SAFE EXERCISES AFTER CHILDBIRTH

Take it easy as much as possible. Focus your attention on yourself and your baby and leave the rest to others. Taking it easy gives your pelvic floor muscles, your pelvis, your abdominal muscles and the surrounding area the time they need to recover.

THE PELVIC FLOOR

After pregnancy/delivery, it is important to train your pelvic floor muscles daily. These muscles have had to endure a lot during pregnancy and especially after a vaginal delivery. This is why the stability and strength of the pelvic floor have reduced. Just like after an operation or an injury you can help these muscles recover by training and a gentle build-up in load.

In this video series, we explain why this is important and how you can do this!

- The pelvic floor, what is it?    

- Why is training the pelvic floor important after pregnancy?

- How do I contract my pelvic floor?

- Check if you’re making the right contraction

DIASTASIS

After pregnancy, many women have complaints as a result of the separation between the two parts of the straight abdominal muscle. We call this a diastasis.

It is important to regain good function of the core muscles in order to recover from a diastasis. To do this, it helps to be able to contract the deep transverse abdominal muscle, or transversus abdominis, and to integrate using it in all daily activities. Because the deep transverse abdominal muscle and the pelvic floor are part of the core and work together, a contraction of one stimulates a contraction of the other. So by training the deep transverse abdominal muscle, you are strengthening your core. You can do the exercise below right after delivery. You can start training this muscle straight away:

• Lie on your back with your knees bent, your back and pelvis in a neutral position and keep a slight curve in your lower back.

• Breath out, contract the pelvic floor to create tension in the deep transverse abdominal muscle. This is a slight tension which you can feel in the lower abdomen.

• Hold this tension for one to two seconds and then relax for five seconds.

• Repeat ten times. Want to build up? Do three sets of ten repetitions.

If the diastasis doesn’t recover enough after delivery, complaints arise and the exercise above doesn’t help enough, we advise you to contact a specialised pelvic physiotherapist. He/she can perform measurements and you will get specific exercises to help your core muscles work together.

In this video series, we explain why core training is so important after childbirth, what a diastasis is and how you can get started with it!

- The core, what is it?

- What happens to the core during and after pregnancy?

- Do the diastasis check!

- Training the transverse abdominal muscle

You’re slowly starting to recover, but still, make sure you get plenty of rest. Keep listening to your body. Be careful with lifting things and household chores. Leave this to others as much as possible.

Keep doing the exercises for the pelvic floor and diastasis from week one during these weeks. Try doing these exercises not only when lying down, but also in a seated or upright position.

Check your posture when standing upright, moving, changing and feeding your baby. When in an upright position, check the following:

• Feet are at hip width, or slightly wider than hip-width. Your weight is on both feet. Centre of gravity is in the middle.

• Knees are as good as straight (but not locked, you can still wiggle them).

• Muscles in the buttocks are slightly active.

• Back is straight, slight natural curve in the lower back: stand up tall.

• Chest up, shoulders low, neck in line with the spinal column and slightly pull in your chin.

• Pull your navel in and up. Slight tension in the abdominal muscles.

• Make sure you keep breathing. Breath out when doing something strenuous; this in order to avoid pressure on the pelvic floor and diastasis.

• We call this position a basic posture.

When you are not doing and exercise or some other kind of strenuous activity, you can relax both your abdominal and pelvic floor muscles (let go).

Start with walking outside with or without your baby. Keep them short and slow. 10-15 minutes is plenty. You can do this every day, and you could gradually build up to 30 minutes.
 

If your recovery and everything else is going well, you can start to do more. You can build up the exercises from the past few weeks to more repetitions. Besides this, you can add new exercises to the pelvic floor and core exercises. In the following videos, we explain how you can do these exercises.

Exercises to the pelvic floor:

- Contract and hold the pelvic floor

- Quick contractions of the pelvic floor

Core exercises:

- The head lift exercise

- The supine head lift exercise

- The standing head lift exercise

If everything is progressing well, as well as taking walks and doing the exercises described above, you can also start doing more muscle-strengthening exercises.

The following are a number of exercises that you can do every other day or every third day:

1. Arms and shoulders

Extend your arms at shoulder height.

• Make 10 small circles backwards and then forwards.

• Make 10 large circles backwards, and then forwards.

• Keep your arms raised at shoulder height and bring your left arm towards your head 5 times. Now do the same with your right arm.

• With your arms still extended sideways, bounce them up and down slightly. Do this for 10 seconds.

Tip: Do these exercises while holding a water bottle in each hand for a tougher workout.

2. Squat

Stand with your feet at hip-width. Pull your navel towards your spine (contract your deep abdominal muscles), keep your chest forward and your shoulders back and relaxed. Bend your knees, pushing your buttocks down and back, as if you are about to sit down on a chair. Squat as deeply feels comfortable. Exhale as come back up. Your knees should remain over your feet. Try to keep your upper body as upright as possible and look straight ahead. Do this 10x and when this goes well, build up to 3x10 repetitions.



3. Oblique abdominal muscles

Stand in the basic position with your feet at hip-width. Place your hands behind your head. When doing this exercise, always make sure that you contract your deep abdominal muscles slightly. Move your elbow towards your hip by tilting your upper body towards your side.

Repeat this 10 times.
Tip: It is important to keep your hips and legs still and only move your upper body. Pay attention to your breathing.

Advice: We advise against running until at least 12 weeks after giving birth. The reason is that your pelvic floor has not recovered enough to absorb this impact.
 

Hurray, it’s ME-time! The Back in Shape workouts enables you to carefully start the active recovery of your body and get you back into shape starting from 6 weeks after giving birth (after your post-partum check-up). The workouts are taught by expert instructors and developed in partnership with gynaecologists and pelvic physical therapists. This ensures that you always exercise in a responsible manner. The challenging workouts in the fresh outdoor air also help feel strong and energetic again!