Everything You Should Know About Postpartum Weight Training

Everything You Should Know About Postpartum Weight Training

Mar 1, 2022 mindpump

When it comes to postpartum weight training, it becomes more of a mental shift than anything else. You aren’t coming off vacation or an easy break away from lifting. You just experienced both a huge mental and physical change that may have taken a toll on one or both.

The key when it comes to getting back into training is your mindset.

Take Your Time

You just had a baby. There is no reason to jump into a super intense 1RM training program. Listen to your body and start where you are comfortable. Even if it means going way easier than you anticipated, just keep in mind that you will get back any strength you might have lost, it may just take some time. Use this as an opportunity to revisit technique adjustments, and focus on quality workouts.

Be Flexible with Your Workouts

This may be the toughest part of all. Now that you have a baby, we don’t have the freedom to go to the gym whenever we want. Scheduling, and flexibility becomes more important than ever. You may not get your five days of lifting in like you used to. This could be due to lack of sleep and/or time. The best thing to do here, is to switch to a 2-3 day full body approach that factors in these changes.

By incorporating a full body approach, even if you only got one workout in that week, you will still hit every body part. That is a win! If you had stuck to a body part split you may have hit your legs, and completely missed the upper body, and now your routine is really thrown off. Even if 1-2 workouts a week is all you can get for the first couple months, that is still MORE than enough to maintain any strength and even build on some lost strength. Think of it as laying the foundation so that when you have a little bit more control of your schedule, your progress will be consistent. There’s no sense in overreaching if it means injuring yourself, and hampering your progress even more.

Slowly Add Movements Back In

Because we are now a little tighter on time, we need to make that time count. Include compound movements that allow you to hit multiple muscles within one exercise. This will help keep any gains you have or make sure that you are getting enough stimulus to grow overall. Including movements like a press, squat, row, and maybe some variation of a deadlift will make sure your smaller muscles are getting hit along with your bigger muscles.

If you really feel like you fell behind, don’t feel the need to rush back into heavy weights. Maybe just increasing your activity throughout your day in the form of taking your baby on walks, or just using the time you are with your baby, to get movement will be more than enough. Trust your instincts. Choose low impact movements. 

Getting Stability Back

Your core muscles will have most likely taken a hit seeing as you just had a baby. Make sure to incorporate exercises that strengthen your pelvic floor as well as your abdominal muscles. You’ll want to make sure these muscles gain their strength back so as to not have any imbalances down the road. Exercises such as hip mobility drills, and anti rotational core work like Palloff presses will help here. Side planks, and deadbugs are other core drills you can incorporate. Using split stance exercises like lunges, or doing presses on a physioball will further help challenge your core while still hitting the major muscles.

Progression

Whether it’s through increasing your step count, or when you get back to lifting weights, make sure to include some form of progression. In the gym, this may look like very slowly increasing the weight (but not at the sacrifice of form), or adding an extra rep week to week. If it is for your core work, it may also be using time increases for plank holds. Whatever method you choose, the key here is to just do a little better than you did the week before.

Whether you just had a baby, or are years since you had a baby, the process is still the same. Take your time, focus on steady progression, and make sure to hammer down quality technique. Health is a journey, and we see success through small consistent habits done throughout the year.