How Diastasis Can Affect Exercises for Pregnant Women

Video Transcript

"In this final series I’ll be demonstrating exercise for your abdominals. Before we begin I want to discuss with you something called diastasis recti, or just diastasis. Before I tell you what that is, let’s go over the anatomy of your abdominal. Your rectus abdominis is the long, lengthy part of your abdominals. Your transverse abdominis is the lower part it goes around your waist. Your obliques are here on the side. Diastasis occurs in the rectus abdominis, there is something called the linea alba which is fiber seam that connects the rectus abdominal, right in the middle, straight down the middle. Sometimes during pregnancy, this separates kind of like a zipper. So imagine a zipper zipping all the way down and your abdominals are separating as that’s happening. It’s okay it happens to a lot of pregnant women, but there are things that you can do, you can still do abdominal exercises, but there are safety precautions that we must take. How do I know if I have diastasis? Well I’ll show you. Go ahead and lie flat down on your mat, you’re going to bend your knees and place your feet on the floor. I want you to take two fingers right below the navel about one or two inches below your navel at a 90 degree angle to your rectus abdominis you’re going to palpate your transverse abdominals. What I’m going to have you do is take a big inhale, exhale and let your shoulders and head off of the mat, with your other hand right in that section between the rectus abdominals, you’re going to see a little bit of a bulge, right above that bulge you’re going to try to stick one – two – three or how every many fingers you can fit into that gap. You will feel a gap, if you do not feel a gap, that’s a good thing. If you do feel a gap, figure out how many fingers you can fit in between that gap, once you figure that out, go ahead and relax, come on up to sitting and I’ll tell you what that means. If you can fit one finger in that gap between your rectus abdominis, that’s normal and you can continue a regular abdominal work program. If you can fit two fingers, you are experiencing a little bit of diastasis, so you can still do abdominal crunches and abdominal exercises, you just cannot do oblique twist. So nothing where your truck rotates side to side. If you can fit two or more fingers in that are, eliminate abdominal crunches on the floor, you don’t want to do oblique twists side to side and you don’t want to do leg lowering exercises. You only want to do pelvic tilt and abdominal contractions, even though I’m giving you this information, you still want to consult your doctor to make sure that this is okay with him. This is basic information; please consult your physician before you continue if you do feel that you have diastasis. We’re going to go ahead and continue. "