How do you heal diastasis recti?

In this blog post I’m going to go through all the things you need to do to address your DR.

We are going to talk about exercises that focus on the abdominal muscles as they are absolutely an important part of rehabilitation.

HOWEVER, they are not the ONLY part of rehab.

So we’re going to start with a couple of things that you might not have thought of and THEN we will talk about ab exercises - (part 3, if you want to skip to it).

THE BREATH

The first thing you should address is your breathing mechanics - I know, I know, you think it’s mega boring and CBA* - just get to the core exercises! But breathing is the first function of the core (think, your baby can do this, but can’t yet hold itself up). I have met a lot of women with a stubborn DR, and when we improve their breathing mechanics, it suddenly gets a lot better.

* CBA = British slang for can’t be arsed

I won’t bore you with a full spiel on breathing, but here are a few things you should be looking for.

• Chest breathing - lots of women breath up into their chests, and not down into their belly and pelvic floor. This means those muscles aren’t going through a gentle stretch-contract cycle, which is important for their proper function

• Holding your tummy in all the time - if you are trying to suck your tummy in ALL the time, you can’t breath into it.

• Overactive diaphragm - some women bear down unnecessarily with their diaphragm in order to exhale or create stability - this creates a lot of pressure down on the lower belly (and pelvic floor) which can cause these muscles to bulge. These women need to learn to relax their diaphragms.

If you would like to know more about breathing, you can watch this video.

If you are a total geek (like me) and would STILL like to know MORE - please let me know and I will create more content on breathing (it just doesn’t seem to interest most people)

ALIGNMENT

You just need to stand up straight right?

Well, yeah, but most women, when they try to do this just thrust their chest up into the air, like this: