Postpartum Exercise: When to Work Out After Giving Birth
July 10, 2024
Are you wondering when and how to work out again after giving birth? Whether you are eager or anxious about moving your body again, the most important thing is to give yourself enough time to heal during the postpartum period.
In our experience, folks tend to jump back into exercise too quickly and intensely without listening to their bodies. This can cause discomfort, pain, or injury, which might end up preventing you from being able to exercise altogether. This “yoyo” pattern of exercising too hard, followed by forced periods of rest and recovery, is something we want to help you avoid.
When you approach postpartum exercise strategically, with awareness, deep care for your body, and support from a physiotherapist, you can ease in at a pace that allows you to be consistent and feel good when you’re moving. Here are some things to consider when getting back into movement and exercise after giving birth, and to watch out for to avoid uncomfortable symptoms or injuries.
Factors to Consider for Returning to Exercise Postpartum
During pregnancy, your body goes through a lot of changes in a relatively short period of time. This can affect everything from your posture to your movement to the muscles you use for certain tasks.
After you give birth, your body changes again, and you’ll need to give it time to adjust, learn new movement patterns, and strengthen areas that you might not have used for several months. You’ll need to build up your overall strength, mobility, and ability to bear weight.
Here’s what else might impact how quickly you can return to movement.
Delivery Method
No matter how you deliver your baby, recovery times will vary from person to person. However, depending on the delivery method, there might be some additional considerations:
- If you’ve had some perineal tearing after giving birth vaginally, you will probably require some additional time to heal.
- If you’ve had a C-section – a major surgical procedure – it’s important to respect the proper recovery timeline.
Energy Level
You and your body have been through a lot, and it’s completely normal to experience some fatigue as you heal. However, this might mean that you have to adjust your expectations of what you’ll feel like during and after a workout session.
Nutrition
If you’re lactating, your body will be putting energy into producing milk as well as healing. It’s important to be mindful of your nutritional intake and adjust it to match your needs during this time.
Regardless, if you exercise at a high intensity too early on or without the right nutritional support, you’re at risk of fatigue, poor recovery, and injury. We definitely suggest consulting a dietician for guidance if you need it.
Mental Health
The postpartum phase can be a challenging time when it comes to mental health. If movement or physical activity is something you usually use to help manage yours, it can feel frustrating or even contradictory to be told to take a break.
Make sure that you have a variety of mental health supports available to you so that you’re not relying entirely on exercise. We also recommend chatting with your pelvic health physiotherapist: they can help you create a strategy to get back to movement in ways that support your mental health AND your postpartum recovery.
Type of Activity
The more effort you exert when you move, the more it challenges your pelvic floor – particularly with impact activities like running and jumping, or anything that puts pressure on the abdomen and pelvis, like lifting weights.
It takes a strong, coordinated pelvic floor to manage these activities without symptoms, which is why it’s so important to avoid starting them before your pelvic floor is ready.
Hormonal Changes
During the postpartum period, there tend to be big hormonal shifts, with estrogen levels typically decreasing. As well as affecting how your tissues heal, it may also contribute to increased urinary urgency, frequency, or incontinence, which can interfere with a return to exercise.
Breastfeeding or Chestfeeding
Changes in breast or chest size, as well as the act of breastfeeding or chestfeeding itself, can lead to soreness and tenderness in these areas, as well as tension in the upper back, neck, and shoulders. You might feel a decrease in mobility in these areas, which can affect how you move and exercise.
Wearing a properly fitted sports bra or other fitted workout gear can help provide support and comfort for these areas as you get back into exercise.
Previous Activity Level
A general rule of thumb is that the longer you have been away from a particular activity, the more slowly you will have to build back up to it.
If you did a certain activity right up until delivery, you can probably take up that activity again relatively quickly. For example, if you stopped running in your first trimester, but continued swimming up until a week before delivery, you can likely get back to swimming fairly early on. However you’d probably need a few months to get your body ready to run again, and you’d want to start a run/walk program rather than jumping back into running a distance you might have been comfortable with previously.
On the other hand, if you kept running until the day you gave birth, you can probably get back into running a bit earlier than in the previous example.
Of course, no matter the activity and how long it’s been since you’ve done it, you’ll still want to factor in all the considerations we’ve mentioned above.
How to Ease Back into Exercise After Giving Birth
Before you make your move(s), getting your physiotherapist to check your core and pelvic floor at 6-8 weeks postpartum can help you understand what your body currently has capacity for in terms of exercise. We can set you up to train and get back to all the activities you enjoy with confidence.
Our post natal group pilates classes are another great first step to ease back into movement. With small class sizes (5 people or less) and led by practitioners with expertise in pelvic floor therapy, they’re a safe space to reconnect to your body as you recover from giving birth.
Pelvic floor physiotherapy can also support your return to exercise (not to mention, help prepare you to give birth so you can recover faster!).
Need some support?
We’re here for your whole pregnancy journey, so check out our list of pre and post natal services or book an appointment with us.
We’re always just a call or an email away: hello@thecheerfulpelvis.com | 604-879-6046