Pelvic Floor and Hip Mobility Workout for Pregnancy

Birth Preparation, Fitness, Pelvic Floor, Prenatal

You may think that the BEST exercises for your pelvic floor are deep squat holds and butterfly poses. It's commonly promoted that wide-legged positions stretch the pelvic floor--and while this is true, it doesn't stretch the ENTIRE pelvic floor! We need to incorporate different types of hip movements to target the various quadrants of the pelvic floor.

You may think that the BEST exercises for your pelvic floor are deep squat holds and butterfly poses. It’s commonly promoted that wide-legged positions stretch the pelvic floor–and while this is true, it doesn’t stretch the ENTIRE pelvic floor! We need to incorporate different types of hip movements to target the various quadrants of the pelvic floor.

When releasing tension in the pelvic floor, we need to incorporate:

External hip rotation with abduction (deep squats, butterfly pose type exercises)
- This stretches the FRONT half of your pelvic floor. However, most of us already have a lot of length here due to our common postural tendencies, so exclusively focusing on these types of movements may not be incredibly helpful.
Internal hip rotation with adduction:
- These stretches target the BACK half of your pelvic floor, where more of us tend to have more issues. During pregnancy, we tend to favor more external hip rotation, so the back half of our pelvic floor tends to be tighter.
Asymmetrical positions:
- These positions stretch the pelvic floor rotationally, where one-half of the front pelvic floor and the opposing back half of the pelvic floor stretch. This is what we are focusing on in this workout!

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In addition to hip mobility to release tension in the pelvic floor, we also need to incorporate thoracic mobility! Your rib cage position impacts your pelvic position. Your pelvic floor attaches to your pelvis, so the position of your pelvis can impact your pelvic floor tension!

The thoracic spine moves in three ways:

Front to back with rounding and arching in the back
Laterally with side bending or stretching
Rotationally with twists and rotations

In this workout, we focus on asymmetrical hip positions and incorporating the three movements of the thoracic spine to help release tension in your pelvic floor to support a comfortable pregnancy, improve the function of your pelvic floor, and prepare for birth!

8-Minute Pelvic Floor and Hip Mobility Release Workout for Pregnancy!

In this workout, we walk you through 8 minutes of exercises that release ALL the different portions of your pelvic floor! Releasing tension in the pelvic floor is more than just deep squats and butterfly pose–we also need to incorporate one-sided movements and internal hip rotation.

These exercises involve a lot of movement to help with pelvic and hip mobility plus include all three movements of the spine: front to back, lateral, and rotational!

Adductor Rock Back to Pigeon Flow with Thoracic Rotation
- This releases tension in the inner thigh and opposite glute as you flow between the two movements. At the bottom of the adductor rock back, you can add in some thoracic rotation, as well!
90/90 Side Camel with Lateral Thoracic Mobility
- This asymmetrical hip release exercise also incorporates lateral thoracic mobility and a hip flexor release! This is one of my favorites to help with round ligament pain too.
All Fours Hip Shifts with Pelvic Tilts for front-to-back thoracic mobility.
- This asymmetrical exercise targets the posterior pelvic floor of the elevated hip with internal pelvic rotation.

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We include these mobility movements and more in our prenatal fitness programs! I’m currently doing our prenatal strength program during my fourth pregnancy—and I’ve felt the best this pregnancy so far!

I also just wanted to thank you ladies! You have no idea how much support you gave me throughout my TTC, pregnancy and now birth! I was able to have a VBAC with an 8 pound 4 ounce baby (I’m 5’1” so clearly size doesn’t matter!) with hardly any tearing at all, just a minor nick. My labor was so smooth and pushing was super effective and quick thanks to your super helpful tips. I did your workout classes, childbirth education class (which is SO helpful) and listened to your podcast a ton. You ladies were seriously the MVPs of my birth and I’m on cloud 9!

I just wanted to say thank you so much for all of your incredible content! I used your childbirth edu and prenatal fitness programs during my pregnancy and felt empowered to take on an unplanned induction. As a pelvic PT, I knew I wanted education that covered physiology and hospital birth interventions in a lot more specific detail and I felt the mamastefit program was comprehensive and easy to digest with the format you have. I will definitely use the prenatal fitness plan again for a future pregnancy and will totally recommend it to patients as well!

Thanks for your amazing programs! I‘m really sad I only found them for my last pregnancy. I‘m pretty sure, that the pelvic mobility exercises were key to being able to birth my biggest baby (4.2 kg, 38cm head circumference) at home (first one was slightly smaller and born via c-section).

Prepare for Your Birth with MamasteFit Prenatal Fitness Programs

If you want more daily workouts to support a strong pregnancy as you prepare for birth, join our online prenatal fitness programs!

MamasteFit is unique in that we are one of the ONLY prenatal/postnatal training facilities in the United States. We develop our workout programs from our experience of working with in-person pre/postnatal fitness clients and work closely with physical therapists to refine our programming. In addition, we are birth workers, so we combine our experience as perinatal fitness trainers and birth professionals to ensure that our programs actually support your birth preparation and recovery!

Our prenatal fitness programs are offered in several formats:

40-Week Prenatal Strength Program in the Teambuildr App:
- This program is a self-paced workout with shorter demo videos. This is ideal if you like to workout in a gym setting and prefer a traditional workout delivery format.
- This program syncs to your current week of pregnancy, so you can start anytime, with one-time payment or month-to-month payment options.
- This program has a full and mini version, depending on how much time you have to dedicate to workouts!
Prenatal On-Demand Fitness Program:
- If you prefer to follow a video as you workout at the same time, this workout program will be the best option!
- This program syncs to your current trimester, so you can grab the trimesters you need!
Prenatal Yoga Classes:
- If you want prenatal yoga, join our prenatal yoga program! This also syncs to your current trimester.