Motherhood is considered the pinnacle of existence as a woman. I certainly attest the feeling of absolute bliss that only our children are capable of making us feel. There is no denying the awe of holding a new life in your hands. Yet… one look at the mirror may bring our soaring spirits to ground zero! Even if the fact remains that the females are designed to carry life in their womb, the frailties of the physical body demand educated care and responsible action.
As part of the natural process, the abdominal muscles go through a unique lengthening process when women become pregnant. As the stretch from inside increases, the body adds functional units called sarcomeres to the abdominal muscles to make them progressively longer and accommodate the growing fetus. Just as naturally, after childbirth, the reduction in the stretch force also reduces the sarcomeres allowing the abdominal muscles to return to its initial length. However, repeated and frequent pregnancy does not provide ample time for this rebounding process. Further cesarean section too changes the delicate biochemistry of the body hampering with its natural extension and rebounding activities.
If for any of the above two reasons – getting pregnant too soon or having a cesarean section, or for any other reason including excessive compulsive eating during pregnancy, excess weight gain or defective recruitment of abdominal wall, if the body is strained before it reaches its normal muscle length / tension ratio, the body may well forget to rebound back! Muscles have memory! Constantly extending the abdominal muscles with each additional child birth without adequate time to recoup, may lead to your body not ‘remembering’ what it should actually be like.
Pelvic floor muscles are enormously strained during pregnancy and while delivering the child. Neither too much too soon, nor too little too late is going to help recover to normal functionality. Typically if the muscles are too weak and are pressured to work too soon, women learn to avoid contracting the painful muscles and thereby develop faulty muscle recruitment patterns. On the contrary, if too much time is given your muscles may not ‘remember’ how to get back to normal tension. It is crucial to begin and follow a structured post-natal exercise regime with proper guidance and awareness.
When a three year old runs and jumps up at the mother, she has to far exceed the functional capacity of a body builder working on mere ‘dead’ weights. Training only selective isolated muscles, like most programs for men do, are not going to improve the functionality in women. Stabiliser deficiencies will lead to overloading of bony structures. Postural imbalances like an anterior pelvic tilt will lead to excessive stress on knees, ankles and feet. So especially for women after childbirth, it is crucial to first train the stabiliser muscles and only then the prime movers. Weakness in the stabilisers in the leg potentially causes weakness of the abdominal wall and pelvic floor.
So the two must dos for every new mother when they begin their exercise routine is to work on recruiting their abdominal wall by performing core conditioning exercises and secondly to work on their stabilisation by performing stabilisation exercises.
No matter how beautiful you are, when you are in pain, you have a bad attitude! So remember Train! But don’t Drain!
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in Food & Health in May 2013
