Moving Before The Six Weeks

What if the six-week postpartum rule is more tradition than science? We take you inside a smarter, kinder approach to early recovery—one that blends evidence with real life so you can move your body sooner, safely, and with confidence. Christina shares the research on moderate activity at two to three weeks postpartum, explains why vigorous intensity may be too much for healing tissues, and lays out clear “navigational buoys” that turn the vague advice to “listen to your body” into specific, actionable signals.

You’ll learn why strict bed rest doesn’t align with modern rehab principles and how early, tolerable movement can reduce complications and lift your mood. We walk through low-strain exercises that fit busy days—supine core work, side-lying strength, seated upper-body moves—and show how to scale modified planks and gentle isometrics to rebuild pressure control without flare-ups. For lifters, Christina explains when an empty bar might be appropriate, how to progress with tiny plates, and which pelvic floor sensations are normal versus signs to slow down. We also talk about cesarean considerations, scar feedback, and how to set expectations during the fourth trimester.

This conversation acknowledges the realities of limited parental leave and the mental load of new motherhood. Instead of fear, we offer a framework that respects your timeline, your delivery, and your goals—whether that’s walking with ease, returning to CrossFit, or carrying a toddler without symptoms. If you’re ready to replace one-size-fits-all rules with practical steps rooted in pelvic floor health, strength training, and gradual exposure, you’ll leave with a plan and renewed trust in your body.

If this helped, subscribe, share with a friend who lifts, and leave a review to support more evidence-based guidance for active moms.

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Chapters

• 0:07 Welcome And Christina’s Background
• 1:32 Cross-Border Moves And Life Chaos
• 4:09 Setting Up The Six-Week Question
• 6:09 Bed Rest Myths And Early Movement
• 10:51 What Six-Week Clearance Really Means
• 13:32 Listening To Your Body With Buoys
• 18:23 Why Blanket Six-Week Rules Fall Short
• 21:12 What The Research Says At 2–3 Weeks
• 24:18 Early Exercise Options That Feel Good
• 27:30 Returning To The Barbell Gradually
• 30:05 Timelines, Variation, And Wins
• 33:12 Practical Buoys And Gentle Progression

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:07

Hello everyone and welcome to the Barbell Mamas Podcast. My name is Christina Previt. I'm a public floor physical therapist, researcher in exercise and pregnancy, and a mom of two who has competed in CrossFit, powerlifting, or weightlifting, pregnant, postpartum, or both. In this podcast, we want to talk about the realities of being a mom who loves to exercise. Whether you're a recreational exerciser or an athlete, we want to talk about all of the things that we go through as females going into this motherhood journey. We're gonna talk about fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum topics that are relevant to the active individual. While I am a pelvic floor physical therapist, I am not your pelvic floor physical therapist and know that this podcast does not substitute medical advice. All right, come along for this journey with us while we navigate motherhood together, and I can't wait to get started. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Barbell Mamas podcast. Christina Previtt here. And I, if you're watching the video version of this or the audio, I'm sorry if some of our audio or visual or quality is just not the same as it was before.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25

Our life has been crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30

Um, so a little bit about me. I don't think many of you kind of know some of our background story, but I'm a Canadian. My husband and I, Nick, who was on the podcast a couple weeks ago, we are from Ontario, and I work for a company called the Institute of Clinical Excellence. And so I'm one of their faculty in geriatrics. I'm also on faculty with pelvic health. And over the last couple of years, the amount of time that I am teaching in person has grown and grown and grown. And it's been an incredible journey. And when COVID hit, that became really challenging. And so we were working through work permitting issues as a Canadian that was working in education, but I wasn't a college institution. We were a private institution, and I was a physical therapist, but I wasn't working as a physical therapist, and we got all that figured out. And we decided, you know, with the border issues, we're gonna head down and we're gonna be near an international airport. And so we decided to move down to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were there for several years. My son was 10 weeks old when we moved. It was pure chaos. And we stayed there for almost two years, and we started to really miss family. And we got onto the other side of the COVID pandemic, and we made the big decision to move home. And we did it right now because my daughter is turned four in April, and in Canada, you start school full-time junior kindergarten at four in September. So we were trying to get here into Canada before she started school so that we didn't have too much of a disruption of her life. But that meant closing on our house. I was defending my PhD. I defended literally the craziest was July. We closed on the 27th of our house. I taught in Atlanta that weekend, and then I defended my PhD on the Monday, and thankfully none of my flights were delayed. But we've gotten here, we've kind of been in limbo, so we have tried as hard as we can to keep this all the audio and video quality as high as we can, but um we are kind of still in limbo. So we close on our house tomorrow. So I'm recording this on Thursday. It's gonna get released on Tuesday, so we are moving. Once I have released this episode, we have moved into what we can only describe as our dream house. And so we're hoping to get into a bit more of a regular rhythm. But um, you know, those transitions they're just they're just super challenging. And we are so thankful for you all for following along with the ride, including going to games and all this kind of stuff. It's just been really, really wonderful. And speaking of transitions, today for our podcast episode, uh, we're gonna talk about exercising before six weeks. I feel like I should have like an audio zoom of like dun dun dun, uh, because this is a little bit, I guess, controversial in that many times the recommendation is to wait six weeks before you're cleared by your birth provider, whether that's your midwife or your obstetrician. And we're gonna talk about, we're gonna let's talk about a little bit about what that six-week mark means, kind of the way that we've set things up within our healthcare system in Canada and in the United States. And this is mirrored from what other clinicians tell me in a variety of different countries around the world, and then what you can do kind of before that six-week mark if you so choose. So, the disclaimer that I'm gonna put on this episode, I I've spoken at the very beginning that this is not medical advice, but I'm going to speak first as we're talking about this topic is that everybody's timeline is different. So, some people may be drowning becoming a mom of two or mom of three or being a first-time mom. And the thought of exercising at two or three weeks postpartum sounds like the furthest thing from their mind. Other clients of mine have been just stagnant or like they feel like their body just needs to move, and that is gonna make them feel better. Whatever is going to work for you is going to work for you. What I'm gonna talk about is some of the recommendations, the way that the system is set up. We're gonna talk about some of the research that we have around exercising before six weeks, giving you some buoys if you decide to start exercising before six weeks and some resources for you, and then ways that we can start to introduce movement in the very, very early postpartum period. So, first, there are some individuals or some lines of thought that go by the five five five rule. Five days in the bed, five days around the bed, five days in the home, or some permutation of this, whether it's 333 or 777. I've seen it as like as long as a couple of weeks. And I do not recommend that strategy or sticking to that strategy strictly. I do not mean that your body should not heal after having a baby, whether you had a vaginal delivery or a cesarean. However, what we know from a variety of different surgeries, for example, is that bed rest is very commonly not the answer. An example is after a joint replacement. So what we used to do after you got your knee or your hip replaced is that you stayed in bed for five to seven days. There is now research that shows that that actually increases the risk of complications. So you are more likely to have things like blood clots when you do not move your body after surgery. And because of that, now the recommendation is if you get your joint replaced, whether you want to or not, there's gonna be a physical therapist that's coming into your room and saying, Let's get up. And you're thinking, um, excuse me, I just had surgery. But we see that our outcomes are better. We're starting to see the same thing, for example, after a cesarean delivery. Moving and walking within your tolerance early on, the more people moved. This was a study that was done in people who were still in hospital. The more they moved, the more steps that they calculated in hospital, the less likely they were to have post-operative complications like hemorrhage. That is important, right? So I'm not saying to, you know, immediately come home from hospital and do all the cooking and all the cleaning and getting out and exercising and being on your feet all day. That is not what I'm saying. But I am saying that you do not need to be fearful of movement or standing in that early time. And I think that this kind of messaging can be really challenging when you have a mom who has more than one kiddo. Because I know, you know, after my first, you know, in that newborn phase, they're sleeping a lot, they're cuddling a lot, I was able to sit and rest a little bit more. Not that I really wanted to because my body was so like just kind of I kind of felt stale. That was just my experience of just kind of feeling like achy after giving birth. And that little bit of movement actually helped me feel better. But after my son was born, my second, it was just not possible, right? My daughter was being introduced to my kiddo. She was going through a really big transition. He was needing me, but she was needing me too. And so I did do a lot more movement a lot faster, not because I was trying to intentionally exercise, but because that was motherhood with two kiddos, or at least that was motherhood with two kiddos for me. And so, research like this that is saying, you know, that early movement is not bad and actually may reduce some of the risk made me feel a lot better around my recovery that there was not anything that I was doing wrong, or that I was putting myself or my recovery in a bad spot by getting a bit more movement early on. When it comes to this six-week mark, I oftentimes question if the waiting for six weeks is because of a data set that is giving us this timeline, or is it the way that our medical system has set ourselves up for when that post-delivery checkup is gonna be? And this is kind of a little bit interesting because the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, so the big organization where a lot of our OBs are getting their recommendations from, actually recommend a lot more monitoring in that postpartum period, right? You see a lot of people who are talking about the fact that during your pregnancy, you get so many check-ins. People are always monitoring how you're doing, how your health is doing. And then when baby is born, this switches, and now all of the attention is on the baby as it should be, but there isn't a ton of attention that is given to mom. So, you know, in my pelvic health space as physical therapists, we try and recommend seeing mamas two weeks after delivery. And that can be via phone or video chat or telehealth, or that can be individuals coming into the clinic. Now, we aren't doing an internal assessment or a speculum exam. You guys are probably cringing, listening to the thought of that being the case. But sometimes we can, for example, check stitches, answer any questions, we can see how your mental health is doing. If you had some issues with your blood pressure, we can check that out and we can start giving you some guidelines or buoys about things to look out for in the early postpartum period. And then as you return to more and more movement. When we are thinking about the advice that we are often given in that early six-week checkup, it's saying, Yep, you are good to go. Just listen to your body. And we have to recognize the frame of reference that that is coming from. And then we're gonna make some recommendations off there. So the way that our providers are looking at your pelvic floor or looking around your vaginal opening or checking out your caesarean scar is to look for medical complications. So they're seeing is there any adhesion still there? Are there any signs of infection? Is there any redness, lumps, bumps that would give them cause for concern? That is what they are clearing. With a speculum, for example, you can't really see what your pelvic floor contraction is looking like. They oftentimes don't check like for your core strength. They don't really do a functional assessment of where they're doing, nor would I really honestly expect them to, because that's not really where their expertise is. And I say that extremely respectfully. As a pelvic floor physical therapist, that's my job. You know, that's my role to help create this bridge. So the obstetrician or uh birth provider, the midwife, is going to clear for medical safety. And then we are going to help take the baton from them and help with return to movement. When they say that we want you to listen to your body, it is important for us to listen to your body. I used to say that that was really bad advice, and I've really come back from that. It's not bad advice, it is important for us to listen to our body, and everybody is going to have a slightly different timeline. And that is okay. We don't want to play that comparison game. The problem comes when we don't tell you what to listen for. And this is where the issues come, right? We tell you to listen to your body, but your body is different. Even if you've gone through a delivery before, this postpartum body is different. This postpartum body that has delivered two kiddos or three or four or more is different than the body that delivered your first or your second. And so we want to make sure that you have these buoys to listen to. For example, if you've given birth vaginally, things that I tell my client, hopefully during their pregnancy, or at the very least, very early postpartum, is that, for example, an increase in range of motion of the front part of your vagina is going to be the range of motion is going to be bigger. So basically, it's almost like this movement that is increase in movement after your uh baby is born is a normal history or a natural history of a vaginal delivery because of that big stretch that you had as baby came through the birth canal. The second thing is that you're gonna feel more movement down there. And so that can be really alarming, right? When you're jumping, or when you are running, or when you are starting to chase after your kiddos, or when you are starting to move a barbell around, you may feel more movement up and down down there. And again, that is normal. It is part of the natural history of a vaginal birth. If you know that, it isn't so scary or alarming to know, especially early on, that you are going to feel more movement, that it's not something that is bad, it's something that is normal. Where we start to again give you these buoys is that as you're returning to exercise, if you're experiencing pain, or if you start to pass big blood clots, which is um the size if you're in Canada, it's a loony, but kind of about an inch in diameter. If you're passing these really big clots, that's your body telling you that you may be pushing it a little bit too hard and you may want to slow down. Other things that are a very normal sensation to have, but is a sensation for us to look out for this heaviness feeling around where your vagina opens. And again, this is can be confusing because it's also a sign sometimes of a prolapse, which is this increase in movement that is linked with the sensations around our vaginal opening, like you're kind of moving over a golf ball. But this heaviness feeling around where the vagina opens oftentimes is like DOMS or tiredness for your pelvic floor. If you think about after a really big leg day or after a sprint session, and your legs are just so pooched, that's the feeling that your pelvic floor will have as you're going back to exercise. Because it's not your legs that are going to be your limiting factor because they didn't go through a big stretch injury. Your pelvic floor did. And so that feeling is something to look out for to see where your thresholds are for today. Are you starting to feel that towards the end of your workout? If yes, that's telling you that your body has done a good workout. You are going to need a little bit of rest before you go into those movements again. Not bad, but you're starting to see, okay, this is kind of where my threshold is for today. And that feeling that DOMS may last for 24 to 48 hours. Just like after a leg day, sometimes you're gonna feel when you're going upstairs, you're getting up from a chair that you did some work the other day. You may feel that in your pelvic floor or around your vagina too. And so, again, not something in those first 24 to 48 hours to be alarmed of. But if you are being followed by a pregnant or postpartum coach, or you're being followed by a pelvic floor physical therapist, if it persists for more than several days, or if it's getting worse, then that might be something to bring up to them and they'll be able to kind of troubleshoot where you pushed it a little bit too much, or what are things that we should dial back on in order for you to keep up with some of the activity or some of the goals that you have for your movement routine. Where we kind of sit at the barbell mamas is that we actually kind of don't agree with this blanket statement around six weeks. And there's a couple reasons for that. One, as we see more and more research come out, many of our recommendations that give blanket statements really miss the mark on the individual person. Where some people may need 12 weeks and other people may need three. There's a lot of nuance here. Everybody's delivery is going to be really different, and everybody's fitness going into their delivery, what their history look like, what their labor and delivery look like is going to be different. And so this blanket statement may not work. The second thing is that if you are in the United States, there is not any paid maternity leave. So oftentimes people are getting potentially unpaid leave for four to six weeks, or they're getting paid leave for six to 12 weeks and then are expected to go back to work full-time. If you have been doing nothing for six weeks and then you have a physical job that you need to come back to on Monday, your body is not ready for that demand yet. Rehab means that we gradually ramp up what your body is ready for. So then when you have to go back to work, for example, if you're a nurse and you're doing patient transfers, that your body feels ready and supported for you to come back to those things. If we are doing nothing and then going back, we may not be setting ourselves up for the most amount of success. Again, that's going to depend on your job, your area, where you are living, the country that you are living in, your employer. There's a lot of variables that come into that. But our reason why this blanket statement of six weeks doesn't really, doesn't really pan out in the real world for many people. Also, you know, doing nothing for six weeks, some people are even told that they shouldn't be lifting their kiddos for six weeks. And that's really tough because our kids, when we're bringing a new baby home, it's a big transition for them. And to feel that not only did this new baby come in that was taking mommy's attention, but now also mommy isn't picking me up anymore for six weeks because she's healing. There a lot of our kids don't really understand. And that can be really tough on them. So it can be just a hard situation. And I wouldn't want anyone who was in that position postpartum who decides to pick up their kiddo to think that they're doing some sort of irreversible damage to their pelvic floor. Now, do I think that we should be going into crazy high-intensity exercise one day after or one week after having a baby? Absolutely not. Right? We're gonna gradually increase our movement and we're gonna use those navigational buoys. And so now let's talk about what some of that movement might look like. So, first, where are the researches? So we have a couple of studies now that have been looking at rates of pelvic floor issues if people decided to work at moderate or vigorous intensity at two to three weeks postpartum versus five to six weeks postpartum. For individuals who return to moderate intensity exercise, now this is aerobic. So this is walking, they put it or any other type of cardio exercise, they put an accelerometer or gave our clients who are two to three participants two to three weeks postpartum an accelerometer and measured the amount of movement that they did and where their heart rate went. So if they were in moderate zones versus really high intensity zones. So what they saw was for people who started at two to three weeks postpartum at moderate intensity versus those that started at five to six weeks postpartum, there was no difference in pelvic flora dysfunctions at one year postpartum. So that's good news, right? It's again, it's starting to generate more and more information and really speak to this gradual return to movement. They did not see any increase rates of pelvic flora dysfunction. So symptoms subjectively, so people telling them what their symptoms are, for those that did vigorous or high intensity exercise two to three weeks postpartum versus five to six weeks postpartum. But we did see a hint towards a decrease in support around the vagina for those that did vigorous intensity exercise, two to three weeks postpartum versus five to six. So, what that is kind of telling me as a clinician and as a researcher in this space is that moderate intensity, we're probably okay, but vigorous intensity might be a bit much for a healing pelvic floor. So this was after a vaginal delivery. This was not after a cesarean, and we don't have a ton of research around the C-section scar. Oftentimes we're waiting for that scar to heal and any stitches or staples to be removed before we're getting into more intense exercise. Um, but if walking feels good for you, then you're just looking for an increase in pain or oozing around your surgical scar. And that's kind of one of those navigational buoys for you. We have some research that is starting to be developed. So, now what are ways that we can start to incorporate exercise in these early, early days after baby? Firstly, any exercise that you are doing on your back as body weight movement is going to have way less strain on your healing pelvic floor than standing up and walking around. So things like glue bridges or clamshells or sideline raises, using bands, using without bands, having baby with you. All of those I say are fair game, right? You're looking for any symptoms, but usually those are really great exercises to start connecting. Early core movements, working on breathing and then squeezing your core, thinking about how your core is feeling, kind of connecting again with your body and how your body feels, because it may feel very foreign in those early days after baby is born. That can be super helpful. Starting to work on things like modified planks to a height or on your knees or on, you know, side planks on knees and elbows, and trying to feel some of those muscles around your core tightening when you are doing that exercise is a wonderful way for you to start incorporating some light exercise into your day. Other things that you can start working on are things like seated exercises or upper body movements. Moms need really strong biceps. You're carrying babies for long periods of time. And putting in things like bicep curls or tricep dips or sideline raises, we don't often use a lot of weight for those just because they're little muscle groups, not because we are trying to hold back for any reason on a healing postpartum body, but just because it's really hard work to move with some of those muscles, especially coming out to the side on longer with arms straight, because that lever is just a lot longer. So putting in some of that upper body movement can be so helpful and just make you feel like you're getting a bit of that good pump for um for exercise and making your bodies feel good. When it comes to when to return to barbell movements, the question that I often ask is what are things that you are doing around the house? And let's put a weight on that. For example, you know, our training barbells are 15 pounds and our female barbells are 35 pounds. And if you think about the amount you are carrying on your body with your car seat and your bag, your diaper bag, you're probably putting 20 plus pounds on you. If you are picking up your toddler, your toddler is 30 to 35 pounds, and you are feeling good with those movements around the day, you're not having any increase in bleeding. Then I have had some clients return to barbell movements as early as two to three weeks postpartum. Now I am talking empty barbell. I am not talking about loading up, I'm not talking about using a weightlifting belt, I'm not talking about bracing really hard. I'm talking about moving an empty bar around. And gradually, every time you walk into the gym after that, adding two and a half pounds on each side and gradually increasing the load from there. You're always monitoring for symptoms. Hopefully, you have a public PTR coach in your corner that you are kind of speaking to and talking to. You are kind of checking in with your body and seeing how you're feeling. You're seeing how much you are sleeping, you're seeing how much you are eating. But for some, that type of early movement is really well tolerated. Again, this is going to be very individual, and I'm not trying to say that everybody can start moving around an empty barbell two to three weeks postpartum. But for some, they've been able to come back to this really quickly. What we see is depending on what your goals are, what your fitness level is, and what your fitness level was during your pregnancy, is going to be one of those factors for when you return. So, for example, when we see elite level runners when they're coming back after having a baby, or they are back to 75% of their running volume by 12 to 14 weeks postpartum. That's where some people recommend starting running altogether, is not doing any running for 12 weeks. And these competitive runners are back to 75% of their volume, and their volume was already really high going into their pregnancy. So we're gonna see a large amount of variation, and nothing is better than another thing as long as we're kind of knowing what we are looking out for and gradually increasing what we are able to do. It's important for us to know that when we're coming back after baby, and this is really early on in the fourth trimester, which is the first 12 weeks after baby is born, and longer term is that we want to celebrate these postpartum wins. We want to celebrate any opportunity we have to move our body. We want to celebrate what our body can do and recognize that postpartum healing takes a long time, right? There's an astronomical amount of change that happens in your body when you go through pregnancy and when you go through delivery. Your entire existence changes and your body changes too. And so if exercising early postpartum feels really good for you, then try and seek out somebody who is going to help you navigate that and is going to give you a message of empowerment and knowledge and not a message that is riddled in fear. We have enough things to be afraid of as moms who are trying constantly, at least me, to not mess up our kids and do all the things right and have all the pressures that society puts on us. We want to make sure that the people that we're putting on our team are really helping to extinguish that fear by giving us the knowledge and making us feel confident in the steps that we are taking in order for us to bridge back to fitness that we love. And honestly, that's why the barbell mama started. I was just so sick of hearing that if you do this one exercise too early, you're doomed to ruin your core and pelvic floor. When that simply is not true. We have things that our bodies are ready for, and we have things that our bodies aren't. And the only way we're gonna know if our bodies are ready for it or not are if we try it. And I'm not saying go rogue, but I am saying that having navigational buoys, inching in slowly, and that can mean at six weeks postpartum, at 18 weeks postpartum, at a year postpartum, or two or three weeks postpartum, is the way that we think about and create this framework for your return to fitness after baby. All right, let's kind of come full circle. So we're thinking about early postpartum, we're talking about exercise before six weeks. Oftentimes, we are in a situation as parents where we may not have the luxury of doing nothing for six weeks because of work obligations or family obligations. And so to not be afraid of movement, but to know what your body is ready for and not by looking for these navigational booze. Are we starting to feel that heaviness that is telling us that our pelvic floor is tired early after baby? Are we starting to have an increase in abdominal pain around our scar after a C-section? Are we experiencing any pain or, you know, um increase in bleeding that may tell us that we're pushing our bodies just a little bit too far? Know those navigational buoys and then rest appropriately if you can when you are experiencing some of those symptoms. If we are thinking about return to work or return to fitness, we want to take a slow, gradual approach, and that can start at two or three weeks postpartum, or that could start at six weeks. We can start working on connecting with our pelvic floor and our core really early postpartum, especially on our backs, working on some of these um early prehab exercises, getting back into fitness. This is going to kind of prime our body, reconnect with our body, and help us feel maybe where our level is at and what we are gonna be able to do. Starting with empty barbells or lower weights, especially upper body weights, is oftentimes an entry point into resistance training early postpartum. When you are coming back to impact, we didn't really talk about this. This is gonna be a big topic for another day, but starting with walk running or walk jogging to gradually do intervals of impact is gonna be a way for us to know where our thresholds are. And then celebrate our postpartum PRs and any chance we get, especially in that early time postpartum when our life is so flipped upside down and we are in a haze that we don't even know that we are in until we are out of it, where we celebrate moving our body in any way that we can. All right, I hope you found that helpful. If you are looking for any of those studies or you have any questions about this topic, I would love to hear them. Make sure you reach out on social media or reach out through our website. We would love to hear from you. If you want to learn anything else about our postpartum programs, we do have a Return to CrossFit powerlifting and weightlifting program. We would love for you to try those out and try a free seven day trial. And other than that, wish us luck. We will be on the other side of our move, but we are going to be trying to get internet and do all of the things that come with a new house. And so um, wish us luck on that and we will talk to you on the other side. Have a great night.