After birth, it can be confusing on when we can return to the gym and HOW to even approach your return to lifting.
There is fairly little guidance at your 6-week “all clear” postpartum appointment; you may have been told you can do anything you want, or maybe try starting light and work your way back up. But, our providers are not fitness trainers and it is not their expertise, so it would be unfair to expect them to give you a laid-out physical fitness program to support a return to lifting after birth.
It is more complex than just “start light and work your way back up.” And you should definitely NOT just do whatever right away. Let’s break down the healing timeline, and how to approach your return to lifting after birth.
Lifting After Birth: Postpartum Fitness Timeline
After the birth of your baby, there are things we can do to support our reconnection and healing (and things that could hinder that) from day 1! You don’t need to wait until your all-clear appointment to begin reconnecting with your body!
During the first 4-10 weeks postpartum, we can focus on:
- Diaphragmatic Breathing for Core and Pelvic Floor Connection
- Pain Management
- Gentle Core Rehabilitation Exercises
- Short Walks
- Thoracic and hip mobility
During these early weeks, we are primarily focusing on allowing the initial tissue healing of our core, pelvic floor, and perineal tissues. If we push too hard too soon, we could inhibit our healing process!
Around 4-10 weeks postpartum, depending on if your bleeding has stopped, we can look to return to the gym. But, we want to be mindful of HOW we approach this return to lifting:
- Starting with core stabilization, then focusing on strengthening exercises
- Floor-based exercises that progress more upright
- Starting with simple, single-joint movements and then progressing to more complex exercises
- Moving in all three planes of motion: sagittal (front to back, most common), frontal (side to side), and transverse (rotational)
But that advice alone may still feel very overwhelming! What do these progressions even look like? Let’s explore it!
If you want it all laid out for you step by step, join our postpartum fitness programs! We offer our programs in three main ways:
- 16-Week Postpartum Program in the Teambuildr app. Workouts are 45-75 minutes long to help you get back to big lifts, jumping, and running. We want you to be able to do WHATEVER it is you want to do physically.
- 12-Week Postpartum Mini Program in the Teambuildr app. Workouts are 15-20 minutes long to accommodate a busy schedule! Same programming design, but condensed to make t more manageable time-wise.
- Postpartum on-demand program are our full-length workout videos that you follow as you work out at the same time!
Early Postpartum: Birth to 4-10 Weeks Postpartum
In the first few weeks postpartum, we want primarily be focusing on resting and allowing our body to initially heal from pregnancy and birth. There was a LOT of tissue trauma that occurred during birth that needs some time to reset!
In the early postpartum, we want to be mindful of our bleeding. Our bleeding can be a sign of if we are doing too much activity! If you go for a walk and notice that your bleeding has increased, we should decrease overall activity, if possible.
This mini-course guides you through the first month postpartum as you begin your recovery after birth! This program includes weekly guidance on how to reconnect with your core and pelvic to support your healing.
- Breathing and Core Connection Exercises
- Mobility Exercises to Relieve Common Discomforts
- Gentle Core Exercises
- Watch on Mobile Device
Early Postpartum Outline:
- First 5 Days: Mostly in or on the bed! Staying off your feet, and managing pain postpartum.
- Light activity around the house for some gentle movement.
- You can start diaphragmatic breathing in supported positions and supine mobility work.
- Days 6-10: Near the bed, still staying mostly off your feet.
- Increasing activity around the house and monitoring bleeding.
- Around day 7-10, the placental scab detaches so you may have increased bleeding for a few hours, but it should go away in a few hours. If it persists, it could be a sign that you are doing too much.
- Focusing on diaphragmatic breathing in more upright positions and lots of mobility!
- Day 10+: Starting to venture outside the house with short walks and reintroduce gentle core exercises that are floor based.
- Continuing with more advancement in diaphragmatic breathing drills and mobility.
We offer a week-by-week progression in our early postpartum recovery course! See a breakdown of one of our recommended breathing drills for early postpartum below!
Returning to the Gym
1) Core Stabilization and Rebuilding Your Core Strength After Birth
As we return to lifting, our first focus is rebuilding our core after pregnancy and birth. You may be surprised at how “off” your core activation feels after birth!
When progressing our core exercises, we want to start first with diaphragmatic breathing (the first core exercise we can do postpartum).
Key Takeaways:
- Inhale to feel the ribs expand OUT to the back and sides; you may also feel the pelvic floor move down
- Exhale to lift up and in with the pelvic floor and core
- You may need to exhale THEN initiate the movement at first, then slowly progress to exhaling WITH the movement
Watch the video below to learn more about HOW to do diaphragmatic breathing to support your core function and optimize your performance. We want to integrate this breathing into all of our movements.
Now that we understand diaphragmatic breathing, we can begin to slowly introduce movement as we breathe; aka coordinate breath to movement.
We want to start with only ONE arm or leg moving so we can focus more on our breath-to-movement coordination.
In the dead bug, we can start with the feet pushing into an elevated surface or wall.
- Then EXHALE to extend one arm overhead, while maintaining the torso position (aka core stabilization).
- Then, INHALE to feel the back push into the ground as you lift the arm back up.
Watch the breakdown video to learn HOW to start progressing in this dead bug movement. This is how we start our core progression in our postpartum fitness programs.
Next, we can begin to add more movement: adding in the opposite leg with the arm’s movement.
- Continue to drive the heel into an elevated surface, and then extend the arm and leg overhead as you EXHALE.
- As you exhale, maintain the torso position (no arching in the back) as you extend.
- Then inhale to feel the ribs push into the ground as you come back to the starting position.
And then after we have progressed through the traditional dead bug, we can do some advancements! Some ways that we advance the core movements are to add some resistance bands or weights. If you want more of a throughout core stabilization progression, join our postpartum fitness programs for a day-by-day workout guide!
2) Returning to Lifting: Step by Step Postpartum Lifting Recommendations
1- Freeze Degrees of Freedom
One of the first ways we can slowly return to lifting is to freeze the degrees of freedom. This means limiting how much movement is happening, usually by decreasing the number of joints working or decreasing the range of motion.
This allows us to focus on how we are breathing in relationship to our movement (which can ultimately support core and pelvic floor strengthening and enhance physical performance) and optimize our form as we explore our new normal.
The kneeling squat is how we begin the return to barbell back squat progression in our postpartum fitness programs.
In the kneeling squat, we are removing the ankle and foot stability requirement from the squat and focusing on the knee and hip extension.
Tips:
- Inhale to lower
- Exhale THEN extend in the hip
2- Slowly Increase Range of Motion
Next, we can slowly increase the range of motion in our lifts. In the goblet box squat, we now have the feet and ankles working to stabilize our movement, but we don’t necessarily want to drop into the deepest squat right away.
The larger the range of motion, the greater stability required! We want to be able to move within a range that we can maintain optimal form, and for most of us, that will be a decreased range at first.
In our postpartum program, we progress from the kneeling squat variations to the box squat! This allows us to add in more joints but in a decreased range of motion.
You can do similar things with other lifts, such as the deadlift: kneeling deadlift to elevated or rack pull deadlifts.
3- Increase loading and resistance
And then finally, we can adjust the loading or resistance to progress the exercise! In the squat, we can:
- Start with unweighted or air squats
- Then use handheld weights such as dumbbells or kettlebells
- Then progress to using a barbell with heavier loading!
3) Strength + Stabilization: Pairing Our Exercises to Support Rebuilding Postpartum
In our postpartum programs, we focus on rebuilding stabilization before we rebuild max strength. Our method to rebuild focuses on super setting a main lift with a stabilization exercise at a higher rep scheme.
Example:
10 squats superset with 10 step-ups per leg. The squat is our main lift in a strength endurance rep scheme paired with the step-up, our stabilization exercise.
In our programming, we pair lower-body strength movements with a single-leg stabilization exercise. We pair upper body strength movements with a core stabilization-focused exercise.
Lower Body Stabilization Exercise: Step Ups
Core Stabilization Exercise: Pallof Press
Find Your Strength Postpartum
It is definitely possible to find your strength again after birth! It can feel daunting as you try to do a push-up or pull-up, and your entire core feels like it forgot how to activate. It does take time! But the patience in rebuilding, and relearning movement patterns is worth it in the end.
After three postpartum periods, I can confidently say I am stronger after having babies than I was pre-kids. The reason is that I took the time after each pregnancy to rebuild and relearn how to move my body BETTER.
The patience is worth it though!
