaphragm moves down. We’re breathing into the back to the back half of the pelvic floor. And then we can exhale to think lift up in the front half of the pelvic floor and pull belly to spine. So inhales, think breathe into the backside of our body, back half of the pelvic floor, and then exhale to lift up in the front and pull belly to spine.

[00:14:23] Gina: Again, the reason is a lot of us favor a more extended position, so the front half of our belly and the front half of our pelvic floor tend to have more length to them. And in that extended position, the back half of the pelvic floor and the back tend to get tighter. And so when we breathe in this way, we bring more length to the back, we shorten the front, and it brings us into a more neutral position. So if you’re experiencing coning or pelvic heaviness, try focusing on your posture and your breathing to see if that helps you not compensate anymore. And usually it’s helpful enough to bring you to a point where you’re no longer experiencing those symptoms.

[00:14:59] Gina: Now, if you do both those things and we’re still noticing coning, pelvic heaviness, something else that you can do is you can do a preparation exhale. So before you actually do the movement, we’re going to exhale to really encourage that deep core system to turn on, and then I’m going to press my weight overhead, I’m going to do my core exercise, I’m going to do my movement. So if I was pressing weight overhead, I would exhale, then press my arm up. And then inhale to lower down. If I was doing some sort of leg lift, I would exhale, then lower my leg. And so this is going to help to turn on that deep core system so that it can stabilize, and then we do our movement.

[00:15:37] Gina: The things that we can do to make core exercises either easier for us or make them harder if you’re not really noticing that they’re challenging enough for you, is one, the most stable position is going to be just one arm or just one leg moving. And so if I was doing like a dead bug, for example, I can move just one arm, bring it back up, and then I can just move the other arm. So that’s going to be really easy for me to do. Then if I wanted to make it a little bit harder, I can do like opposite sides moving. So one leg, one arm moving. But I will do them all on the same side so that I don’t have to shift my weight from side to side. But then if I want to make that a little bit harder, I can alternate sides, so I have to shift my weight from side to side, which makes the core stability a little bit harder. If I was doing lunges, for example, I can start with a split squat, which would be no feet moving, but in an asymmetrical position, I can then do a reverse lunge where one foot is moving, I can then do walking lunges where I’m alternating my legs. And then we can add on resistance, such as bands, weights, like things to make the movement just a little bit harder.

[00:16:38] Gina: And so with this progression, if you’re finding that the movement is too hard, you can also regress it to a more stable position. So more stable is going to be less moving pieces. Usually only one side moving at a time, like body weight movements, fairly lightweight, in a really supported position. Harder movements are going to include like weights and bands, we’re alternating sides, there’s a lot of movement happening. And then we can find something that’s in between. And so if you’re noticing that the movement is either causing you to compensate and breathing and posture is not helping you to not compensate anymore, so we’re not experiencing that coning and that heaviness, then we can find an easier version until we feel challenged, but we don’t experience those compensations. And so that is a technique on how you can continue to train your core during pregnancy and how we can figure out what is the next thing for us to do as we progress our core training in the postpartum.

[00:17:31] Gina: Within our prenatal and postpartum fitness programs, we do include those regressions and progressions for you, step by step, so you don’t have to figure it out all on your own. But this is just to help you understand what to do if maybe you’re doing a movement and you’re trying to figure out, “Okay, how do I modify this to meet me where I’m at right now?” And then we also have our postpartum core progression that’s available as a free ebook that we’ll link down in the notes below, but with this ebook, it’s six workouts that progress on each other. And so we start in those super supportive positions, and then we end using some resistance with bands, we decreased stability with a ball to make the movements much more challenging, but they’re going to walk you through that progression. And all those core workouts are included in our postpartum fitness programs as the warmup to help relearn to stabilize your core, to set yourself up for the workout, so that we can learn how to coordinate breath to movement with all of our exercises.

[00:18:24] Gina: Now, during pregnancy, there are some exercises that do tend to cause a little bit more coning than others. This is gonna include overhead pressing movements, vertical pulling movements, so pull ups. This is also gonna include very core intensive exercises, such as hanging from a bar, or doing like really flexion focused exercises, such as sit ups or crunches.

[00:18:45] Gina: With the overhead pressing movements and vertical pulling motions, the big things that are causing that coning is we tend to get a little bit more extended in our spine as we press weight overhead and as we pull weight down. So things that we can do to help decrease coning with the vertical pulling and pressing motions is one, focus on our positioning. So maybe we find a seated position instead of standing with the overhead press, or maybe we bring our knees up towards our chest and place them on an elevated surface while we do the pull downs. This can help to decrease the tension in the abdominal wall. We can change the angle of pull or push. So instead of pressing directly overhead, which can increase pressure down onto the pelvic floor, we can press like at a 45 degree angle with a landmine press, for example. If we were doing like a pull down and it was causing coning, maybe we do more of a vertical pull or like a 45 degree pull instead of pulling directly overhead. So changing the angle of the pull can be a really great technique as well. And then of course just decreasing the loading overall, so pressing less weight and pulling less weight can help to decrease coning.

[00:19:49] Gina: When it comes to the hanging motions and very core intensive exercises, usually there’s a point during pregnancy where we do have to omit those and replace them with different core exercises that serve us a little bit better, and then in the postpartum eventually you get back to those exercises as well. So hanging from the bar, planks, sit ups, crunches- really core intensive, particularly like the rectus abdominis intensive exercises, tend to go a little bit quicker during pregnancy.

[00:20:15] Gina: So the type of core exercises that you can focus on during pregnancy and the postpartum that tend to not cause coning and tend to not cause that pelvic heaviness are going to include motions that are anti, so these are going to movements where you’re resisting movement. So anti lateral flexion, so you’re resisting the side to side bend, anti rotation so like a paloff press a great example of this, you’re pressing a band or cable out and you’re resisting a rotation towards that point of attachment. We have anti extension which is going to be like that bird dog motion or anything where you’re in like a tabletop position because we’re trying to prevent our spine from arching as we go. The anti lateral flexion can be like Farmer’s carries, for example. So the anti motion is going to be resisting movement in some direction and maintaining our spine position as our arms and legs are doing things.

[00:21:04] Gina: Next thing that we want to incorporate with our core training is rotational movements and so the core and our spine need to twist and rotate. And so during pregnancy, you may have heard the myth of never twisting your spine because it can cause all sorts of issues. This myth has been debunked. It’s not true. Our spine does absolutely need to twist and rotate, not only for your just general comfort throughout pregnancy, it also aids in pelvic stability. But in addition, if we never twisted in our spine and within our hips, it’s going to decrease the mobility of your pelvis, which is really important to creating space for your baby to rotate.

[00:21:40] Gina: So the bony structure of our pelvis needs to torque and twist by shifting position within the pelvis to allow our baby to rotate through the middle of the pelvis. The bottom of the pelvis especially needs to find more internal hip and pelvic rotation where the two halves of the pelvis kind of move away from the sacrum to create more space for your baby at the bottom of the pelvis. The bottom of the pelvis tends to be where we have a little bit more labor stalls that could occur because of common postural tendencies during pregnancy. We tend to favor a little bit more external hip rotation, which decreases space in the bottom half of the pelvis. And so if you never twist during your pregnancy, you’re probably going to have a very tight back half of your pelvic floor, which could decrease your sacral mobility or how well your sacrum can move out of the way, in addition to decrease space in the bottom half of your pelvis, which could make it a little bit harder for baby to exit out of your pelvis. So you may have a later labor stall, so you’re like eight or ten centimeters and baby is just not getting underneath that pubic bone for example.

[00:22:38] Gina: So very important to twist both in the spine and within the hips during pregnancy, but I wouldn’t find like my deepest expression ever. So I’m not trying to twist as deep as I can into my belly. I do want to ensure that I’m still comfortable in all of these movements. And we incorporate a lot of rotational exercises, both for your spine and for your hips within our prenatal fitness program to ensure that we have good pelvic mobility to not only support a comfortable pregnancy, but to help support your baby’s movement through your pelvis during birth. Rotational exercises can include like upward chops, diagonal pull downs, pressing the band out and then rotating to one side. So incorporating all those exercises are really beneficial for both your spine and for your hip movement and core strengthening.

[00:23:24] Gina: The final type of movement that you can incorporate within your core routine is going to be hip extension exercises. And so again, our hips, our glutes, quads, hamstrings, adductors, hip flexors. All of these are a part of our core in one way. They help to have pelvic stability by attaching your pelvis to your spine. They help with dynamic movement by helping your arms and legs move. And so we do want to incorporate hip movement as a part of our core exercises, but we want to maintain the torso position as our hips move. And so this can be like doing a squat, doing a deadlift, doing lunges, anything where we’re extending in the hip but maintaining our upper body position is going to be a core exercise. You can also load the weight just on one side when you do your lunges or your squats to help with some of that anti lateral flexion as well, so that can be another great way to make your leg based motions more core focused.

[00:24:16] Gina: And so when we’re picking core exercises for our prenatal and our postpartum workouts, we want to focus on the anti movements, so the ones that resist movement are going to be really helpful. We want to focus on our rotational exercises with more of that twisting and side to side type movement within our spine. And then we want to incorporate the hip extension exercises where we maintain our upper body position as our hips move. And so a lot of our workouts within our prenatal and our postpartum program are incorporating those three elements into our core workouts.

[00:24:47] Gina: Now the last question that we get a lot of is all about diastasis. We get questions on, “Can you prevent diastasis during pregnancy?” And then, “How do I heal diastasis after birth?” Diastasis rectus abdominis, known as DRA or DR- you may also hear it as like your abdominal separation or like a belly gap- this is going to be when the two six pack ab muscles that are two separate muscle bellies, move away from one another and that connect the tissue in between stretches. Now, this is a normal adaptation that happens during pregnancy. We need our abdominal wall and the connective tissues to stretch and thin to help our baby grow. And so if you carry your baby to term, you will probably have some degree of diastasis. And now it can vary from person to person, depending on like how you do movement during your pregnancy, your breathing pattern, your general posture, genetics, just tissue integrity- so there’s a lot of factors that can contribute towards what severity of diastasis that you get. But one thing that is within your control is going to be how you move your body and your general posture. And so if you’re doing all of your exercises during pregnancy and you’re experiencing coning with every exercise, this is going to stretch that tissue more and potentially damage it. And so if you think about a hair tie, if you’re pulling that hair tie repeatedly, eventually it gets loose and the elasticity goes away. It’s the same thing with that tissue, the more we stretch and stretch that tissue, potentially the more damage it can get and it can decrease the elasticity of that tissue, making it harder to heal in the postpartum.

[00:26:23] Gina: So when we’re doing our core exercises, and just exercises in general during pregnancy, we do want to minimize abdominal coning. So we want to prevent that kind of tenting position from coming up, which again is one of those compensation patterns that we discussed earlier in this episode. So we can focus on things like posture and breathing to help activate the deep core more to help prevent the more severe diastasis.

[00:26:47] Gina: And now Roxanne and I both are sisters, so we have the same general genetics. We both did the same programming, maybe I did a few more days each week than she did, who knows, and I didn’t really have much of a diastasis after pregnancy, like it healed pretty quickly after birth, while Roxanne still has a little bit of a diastasis even at 18 months postpartum. And so it can vary from person to person, even if you do all of the “right” quote unquote things.

[00:27:13] Gina: Having a diastasis doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a functional issue or that there’s anything wrong. Our bodies are going to be a little bit different than they were pre kids, pre pregnancy, and that’s okay. Now, if your diastasis is causing functional issues where you’re having a hard time stabilizing because we have that kind of leak within our core canister, then we can do a lot of stuff postpartum to help heal it. For a lot of us, diastasis will spontaneously heal within the first six weeks postpartum. So you’ll give birth, and then just on its own the tissue will get denser and heal itself on its own, which is pretty nice, but it doesn’t happen for everybody. So if you still have a diastasis after six weeks postpartum, you usually have to be a little bit more deliberate with your effort with healing that tissue.

[00:27:57] Gina: Now, in the first six weeks, you may notice some marketing towards you to grab the belly band, the corsets, the waist trainers, to heal your diastasis, to shrink your waist, and all that garbage. Just know that those marketing tactics are trying to prey on your vulnerabilities and make you feel like there’s a problem that you don’t actually have, so that you buy their product. Any product that is advertising if this is going to heal your diastasis by squeezing your waist and bringing all those muscles closer together is false advertising. It’s not true. Physically bringing the two six pack abs together does not heal a diastasis. Like I said, most folks, that tissue heals spontaneously on its own, so if you are wearing the belly bands and everything, and you’re like, “But my diastasis healed!” it’s probably because it was just spontaneously going to.

[00:28:45] Gina: So physically running the muscles together does not heal a diastasis. What actually helps with diastasis is making those tissues denser so they can withstand changes in pressure. If we think about what our deep core system is doing, it’s helping to manage pressure within the abdominal cavity, which helps to stabilize our spine. And so if that tissue is really thin, and it can’t withstand changes in pressure, we’re going to experience that coning and a leak in our stabilization.

[00:29:12] Gina: So if you think about having a soda can and you put something on top of that can, it’s going to be able to stack a bunch of weight before it probably collapsed on itself because it’s contained, it’s stacked, it’s a pressurized system. But once I open that can and then maybe if I cut like a slit down the center and then put something on top of that, it would squish the can. And so that is what a diastasis that doesn’t have much tissue integrity is doing, is instead of having this thick core canister that can withstand changes in pressure, we have this kind of cut down the middle that’s pushing all that air out, or pushing it more forward. And so when it comes to healing our core and healing diastasis after birth, we want to focus on making that tissue denser so it can withstand changes in pressure.

[00:29:58] Gina: Now, how do we do that? If wearing the belly bands and the waist trainers doesn’t do that, what do we have to do to help heal that diastasis to make it denser? And this is going to be with those core exercises and with resistance training. And so with our core exercises, again, we’re going to focus on that deep core, help to turn it on, integrate all those systems back together, and then we can start focusing on things beyond that.

[00:30:21] Gina: So with our deep core system, doing those exercises like those dead bugs, those side planks, those bird dogs, all the movements that we incorporate within the MamasteFit Postpartum Fitness Program as your warm up are going to be those deep core exercises where we learn how to integrate our breathing and coordinating that with movement is going to be really important. In addition, we can incorporate cross body movement, so like more rotational exercises, which is going to help to activate the internal and external obliques more to help increase density across the tissue diagonally. And so these are going to be exercises like your diagonal banded pull downs, your upward chops, your paloff press with rotations, so a lot of that cross body where I’m bringing like my shoulder towards my opposite knee, is going to help to increase density across that tissue diagonally to help heal a diastasis. And then adding resistance. So our tissues and our bones are only going to be as strong as the demand that we put on it. And so when we hold weights, we lift with weights, we use resistance bands, it’s going to make our tissues and bones a lot denser as well. So if you notice a plateau with your diastasis healing, it’s because you need to add more challenge, usually. And you can also work with a pelvic floor physical therapist to help heal your diastasis as well- if you’re doing all these things and you’re still not seeing improvement, sometimes having a one on one approach to managing your diastasis can be really beneficial. And we’ll link our pelvic floor physical therapists down in the notes below. They do virtual consults and if you’re local to us in Moore County, North Carolina, you can also work with them in person.

[00:31:51] Gina: And then the final thing that you can do to help heal your diastasis, if you’re doing all of these other things, you’re doing the exercises, you’re working with PT, but your diastasis is just so severe that all those things are not helping, there’s also surgery that is available, which is usually more of a last resort after working with physical therapists, but it is an option that you can consider if you’re just doing all the things and nothing seems to be working.

[00:32:13] Gina: Diastasis is one of those things that a lot of us feel a little bit more anxious about. You can’t prevent it during pregnancy, but there are things that you can do to decrease the severity of it, such as focusing on your posture and your breathing during movement to ensure that we’re minimizing that abdominal coning. In our prenatal fitness programs, we incorporate a lot of modifications for you so that you can find a variation that feels good for you in your body to help decrease the mismanagement of pressure.

[00:32:39] Gina: In the postpartum, a lot of us will spontaneously heal with diastasis. Know that there will always be some sort of gap between those two muscles because they’re two separate muscle bellies, and so you’ll probably always be able to get one or two fingers in there. But what we’re focusing on more is not the gap, but rather the depth. So how far can you push your fingers into your abdominal wall would determine how dense that tissue is. And so we want tissues that are denser and the way that we can do that is not with those belly bands and waist trainers that are squeezing your waist and trying to pull the muscles together, those actually can cause more problems than help you because now, because there’s no movement happening around the side, all that pressure needs to go down into the pelvic floor. So you may notice more pelvic floor issues if you’re wearing really tight waist trainers. Rather, we want to focus on exercises that help to integrate the internal, external obliques with the transverse abdominis- so we’re exhaling and then rotating with these cross body movements- and then also really focusing on that deep core to help learn how to stabilize again, to increase the density across that tissue. And then adding resistance and more challenge with our exercises to make that tissue denser.

[00:33:44] Gina: And we do all of this for you in our pre and postnatal fitness programs. We guide you through exercises to help you progress in the postpartum. We offer modifications during pregnancy because we do need to train our core during pregnancy. There is hope for you after birth to help heal your core, but it’s hard to figure out what all of these little things are. And so we’ve been working with in person clients for the past seven years, so we don’t just train online clients, we also train in person clients, so we’re seeing what works for folks. We test all our programs with both virtual and in person clients to figure out what exercises work, which ones were confusing, which ones seem to feel good for most people. So you can trust that we are very deliberate with our programming. We’re very intentional with what we do. We have our PTs review our programs to make sure they’re exercises that make sense as well. And so there’s a lot of effort being put into our prenatal and postpartum programs. It’s not just, “Gina was pregnant once and then gave birth and then made these programs.” there’s a lot of professional expertise behind them as well.

[00:34:44] Gina: So thanks so much for listening to: How do you train your core during pregnancy? During the postpartum? What are safe or unsafe exercises? Generally, again, there’s no dangerous exercises, and there’s no necessarily list of safe versus unsafe. We want to focus more on the symptoms that we may be experiencing.

[00:35:02] Gina: If you want more of a guide throughout your pregnancy or your postpartum on how to approach training your core, check out our online prenatal and postpartum fitness programs. You can also bundle our prenatal fitness programs with our childbirth education course and pelvic floor course, and you can use code STORY10 to get 10 percent off any of our online offerings, so you can grab the prenatal and the postpartum fitness program for 10 percent off. And with our prenatal fitness program, you can bundle it with childbirth education and pelvic floor prep to save an additional 15 percent off.