During pregnancy, and in the early postnatal phase, your body has gone through significant changes. This often means that you’ll have picked up new habits, different movement patterns, and may have difficulty feeling your core muscles at all at first. In this short video, you’ll learn to understand how the core works, how to connect with it and learn to engage it effectively. You can use your core muscles in other workouts in the programme, but also in daily life.

You should be aiming to start introducing pelvic floor exercises regularly from as early as you feel comfortable to do so after birth. This routine will challenge you to use your pelvic floor muscles in a variety of positions, and learn how to use them effectively for real life. You can repeat this workout regularly over the next few weeks / months, alongside your daily practice.

I always recommend seeking the advice of a Pelvic Health Physiotherapist for a better understanding of your pelvic floor.

It’s really important to know that your pelvic floor muscles have to have the freedom to move and to function like any other muscle - with the ability to relax and contract. It’s very common for women to squeeze and hold the pelvic floor muscles too much, either because they feel like the muscles are ‘too weak’ or to try to prevent leaking or because they are subconsciously protecting the area. This leads to ‘overactive’ pelvic floor muscles, which cannot work properly because they can’t move or turn on and off as we need them to. This routine will help you to identify whether you are struggling to ‘let go’ of tension in your pelvic floor, give you cues and exercises to help you to improve it, and provides some helpful mobility for the hips and pelvis which can really help if you’re still struggling with pain in the area.

You can repeat this workout regularly over the next few weeks / months, alongside your daily practice. If you recognise that you do struggle a lot with an overactive pelvic floor, you may find that you benefit most from working on releasing it and learning to relax it properly first before you continue with any other workouts or daily pelvic floor squeezes, since this could make your problem worse.

I always recommend seeking the advice of a Pelvic Health Physiotherapist for a better understanding of your pelvic floor.

Now that you have a good understanding of how your core behaves - with the connection between the breathing, abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, this routine will progress you further. You’ll get lots of explanation along the way, about how to use your core more effectively, and start to feel that you’re challenging your abdominal muscles further.

If you’re concerned about an abdominal separation, or you’ve noticed a doming or coning effect at your midline when you’re exercising or doing daily tasks such as getting up from a chair or sitting up in bed then it’s probable that you’ve got Diastasis Recti. This is a common effect of pregnancy - and in fact 100% of mothers will experience abdominal separation by 35 weeks of pregnancy. The recovery from this varies from person to person - but before you really get started with your rehab, this video is worth a watch to understand it better and reduce your anxiety or fears.

Use this video to learn more about Diastasis Recti - the separation of abdominals that occurs during pregnancy, and may still be present as you return to postnatal exercise. Learn how to check yourself for Diastasis, and follow along with some simple exercises and techniques to help you exercise safely with the gap.

For more Diastasis Recti content and workouts please see the September chapter in your monthly Library

Begin to use your core effectively, to support your postnatal recovery. You can learn to move in a way that achieves tension across the abdominal gap, which is what’s required to strengthen your midline again. If you are noticing a lack of connection around your middle, or struggling with back pain - this session will help you to feel more confident about strengthening your core after pregnancy.

A live class recording from the membership, which focuses on a core workout to help restore your connection to your core and midline control and help to master your Diastasis recovery.

Another core-focused class where you can begin to progress your efforts and feel that you are making gains with your strength. There are some modified options available, so that you can repeat this class at different times and find that you can add extra challenges.

If you do have a diastasis (abdominal separation) - diastasis management is all about finding positions and movements that allow you to challenge the whole core system, while still being able to control the pressure around the abdominal wall. It's really essential that you take the time to learn that connection well, but also to be able to challenge those muscles if you want to see progress. There is often lots of confusion around what you 'can and can't' do with Diastasis, but the most recent evidence suggests that exercise does need to be challenging if we want to achieve strengthening.

This class is particularly for women who have had a C-section delivery. Please note it is NOT appropriate if you’re less than 8 weeks postpartum, or still have an open, red, raised or sore wound.

Improving the mobility of the scar tissue is very important for your overall recovery. We’ll discuss it further in the class, but if you’ve got a numb, tingling, thick or stuck scar it can affect your ability to use your core muscles well. It can also be the cause of pelvic pain, back pain, an overhang at your abdomen or bladder or bowel issues.

It’s common for lots of women to feel very disconnected with their scar or even feel unable to look at it or touch it. If you’re really struggling with this, take a look at this video from my colleague at The 360 Mama.

I'd also recommend that you aim to do one Restorative class per week (you can find more in the Restorative Library), as they are designed to support all the deep core work by making sure you maintain good mobility too, and to help reduce tension or pressure around the abdomen and pelvis, which can particularly affect pelvic floor function.

Remember that using a variety of strengthening and slower paced classes that focus on your breathing and posture will ensure the best overall results at first.

If your goal is to return to other exercise or sport eventually - it’s really important that you do some rehab work in positions that apply to that activity. For example, if you want to start running, but you’ve only ever done pelvic floor exercises while lying down, they are unlikely to cope with the demand that running or impact puts on them.

Even if you are walking regularly with your baby, it’s helpful for you to practice some strengthening in upright positions, because this is more functional for your daily activity. Lots of women report feeling heaviness in their vagina or back passage, or leaking urine while walking, lifting or doing exercise, so this is an example of the kind of workouts you should eventually move onto.

If you’ve got this far, and feel good - you could start to look at the Cardio Core Library for more of these athletic workouts.

43 min

This is a good starter programme for your postnatal fitness. Moving forwards, you can find classes with specific themes under the ‘Monthly Library’ tab. Some of these will relate to particular symptoms or concerns you have, and you can begin to use the library with a little more freedom.

I’d love to support you as best as possible throughout your membership, whether with Qs at the end of a live class, or get in touch via email if you’d like any more help.