I’m a postnatal fitness expert – here’s why it’s not just all about kegel exercises

New mums have a lot on their plates. Between nappy explosions, work meetings, school runs, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, it’s almost guaranteed to be an overwhelming time, most of the time. Throw into the mix disrupted sleep, patchy eating times, and the emotional rollercoaster of parenting, and it’s no wonder that to most postnatal women, finding time for fitness and wellbeing seems impossible. As a mum of four, I’ve done it many times over and know the pressure all too well. And yes, time is tight, but the good news is that rebuilding your body post-pregnancy doesn’t actually require long, mean hours in the gym.

Are Kegels all they’re cracked up to be?

So, you’re postnatal and determined to carve out time for you and your body. Good news: there’s no shortage of fitness advice online. Bad news: not all of it is as credible as it might appear. Trying to figure out whose advice to trust is overwhelming, especially when two experts completely contradict each other.

Most exercise advice for postnatal women will mention Kegel exercises. Kegels are pelvic floor contractions which strengthen the deep core muscles. Don’t get me wrong – they’re a really important part of postnatal recovery. But there is much more to the story than it often appears, and a few more steps are needed before bringing Kegels into our workouts. When these steps are missed, women can be left feeling frustrated at the lack of results they’d hoped for.

Before you start squeezing your pelvic floor every time you’re at a red light or unloading the dishwasher, we need to reconnect with the entire core system. Pregnancy can have drastic effects, like shifting posture, flaring the ribcage and tilting the pelvis. These changes can all affect your pelvic floor health, and Kegels alone are not enough to fix them.

Your pelvic floor doesn’t work in isolation. It’s part of a team, along with your glutes, abdominal muscles, abductors, lower back, and your respiratory system. Together, they make up the deep core. Everything needs to work in synergy, and for that, we need three steps: respiration, engagement, and activation.

When I started the StrongLikeMum YouTube channel, I wanted to create a hub for short, effective postnatal workouts for all women, from a postnatal expert who knows that intensive courses and strict diets are completely unrealistic. Here are my three absolute non-negotiables when it comes to exercise after pregnancy – and what makes them so vital to recovery.

Step 1: 360 breathing

Okay, breathing sounds boring, but this step is not to be missed. Our breathing really affects how our core functions. The movement and position of your diaphragm and ribcage can deeply impact how the pelvic floor is loaded and positioned. During pregnancy, it’s not uncommon for the ribcage to lift, or ‘flare’, as the baby grows and takes up more space. Internal organs, including your diaphragm, are pushed upwards, and this can cause the ribcage to protrude outwards, with the lower ribs pushing upwards.

As pregnancy progresses, your pelvis is tilted forward, which means the increased weight of the baby, placenta and amniotic fluid is shifted off the supportive bony structures of the pelvis and rests much more heavily onto the pelvic floor below. If misalignment continues, no matter how many kegel exercises you do, the increased pressure on the pelvic floor could mean you struggle to engage the muscles as efficiently as you’d like to when needed.

For this reason, I start all my clients with a 360 breathing exercise. You can work on this exercise sitting in a chair, but I’d recommend lying back on a mat. While keeping your hands relaxed by your sides or resting on your lower abdomen, take a deep inhale. The goal is to encourage the diaphragm to descend. Keeping your shoulders relaxed, allow your ribcage to expand and visualise your pelvic floor relaxing and releasing. In the first stage of this exercise, allow your breath to ‘fall’ away with a soft ‘hah’ sound, without drawing up the pelvic floor on the exhale. Focus on keeping your shoulders relaxed and the pelvic floor released. You can then build on the pelvic floor kegel activation as you exhale.

Often, Kegel exercises reference the feeling of stopping the flow of urine. Instead of this, try visualising the coccyx bone at the back of your pelvis and the pubic bone at the front of your pelvis, drawing inwards towards each other and lifting up along the midline. To join me in this technique, try this StrongLikeMum workout.

Resistance bands

Resistance band exercises can be incredibly useful as we attempt to fix rib flare and support our posture, all of which allows better core engagement. Here’s a great exercise to engage the pelvic floor and abdominal muscles, including your obliques: Sit or stand holding a resistance band in one hand. Holding this arm out in front of you, in line with your shoulder, grab the other end of the resistance band in your other hand, a little lower than the first. Inhale, and as you exhale, pull the resistance band diagonally downwards, gently encouraging your ribcage across to the opposite hip. Inhale and return to the start position and repeat.

Step 2: Getting to the deep core

The ‘box row’, as featured in this workout, is one of my all-time favourite exercises for postnatal women rehabilitating their pelvic floor. This move is best when paired with other deep core engagement exercises like pelvic tilts, leg slides, the bridge and heel taps.

Firstly, by working in the box position, we slightly increase the challenge for your pelvic floor because you’re working against gravity. Pulling backwards with the resistance band strengthens your upper back muscles, which helps to support better posture.

Resistance in the upper body also triggers a response in the pelvic floor via a deep line of soft body tissue known as the Deep Front Line. This is why this box row is so fantastic for postnatal women. If, however, you are managing diastasis recti, it’s important to keep an eye on your midline when performing this exercise. The box/all fours position can place an increase of pressure onto the front abdominal wall. However, this can be a good way to strengthen the front abdominals and rehab diastasis recti, provided you can garner tension along the midline. If you notice a bulge along the midline, modify your exercises and begin with workouts like this.

Step 3: Don’t forget the glutes

Alongside pelvic floor activation and posture rehabilitation, glute exercises are a crucial (and often forgotten) part of postnatal recovery. During pregnancy, as your bump grows, your pelvis can shift forward, which puts increased pressure on the pelvic floor. By activating your glutes, we can help to restabilise the pelvis and encourage better alignment. Glute kick-backs are a fantastic body-weight exercise that activates the deep glutes, and you can progress the movement by adding a resistance band.

By looping the middle of the band around your foot and holding the ends in both hands, you can increase the resistance in the working leg, pushing backwards. Other valuable glute exercises for the postnatal period are the glute bridge, butterfly, fire hydrants, lunges and squats when you’re ready.

But before anything else, the three steps of respiration, engagement and activation are vital for an effective postnatal recovery. Connecting your breathing to your deep core, using your upper body to engage your pelvic floor and activating your glutes to realign posture all help to strengthen and heal your body, post-birth.

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