How To Prevent Abdominal Muscle Separation During Pregnancy

If you're concerned about diastasis recti or ab separation in your pregnancy that can cause the mummy pooch after you have your baby or back pain, today I'm going to give you five strategies to prevent diastasis recti in your pregnancy. For pre and postnatal fitness and yoga videos, how to heal your core and lose weight after you have a baby, make sure you subscribe to our channel and hit the bell to make sure that you get notified every Friday when we release new videos for moms. In my first pregnancy I didn't know about diastasis recti or how to protect the core in pregnancy and I ended up with a four finger diastasis recti gap right at my belly button and luckily I was able to heal it but after learning and studying about the core in pregnancy and diastasis recti I was able to prevent and reduce that significant gap for my next two pregnancies. So this is what I teach these strategies to moms to help prevent or at least reduce the impact of diastasis recti after pregnancy and I know that these strategies are going to work for you as well. Number one, avoid the harmful ab exercises that can cause your abdominals to separate even more. So the traditional core exercises like sit-ups and crunches, anything that jackknifes the body or causes any coning, also heavy lifting, but I do have a video that I'll link to that shows you all of the exercises and movements that can put you at risk for diastasis recti. Number two is to do the safe core exercises. So we want to activate and use our transversus abdominis which is our deep inner layer of abdominal muscles that wraps around us like a corset and I will link to a video there that shows you the best core exercise to do in pregnancy and we also have, if you go to our channel, a playlist of fitness and yoga videos and in every one of those videos we do some exercise that is safe for the core and using the transversus abdominis as well as helping you prepare for labor. Number three is to not let your belly hang. I know this is a little bit disappointing because possibly for the first time ever when you're pregnant you don't have to worry about having a belly and you feel like you can just let it all hang out. However, when we're just letting it all hang out your abdominal muscles are separating and they're not protecting themselves. So activating our inner core and feeling like you're hugging your baby to your spine is a good way to protect your core against diastasis recti. Number four is to use belly wrapping. So there are a couple of different good ones out there. I was recommended to use the Belly's Ink Ab System and I really loved it and so what you do is I'm just going to tuck it in so that you guys can see how it works here and I really loved how easy it was but so underneath your shirt they do have a little slip that can go underneath it as well but I usually don't bother with the slip. So you just wrap it around your back. The velcro is really excellent. This has lasted me through two pregnancies and one goes under and the other goes over and you can velcro on the back and if you have a belly it's just going to go around your belly and it's going to support so that stretching isn't going to happen and so that your muscles are less likely to be separated and the other benefit is it's going to support your back and lift your belly support your back and less likely to get back pain or help with back pain and then you can just smooth it out actually and take sort of the little place where it overlaps to the side and if you pull your shirt down you don't even see it under there. You might see a little bit more if you're pregnant but if you're pregnant it doesn't really matter anyways. So this is the one I use. If you have one that you really like that you thought helped you in your pregnancy or after your pregnancy let me know and I'll also put the link to the Belly's Inc ab system. This is not sponsored I just really loved it but I will put the link if you wanted to go check it out below. Number five is to use kinesiology tape on your stomach to pull the skin and the muscles together to prevent that stretching and separation of the core. So I will link to a video above that shows exactly how you can use kinesiology tape or kinesio taping to prevent diastasis recti. I just got mine off Amazon it's fairly inexpensive and it's just sticky tape and you can put it across your belly as I'll show you in the video but it can last for about two or three days before you have to change it for the next time. Now you know all the tools and techniques to prevent diastasis recti. If you do end up with diastasis recti which is sometimes inevitable and impossible even if you do everything perfectly I do have a complete guide on how to heal your diastasis recti after you have your baby as well as I have a free ebook the ultimate list of tools and techniques to cope with pain in labor and you can go and grab those from the description box below. So are you still feeling nervous about your diastasis recti in your core in pregnancy? Let me know how you're feeling about it and what your plans are to prevent diastasis recti in your pregnancy. If you found this video helpful please subscribe to our channel, hit the like button and make sure you ding the bell to get notified every Friday when we release new videos and of course share with all your pregnant mama friends.