5 top tips for returning to running in postpartum
1. WAIT! You may feel like you are ready but the body, particularly the pelvic floor, needs time to heal and recover. Did you know after a vaginal birth the pelvic floor muscles stretch up to 3 times their original length!? As well as a minimum of 6 months for it to properly heal! It is recommended to wait minimum 12-16 weeks before returning to running (with all the rehab before this point too).
2. See a women's health physio for an internal assessment - ESPECIALLY if you have pelvic floor symptoms such as leaking or heaviness. They can diagnose and prescribe specific exercises to help reduce and manage symptoms to get you ready for preparing to run again.
3. Begin preparation early, especially if you are keen to be able to run again. Link in with women's health exercise physiologist and physiotherapist, have your assessments done and exercises prescribed to help gradually strengthen your body. You should ideally begin with gentle walking, pelvic floor exercises and specific core strengthening exercises and progress to full body strengthening and running specific exercises.
4. STRENGTH TRAINING - if we are strong our joints are more stable and reduce the risk of injury. Running specific strength training also allows you to focus on running specific movements in a controlled manner so your body has great technique once you start running and increasing speed.
5. Learn how to breathe effectively with your core. After pregnancy this is often challenging to the change in posture from pregnancy, the stress placed on ribs, diaphragm and pelvic floor in pregnancy and just our general lifestyle of being stressed and breathing with our neck and shoulders! When we run, we breathe harder and faster! So we want to be able to breathe really well before we had higher intensity such as running. If we can do this really well at base level rehab, we can build this up. Sub-optimal breathing when running can lead to issues down the track such as pain, injury and pelvic floor symptoms.