Postpartum recovery "advice" from 10+ years ago which really doesn't hold true anymore

From the Vault this week;

I pulled out the 250th episode of the podcast and what better way to celebrate it, if that's the right term ;), than by sharing with you what I've learned in my decade+ long working in the postpartum recovery field.

I talk about all the things I learned when I did my first postpartum qualification 10+ years ago that no longer hold true. I talk about the change in exercise methodology and how we now should be thinking of postpartum recovery. 
What should be part of it and what shouldn't.,

Which myths still persist even though they've been proven to be incorrect?
Why I quickly realised I knew absolutely nothing after I first qualified.
The many flaws in a lot of postpartum qualifications out there, the outdated thinking etc.

And, most importantly, I share with you what the expert thinking now is.

Post partum core strength and training.
Pelvic girdle pain.
Why you should stop isolating muscles such as the TVA.
Why a holistic approach is the only way.
Post partum diet advice.
Move away from diaphragmatic breathing.

and much, much more.

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!


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

Playing us out this week "Ringing bell" by Visitants. 

Transcript

Why Old Advice Still Spreads

Peter 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert Peter Lap. That, as always, would be me. This is a podcast for the 1st of June 2026, and it's a from the fault episode from a couple of years ago that I did on things I changed my mind on in the last 10 to 12 years. Some of this stuff comes up and it it ties in a little bit with the standard myth busting stuff that I've done a lot on. Basically, uh a couple of years ago, I did an episode where I spoke about all the things that have changed in my 10, now 12, 13, 14, 15 years of postpartum, working with postpartum women, and the things that have changed, um, you know, which may still persist even though they've been proven to be incorrect. Why I quickly realized I knew nothing when I first qualified the many flaws in most postpartum qualifications out there and all that sort of stuff. And I share a review, of course, what the expert thinking now is. Um, here we go. I saw something that BioLane, uh Lane Norton did um a while ago. Basically, things that he changed his mind over the past 10 years. Um and I thought, well, that's fascinating. Let me do one of those for post Python exercise. So postpartum exercise related stuff only. Now I qualified uh I got my first postpartum qualifications. Let me put it this way. And I got my first postpartum qualifications 10, 11, 12 years ago, something like that. So I've been doing this for a while. And the way I was originally taught a lot of stuff to do with postpartum recovery, um, it mainly centered around pelvic floor issues and and diastis rectile as it's kind of the field still does, um, but it's really moved on quite a bit in the last 10 years. I'd like to think of at least a little bit to do with that, but you never know. Um, and the thinking has really progressed for people who have kept up with the science and all that sort of stuff. I know a lot of people are still repeating some of the myths because it's difficult, right? When when you write a blog post as I've done over, I don't know, I've I've written hundreds and thousands of articles. Literally, literally on on on the on my website alone, I've got like six, seven hundred articles up, um, let alone what I've written for other people and all that sort of stuff in the magazines. Um it's it's moved on a lot, but it's it's stuff that you wrote 10 years ago, it's still out there, right? And it's really difficult for people to move on. And I personally have had a look over um over the old Castle PT website and and and the healthy plus nasal body website to make sure stuff is still accurate enough, but you know, sometimes you miss stuff. Like you said, if you've written a thousand articles, you're gonna miss one or two bits and pieces. Um, and that information is out there forever. The problem is quite often when you have a fairly respected uh website with regards to information, the old information still gets like cited as as evidence that that is still um still accurate, and that as if that still reflects current thinking and all that sort of stuff, and it doesn't always. So I'd like to go into that a little bit. Um, you're gonna hear a lot of things that, like I said, I was told when I when I qualified, and then I the science has moved on, or I just found out that it's complete hokeum, it's just not true. Uh, just whatever. Right? I'll start with one of the obvious ones, and you'll have heard me say this before and kind of go um kind of go through this in in order. For once, I've actually prepared a little bit, I've at least got the headlines prepared.

Crunches And Planks Reconsidered

Peter 4:10

Um, crunches are bad for you, and planks are to be avoided. That's where we're starting. So you still see this a lot when it comes to postpartum recovery, diastasis rectile uh specifically, uh, a lot of people are still, a lot of personal trainers and coaches are still saying that crunches are to be avoided because they put too much pressure on the abdominal wall, or if you picture your stomach, um, the gap that is diastasis rectile, so to speak, your linear halva. If you picture that with like a triangle shape and you then do a squishing motion, you move up and down, you make that gap wider. That's what the thinking kind of used to be. Um so either it came from a you shouldn't do crunches or uh sit-ups, especially, but no one ever really does sit-ups sit-ups anymore. But uh crunches, you shouldn't do them because abdominal pressure is too much, uh, which is you know clearly nonsense. Um, or it is because your stomach gets folded up in such a way that you're actually forcing that gap to be to be wider. And that is an interesting sort of thing, and I've written about this before, and some of you will have heard me mention this before, because it neither of these things are true. Like I said, that is what we used to be taught when you go to your postpartum qualification, the base level is about a six, seven-week course, so they're not tremendously um intensive, and and you know it's it's fairly superficial stuff, so it's it's a six-week module kind of um the the base one that I did. And biomechanics wasn't really a huge part of this, like 10 years ago. There was just a lot of this is the perceived wisdom, and therefore accept it. Now, when you lie on your back and you perform a crunch, and you know, whether your knees are up, doesn't really matter. But all you're doing when you're crunching is basically you're bringing your head and your shoulder blades off the floor, and what happens automatically is your lower back will start to round a little bit and will actually go into the floor. Now, as you exhale through it, so if you do the core breath, and we'll come on to that a little bit in a little bit as well, then your stomach stays flat, there is no internal pressure at all, and there is not really any movement in the abdominal muscles that creates that triangle shape that that pushes your uh your gap wider, so to speak. That that that movement is just not there. Um and I'm putting aside the fact that even if that movement was there, it wouldn't necessarily make the gap any wider, right? So, but it it just doesn't make any sense for that to be the case. But that is what we used to be told, right? That is genuinely what the thinking used to be, and the issue with that is that it still gets repeated a lot. You need to avoid crunches. Now, the the reason, like I said, if you exhale through the motion, as I always tell people on the healthy post-natal body uh in the HP and B program and every single website, every single YouTube clip that we have, and there's like 150 exercises on there. Um, every single one of them I talk about how to breathe, right? Every single one of them. So, you know, it's it's it's tedium. That's what it is. My 10-year anniversary, the the the metal anniversary of metal is tedium. Um, so you know, you you move that to if you exhale through it, there is no internal pressure. Now, the issue with crunches isn't that they make your diastasis work, it's that they're not terribly effective at fixing anything, and that's why I don't do them much in the beginning. I think in month three or four of the HP and B program, we start to add things like toe-reach crunches and all that sort of stuff. They do serve a purpose, and you know, they do work the top part of uh the top uh uh top part of your uh abdominal muscles, they're just not particularly useful when it comes to healing diastasis rectangle. That is not the same as making diastasis worse. Right. The second part of that comment was really very much about avoid planks at all costs, right? And that again comes from the same sort of thinking that we were told that if you hold a plank, a front-loaded plank, right? So a plank where your belly button is is facing the floor, where your belly is facing the floor, they call that front-loaded, and then you have side plank variations and and and reverse plank and all that sort of stuff. But the plank, as most people know it, is just your normal low or high front front-loaded plank. The thinking about avoiding that was that uh if you have diastasis rectal, your core isn't strong enough to hold that position, and this may this may well be true. Um, and therefore it may it make your diastasis worse, or people would hold their breath, and therefore the abdominal pressure, the intra-abdominal pressure would increase, and therefore, it's like that inflated balloon that I that I've spoken about before. That is predominantly what the cause of diastasis recti is, is too much pressure on your core. And if you have too much pressure, internal pressure on on the abdominal wall, you know, you're not going to at least heal your diastasis rectile. Now, the thinking there was that all planks are therefore it's unsafe to do postpartum. Again, when we think about this a bit clearly, and you know, as I always point out, if you've just done a six-week module of anything, you think you might have all the answers, but you know, you actually know nothing. You have you have some when you just qualify for a job, you're still terrible at the job, even though you know you think you have all the knowledge. It's pretty much that there's that Donning Kruger effect, right? Uh, you have a little bit of knowledge, but it's nowhere near as much as you think it is, and and most teachers that are any good, uh, at least at relaying information, can almost convince you that what they are telling you is is is the gospel, and that therefore you need to take this on board, and this is the way it is, and blah blah blah. And you you kind of forget to think a little bit. Most of the time when you go to PT school, thinking is not required. There's a lot of absorbing of information as you're sitting in the classroom and you're playing about with potential clients and you're doing case studies and all that sort of stuff. There's a lot of fighting of information, but there's very little critical thinking involved quite often, uh, which is a problem. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but but you know, it is what it is. So you walk out of your your six-week module, level one, so to speak, level one post-partum qualification, and you think planks aren't a great idea. Now, that is not necessarily true, because if you if you if I said it correctly, then and you heard that correctly, then you're already thinking, yeah, but planks are fine if you can hold a plank, right? If your core is strong enough to hold a plank, but it's for 10 seconds or five seconds or whatever, that by definition is not going to make your diastasis any worse. Because your body's strong enough for it, right? Um so then it becomes a case of are you ready to hold a plank or not? Now, certain planks, like I said, there are various variations of a plank, so a side plank and all that. I'm huge fan of side planks. I think they're in like weeks one to four of the program. Uh, the home, not the home routine, not the daily routine, I don't think. There might well be to be honest, but um definitely, definitely in in the the longer exercise uh sessions, the the strength session, so to speak. They're definitely in there in at least week weeks five to eight. And that's because we really want to work those obliques a little bit. And side plank is a nice way to to to get that done. They can do them on your knees, and you need to progress this. You don't need to start doing a full side side plank right away. Most people can't do them properly, anyways. So you start on your knees and then you move up. But it's the same for uh for a front loader plank. Again, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the most beneficial exercise to do at that stage, but there's a big difference between that and what we were told is that these are unsafe to do at any stage, right? I still see some of the people um on support forums. I uh I get emails from people asking questions sometimes about books they've read or things they've seen on support forums. Uh Peter at healthypostnatalbody.com, by the way. If you didn't know the email address yet, um right, they send me an email saying, Can I do this? I've been told to never do a plank again. That makes no sense whatsoever. That is just not just not true. Planks are not the devil, right? Planks are a really useful exercise if you do them at the right time. Um, so plankton crunches, you are fine to do, you just need to know why you're doing them, and um and you need to know that your body is is ready to to actually do it. So that kind of brings me on to the next one. The

One Size Fits None Postpartum

Peter 13:40

personal approach to postpartum recovery is something that nobody fought about 10-12 years ago, right? And it makes no sense. And I I it sounds stupid even as I say it, but it used to be the case that the way we were told to deal with clients with diastensis rectile, clients with pelvic girdle pain, and all that sort of stuff, is there are standard solutions that everybody needs to do. Um, standard programs that will work best for absolutely everybody, which is of course not true, right? I've said this before, there's at least three different kinds of diastasis recta if you just look at the above navel or below navel and completely open diastasis recti model. Um, and there's a lot more if you take into account muscle functionality, which I always do, right? There's like a billion there's a thousand different models. I can put a hundred women with diastasis recta in a room next to each other, and if two of them will be exactly the same, um then that is quite remarkable already, right? Um, so to think that there is a standard solution to all these different kinds of diastas recta, I just can again doesn't

Diet Myths Bloating And Reality

Peter 14:55

really stack up nicely, and we want to personalize the approach as much as possible. And like I said, that brings me on to the second point: diet, right? It used to be again when you just qualify as your postpartum thing. Again, I it's been a while since I've done any postpartum courses, to be fair. Uh right, I've helped write some, but I haven't I haven't uh I haven't sat through one. But the idea of diet and postpartum recovery, diet for postpartum recovery, uh used to be like, oh, you need to go Mediterranean and you need to avoid bread, and you need to avoid XYZ, um certain foods help you make you bloat and all that sort of stuff. There's to be a voice, uh those foods are to be avoided at all costs. Again, the principle behind that is sound, because I've spoken about abdominal bloating before. Um that you if you have hot chocolate, for instance, warm hot chocolate uh at night always makes at least always makes me bloat, it almost makes everybody bloat because that's what hot milk kind of does. Domino's pizza, the pizza bloat, everybody knows it. Domino's pizza specialists I'm I'm I'm worse with. I I look like I'm seven, eight months pregnant about a dominoes. Um and a lot of my a lot of my clients are the same. Now those foods, yeah, they are to be um minimized, right? You don't want them too often because constant internal pressure, constant bloating means your postpartum recovery for diastasis tracta at least won't be as successful as it otherwise would be. But the idea that you can't have an apple anymore is different for one person for the next. So, what we always used to be told is uh okay, do apples uh basically have all the northern uh fruits and veg and avoid all the exotic ones because of the sugar content and all that sort of stuff. Mango and pineapple and and and all that sort of gun. That that was the thinking as it was relayed to me in the course, and that's of course, it doesn't make sense. I've had clients before that were completely fine with mango, and that blows at the sight of an apple. So, therefore, they are to avoid apples in an ideal world, as Dinky stores in the background. She's had a long day. Uh so so she's so you can't say mango is to be avoided, or you should be drinking chicken broth and all that sort of stuff. There are benefits to chicken broth, but not everybody needs to drink chicken broth all the time. Um, Dr. Crystal Lao, who I had on quite a while ago, talking about basically the sitting the month. You know, I ages ago I did an interview with uh Guangmen Whitney about this, and and she was the she literally wrote the book on this, the as in traditional, the the more traditional approach, and then Dr. Lau updated it a little bit for for modern times and all that sort of stuff, so she stayed true to it and she picked some of the science-y bits from other things and inserted that and took some bits out and she updated it for modern life. That is useful, but not everybody has to do exactly that with regards to foods, right? If you want to eat chili con carne all the time, it doesn't make you blood, then you can eat chili con carne. As long as you have a uh a varied, ideally whole foods and nutrient-rich diet, uh, for postpartum recovery, you will be fine. There isn't really a magic food. Uh, so you don't need to have loads of turmeric in your food to help with anti-inflammatory and all that sort of stuff, and antioxidants, and for you don't need to have like loads of blueberries and all that sort of stuff if you don't want to. I'm not saying these things aren't beneficial, I'm just saying everybody needs to take a personalized approach to this. Uh, so that's definitely changed over the last 10 years. You'll find a lot of my stuff that I do now is is a complete um it's it's a complete shift away from the idea that there is one approach that everybody who is looking for post-partum recovery, the most effective and efficient postpartum recovery, should be looking for. Um, that is really just

Stop Worshipping The TVA

Peter 19:20

not the case anymore. Um something else that we used to be told is that the transverse abdominis, so the TVA, and you hear a lot about this on the internet, is the single most important muscle group to work on postpartum. And isolating it is the way to go. So usually you find out with the the TVA exercises, you lie on on uh on your back, and and then they make you do some sort of talky and type type thing. Uh, we do TVA specific leg raises in in the HP and B program, but that is such an advanced move that um that it really is much later on, and you have to be really quite strong for that. Now, the thinking again used to be right, and this was then level level two postpartum recovery or something like that, that postpartum recovery centered around the TVA. Now, I had Jessica Marie Rose Legio on a while ago, and she was very big on the on the SOAS, and there's a much stronger argument for focusing on that than there is on on the TVA. But for me, again, it's it's it's an oversimplification to think that a muscle needs to be isolated, right? That is that is a silly way to do any sort of recovery for life, uh, is by isolating muscles that make no sense whatsoever, right? We need to move in unison, we muscles need to learn to move in unison. And for me, what I have found personally and is that the glutes are significantly more important postpartum, that a lot of issues stem from the glutes. That doesn't mean we ignore the TVA, because part of that is the core breath. No, no, we do, it's a different kind of breathing and all that sort of stuff. Um, and but it's teaching the core what to do and when. And I speak to a lot of people postpartum, almost everybody postpartum, every woman postpartum struggles to, as you say, fire up one of the glutes. The back kicks in all the time. And one of the things that we used to be told is back problems equals weak core. As in, if you have back problems, that is almost inevitably because you have a weak core. And that is just not the case. That makes no sense whatsoever. Back problems can be caused by the glutes not kicking in, the lats not working, your uh your traps not doing their thing. And basically, that group of muscles surrounding the lower back not pulling. Their weight, so to speak, so the lower back has to overcompensate for everything. Now, admittedly, there is a very strong link between diastasis rectile and back pain. And I know I've I've heard people have argued with me before about this, but I can show at least 10 studies that show that there's a correlation between the two. If not a causal link, there's a correlation between the two. That just shows that if you have poor muscle activation at the front part of your core, the back part of your core, lower back, is going to be an issue. Um that makes sense, but that doesn't mean that that is what your predominant problem is, and that it does not mean at all that that's where the focus should be. And therefore, I think the glutes are significantly more important to focus on than the TVA is, especially because the TVA is, yeah, it's you can work it so easily. It is remarkably easy. You never should really isolate a muscle to that extent. There is no benefit to that. Um I'm not sure how anybody thinks, and this again, this used to be what the thinking was, and and and I've written quite extensively on this now. Um I'm not sure exactly why the thinking shifts is so strongly around the TVA and working it uh in isolation, because that doesn't make sense. If if your client uh if you as a person, your body has to move in uh in conjunction, so several muscles have to work together to say lift the toddler, lift the baby, move things from A to B, all that sort of stuff, then it makes no sense to isolate muscles to the extent that they you're not teaching them to work well together. Um especially if you then combine that, and this is my biggest pet peeve, to be fair, of all times, uh, with regards to uh well, it's not my biggest pet peeve. It's it's the worst thing they teach you

Core Breath Versus Diaphragmatic Breathing

Peter 24:00

in in uh any sort of postpartum class, uh postpartum course. Diaphragmatic breathing. Can we please stop with that already? Just just cut it out. I've I've I've had enough. I've I've written about this, I've spoken before about how it's not the worst thing in the world, and I kind of understand why people used to do it. Yeah, but this is that was me being nice, it's just wrong. Just stop it already. Um because the the the core breath in the way that I teach it is just so much better. It just is, it's not even close, right? You have to when you're teaching postpartum recovery, this for postpartum recovery only, and even then only up to a point, I just much prefer it. Uh, when people get really good at doing the core breath through exercise, so so core breath through hit classes, core breath through tennis, core breath through, uh any sort of athletic endeavors, from football players to soccer is what I'm talking about, then some female soccer players. Um if you teach your body how your core how to contract as you're breathing, to the point that you don't even need to focus on it anymore, but your core just works better, you become a better athlete, and and and your overall function will simply be better. From a diastasis rehab perspective, you have to we have to work that bit underneath the belly button, and and diaphragmatic breathing doesn't even begin to touch that bit. So breathing for your diaphragm is as in emphasizing that diaphragmatic breathing is uh is uh useful in a way, but it is nowhere near good enough for postpartum recovery breathing. It has to be the core breath, guys. We have to like I said, I'm gonna be pretty hardcore on this uh going forward. I I used to be okay with diaphragmatic breathing, but I I just can't anymore. It is it is such a it's it's it's it's not even 50% compared to the core graph. I'm I'm I if I say 70 uh 70% up, I I'd be nice. It is just nowhere near there. So if you don't know what the core breath is, check out the video, it'll be in the podcast description as well. I'll make sure I put it in this time. Um, and I again I know I have to reshoot this thing because it's it's years old, and and you know, we have to put more effort into our videos now and all that sort of thing. But it is it is important that people get this right. So I'll do it and I'll throw it up on the threads and uh maybe even Instagram, even though I don't do anything on Instagram, I'm just healthy postnatal body on threads, right? Um, Instagram and Facebook are just for updates from when when another podcast episode is up. Right. Finally, and this will be uh I think this this will be my finally, because I could to be fair, I could do this

Train For Real Life Lifting

Peter 27:00

all all day long. There's another thing by the way, postpartum training should focus on the core. This again, this is what you hear a lot in in postpartum recovery class. Um, by core we mean everything except for the arms and the limbs, right? Um in this particular in this particular case. So they're talking about uh back muscles, your pelvic floor muscles, uh glutes are part of the core, and and the front bit of your core. So all your uh your TVA, your abs, and all that sort of stuff. Postpartum recovery has to be about more than just a core, simply because, like I already briefly touched on, we have to teach the body to work together well. And and women have to have to be able to get through life without getting injured, and they have to be strong enough to lift the baby. You know how one of the things that always drives me nuts. You know how every single man in the world who's a dad starts throwing the baby up in the air and catching her, catching him or her. We that's an effect. They all do it. Every every every dad I've ever met does that, at least, ladies, if you're if you're listening to this, my husband doesn't do it. I bet you, I bet you he does, because it's fun, right? It's fun to throw a baby up in the air, even if it's just a little bit and then catch him or her again. Right, that's a nice thing to do, and you and the kids love it, and it's all it's all good. The amount of to then not train women that to be able to hold a five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten kilogram weight above their head for a little bit, it's just that just doesn't make any sense, right? Arm strength, shoulder strength, and all that sort of stuff is a thing, but we have to teach that it's not just about arm strength. You know, there's a there's a combination move on the healthy plus natal body program called hammer curl into bicep curl into arnold press. And that is one of those it works the biceps and it works the shoulders and and all that sort of stuff. It's again, it's on the YouTube channel hammer curl into bicep curl into arnold press. Um, and it's a combination of muscles that we're using there, and it's picking baby up, pressing them overhead, picking baby up, pressing it overhead. That is what that move is about. We have to start educating the female body, so to speak, postpartum, as in how to function when moving weight about. In an ideal world, even side to side, which is why Russian twists and all that sort of stuff, pay-off uh payload presses, wood choppers and all that sort of stuff are quite useful. Downward woochers, uh, upward wood choppers if you want to do it, cross-body wood choppers, and all that sort of stuff, is very useful because you're moving a weight, a baby or toddler or whatever, or buggy or whatever, from A to B. So to just focus postpartum on the core and not incorporate the arms and the legs in this, it's just it's it doesn't make sense. Postpartum recovery has to include absolutely everything again. And and ten years ago, even six, seven years ago, I don't think enough postpartum programs taught people this. And and even now, if I see some of the postpartum programs that you can buy out there as a as a postpartum woman, they don't include that at all, and it just doesn't make sense. But they include two or three kilogram weights and all that sort of stuff. You're going to keep feeding your baby. I keep saying this. You're going to keep feeding your baby, that baby is gonna get heavier, and you still need to be able to pick him or her up. So you have to train your body for that. Your core can't be weak, it can't be strong holding a plank and a weak picking a baby up. Because you know, you've taught it the wrong thing. The the the exercises that we do have to have a functional element to them. And it's great if you can hold a five-minute plank, but if you can't pick your baby up without doing your back in or just in your belly uh popping out because you're holding your breath, because you're never taught your your core how how that actually works. That it just doesn't make any sense. And we have to move away from that. Then this brings me on to the last point, and this this genuinely is uh is my biggest uh one of the biggest peppers. Diastasis

The Truth About “Diastasis Safe”

Peter 31:35

recti safe versus diastasis recti-unsafe workout. There is no such thing as either. The only diastasis recti-safe workout you can do is a workout that you can cope with. Um a diastasis recti-unsafe workout is a workout you cannot cope with yet. And that can be the same exercise routine for the say uh for different people. If I go onto YouTube now and I Google diastasodecti safe workout, I'm going to get hundreds of videos. All of exercise routines that use yeah, they're they're just movement. And movement is great, but it it doesn't it doesn't mean anything. Most of them don't actually help heal diastasodrecti because that's not what they're catered for. Most of the instruction is either terrible or missing, right? It doesn't tell you how to breathe through an exercise and what you should be feeling and all that sort of stuff. It's just go do these mountain climbers. Almost Joe Wick style, right? And um, as in this is how you jump. You just go, yeah, Joe, but I need a bit more guidance. And Joe Wicks and all that is lovely, by the way, if you don't have any any injuries. Um, so that's or or any sort of rehab requirement, and Joe Wix is fine, but that type of workout is fine, but it's you cannot do that for postpartum. You just can't. I almost went full Dr. Cox there, uh Cox there, if you remember um Scrubs. Like, so it's that is just not how how it works. There is no such thing as a disaster rectif safe workout that is safe for everybody, diocesous rectif unsafe workout that is unsafe for everybody. That doesn't exist, right? So we need to move away from that term. The only thing you want to look out for is exercises that heal your diocese recti, which is a lot, a lot of them if you do them properly, almost I would argue every single one of them will help heal your diastys rectify if your body's able to do it and you breathe properly. Right? That makes it the diastys recto safe work. I can make a I can heal someone's diastys recti and just have them do bicep curls. Right? That in bicep curls, shoulder presses become part of that thing, and and that will still help heal their diastysis recti. Just because they're breathing properly and their postures properly, and they know how to activate the right muscles at the right time, the right core muscles at the right time as they're shifting a weight about the point of that particular exercise for anybody listening to thinking, oh, bicep curls, Peter, about the biceps. Yeah, but the point of a bicep curl when we're trying to heal diastasis recti is not just the bicep, there has to be more to it than that, right? So that brings the core into play much more than say bicep curl does where you just focus on activating the bicep and ignore everything else. In the same way that my clients don't wear weight belts when they deadlift. I I I'm not having it. Because I'm not training power lifters. Right? I I'm training for for uh postpartum recovery, sure, or athletic benefit. Um and athletic benefit, unless you are wearing a weight belt uh when you're playing a sport, you should not be wearing it in the gym. It is that simple, in my humble opinion. Um, even in my arrogant opinion, it's that simple, right? For postpartum recovery, we don't wear belts and all that sort of stuff as we're exercising, as we're teaching the body to move. We're not then telling the body, oh, but don't worry, an external thing will take care of this. Because that's the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.

Reviews Requests And What’s Next

Peter 35:28

So uh that's it for this week, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you get something out of this. Peter at healthypostatobody.com. If you if you could give us, you know, it's episode 250. I've been doing this for a while. Give us a like. We've we have like 160 odd reviews uh or or or stars and and some reviews on on Apple, whatever you call it. I would really like some more reviews, that'd be awesome. Uh so if you would be kind enough to do that, that'd be appreciated. Peter at healthypostnatal buddy.com. If you have anything you want me to cover this year or over the next class, help me 250 episodes. Um, like I said, next week, perimenopause, and then we're doing uh I was trying to do a financial literary with literacy with kids and all this sort of stuff that might be coming out in the in the near future. I've got a ton of stuff coming up. Follow me on threads, healthy postnatal body on threads as well. Um, because I'm quite yappy on that. You'll you're gonna get a response and you're gonna like it. I'm telling you, I'm quite active on that. Um, you take care of yourself, have a tremendous week, and I'll be back next week. Right? Bye now.