A lot of postpartum women are doing the breathing work and still not feeling it connect. The missing piece is usually not the breath itself, it’s the rib cage behind it.

In the postpartum period, the way you breathe matters far more than most people realise. Not because breathing is a magic fix, but because your breath is the foundation of your pressure management system. Your diaphragm, pelvic floor, deep core and intercostals all work together as a unit and that unit is driven by your breathing mechanics.

During pregnancy, significant physical changes alter how that system functions. Your rib cage shifts as your uterus grows and pushes upward. Your diaphragm gets compressed and has less room to descend. Your pelvic floor is under sustained load for months. Your posture shifts to accommodate a changing centre of gravity. By the time you’re postpartum, the breathing patterns you’ve adapted to may be shallow, anterior-dominant and missing the full exhale entirely.

This matters because:

• If your inhale only goes into your chest, your diaphragm isn’t descending properly then your pelvic floor, which should follow that descent, doesn’t get the signal it needs
• If your exhale is short and incomplete, your ribs don’t fully recoil, your core can’t fully reset, and pressure stays stuck rather than redistributing the way it should
• If your rib cage can’t expand laterally and posteriorly, the breath has nowhere to go — no amount of breathing cues will create movement that isn’t mechanically available yet

The good news is this is trainable. Here’s how I approach it in three steps.

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Step 1: Awareness

Before you can change your breathing, you need to understand what it’s actually doing.

Most people, when asked to take a deep breath, breathe into their belly only or chest — ribcage rising upward, shoulders lifting, little to no lateral or posterior expansion. This is the pattern pregnancy reinforces, and it’s the pattern that needs to shift.

A full, functional breath should expand in all directions: front, sides and back. That’s what we call 360 degree breathing. The inhale creates expansion through the whole rib cage and the diaphragm descends, which produces a gentle downward and outward pressure through the pelvic floor. The exhale is the reversal — ribs descend and recoil, diaphragm lifts, pelvic floor gently returns.

That exhale piece is where I see the most issues. People either cut the exhale short, or they exhale without the ribs actually coming down — so the reset never fully happens.

What to practice:

90/90 breathing
Lying on your back with hips and knees at 90 degrees (feet on a wall or chair). Before you even start breathing, this position helps stack the rib cage over the pelvis — meaning the bottom of the rib cage is aligned over the top of the pelvis rather than flared forward and up. That alignment matters because when the ribs are flared, the diaphragm is already in a shortened, less optimal position before the inhale even begins. Getting the ribs stacked over the pelvis restores the diaphragm’s ability to descend properly on the inhale and fully recoil on the exhale.

From there, place one hand on your lateral ribs and one on your belly. On the inhale, focus on breathing wide into your hands, into the floor beneath you, feeling the posterior rib cage expand into the surface below. On the exhale, take it all the way out. Feel the ribs descend and recoil back toward that stacked position. Don’t rush it — the full exhale is where most people shortchange the movement.

Supported deep squat with posterior rib expansion
Sit on a yoga block in a deep squat position with a pilates ball between your knees and chest. Fold forward slightly, reaching down. This position physically opens the posterior rib cage and gives the breath somewhere to go at the back — many people feel posterior expansion for the first time here. Breathe into the back of the rib cage on the inhale and use the full exhale to feel the ribs recoil.

The goal here isn’t perfection — it’s perception. You’re building an awareness of where your breath is going and where it is or isn’t reaching yet.

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Step 2: Rib Cage Mobility

Awareness gets you so far. But if the rib cage doesn’t have the mobility to actually execute that pattern, the breath has nowhere to go

This is where most programs skip a step. You can cue a 360 degree breath all day, but if the rib cage doesn’t have the mobility to expand laterally and posteriorly  and if the thoracic spine can’t rotate to allow that  the movement pattern simply isn’t available. You’re asking the body to do something it isn’t physically capable of yet.

Your diaphragm attaches all along the inside of the rib cage: front, back and sides. Your rib cage attaches to your thoracic spine. So thoracic mobility and rib cage mobility are directly linked. Restriction in one limits the other.

That restriction also lives in the intercostals — the small muscles between the ribs that control how much the rib cage can expand. Improving rib cage mobility means improving the mobility of the thoracic spine and the length and suppleness of the intercostals, particularly along the lateral line.

What to practice:

Quadruped thoracic rotation with band resistance
On hands and knees, a band anchored at shoulder height provides resistance as you rotate through the thoracic spine. The band creates a pull that encourages you to find more range rather than compensating with lumbar rotation. Keeps the movement honest and specific to the thoracic spine.

TRX lateral line stretch
Holding the TRX straps and leaning away, this opens the entire lateral line — lateral intercostals, lats, quadratus lumborum. Directly improves the capacity for lateral rib cage expansion. Most people feel this stretch somewhere they’ve never felt a stretch before, which tells you how underworked this tissue is.

90/90 side lying weighted thoracic rotation
In a side lying 90/90 position, a light weight in the top hand guides the thoracic spine into rotation while the hips stay stacked. The weight adds just enough load to encourage the thoracic spine to open into range rather than stopping short. This is a more controlled, position-specific drill than the quadruped variation — good for people who need to slow the movement down and really feel where the rotation is coming from.

The aim of this step is to create the physical capacity for the breathing patterns you worked on in step one. Once the rib cage can actually expand, the breath has somewhere to go.

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Step 3: Strengthen the System

Mobility without strength doesn’t hold. If you can only access thoracic rotation and lateral rib expansion in passive, and mostly unloaded positions, it will disappear the second real demand is placed on the system.

This step takes the range you’ve built and trains it under load — so it actually shows up in your lifts, your daily movement and everything else you’re asking your body to do.

This is also where the intercostals get their most direct strength stimulus. The intercostals aren’t just passive structures that allow the rib cage to expand — they have to actively control that expansion under load, resist lateral compression, and contribute to rotational stability. The exercises below demand all of that.

What to train:

Short lever side plank with DB rotation
The side plank position directly loads the lateral line under a stability demand. Adding the dumbbell rotation introduces a rotational challenge that the intercostals have to resist and control — making this one of the more direct ways to strengthen that lateral system under load

Cable row with thoracic rotation
A rowing pattern that includes thoracic rotation at the end range of the pull. The cable provides consistent resistance through the full range, so the thoracic spine has to rotate against load rather than just passively opening. Connects upper back strength directly to thoracic mobility in a functional, loaded position.

1/2 kneeling landmine cross press
The cross body pressing line is what makes this exercise specific to thoracic rotation. Pressing diagonally across the body requires the thoracic spine to rotate under real load  and the half-kneeling stance removes the lower body from the equation so the demand stays through the trunk. This is where the mobility you built in step two becomes usable strength. Probably one of my current favourite upper body accessories!

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Putting It Together

These three steps aren’t a one time fix, instead they’re a framework you come back to as your capacity develops.

Start with awareness. Understand what your breath is doing and where it isn’t going. Then address the mobility that’s limiting it. Before finally, strengthening the system so that what you build actually holds under load.

Breathing mechanics aren’t separate from your strength training. They’re the foundation of it and in the postpartum period, they’re often the missing piece that makes everything else work better.

If you want this kind of progressive, connected work built into a full program, this is exactly how Return to Strength is structured — from the ground up, with every layer earning the next. Try it here for 7 days free