Fitness
How to safely return to exercise after having a baby
When Fan* gave birth to her first child almost two years ago, she was given little direction about how to return to exercise.
After a 20-minute session with a physio, they remember being given an A4 sheet of exercises to follow at home.
“It was all a bit of a blur, because I was sleep-deprived, and over-excited,” they said.
“For the first six weeks, those exercises were enough. But after that, I didn’t know what to do.
“I had heard about people going back to sport after a few months, and others who didn’t do certain exercises for years, or ever.
“It was pretty confusing.”
(*Fan uses she/they pronouns, and asks us to mix them up throughout the article).
Fan wasn’t sure where to turn when she wanted to exercise, so ended up consulting Google.
(ABC Sport: Kate O’Halloran)
As is common among women who have given birth, Fan also experienced urinary incontinence.
She was referred to a pelvic floor physiotherapist while in hospital, who gave her some exercises to strengthen her pelvic floor muscles.
But after being discharged from the hospital, there was no follow up:
“I wasn’t really sure what I was meant to do … so I turned to Google.”
Australian postpartum exercise guidelines ‘fall short’
Dr Melanie Hayman, an expert on exercise and pregnancy, says experiences like Fan’s are not unusual.
As she explains it, the regular six-week postpartum check-up typically focuses on the health of the newborn baby.
“There are usually a couple of questions about mum’s health, but it can be quite superficial,” Dr Hayman said.
“[Topics like] returning to exercise, or the physiological changes that occur throughout pregnancy, or as a result of birthing, are not assessed.”
Many women experience core muscle separation and some form of incontinence after birth.
(Getty Images: Gabriel Mello)
That’s despite the fact approximately one in two people who give birth experience symptoms like urinary incontinence (47 per cent), and pelvic organ prolapse (50 per cent), which can increase fear of exercising. An additional 17 per cent experience faecal incontinence.
Current Australian guidelines, however, do not provide specific advice for returning to exercise after pregnancy.
Instead, those who are “healthy” are encouraged to meet the existing Australian adult exercise guidelines (for non-pregnant people).
“That’s where our current guidelines fall short,” Dr Hayman said.
“Someone who is five or six weeks postpartum is not your general population … [but] the issue is that we only have a certain body of literature at the moment.
“So while the current recommendations are still accurate, there are some absences in them, and it would be great to able to provide more guidance, especially in the early phases of the postpartum period.”
She said one reason it was difficult to provide ‘one-size-fits-all’ guidelines is that individual experiences vary:
“Every birthing and postpartum experience is different, so one of the most important things is that return to exercise has to be individualised.”
Any form of activity, however, is better than none, with Dr Hayman advising starting with some gentle walking, even if this is just five minutes a day.
“Traditionally, pregnancy was considered a ‘delicate’ period in a woman’s life where they were advised to take it easy, because of fear that any sort of exertion might harm the mother and/or fetus,” she said.
Individual experiences vary so much, exercise can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. (Getty Images: Halfpoint)
“The issue is that being inactive actually increases the risk of adverse health outcomes.
“The more women can be active in accordance with our guidelines, the better.”
Gyms with childcare and flexible times are hard to find
Finding a place to exercise is another reason many struggle to get active postpartum.
When Fan reached three months postpartum, they were determined to find a gym where they could return to greater levels of fitness.
But it was a task that proved more difficult than anticipated.
Most commercial gyms wouldn’t allow Fan to bring her child, or if they did have a crèche, they had long registration waitlists, or were full at the times that suited her.
Eventually, Fan turned to local Preston gym 23W, a women-only strength and conditioning community with a specific focus on postpartum mums.
23W employs a full-time nanny, while the on-site creche is situated in the same room as other gym equipment, allowing parents to keep an eye on their child while exercising.
23W employs a nanny to look after kids while their parent exercises in the gym.
(ABC Sport: Kate O’Halloran)
“It just means our members can come in knowing they’ve got that support, whether it’s emotional support, [or just] knowing someone’s looking after their baby. It makes a big difference,” owner Ange Drake said.
Drake also runs classes at different times throughout the day, to provide greater flexibility for her clients.
“In that first 12 months [postpartum], you’re probably not going to be training first thing in the morning, because you’re going to be pretty tired, or last thing at night.
“There’s some great postpartum programs out there, but where a lot of women come unstuck is that they’re only offered on one day, at one time in the week, and if you miss it, it’s gone.
“So having flexibility with timing is really important.”
Important to ‘normalise’ common postpartum symptoms
Drake, who has two children of her own, says one of the biggest barriers women face when returning to exercise is the “disconnect a lot of them feel with their body”:
Ange Drake sees a lot of women come into her gym with a somewhat disconnect to their body.
(ABC Sport: Kate O’Halloran)
“After giving birth, things have stretched out, or moved and don’t feel the way they used to. A lot of women feel like whole muscle groups have gone offline.
“They have lost the trust in their body; knowing what it can do, and trying to navigate the new body they’re in.
“This includes how they can rebuild it, and make it stronger while looking after the needs of a little one.”
For many, this includes pelvic floor complaints, lower back pain and issues to do with abdominal separation.
“When you’re in the moment, it’s really scary to think, ‘am I going to be able to run again?’ Or, ‘I’m leaking when I’m going grocery shopping,’” Drake said.
“These experiences can be really alienating … and a lot of women think ‘it’s just me’.
“So we try and help them understand that what they’re experiencing is not uncommon, and that women have been able to rehab whatever it is they’re going through.”
While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
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Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
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Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
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Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
SOLE Fitness announces new additions to its home exercise bike range, with models including built-in screens, resistance systems, and notably, zero monthly subscription fees.
— SOLE Fitness has announced a new range of home exercise bikes aligning with its policy against mandatory monthly subscription fees – addressing a growing concern among cost-conscious fitness enthusiasts.
For more information, visit: https://www.soletreadmills.com/collections/bikes
The announcement comes as subscription fatigue intensifies across the home fitness market – where hidden costs of ongoing memberships have become a significant pain point for buyers. Many consumers now actively seek alternatives that deliver premium features without the financial burden of perpetual fees – and SOLE Fitness offers its range in direct response.
Technical capabilities across the range support the no-subscription experience through innovative design and robust hardware. For instance, SOLE Fitness cites the SB1200 exercise bike as a suitable option for its 10-inch touchscreen – including preloaded entertainment applications.
SOLE’s team notes that this particular model also incorporates 100 levels of adjustable magnetic resistance, offering a broad spectrum of intensity for diverse workout preferences. A 35-pound flywheel contributes to smooth, consistent pedaling motion, while the durable steel frame supports users up to 300 pounds.
Elsewhere in the range, SOLE Fitness offers options across recumbent, upright, and indoor cycling styles to accommodate different fitness goals and space constraints.
The LCR Recumbent Bike is an example of a comfortable seated design with back support, ideal for low-impact cardio sessions, coming with 40 levels of magnetic resistance. The B94 Upright Bike, meanwhile, delivers a traditional bike posture with 20 levels of resistance, suited for users seeking straightforward training without advanced touchscreen features.
Central to the value proposition is the SOLE+ App, which provides zero-cost online fitness classes to customers who own SOLE equipment. The app offers hundreds of home gym video tutorials ranging from basic to advanced routines – standing in contrast to platforms that charge separately for similar content.
As explained by SOLE Fitness, its overall range is engineered for smooth, silent rides through magnetic resistance systems, sturdy steel frames, and precision components that deliver a premium indoor cycling experience. Magnetic resistance eliminates the wear and noise associated with friction pads, while the structural integrity of the frames ensures stability during high-intensity intervals.
“Each treadmill is crafted to provide an unparalleled exercise experience, featuring robust motors, intuitive controls, and cushioned running surfaces for maximum impact absorption,” says a company representative.
Moreover, since the company’s product portfolio is designed to offer entry points at various price levels, customers have readily available access to select models that align with their own budget and training preferences.
Interested parties can browse the full selection at: https://www.soletreadmills.com/
Contact Info:
Name: Inquiries
Email: Send Email
Organization: SOLE Fitness
Address: 56 Exchange Pl., Salt Lake City, UT 84111, United States
Website: https://www.soletreadmills.com/
Release ID: 89185487
If you encounter any issues, discrepancies, or concerns regarding the content provided in this press release, or if there is a need for a press release takedown, we urge you to notify us without delay at error@releasecontact.com (it is important to note that this email is the authorized channel for such matters, sending multiple emails to multiple addresses does not necessarily help expedite your request). Our expert team will be available to promptly respond within 8 hours – ensuring swift resolution of identified issues or offering guidance on removal procedures. Delivering accurate and reliable information is fundamental to our mission.
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