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Hold back on those daily runs for a while as your body and more importantly, your pelvic floor needs time to recover between runs.
The impact from a run can cause the muscles you are working on strengthening to become strained and weakened. Take a day off and allow those muscles to firm up again. Running consecutive days in a row can compound stress to the pelvic floor and lead to injury. Immediately after birth your hormone levels are a bit crazy, and your body still releases the hormone relaxin for about months after the birth Relaxin is the hormone that relaxes the ligaments in your pelvis getting you ready to give birth!
Wear a supportive running bra or 2!
You will need extra support for your runs, especially if you are breastfeeding. Shock absorber, Sweaty Betty and Lululemon do some great ones.
Some of my women even wear 2 bras sometimes to give them even more support! Post-natal exercise does not decrease milk production and it also has no adverse effect on the baby, however, if you exercise and you breastfeed, you will need to drink up to 50 per cent more water than normal on those days. Also if you are doing particularly high intensity exercise, there is a chance of lactic acid build up in your muscles, but everything returns to normal after an hour or so.
Lactic acid can get into breast milk and create a bitter taste, so to avoid this, you may want to feed your baby or pump a half-hour before you exercise and your breasts will also be less heavy and your baby will be less likely to interrupt your workout due to hunger! Here is a rough guide to help you determine how hard you are working out and what the right level should be for you.
Chinese Gender Predictor Is it a boy or a girl? Once you have have had your week check by the doctor and had the go ahead to exercise, focus first on the type of strength-type training and give any high impact cardio a break. One study found that prenatal water aerobics regulars were 58 percent less likely to request pain medication during labor than non-exercisers. If you do develop it—and many fit women do because genetics and age play a significant role—exercise may help prevent or delay your need for insulin or other medications. Makosi's jacuzzi 'pregnancy', Nasty Nick's lies and Kinga's wine bottle My life as a mum Olympian athlete and gold medal winning long-distance runner Jo Pavey, 41, juggles motherhood with intensive training and competitions across the globe. Confronting moment man 'high on Fantasy' collapses in
If you have been working out alot and have a higher fitness level, aim for a during the work intervals. If you are still building up your fitness level, aim for Power walking is a much more gentle form of cardiovascular exercise for you to begin with after childbirth and there are many ways you can make your power walks more fun. Once you have improved your core strength and increased the length and pace of your walks and you feel comfortable you can start a walk-run programme: Try alternating one minute of running with one minute of walking for 30 minutes total 15 minutes of running and 15 minutes of walking.
If that feels too much you can start with minutes walking and one minute of running and once you feel stronger you can progress to running for two minutes and walking for one minute for 30 minutes total. Be sure to take rest days in between! Ladies, it's time to squeeze. Here's how to work that pelvic floor and gradually ease back into exercise. The women and it is usually women that come to our classes, although fathers and male carers are welcomed have to fill out a health questionnaire.
We advise women not to start classes too soon after the birth of their baby — most show up when the baby is a couple of months old. Those mothers who have had a caesarian section are monitored carefully and given alternative exercises to the more taxing core work that forms the final section of the class.
Most modern prams are robust enough for our hilly local park. The hour-long sessions start with power-walking and power-talking. The workouts are as much about getting together and comparing notes as about easing back into running. From the warm up, the buggy-runners move into dynamic drills, running drills, hill running, then finish with core work and stretches.
Everything is done with your baby in tow. Sometimes, the buggies are parked up for the runners to practise their hill-sprints or step-ups unencumbered, which is when this coach puts on her nanny hat.
For me, this is extra-gratifying. So I get to cuddle babies, pass on words of wisdom and guide new parents to their first 5K race. Some buggy-runners treat the class as a social event, repairing to the park cafe for cappuccino and cake every week; others decide to join our Saturday running group or Sunday long-running marathon group.
Some end up loving running so much they join a club and win trophies one ex-buggy-runner is now a sub three-hour marathoner. Many women, like Jo and Paula, go on to run even more strongly after having children.
Topics Fitness The running blog.