The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
From the vault; Diastasis questions answered and can you pause rehab exercise safely?
In this week's episode from the vault I answer some diastasis recti related questions that come up regularly.
I also talk about the having to take a break from rehab exercises. Of course it happens regularly that life gets in the way, is that a probolem or is it just not that big of a deal?
Here are the questions I cover;
1. I'm not sure I'm doing the home workouts right. When there is a spot that says "breathing (lying)" or "(standing)", does that just mean I do the upward motion breath that many times while lying or sitting? (I explain why we do this) And am I supposed to breathe up from my lower abdomen as shown in the breathing video every time I exhale in an exercise?
2. So, I was super diligent the first 6 weeks, but then I had a whole bunch of things come up right after the other and I've been pretty inconsistent for the last 6 weeks. I got all the way through weeks 1-4 and noticed a huge difference in strength and my diastasis gap and then got half way through weeks 4-8. I've done the workouts off and on since then but my gap seems to have digressed and gotten bigger... is that possible or am I imagining it? And if it is possible, how do I stop it from spreading apart again, are there certain motions I just can't do anymore?
3. Are the exercises you have us do in this 12 week program safe for early pregnancy as well, or just for postnatal?
4. And last question, how will I be able to tell once my body is strong enough again and how can I know that my diastasis is healed? (Since it's apparently normal to have a small gap there, I'm not sure how to tell once I've achieved a healthy level of separation.)
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 "I will survive" by Moses Kidd
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Post Natal Body P odcast With your Post Natal expert Peter Lap. As always will be me. This is a podcast for the 25th of October, 2025, and there's Dinky Snores in the background. And this week is from the vault, right? We did uh we did uh uh a new QA last week. This week I'm doing a From the Vault QA for the best answer's questions and taking the break from rehab training. Will it take you back to square one? Listen when you stop doing your exercises, will you go all the way back? Um I'm talking about the core breath, uh, the importance of that, why the core breath is actually the the base of everything we do. Um we're talking about you know how and when you'll actually get results. Are the exercises that we do 12 weeks postpartum? Are they fine for early post uh early pregnancy and all that sort of stuff? And finally, how will you know that your body is strong enough and that you know that your uh diastas has actually healed? Which is a superb question. Um, they all all those four questions came in in the same email a while ago. Um, and I was very, very happy. I'm not forgetting emails like Peter at healthypostnatalbody.com. Give me a shout out if you have any questions, or it would like me to have certain guests on and discuss certain topics, of course. That's what I'm for. Anywho, anywho, I'm a busy boy, and stuff is creaking in the background, and I really don't want to edit them. I don't want too much familiarity. Welcome to the Healthy Person Native Buddy podcast of Little Old Me. This is the podcast for the 21st of April 2022. Uh 2024, 2022, COVID missed everything up, but we missed a couple of years. I'm with Kitty and Bob uh and uh and buddy, and that's about it. And um I am answering questions because I have not gotten around to editing interviews yet. I am so busy, it's absolutely crazy. But I had a wonderful email this week which had four questions in it, and you know, I like nothing better than to have one simple email that obviously uh that uh obviously I also responded to the email separately, by the way. That's what I was gonna say. I like nothing better than getting one email with loads of questions because it fills up an entire podcast episode, or at least I hope it will. Right. Uh here we go. Hi, Peter. I have a couple of quick questions for you. Uh number one, I'm not sure I'm doing the home workouts right. So, this is someone who's a member of the healthypostnatal body.com thing. When there's a spot that says breathing, lying, or standing, doesn't mean I do the upward motion breath that many tiles while lying or sitting. And am I supposed to breathe up from my lower abdomen as shown in a breathing video every time I exhale in an exercise? So that's basically two questions about the core breath, right? Um, first of all, yes. So the core breath, let me, for people who don't know, let me quickly explain it. It's it's the way I tell people, uh tell postpartum women how to breathe. And to be honest, I even do this with athletes who are not postpartum. So when I do any sort of core stuff, uh I I like people to exhale a certain way, and by that I mean contract the muscles in a certain way whilst they're breathing. This takes a bit of getting used to, um, but I find it's massively beneficial because it stops what I call the collapse at the top of a range of motion. So when you see people, I don't know, deadlifting or picking a weight up off the ground, for instance, what happens a lot of the time, they hold their breath through the motion, and at the top of it, when the weight is up in the air, they exhale and they almost collapse on themselves. And that is not the way I like people to breathe. Uh, I don't think it's the healthy way to breathe. I get it when you're doing like a personal best and you're a power lifter and all that sort of stuff. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who are athletes who play a sport or just postpartum, uh, postpartum women or postpartum athletes, even as well, and just men as well. There is a better way to breathe, and that's to breathe through the motion so that you're relaxed in all the right bits during the motion and that you're not unnecessarily tense, that you teach the right muscles to function at the right time. That's what we're going for. Um, the core breath video is obviously it's on the YouTube channel as well. I will link to it in the podcast description if I actually remember to do so this time because I've forgotten that once or twice. Now, in the beginning, when you do the healthy postnatal body program, the very early stages of your postpartum recovery, you kind of your body probably doesn't know how to do the core breath, because nobody really does that. I find the most effective way in the beginning to get people to used to to the core breath is by saying, okay, the first 10 exhalations you do lying down, and it helps that the rest of, and this is by design, but it helps that the rest of the program for the first few weeks is also starts on the floor. So you start by breathing a couple of times, finding that mind-muscle connection, right? Focusing on the right bits and feeling what your body should feel like, trying to get that feeling at least in the beginning, you're not going to get this right. You just try to get used to it, right? It's quite tricky to get used to, admittedly, but you will get there if you stick with it. And then towards the end, after we've done so the home program consists of like six exercises in the first uh four weeks, and the first three are lying down, and then you do some squats and some lunges and all that sort of stuff. And the last that the end of that um that session, you do 10 seated core preps, and that is then just the next stage of. But hopefully, after three or four weeks, you will feel that you have a bit more muscle activation and all that sort of stuff. And that breathing, sitting down, then becomes easier, and you kind of then know what I'm talking about, and you kind of know what to do, and that means that you can even start breathing and thereby healing your dicytos rectile using that core breath. Um, when you're sitting in the car, or then when you're just you know doing stuff, sitting watching television, get 10 nice quick core breaths in, just to improve that mind muscle connection and all that sort of stuff. I find that's massively beneficial. This is also why I think the core breath, as we do it in the HP and B program, is much better than that diaphragmatic breathing and all that sort of stuff. So it's exhaling from the bottom up. So to breathe up from my lower abdomen, as the lady asked. So, am I supposed to breathe up from my lower abdomen and show in a breathing video every time I exhale in an exercise? And the answer to that is yes. Um, but you go with the pace of the exercise. So, for instance, if you do a squat and it takes two seconds to come back up, then it the exhaling takes about two seconds. If you do a kettlebell swing, which is much quicker, then exhaling is also much quicker. But the muscle contractions is exactly the same through through both forms of exercise, through both exercises, and that is really beneficial, especially when you then translate that to a sport or daily activity. So, tennis players, you know, exhale through the rotation. Oh, your core using a core breath, exhale through the rotation, and like I said, this becomes instinctive after a while, will have you so much better balanced, and you generate so much more balanced force that your game improves almost automatically. I worked with a with a football player who found that just his turning on the spot was easier because he because this was a guy, because he learned how to exhale during the motion rather than get a deep breath, and now we sprint when everything is placed. If the muscles work properly and in the right order, you can gain the valuable seconds for us mere us mere mortals that have like a normal life and are not athletes. What that means is that basically as you learn to exhale through an exercise, and not say exhale through the effort, it means that there's less chance of injury, for instance, lifting your child out of the car when you move side to side. You don't need to think about bracing everything and all that sort of stuff. You just pick your child up, exhale through the motion, boom, and it becomes automatic. Your body will know which muscles to use at which time, rather than bracing everything or you know, using your back to lift with everything and and all that sort of stuff, which we see a lot of, which can, I'm not saying it always leads to injury, but it definitely can do. So, yes, we start by lying down, then we move to sitting, and then we move to standing up because standing up core breath is actually a little bit trickier than lying down is. Um, and you exhale like that every single time. And before you know it, and by before you know it, I mean usually that's four to six weeks, but definitely after three months, it kind of just becomes the norm. That's kind of just what you do. Um, and you might need to remind yourself of that every now and again, especially when you start lifting heavier things or when you carry something really heavy, but it is by far the easiest way to lift, uh, I find. So, question two. So, I was super diligent the first six weeks, but then I had a whole bunch of things come up right after the other, and I've been pretty inconsistent for the last six weeks. I got all the way through weeks one to four and notice a huge difference in strength and my diastasis gap, and then got halfway through weeks four to eight. I've done the workouts off and on since then, but my gap seems to have digressed and gotten bigger. Is that possible or am I imagining it? And if it is possible, how do I stop it from spreading apart again? Are there certain motions I just can't do anymore? So, again, there's a couple of questions in there. First of all, let's start at the beginning. Well done for being super diligent in the first six weeks. Because let's be honest, this stuff is tricky sometimes, and life does get in the way. The issue with life getting in the way of rehab exercise is that as you are recovering, and if you then stop, the body kind of um regresses a little bit, right? It it it's it gets a little bit weaker again because it's not fully recovered yet. Um now, usually, if you don't have any injuries and you just skip the gym for six weeks, you might feel a little bit more meh and a little bit weaker and all that sort of stuff. Uh when you're in the process of healing, still you feel that little feeling a little bit more. That's kind of all it is. You still have some benefit, of course you do, you put six weeks of effort in. So you're not back to square one. You will find that um that the when you pick the exercises back up again, everything you had six weeks before then comes back a lot quicker. But yeah, you could regress a little bit, and and the gap could feel a bit bigger, even though it isn't really the back, the the gap doesn't necessarily open up, the muscles around it just get a bit weaker and it feels a bit. Uh it feels like the gap is a bit wider, but it's not necessary. Um, it could of course be that if you've done I don't know, if you if you've done six weeks of of of exercise and a reasonable diet, and by diet I mean the diastasis recti type stuff to prevent you prevent your bloating and all that sort of thing. So it doesn't matter what you eat, you just didn't eat the things that made you bloat. And if you stayed away from that, and then you started eating those things that make you bloat a little bit, and you haven't done your exercises, yeah, then it it could get a bit bigger. Um, the the gap could get a bit bigger again. But your muscle activation, your muscle functionality is still still there somewhere, right? It's just a little bit less. But when you go back into it, you'll get the results a lot quicker. Exercise always, always, always pays off, and it always has a benefit somewhere. Uh having to take a break for six weeks is not the end of the world. Sometimes that just happens. It is what I always tell people that you know if you can keep doing the home routines as often as you can, right? It's um the home routines are the bread and butter, and they're bread and butter, and they kind of only take 10 minutes. So even if you can't do the strength weeks any uh for the strength sessions anymore, then definitely uh try to get the home routine in once or twice a week, just stay on top of it. And I know that's difficult, but it it really does help. And if you can't, then you just accept that that that you're not gonna be on top of it for a while, and you can get back to it um later on. Like I said to somebody, uh, and I mentioned this on Fred as well, but like I said to somebody earlier in the week, there isn't that much difference between postpartum recovery six months postpartum and six weeks postpartum. And by that I mean that you'll be fine if you have to start a bit later or take a little bit of a break. But that it really isn't the end of the world, that is just not how it works. So, with regards to the um second question, uh are there certain motions I just can't do anymore? Because the way to stop it spreading apart again, so to speak, is to to not to prevent internal pressure, right? So no bloaty foods and do your exercises and all that sort of stuff. Once it's healed, it's healed though. Once it's healed, it's done. And we'll get to that when it's question four, because she touches on that a little bit in in question four. Are there certain motions I just can't do anymore? Well, you might find it's a bit more difficult to control the exercises you used to be able to do in the weeks uh four to eight program compared to the weeks one to four program. Uh sorry, the exercises you're struggling a bit weak with now from the program that you used to be okay with. That just means you regress the program a bit. You go back to doing stuff from weeks one to four and just build it back up again. You're not missing anything. And you can always, you know, if you don't want to pay for the HP and B program, that's completely fine. You copy and paste this stuff before your trial expires, right? You can always go back into it. The links always work, right? You just don't have access to the site anymore. But you can always copy-paste the thing into a Word document, and I really shouldn't be saying this, but there you go. You can do it, and then then go back to weeks one to four and just say, Okay, I'm not want to pay for it, but I don't want to miss out on that first three months program. You don't keep progressing through the program if you feel that the program is moving at too fast a pace for you, and you set your own pace. That's the whole point of of me giving so much access, um, is that you can you can time it yourself in an ideal world if you're very diligent, then you can probably do weeks one to four in four weeks, and weeks four to uh five to eight in in in four weeks, and all that sort of stuff. But if you find you need to slow down a bit, then you can. Nothing to stop you doing that again. Even if you pay for the whole healthy postnatal body program, you pay your fifty dollars or your 40 pounds, whatever currency you you are in. Um you have lifetime access, right? You don't need to rush through it. The whole program takes nine, ten months, and very few people stay diligent for nine to nine, ten months. But a lot of people do come back to it after child two and after child three, and they just take their time. So you the only motions you can't do anymore are the motion that is first of all, it's not permanent that you can't do those motions anymore, and secondly, it's just means that your body isn't quite strong enough to do them anymore. So it's the same as I don't know, I can squit a I can I can squit, I can squat 100 kilos one week uh because I keep training squats and you know I build that up to 100 kg squat, and then I don't do squats for six weeks. Yeah, I can go back to a hundred kilogram squat. I can go back to an 80 kilogram one and build the 100 back up. That's kind of the approach you want to be taking then. Take a step back in order to move forward again, and you might well find that taking a step back actually, you know, it comes back so quickly. Once you've been diligent for six weeks or so, it comes back so quickly. Your body remembers. I'm not talking about physically the muscles remembering, and that's not what I mean by muscle memory, but it's your body remembers how to move. Right? That this is how you always can tell the difference between someone who used to say be an athlete and someone who um who wasn't? You know, someone who's never exercised before will take a lot longer to learn a new exercise than someone who's used to be really good at any type of movement, the body just kind of gets it. Right. Question three. I hope that helps. This helps, by the way. Uh question three. Are the exercises you have us do in this 12-week program safe for early pregnancy as well, or just for postnatal? Um, okay, so first of all, little caveat the healthy postnatal body.com program is 13 weeks completely free access. The program is much longer than 12 weeks, right? Everything in the program, however, is fine for early pregnancy. The only thing, and for early pregnancy, even late pregnancy, you can keep doing most of this stuff. The only thing we don't do is in the last trimester, we don't do exercises on your back anymore. That is the only change we make. So you can, especially things like squats and lunges and all that sort of thing, wood choppers are very beneficial later on in the pregnancy. Uh, glute kicks, all that sort of stuff are very, very useful. So they're completely safe to do. All exercise, and this goes for all types of exercise during pregnancy, as long as your exhaustion level isn't about above roughly a seven out of ten, you're completely fine to do almost everything. I've had, and I've mentioned this before, I had someone pregnant with twins who scheduled her C section on, I don't know, Friday, who did a hundred kilogram squat on a Thursday, the day before her due date, because she wanted to prove that she could do it. It's completely safe because she was already used to doing it. Right? That is the thing. During pregnancy, you can keep doing what you are already doing. And you can even, in a lot of cases, if you're coming from a relatively say low bar where you don't exercise a lot, starting exercise in pregnancy will benefit you. You might just, if you're if you're, I don't know, if you're an athlete, a more athletic person, or you train a lot, anyways, you might dial down the intensity a little bit. That's all you need to do. Everything else is always completely safe during pregnancy. I I have never come across anyone that trained too hard, uh that trained reasonably during pregnancy, that where something went wrong because they exercised too much, or they exercised reasonably. Do you know what I mean? If you don't go overboard, you will be fine. I've got an interview coming up with somebody about pretty much just that, but from a postpartum angle. Um, hopefully you'll get in two or three weeks or so when I can actually get around to it. Um, by the way, if you have any questions yourself, Peter at healthy postnatal body.com, right? Or just reply to the to the healthy postnatal body emails if you're if you're a member. If you're not a member, also cool, Peter at healthy postnatal body.com. Right. Last question, and maybe most importantly, uh number four, and last question how will I be able to tell once my body is strong enough again? And how can I know that my diastasis is healed? In between brackets, since it's apparently normal to have a small gap there, I'm not sure how to tell once I've achieved a healthy level of separation. Right, that is a phenomenal question. It's a good one. Yes, it's completely normal to have a gap there, and the reason you don't know what the normal level of separation is is because nobody checks this prenatal. Nobody ever checks this before they fall pregnant. There's never been a 16, 17, 18, 19-year-old girl who does a diastasis type check to check what their normal level of separation is. So nobody knows. What we do know with regards to the gap, anything below two and a half, 20 uh 2.5 centimeters, 25 mil, is no longer classed as diastasis. Whether that's normal for you, it might be a bit smaller, might be a bit bigger, but anything below that, technically, gap-wise, we don't class as diastasis anymore. Um, how will you know once your body's strong enough again? And diastasis are healed, are two separate questions. Diastasis is healed, is basically when your stomach is back to back to the new normal, right? Back to where that gap feels normal again for you. And like you said, that's completely that's that's completely personal for for everybody, but it's usually around that 25 mil, two and a half centimeter, two, two centimeter gap. Anyway, anywhere near there is actually completely fine. And don't worry about it, even if it's slightly bigger, it's not necessarily something to worry about. How will I be able to tell once my body is strong enough again? That is the key question, because that's the one that really matters. Because once your body knows how to function well enough again, everything you do will help heal your diastasis. Let me repeat that once your because that's an important lesson. Once your body functions well, everything you do will help heal your diastasis. If you breathe properly through an exercise and you do bicep calls or backflies, and you exhale properly through it, and your body functions well and your muscles work well enough, that backfly will help heal your diastasis just because of how you're breathing through it. Right? And this is really important. That gap will get back to normal and in normal for you by itself, once you know how to breathe properly and that your body functions properly. And will you be able to tell what your body is strong enough again? That is just by being able to do the things you want to do. Right? And I've said this before once your body is you know pretty much all there, so to speak, and and you're fine and you have full muscle functionality, as long as you don't overdo it, you don't try exercises that you can't control uh your core on, then you'll you you will be completely fine. Everything in life, as in if I know I can deadlift 150 kg, I can pick 150 kilos up off the floor safely, right? Then I'm strong enough to do that. Doesn't mean I'm strong enough for 250 kg. But I do know that if we go from 150 to 160 to 170 to 180, sooner or later, or get to 250 in a safe way. Does that kind of I hope that kind of makes sense? That not analogy, that some people, some women at the end of three months uh of the healthy post-natal body program can do things like crossover crunches or individual leg raises. Right? That doesn't necessarily mean they're strong enough to do full leg raises or bicycle crunches, so where you kick your leg all the way out because they might not have the control in a core yet. But if your body functions well enough, right, then so you can do the crossover crunch nice, you can add a degree of difficulty and build it up in a completely safe way to get to do the bicycle conscious. You're very unlikely to make your diastasis worse during exercise. Right? Unless you're constantly doing exercises where you are not in control of your core, your diastasis is likely never to go and get worse once you have good muscle functionality and all that sort of stuff. Because, like I said, if you're in control and you're breathing properly, every exercise you do makes your diastasis better, right? Improves your diastasis. So um that that that is an important part to remember that you don't need to be on a postpartum program forever. You don't need to, and this is why the the HP and B program splits up in in uh after four months, I think it is, right? Into a legs and glutes, into a core and and an upper body or posture type type program. I can't even remember top of my head. I know I should, but I can't. Um and you know, you can focus on the things you want to focus on because everything you do at that stage, if you do a posture-related exercise, uh exercise, so a lot of in the posture sessions, a lot of that is back and back of the shoulders and and and all that type of stuff. Glutes, lot of glutes, there's always glutes. Um that will help heal your diastasis if you still have some, and your body will be strong enough to do those exercises or the variations of that. Doesn't mean your body is strong enough. Like the session that this lady sent in uh was the home strength uh weeks 13 to 16. So that's the email she responded to. And there is the home and strength weeks, and there's the advanced strength, right? So, because from day one in HPMB, I split it up into the normal home sessions and the normal strength sessions, and the normal home sessions, because they're the same for everyone, and the advanced strength sessions, depending on what your level of uh of fitness of or of ability is, because a lot of people on the HPMB program come to this with uh quite a high level of fitness, so there's no point in giving them really normal entry-level type uh strength sessions. They'd get bored, they never stick to it, right? And by by high level of fitness, I'm not talking about comparing people who sat on the couch for two to professional athletes and talking about, you know, the strength sessions are for everyone. The advanced strength sessions are really just they come in levels as well, and the top ones of those are you know athletes, strength sessions, as in they they have better muscle functionality and all that type of stuff. Um I hope that helps. But at the end of the day, right, your diastys, once you've recovered and once you've got muscle functionality, your diastys won't get worse by itself. That just doesn't happen. If you have to take a break midweek, mid midway through your uh your rehab program, you are going to get a bit weaker, but that doesn't mean you won't have any benefit, right? And when you get back into it, you just take a couple of steps back, a couple of weeks back, and then you go again. In case of the HP and V program, you can just copy and paste the stuff. I don't care. If you're like, I'm not gonna be paying for this, Pete, then that's fine. Just copy and paste this stuff and put it in the thing and take your take your time. Right? That is the key. That is the thing to do. Um I hope that helps. I hope that helps everybody. I hope you get something from this. Peter at healthypostnatalbody.com. Um, if you want to get in touch, if you have any questions, I I hope I find the time to edit some interviews and and record some intros and outros and all that sort of stuff. I have several in the pipeline. I I just can't find the time to get them done. Because believe it or not, it takes longer than it sounds like it takes, right? Um, anyways, here's a new bit of music. You take care of yourself. Bye now.
Speaker 1:In the well I dug myself, cause I fell under that spell, and the fireflies in the sky spelled my name in lights. All the hope I just can't see while I'm hurting and bleeding, but the help is on its way way too late. I will survive. I will find a lifeline. I will survive, and you'll beg yourself to see me one more time. In the hours I spend alone searching for my home, all the hungry nights away when my tears are all I taste and the help is on its way way too late. I will survive, I will find a lifeline. I will survive, and you beg yourself to see me, you'll beg yourself to see me, you'll beg yourself to see me one last time.