After you deliver a baby, it often takes time and effort to bring muscle tone and neuromuscular pathways back online for the pelvic floor. As with any well-structured and progressive training, don’t compare what you can do with what you see others doing. It’s much more important to start from where you are, and progress from there. The goal of the following beginning postpartum core exercises is to get your diaphragm, TA, and pelvic floor muscles working together again. Because of that, you can do this workout multiple times per week. It shouldn’t make you feel sore so much as…
Author: Alison Naney
Core training after pregnancy demands patience and a back-to-the-fundamentals approach. This is because growing a baby changes your structure in major, long-lasting ways. Given these shifts to your alignment and anatomy, one of the best things you can do to support your return to athletic activity postpartum is to strengthen your core globally. Core training after pregnancy, and in general, isn’t about doing a million crunches to cultivate a six-pack. The goal is a functional core: a core that supports you as you eventually layer on more strenuous strength work and learn to move again with good postural and pelvic…
I love running downhill. So much so that for the ultras I run I tend to subtract the downhill miles from the overall distance to make it more manageable to wrap my head around the undertaking. Years ago, while teaching technique clinics, I quickly realized that not everyone shares this love. While I wanted to work on uphill technique, more people were interested in how to go downhill without knee pain, ankle injuries, or blown-out quads. I’ve come up with three tips that can help with your downhill prowess: engage your core, look down the trail, and practice a quick…
While it’s great that running and hiking are both simple and do not require much gear, the shoe is a very important piece of equipment that causes trouble if not replaced often enough. Running shoes are designed to last between 200 and 500 miles. That may sound like a lot, but even the higher end of that range comes quickly with regular training. With really good form and specific strength, a runner can get by with dead shoes for a limited time. But most people quickly head down the injury road without proper footwear. When an athlete starts feeling a…
As athletes we spend a lot of time thinking about how to get more out of our training, but as coaches we know that the time between workouts is when adaptation occurs. Paying attention to activities that increase mobility and ultimately allow you to train more is a no-brainer. As a massage therapist and coach, I’m often asked what an athlete can do between training or massage sessions to jump-start recovery, improve range of motion, and keep from walking around like a 90-year-old. My answer is always the same: especially if you have a desk job (most of us), one of…