Fitness for Mums - Vix's Response

Mum Zone's resident Professional Fitness Specialist Vix of Mama Moves is available to answer some of your questions about fitness.

Topics include: Getting back your pre baby body, weight loss, toning and defining, body shaping, improved fitness, general wellbeing, hormonal balancing, increased strength and fitness, improvement or elimination of urinary incontinence, reduction in the size of diastasis recti, making the abdomen more stable, reduction or elimination of lower back pain, improved energy levels, decreased anxiety and stress levels, greater ability to carry out daily activities eg. lifting bub and more.

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Reader's Question

What exercises can I do to tone my abdomen after having a c-section?

Vix's Response

Before starting any strenuous exercise regime, ensure you are ready, especially for abdominal exercises. Many women develop a gap in their abdominal muscles as their stomach expands during pregnancy and labour. It can take approximately 4 to 8 weeks after giving birth for this gap to close. If you start doing abdominal exercises before the gap closes, you risk injuring those muscles.

Here’s how to check on these muscles:

Lie flat on your back with your knees bent. Place the fingers of you left hand, palm facing you, just above your belly button.

Inhale, then exhale and lift your head and shoulders off the floor and slide your right hand up your thigh toward your knee. This will make your abdominal muscles tighten, and you should be able to feel a gap between the two edges of the muscles. If the gap is 3 or more finger widths, you can gently begin to strengthen your abdominal muscles with pelvic tilts and leg slides. Once the gap narrows to only 1 or 2 finger widths, you can start doing crunches.

Vix

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The opinions expressed on these pages are of a general nature and are by no means a substitute for professional advice. Therefore neither Mum Zone or Vix Erber of Mama Moves are liable for any actions pertaining to the use of the supplied information.