Why Your Core Work Isn't Working

Well, it's possible you're doing it all wrong.

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(It meaning core work, and specifically postpartum core “repair” work.)

Here’s the bottom line: If your transverse abdominals aren't giving you support all the way around, superficial ab activities (think: crunches, planks) might do you more harm than good.

There's a lot more core work to be done under the surface.

Here’s a quick step-by-step:

1. Pelvic floor: Start in easy seated pose (sukhasana) and breathe into your pelvic floor.
2. Transverse abs: Come to hands and knees, keeping your spine long. Inhale, fill everything up. Exhale forcefully, deflate your belly like a balloon, hug "baby" into spine.
3. Obliques: Keep that core engagement from #2 and move into side plank pose. (Bottom knee can stay down on the ground.) Feel the core engage all the way around as you lift your hips away from the ground.
4. Rectus abdominis: When your body is ready for it and you don't see any coning or doming along the midline, turn your side plank into a plank pose.

Now, if you’re reading all of this like “The rectus what? What the heck are transverse abdominals??”—this is why the Mama Core Workshop exists. It’s more than I can fit into one blog post, and honestly it makes a lot more sense explained and practiced and demoed than just typed out.

Check out the Mama Core Workshop to learn more—because our abs after baby should not be a mystery, and you deserve to know how it works!

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