Abdominal exercises are not just for building six packs. They have other uses such as alleviating your lower back pain, strengthening your abdominal muscles, and improving your overall health. For pregnant and postpartum women these exercises are especially important since for them it is not just about getting a better body shape but also about avoiding future complications and a lot of pain.
A woman undergoes a lot of changes during pregnancy. These include changes in the muscles as well since the body needs to accommodate a growing fetus. In order to allow the baby to grow, the muscles become laxer and be more stretchable. The abdominal muscles stretch the most. These stretch about 50% or more than their usual length. This could weaken these muscles causing lumbar compression. Doing abdominal exercises can strengthen the muscles. Strengthened muscles would be able to support the uterus better. They also decrease pelvic pressure and lumbar compression thus decreasing the lower back pain and pelvic pain.
Abdominal exercises done during pregnancy and postpartum also help your body deal with the condition called diastasis recti. It is a normal condition in which the abdominal muscle called rectus abdominus splits along the length so as to make room for your growing baby. Most women get this condition. Due to the diastasis your lower back will get lesser support and hence will cause you pain. There may be other discomforts as well. Also, after the pregnancy the rectus abdominus needs to join together and if you do not control the diastasis with exercises your body may have difficulty doing this. This would lead to problems such as umbilical hernia in future.
Abdominal exercises also help you have a safer and easier delivery. Other than that pilates and other exercises improve your posture and decrease pains and aches. They strengthen the pelvic floor and back which in turn protect you from any future injury. These exercises also help postpartum women get back into shape quickly.
All in all, it is very important that pregnant and postpartum women do abdominal exercises. Most exercises are safe enough though you must consult your doctor before you start on anything. Remember to drink lots of fluids while you go about these since the baby would be taking food from you and would require adequate nutrition. After postpartum if you still have fat to lose you may want to consider fat reduction exercise routines such as P90X. You may learn more on P90X, P90X reviews, and P90X workout from the links given below.
