How Strong Are Your Ab’s?

 

If you have ever had a baby (or three), you may have noticed the strain pregnancy and delivery can have on your abdomen. Have you ever wondered if you have a diastasis recti or why you continue to sport that mommy pooch? You know… the stomach that looks like you just ate Thanksgiving Dinner? Read on dear friends to find out how to test for a diastasis recti and get rid of that mommy pooch.

 

A quick anatomy lesson

Multiple muscles make up the “true” core but today we put our focus on the abdominal muscle group.

The rectus abdominis muscle, aka the six-pack muscle, is a show stopper and helps bring your trunk upright if you were to say, sit straight up in bed. The external and internal oblique’s run diagonally and play a role in trunk rotation and side bending. The true beauty of all the abdominal muscles, the transverse abdominis, lies deep to the previous muscles discussed. The transverse abdominis or TrA for short is our God-given weight belt. It runs horizontally from the front to the back. It helps keep our organs from popping out, provides support so that we can flail our arms and legs around, and helps flatten our tummies.

 

As you can imagine, when you have a baby or even gain some weight, this puts some strain on the abdominal muscles. This increased strain can assist in developing a diastasis recti (thinning or separating of the abdominal muscles at the linea alba) or the “mommy pooch”.

 

How to check for a Diastasis Recti

 

 

 

A couple of things about Diastasis Recti:

 

• It is completely normal, like 100% normal to develop diastasis recti during pregnancy. As the month’s progress, the diastasis does heal in the majority of individuals. If you are months or years postpartum and still experience a diastasis recti please reach out to me!
• It isn’t always just about the gap! You can have a well-functioning diastasis recti meaning the tension in your soft tissue or fascia is taught and you can spread the load through your abdominal wall.

 

If you did the diastasis recti self-check and didn’t feel a diastasis you can still present with a mommy pooch.

 

A few reasons for the continued mommy pooch:

 

• You continue to stand/sit/function in postures that place stress on the abdominal wall.
• You may be doing abdominal exercises that your core may not be ready for.
• You may need to change up your breathing pattern. Yes, it is true, pregnancy causes all kinds of issues with your breath.
• You may need to re-educate the TrA muscle how to turn on and provide that tension to flatten your belly. If your TrA is not firing on all cylinders you may get abdominal doming. The doming is caused by the rectus abdominis being dominant and not enough TrA activation.

 

How to Get your Transverse Abdominis to Fire

 

A couple of cues you may find helpful:

• Place hands just inside hip bones, you can feel your TrA tension under your fingers.
• Pretend like you have a string tied between your hip bones and draw them together.
• Think of your hip bones as headlights, when you tighten your TrA you want to do so by shining your headlights at one another.
• If you are contracting your TrA, you will see your abdomen flatten.

 

Do You Have Doming?

Check out this Instagram post to see if you have doming.

 

5 Abdominal Progressions

 

What to watch for:

• No breath-holding. Exhale and contract your TrA then perform the exertion part of the exercise (ex. leg lower).
• No doming should be present. If you notice doming occurring, you need to either regress to the previous exercise or spend some time connecting your TrA with the pelvic floor.
• Perform 3 x 10 each leg of the exercise that best fits your current core strength.

 

Marching

 

Marching with Legs Elevated

 

Heel Taps

 

Dead Bugs

 

Bicycles

 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Taryn 🙂