Understanding Anterior Placenta Effects, Sculpting Toned Arms, and Debunking Weighted Vest Myths

In this week's episode I answer more questions;

Does an anterior placenta make diastasis recti worse?
I talk about what anterior placenta is, what the effects of it are and why its nothing to worry about.

I also talk about "How to create toned arms". I get asked this question a lot so I talk about the right exercises to do and which exercises you can probably stop doing.

And finally; Weighted vests to help heal diastasis? Should you really be walking around with a heavy vest during the day if you want to heal your diastasis recti a bit faster??

As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.

So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!

BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.

Though I'm not terribly active on  Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!

And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)

Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.

Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic

Playing us out this week "Promised Land" by Brian Brown

Transcript

Peter Lap: 0:00

Hey, welcome to the He Body Podcast. Wi t your PostNatal expert, Pe it up That , as always, would be me. Today, it's just little of me. I'm talking anterior placenta and diastasis recti. What is an anterior placenta? Should you be worried about it? Does it affect your diastasis recti in the size of your bump? I'm also talking a little bit about toning arms. Yeah, that's right. Triceps and shoulders that's what we're talking about how to tone the arms, how to get a bit more definition of exercise as you do, and why you want to focus on the triceps and shoulders over the biceps. And finally, a weighted vest for walking. Will it help you get fitter Right? Quite a lot to go through. So, without further ado, here we go.

Peter Lap: 1:08

Hey, welcome to the Alfie PulseNatal Body Podcast. This is the episode for the 10th of March 2024. And you know time flies and all that sort of stuff. This week it's little of me answering questions. Again. Next week I'm talking a postpartum psychosis with Dr Teresa Costadas, which is who is like one of t experts in the US. You're going to love that episode. It's one of my favorite interviews that I've done in a while. But today, like I said, little of me. We had a couple of episodes on where we guessed on. So now I get back to doing emails and all that sort of stuff and answering questions that I was asked. There's just me and little Kitty, so if you hear any snoring in the background, that's who it is. What was I saying? What was I saying?

Peter Lap: 1:55

Anterior placenta? That's one of the questions I was asked a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, by the way, peter, at healthypostnatalbodycom, if you want to email in any questions, I'm also on Thread's as Healthy PulseNatal Body, I think, underscore the course in between every single one of those things where I'm a bit more active. So if you have any questions you can send me messages there and all that sort of fun stuff. What did I just say? Anterior placenta? I'm sorry, guys, I'm having one of these days. It's absolutely, absolutely chaos.

Peter Lap: 2:31

I was asked a couple of weeks ago by one of my clients whether an anterior placenta would impact your diastasis recti and the size of your bump and all that sort of stuff. So it's an excellent question. It was one of those that I never considered that people would have questions about it, because it is rather common to have interior placenta and it's hardly ever cause for concern. But you know, you read certain things online and it immediately goes horribly, horribly wrong. So the process of the information is actually pretty sound and not to scare mongery and all that sort of thing, right?

Peter Lap: 3:12

So first of all, what is anterior placenta? It just means that the placenta is at the front of your uterus, so closest to your belly, instead of at the top or at the back. It's nothing whatsoever to worry about. The placenta is just in a different place. So the placenta, I'll teach how to suck eggs a little bit.

Peter Lap: 3:31

Well, almost literally, the placenta basically forms where an egg implants in your uterine wall, in the wall of your uterus, and that's a fertilized . Of course, you know, usually that would sit at the back or top of your uterus, but sometimes it goes at the front, and that's what an anterior placenta is. It's basically just an extra bit of padding between your belly and your baby. ? Now, the placenta can move as your belly grows and all that sort of stuff, so it doesn't necessarily start there, it can still move to the top. Anyways, no one really knows what causes it, but other than you know why the egg implants there. So you know, but it doesn't have any effect on the pregnancy and it actually happens. According to some studies it happens in up to 50% of all the pregnancy, so that is quite a lot.

Peter Lap: 4:40

So Will it affect the size of your bump? No, because the size of your bump is just a t, determined by the size of the baby and all the fluids that it needs that you're producing the space, essentially the container that is your belly. Be a bit blunt the container that is your belly will be filled up with the same amount of stuff and therefore it doesn't need space. The more space placenta would always be there, would always grow and all that sort of stuff. So whether it sits anterior or at the top of or, it doesn't really matter where it sits, it doesn't really matter at all. It also really doesn't affect your diastasis recta. The only thing that it could affect a little bit is that you don't feel your baby kicking as much. But again, it's nothing to worry about and regularly during the pregnancy it starts to move. So you might not even realize that you can't feel the baby kicking because it usually doesn't start kicking that early on in the pregnancy. Anyways, and I believe top of my head, usually anterior placentas get found out at your first scan, which is 18 or 21 weeks or something like that, somewhere near done, anyways. So now there's nothing to worry about and won't affect your diastasis or anything like that. You're going to get a bit of diastasis, as I've said before, but as I've said before in other podcast episodes, because you always get a bit of diastasis, so you don't get any more with an anterior placenta than you would with the posterior one, which is good to know, I suppose, if you had that question, if you were concerned about it. Like I said, someone asked me and therefore I'm just relaying it back to you. Secondly, this won't be a very long episode, by the way, because I'm drowning in work. I've got some things coming up and all that sort of thing that will be fascinating for you people, but I can't talk about it yet.

Peter Lap: 6:56

Toning of the arms I get this as an awful lot right. An awful lot of women and men in general, but people in general, but an awful lot of women want to tone up a little bit and they want to tone their arms and then they start to do a lot of bicep curls and all that sort of stuff. So, very briefly, toning is nothing more than usually losing a bit of body fat and getting some definition right. That's what I mean by toning. Someone asked the other day what was meant by toning and all that sort of stuff. A personal trainer asked what they thought their clients asked other people what they thought their clients meant when they said toning. Toning for me is losing a bit of fat and get a bit of definition in the arms. But if you get, if you're looking at defined arms and making the arms look nice in like a t-shirt or anything like that, you really want to focus on your shoulders and your triceps.

Peter Lap: 8:00

The mistake a lot of people make when they focus on toning of arms, when they want to get a bit more definition in arms, is that they start focusing on the bicep and the problem with that is that the bicep is actually just a small part of the arm compared to the triceps, right. So the biceps are like 33% size compared to the triceps, which is 66% of size of your arms. So what that means and I'll go into the how a t-shirt fits in a little bit as well, because that really matters but what that means is that if you're working a small muscle only, you're focusing on the wrong muscles If you look at how a t-shirt fits around. Most people that a t-shirt fits nice because you have a decently rounded shoulder and you have triceps, so you don't have bingo wings, so to speak. So the triceps are much more responsible for filling up a t-shirt or filling up any sort of top really, and the shoulders do that as well. There's very little bicep action, so to speak, happening in that and it's not that most people have stronger biceps than they have triceps, because they are at least more visible, more pronounced, because they do a lot more motion with the biceps than they do with the triceps, and everybody can flex their guns a little bit, so to speak, with very few people that hardly ever train arms can flex their triceps well. So doing a whole bunch of biceps just kind of goes against everything you're actually trying to accomplish.

Peter Lap: 9:42

Like I said, the part of toning is making sure your body fat percentage is low enough to actually see the muscles, to have visible muscles, and that, of course, is predominantly diet-related sort of stuff, right, but assuming you're there, assuming your body fat percent is low enough, and that's different for everyone the reason I don't give you a percentage to hit or anything like that there is because, especially for women. You know you have boobles, you have breasts and that messes up any sort of sort of side things, any sort of body fat percentage scales and all that sort of stuff. If you have larger breasts, that means your body fat percentage is going to be higher, and I have never been. If you're standing on a set of scales, that is and I have never been a big fan of the old calipers and all that sort of stuff you know where you squeeze certain bits, because you have to be really careful that you always measure in the right bit. So, predominantly, you know your body fat percentage needs to be low enough. That's all I'm going to say about that, and that is different for every sort of individual.

Peter Lap: 10:53

But once it is, it's just a case of doing a good amount of shoulder exercises, and I always tell people to make sure you get your shoulder presses in, you get your front raises in your Arnold presses. All these exercises you can find on the HPMB YouTube channel, right? They're part of the program as well, of course. Right, because we're lifting regularly. We do a lot of upper body movement and upper body exercises. That will help not just heal your diocese recti and help you be fitter in general life, but they'll also help you tone up and work the right muscles. We also do some bicep stuff, by the way.

Peter Lap: 11:33

I'm not saying we don't do anything, but predominantly you want to do things like front raises, lat raises, some pressing exercises for your shoulders. Make sure you do some exercises for the back of your shoulders as well, for those rear delts, because that is something that a lot of people forget and they are really important if you want to have nice round shoulders rather than that blocky sort of look where you have muscle at the front of your body and not too much at the back of it, which you can really tell with shoulders. If you know what you're looking for, if you ever look at someone and say, hey, they've got great ton, why don't their shoulders look great? It's usually because the back of the shoulders underdeveloped compared to the front, anyways. And then you want to do some tricep stuff. So you know things like overhead tricep extensions and bench dips and tricep kickbacks and all that sort of stuff.

Peter Lap: 12:30

Bench presses, of course, you know. I know someone's going to listen to this, saying, yeah, but bench presses is better. Yeah, bench presses great. Press ups and all that sort of stuff are great, assuming you'd I'm assuming there that you're doing those with good form and focus on the tricep. But then say the chest right. If you do a really wide grip, bench press, for instance, you're mainly using your chest muscles over your triceps and there's very little tricep action in that. If you, however, do a narrow grip and your elbows are relatively close to your body to do when doing a bench press, you get a lot more of tricep action out of the exercise. It does make the exercise a lot more difficult, right? This is why you see people usually spaying a bit wider, spaying the elbows out a little bit when they do a big bench press or doing press ups. Right, you see, there's a lot with press ups. People have the arms really, really wide, the elbows are almost next to their shoulders and all this sort of stuff. You want to tuck them in a little bit and that way you get a lot more tricep action. So working your triceps and working your shoulders will create significantly more toned arms and will significantly do more for the toning your arms than bicep curls and all that will do. Bicep curls and all that are great. I'm not saying to not do them, but if you want to have nice definition. It starts with the bigger muscles, it starts with the triceps and the shoulders. Right, we've got 14 minutes in. Like I said, it'll be a short one.

Peter Lap: 14:07

A ed vest for walking. I thought I had to address this, but I had another question about this this. Someone was told and I'm not going to name names here, this was an email that was sent in to me by someone who trained with another personal trainer, did somebody else's program, and again, I'm not going to name names and I'm not going to read the email because that would give it away, so to speak. Anyways, they were told by the other personal trainer to buy a weighted vest because the weight then this is postpartum, right. They were told that. And the weighted vest, by the way, they go from 15 and 10 to 15, 20 kg, something like that. If you've never worn one, they're basically vests that you put little blocks usually little metal blocks and something like that in there and you can create up to 20 kg of excess weight, which is 44 pounds, something like that in old school pants.

Peter Lap: 15:17

So this person was told by their old personal trainer that they did their postpartum program with the buy a weighted vest because they'd lost a bit of weight during the labor on the 24-hour diet, which is what I call when you give birth. So they lost a lot of weight and this is what they were told, right, I'm not saying that this is actually true. So they lost a lot of weight and therefore moving around was now much easier and therefore they could add a lot of weight to it. And it will help heal dead life status because you're walking around with more weight and it'll help to increase your exercise levels because you're walking with a weighted vest and therefore you burn more calories. That's fundamentally what boiled down us. Now, of course, it is true that you'll burn more calories if you walk around with an extra 20 kg on your back all the time right, that's fairly basic science, that is and you get a lot more out of your work, I suppose from an exercise perspective, if you say you're walking up a hill with an extra 20 kg as a weighted vest, yeah, you'll be working a lot harder. That doesn't mean it's a good idea, right, we should even be recommending it.

Peter Lap: 16:40

A weighted vest will do absolutely nothing and I mean zero to help heal your disasserts. That is just not true. That is just not the case, that's just not going to happen. If you listen to this thing regularly, then you kind of already know that that's where this was going to lead, because I tend to get a lot of questions that I deal with and I'm like no, that's not how anything works. They also won't help improve your posture. A weighted vest that also doesn't make any sense. You won't walk more uprights because you have more weight. That is yeah. Like I said, that is just not how anything works.

Peter Lap: 17:26

The reason it doesn't help heal your disasserts recti is because that is not what causes disasserts recti and it's not the opposite of what causes disasserts recti. You know, like I said before, disasserts recti cause my internal pressure and all that sort of stuff. And, of course, wearing a weighted vest, if anything, for a lot of people, unless you're breathing properly whilst wearing, it, creates more pressure. A lot of people, when you add weight to their back, they don't relax into it. That was big, all that breath a bit. One of the things that I make a big deal of is exhaling during effort and keep breathing and all that sort of stuff.

Peter Lap: 18:05

If you're constantly bracing your core because you have excess weight, it just makes no sense whatsoever. It also doesn't work any of the muscles that would help heal your disasserts. You know it doesn't work your glutes harder to wear a weighted vest. It doesn't work your TVA any harder. It doesn't work your obliques any harder, really. Now I know some of the proponents for wearing weighted vests would say, yeah, but you have to keep proper posture and you have to really focus on that. But that defeats the purpose. You don't walk around with an extra 20 kilos on your back and worry about your posture all day. I thought this never worked. So don't buy a weighted vest and don't do any of that type of stuff for disasserts. It's just not going to help. Anyways, that's me pretty much done.

Peter Lap: 19:00

Guys, peter at HealthyPostNatalBodycom, if you have any questions yourself, next week, like I said, dr Theresa Costales is on talking about postpartum psychosis. That's an amazing interview. You've got to love her. This is like the most knowledgeable person in America about that type of stuff. So that's next week. So I'm now going to go back to making sure that that episode is actually ready to go out. You'll have a tremendous week and I'll check in on you next week. All right, thank you.

Speaker 2: 19:39

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Speaker 2: 19:50

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Speaker 2: 20:01

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Speaker 2: 20:48

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Speaker 2: 21:19

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