Feel Ready to Exercise Before Your 6-Week Postpartum Visit? Here's What You Can Do Safely.
I’ve seen the question so many times in mom groups. “I had an uncomplicated birth and I’m feeling completely fine 3 weeks PP, what can I do for exercise?” Often people are taken by surprise at how good they feel physically a few weeks after birth, even if that birth was a little more complicated than they expected. Many have used exercise as a coping mechanism in the past, are worried about how their body looks postpartum and want to navigate their way to feeling more at home in their postpartum body (more on this topic later) through exercise, or just find that exercise is good for their mental health.
I get it. As a trainer and a spin instructor, I most definitely find that exercise is a coping mechanism for me. It does make me feel good physically and mentally. And after my last birth, I most definitely did not feel at home in my body, so exercise was my go-to. At 5 weeks postpartum, I walked into my first postpartum spin class. I was back in the saddle teaching a mere 2 weeks later. Needless to say, I completely understand the feeling of “I feel fine, so I am fine.” But also as a prenatal and postnatal fitness specialist, I know better.
This is not to say at all that there’s NOTHING you can do before your 6-week check up. There most certainly is, but the answer isn’t jumping right back in to what you were doing previously. So in this article, I’m going to chat a bit more about the healing your body is going through postpartum, why it is essential to ease yourself back in to movement, and what you can do in those first 6-weeks to heal your core and pelvic floor while giving yourself some much needed movement.
You might be ready on the outside, but your insides aren’t
Okay, so here’s the deal. I do recognize and can totally relate to FEELING ready to exercise before the 6-week mark. I can totally relate to being mentally ready to get back into your regular routine immediately. You’re talking to the girl who went back to spin classes at 5 weeks postpartum and was up front teaching a mere 2 weeks later.
What I’m saying is I get it.
BUT, knowing what I know now that isn’t the approach I would or will take again. You may feel ready to jump back in, but your body has A LOT of healing to do. Your body definitely isn’t ready to jump right back into what you were doing. There needs to be a gradual return to exercise postpartum and it needs to begin with giving your core and pelvic floor some love.
Why? Well let’s talk about that.
Why you should ease back into movement- yes, even walking
Your core and pelvic floor have gone through a lot in the past 9 (10) months. You uterus has grown to roughly the size of a Butterball turkey and even if that baby was born via belly birth, the pelvic floor has sustained A LOT of pressure for quite a while. It’s a pretty incredible group of muscles, but it also just doesn’t “bounce back” to what it was before. Things to also take into consideration here- if you labored before a C-section your pelvic floor went through other changes and stresses and the fact that your abdominals were also under quite a bit of pressure throughout pregnancy. The core system as a whole has been altered in some pretty significant ways.
Here’s the other thing: Your placenta detaches from the wall of your uterus, leaving behind a wound the size of a dinner plate that needs to heal. That doesn’t happen overnight.
Even walking longer distances can be too much for the pelvic floor, especially during recovery from pregnancy and birth. You also tend to be on your feet A LOT anyway during that early postpartum period and it can be really easy to overdo it while walking because it is considered “safe” in early postpartum. However, the truth is that walking is actually a lot for your pelvic floor to handle after pregnancy and birth. My suggestion to clients is to start off really small- 5-10 minute bouts of low intensity walking the first few weeks. Then over weeks 3-4 that increases to 10-15 minutes. Weeks 5-6 we increase to 15 minutes, maybe 20 depending on how that a particular person is feeling and handling the load. During that time my clients are usually starting a gentle at home strength training routine as well to support their daily activities.
Easing back into exercise, while boring, is essential to recovery and returning back to the things you love sooner while addressing any issues that may come up.
3 Exercises You Can Start With
So what CAN you do during those first few weeks if you’re feeling ready to get back into a routine? Yes, there are absolutely things you can do and I work with many clients who start before the 6-week mark. But the workouts are definitely not going to look like a mom-baby bootcamp. We start with reconnecting to the core and pelvic floor and managing pressure and breathing strategies during daily movement- a lot of the exercises look a lot like what you’d be doing in daily life and then gradually building in intensity and strength from there.
Of course, I suggest glute work for all of my clients (and for you reading this blog), so the three exercises I’ve chosen are a mix of the things I just mentioned.
Core and Floor Connection Breath
Incline Glute Bridge
Kneeling Hinge
Overall, feeling “ready” is often because your brain is ready- not because your body is ready. A gradual return to fitness postpartum is important for a number of reasons, including core and pelvic health. Did this article give you a good place to start with your recovery and return to fitness?
If you’re itching for more guidance on how to recover and rebuild strength postpartum, I created my 8-week program Fourth Trimester Recover and Rebuild to help you do just that. Learn more and enroll here.