We get asked all the time how quickly women can return to exercise postpartum. While you don’t want to vigorously exercise until cleared by your doctor (usually at your 6 week postpartum visit), here are three safe, effective exercises you can do right after your baby is born.
Hey, I’m Kathleen Donahoe, co-owner and Senior instructor of oh babyfitness.com. I’ve trained thousands and thousands of women over the years in pre and postnatal exercise. And now I’m expecting a little boy in just about two months.
One of the questions I get all the time that now being on this side of things I really understand is what exercises can I do after I have the baby or when can I go back to exercise. The most important thing to know is that your doctor’s gonna check you around six to eight weeks postpartum to see if it’s safe for you to do exercises and up until that point you don’t want to do anything vigorous. You want to walk and then you want to do these three exercises. So today I’m going to share the three exercises you want to do right after you have your baby in terms of getting back, getting things moving again.
The first exercise you want to do, and you can do this one in the hospital, is a simple Kegel, a simple pelvic lift. So you just want to see if you can find that muscle again, picture your pelvic floor, it’s size of a piece of paper, attaches pubic bone tailbone hip to hip, and just simply lift and drop your pelvic floor. A good time to do this when you have a new baby is when you’re nursing when you’re sitting there see if you can just lift and drop your pelvic floor a couple times.
The second exercise you can do postpartum before you’ve been cleared by your doctor is an inner abdominal hold or squeeze. That is a simple feeling of pulling your belly button up and in so you’ve carry this baby for months and months and months. You’re abdominals are stretched out. You want to see if you can start to engage them suck them up and end. We’re not talking about crunches, we’re not talking about sit-ups. It’s a simple feeling of trying to pull your belly button up and back you can see me do it here. It’s just that motion right there. And again, you can do that in the hospital. You can do that right away while you’re nursing or if you’re feeding your baby. Just think hold and think pull your belly button away from that pillow away from your baby. See if you can engage those abdominals.
The third muscle isn’t stretching or an opening exercise. It’s a chest stretch. If you picture your life as a new mom, everything is right here. You’re feeding the baby. You’re changing the baby. Everything’s here here. If you look at new moms, they start to look like this, really rounded. So what we want to do is open the chest up, the way to do that is just bring the arms back behind you, turn your thumbs under and under, and lift and open up here. Another good thing to do is when you’re walking through a door, if you put your elbow on the door, you can pull it back. You’ll feel it stretch across your chest, hit both sides opening up and back.
So, like I said, the three exercises you can do postpartum before you’re cleared by your doctor, you do your Kegels and do your inner abdominal hold transverse abdominal squeezes and chest stretches. That’ll make sure that when you’re ready when you’re clear to exercise, your body’s already healing already on the path to Wellness and Fitness.
You can find out more at oh babyfitness.com.
We get asked all the time how quickly women can return to exercise postpartum. While you don’t want to vigorously exercise until cleared by your doctor (usually at your 6 week postpartum visit), here are three safe, effective exercises you can do right after your baby is born.
Hey, I’m Kathleen Donahoe, co-owner and Senior instructor of oh babyfitness.com. I’ve trained thousands and thousands of women over the years in pre and postnatal exercise. And now I’m expecting a little boy in just about two months.
One of the questions I get all the time that now being on this side of things I really understand is what exercises can I do after I have the baby or when can I go back to exercise. The most important thing to know is that your doctor’s gonna check you around six to eight weeks postpartum to see if it’s safe for you to do exercises and up until that point you don’t want to do anything vigorous. You want to walk and then you want to do these three exercises. So today I’m going to share the three exercises you want to do right after you have your baby in terms of getting back, getting things moving again.
The first exercise you want to do, and you can do this one in the hospital, is a simple Kegel, a simple pelvic lift. So you just want to see if you can find that muscle again, picture your pelvic floor, it’s size of a piece of paper, attaches pubic bone tailbone hip to hip, and just simply lift and drop your pelvic floor. A good time to do this when you have a new baby is when you’re nursing when you’re sitting there see if you can just lift and drop your pelvic floor a couple times.
The second exercise you can do postpartum before you’ve been cleared by your doctor is an inner abdominal hold or squeeze. That is a simple feeling of pulling your belly button up and in so you’ve carry this baby for months and months and months. You’re abdominals are stretched out. You want to see if you can start to engage them suck them up and end. We’re not talking about crunches, we’re not talking about sit-ups. It’s a simple feeling of trying to pull your belly button up and back you can see me do it here. It’s just that motion right there. And again, you can do that in the hospital. You can do that right away while you’re nursing or if you’re feeding your baby. Just think hold and think pull your belly button away from that pillow away from your baby. See if you can engage those abdominals.
The third muscle isn’t stretching or an opening exercise. It’s a chest stretch. If you picture your life as a new mom, everything is right here. You’re feeding the baby. You’re changing the baby. Everything’s here here. If you look at new moms, they start to look like this, really rounded. So what we want to do is open the chest up, the way to do that is just bring the arms back behind you, turn your thumbs under and under, and lift and open up here. Another good thing to do is when you’re walking through a door, if you put your elbow on the door, you can pull it back. You’ll feel it stretch across your chest, hit both sides opening up and back.
So, like I said, the three exercises you can do postpartum before you’re cleared by your doctor, you do your Kegels and do your inner abdominal hold transverse abdominal squeezes and chest stretches. That’ll make sure that when you’re ready when you’re clear to exercise, your body’s already healing already on the path to Wellness and Fitness.
You can find out more at oh babyfitness.com.
