Weeks 6 +
In this stage, you have likely been discharged from your maternity care provider with the guidance that you can resume all activity. This is an interesting time for many new moms because:
On one end of the spectrum are women who can’t wait to exercise and when they are given the ‘green light’, they tend to put their pedal to the metal and start right away with high level activities like running, jumping and heavy weight lifting. For some, this is when symptoms like pain, leaking, pressure/heaviness etc show up and it can leave women feeling disappointed or confused because they thought they were “good to go”
On the other end of the spectrum are women who feel really nervous to exercise and feel it hard to transition from messages to “be careful” in the first 6 weeks to suddenly having free reign to start back to everything without guidance.
And then obviously many of you will fall somewhere along this continuum.
I always suggest, when in doubt, reach out for individualized help! This is a time when many new moms express their desire to have a personalized assessment of their core, pelvic floor or other areas of the body in order to gain awareness of how they are doing and what things they should be aware of.
Some of you will feel comfortable progressing exercise on your own initially and feel confident that you will be able to determine if you need some guidance as you go and some of you will feel more confident having guidance right from the get-go as you progress. I encourage you to take the route that feels best for you.
At the 6-8 week mark, I am increasingly interested in your personal goals and always ensuring that your exercise plan includes suggestions that are meaningful and exciting for you. I encourage new moms to be well rounded in their activity selection and to consider a variety of styles of exercise or activity (flexibility/mobility through yoga or stretching for example, strength based exercise such as weight training, pilates etc and also cardiovascular activities like swimming, running, cycling or hiking etc)
I am including below, some follow along videos to help you incorporate what you have learned thus far and help you start to think about how you may implement exercise into your schedule.
YOGA
20 Min Mom & Baby Yoga | Hannah from Happy Day Yoga
25 Min Postpartum Yoga | Meghan from Mandala Mamas
start at 2:24
STRENGTH | JStraker Fitness
10 Min Glute Focused Workout
15 Min Full Body Strength
Modifying Exercise
Consider this a stage where you are further progressing and moving into a stage of strengthening. I wouldn’t expect your strength to be at it’s highest after coming out of a stage of rest and recovery. Many women at this stage feel humbled or discouraged with not being as strong as “before”. Think of this stage as a time to acknowledge where you are and start progressing resistance and strength with the goal to reach your goals.
I am including a friend/colleague of mine's visual exercise progressions.
Brittany Klingmann @brittklingmann is a fellow pelvic health physical therapist and avid CrossFit and Weightlifting athlete. She has provided these excellent visuals to help you see how modifications can work you up to the desired exercise.
It is really common for women to try to get back to the difficult exercises they did before pregnancy, and there is nothing wrong with these exercises, they are just hard!
I encourage you to think of starting from a basic position and progress up to the more difficult positions with your deep core connection. The stronger you get, the more you will be able to do.
Take a look at these exercise progressions to see what I mean:
Start with the first image and maintain your form. Once you can perform the exercise with good form easily then you can progress on to the next level.
Stop on the one that you feel you are just able to do below your symptom threshold and then progress to the next option when ready
Postpartum progression of jumping jacks, skipping, box jumps, crunches, pull-ups, squat, lunge
I have included some videos that Brittany Klingmann and I created to demonstrate how to break down and progress exercise postpartum.
Postpartum progression of plank, kettlebell swing, sit ups
