Working out after the Birth of your Baby
What you Need to Know about Postpartum Recovery and your Return to Exercise
At FITMOM, we pride ourselves on our postpartum protocol that gets women back to their more advanced workouts injury free.
But, before progressing to more advanced or higher impact exercises, we strongly encourage all new moms to meet the following benchmarks as they return to exercise:
Follow our Core Restore Protocols to ensure proper core function. Complete a self-assessment for abdominal separation and learn how to engage your core properly, building a strong foundation before progressing into abdominal exercises that might not yet be appropriate for you.
Complete a minimum of four weeks of FITMOM focused strength training.
Have a full assessment with a pelvic floor physiotherapist who will help get you to the point where you can safely resume higher impact activities, because you have the strength to do so.
Be patient with your recovery and slowly progress to higher impact exercises over the course of around six months postpartum. One of the main reasons we recommend easing into high impact activity is that the pregnancy hormone relaxin, which is responsible for softening tendons and ligaments which make joints less stable, is still present for up to five months postpartum (and possibly longer for breastfeeding women). Resuming higher impact activities to soon can increase the risk of injury due to joint instability and can increase the pressure/stress on the pelvic floor and abdominal wall.
It might be very easy to write off these recommendations and go full steam ahead if you’re not experiencing any negative symptoms. Many women actually experience symptoms in the longer term that ultimately derail their recovery and reduce activity levels.
These guidelines are the minimum we recommend, but they don’t mean you can’t still have challenging workouts! Your workouts after having a baby should be tailored so that they take into consideration your well being and long term health. A postnatal fitness specialist is a great person to enlist to help you get back to exercising again after your baby is born. And the FITMOM and Baby class is a great place to begin!
Are you ready to #Jointhemotherhood? We’d love to have you join us to connect with other people in your community and receive expert instruction for a fun, safe and effective workout during your child bearing years. Try out our classes with our New to FITMOM 3 Class Pass for new FITMOMs!