I’ve been really open about my experience with low back pain postpartum.
As you know movement is my medicine, I love lifting and any and all kinds of movement.
It’s my stress reliever and my therapy.
When I have low back pain, I can’t move: and I feel trapped, angry and anxious.
After Eva was born I could NOT shake my low back pain. Bending over to pick the kids up, getting them out of their cribs, carrying them around during the day WAS AWFUL.
I struggled to feel my abs and the majority of my go-to strength training exercises no longer worked for my body. EVERYTHING WOULD GO RIGHT TO MY LOW BACK.
If what you’re doing isn’t working… you have to change your approach.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
My pain sent me further down the breathing rabbit hole, and further down the alignment and stress path. These breathing drills helped to gain a foundational awareness of breathing.
90/90 Breathing – This helped me to get some more hip internal rotation, shut down my overactive hip flexors and wake up my adductors ( inner thighs)
Core Breathing + Back Body Expansion– Yes more breathing to help me find my abs again.
I made the choice and opened my mind to things I hadn’t known about and/or believed in before.
I wanted to feel better again!
I am SO THANKFUL to all of my clients for always being my willing and ready guinea pigs and trusting me with their bodies.
Grateful for Sarah Duvall for putting out the PCES (postpartum corrective exercise specialist certification) and being such an awesome anatomy teacher which randomly led me to Katie St. Clair who does an amazing job combining breathing and strength training.
This before and after is just 5 weeks of consistent positional breathing and strength training.
It’s easy to SEE from photo 1 that I couldn’t stack my rib cage over pelvis to create solid intra-abdominal pressure. This is WHY my back would take the brunt of the work.
But how did I make the change?
No amount of simply “cueing ribs of hips” was going to change this.
This all had to start from the inside out with great breathing.
Then great breathing in different positions then I was used to strength training in helped to expand my back and sides and bring my ribcage down waking up my external obliques and serratus.
Can you see the difference in my hinge point?
Interested in seeing the bang for your buck exercises I used to elicit this change?
I’ll be sharing more soon!
Please share this post with someone who is experiencing back pain 💛
