Postnatal Exercise

This very much depends at what you are looking to return to and the extent of your injuries. You may have had your GP “sign you off” at your 6-8 week postnatal check. This is to sign you off as medically fit for general life, it is not a return to exercise check. If at all possible, I would advise booking in to see a pelvic health physio to have a thorough check if you’re unsure.

Time frames are generally unhelpful because of how much it can vary from one person to another. A more useful marker is hitting recovery goals. For example, when you are free from all symptoms you can start increasing your walking pace and distance, or beginning gentle bodyweight exercises or begin incorporating yoga or post natal pilates into your weeks. How ready you are will be determined by many things, including the type of birth you have had, whether you have had any stitches or whether you are experiencing symptoms of prolapse.

The earliest we would look to return to weight training is 8 weeks and jogging is 3 months, these are due to the body’s set healing times that we cannot change. For the majority it is much longer because those markers are assuming you have had plenty of sleep, eaten well and had no setbacks (doesn’t really match with the average newborn experience!).

Whether you are planning to start exercising at 6 weeks or 6 months, you have to lay down the foundations first. Here are the four postnatal rehab steps and a good guide to postnatal exercise

and I have to say that I agree with this; however, it doesn’t mean that from week 1 – 6 you should sit on the sofa and do nothing. Yes, you need to prioritise rest, but from as early as you feel comfortable in doing so, you can start to reintroduce your pelvic floor exercises and core breathing as part of your postpartum exercises.. It is sensible to begin reconnecting your brain to those all-important core and pelvic floor muscles again. These can be done in a seated or lying position and don’t impact rest.

When you feel ready, short walks with or without the buggy are a great way to get the body moving again and over time you can steadily build up the distance and time spent walking. An added bonus is that babies often love to sleep on-the-go, so you can keep your baby snoozing while you get moving. Gentle stretching and rest during the first 6 weeks will help your body naturally rehabilitate, allowing your organs to return to their original positions and scars from episiotomies or C-sections to heal. When it comes to postnatal exercises, there are a huge number of things that you can do so it is important to find something that you both enjoy and feel comfortable doing so you are more likely to be consistent with it.

When you get the all clear from your doctor or physio, I would recommend starting with Pilates-based exercise. You can start off by going to a post-natal Pilates class, working with a PT, doing a class at home, or just incorporating some bodyweight exercises focusing on the breath and alignment. Pilates is wonderful for easing the body back into exercise in a gentle way. It is kind to your joints and has a strong focus on moving in the right way rather than just moving, and that’s exactly what we need after our bodies have been through pregnancy.

If you are someone who likes lifting weights then you can start with light weights once you feel that you are mastering the bodyweight movements and your body feels happy with them, during and afterwards. You need to listen to your body to determine how fast and how much to increase the weights, as there is certainly no one size fits all here. Don’t make the mistake of lifting weights as heavy as you did pre pregnancy to begin with; your body will need to build up to that again.

I know there will be some keen runners reading this, so I wanted to make sure I touched on it. However tempting it may be, please don’t lace up those running trainers straight away. In order to get back to running it’s important that you prepare your body for it because what it has been through will have had a big impact on it. The time frame will depend on how much you ran before or even during pregnancy, but also on how your birth went, what kind of birth you had, how your body is recovering etc.

Physios have released updated guidance over the last few years that suggest that the best time to get back to running after birth is 6 months. Don’t panic. I know this may seem like a long time to many of you, but this is merely a guide and everyone is different. But what it is suggesting is that you need to put aside some serious time to rehabilitate your body and get it ready for running before you set off for your first run.

Your body is carrying those pregnancy hormones for a while after you give birth, and even longer if you choose to breastfeed, so you still need to be mindful of this when you introduce impact work back into your workouts. Building strength in your muscles to support joints such as hips, knees, ankles is vital for returning to running. There are plenty of exercises that are great for building strength – for example, landing on one leg, rebounding from one to the other – so make sure to start adding them into your workouts before you hit the pavement.