Some might call me Captain Obvious, but did you know that your rectus muscles physically lengthen during pregnancy? If you live in an anterior pelvic tilt or with flared ribs, your rectus muscles also tend to live in an overly lengthened state.
The rectus affects the width of a diastasis, helps control spinal extension, and facilitates spinal flexion.
After pregnancy, some shortening and thickening naturally occurs, but sometimes we need a bit of help. It’s kind of like we’re a deflated beach ball 😅
To counterbalance this, our bodies might add a layer of gripping in our upper abs, pecs, glutes, or toes, or even go into a forward head posture. Strengthening our rectus can help improve resting tone so we don’t have to grip.
As we work on rectus strength, we need to make sure we don’t ignore balance to our core engagement and pressure management system. This can present as our abs looking like a bread loaf when they contract and increasing the doming of your diastasis or pooching in the lower abs. Too often, people will focus on core work without paying attention to whether they’re putting pressure down onto their pelvic floor, but you’re then just closing one leak in the system (diastasis) to potentially contributing to another (prolapse). Making sure you can get a 360 degree expansion during breathing, balanced TA engagement, and watching that your lower abs stay flat can help. Any symptoms of increased pressure or heaviness in your pelvic floor (or needing to pee) can indicate that you’re putting pressure down on your pelvic floor.
You might also need to:
1) Address limited mobility in your spine, pelvis, and rib cage to help your abs not have
to work so hard.
2) Only go through the flexion range or load where your abs can stay relatively flat and
there’s no neck tension.
3) Include core strengthening in different planes of motion and through a full range to
ensure balance in your ab engagement.
Did you know I teach online:
Online Continuing Education for Fitness and Health Professionals
PCES - Pregnancy & Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist
www.coreexercisesolutions.com/postpartum-corrective-exercise-specialist/
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