Your glutes are one of the biggest players in your pelvic floor and core system — sharing load with your diaphragm, deep abdominals, and pelvic floor to keep your hips, low back, and pelvis stable with every step, lift, and squat you do. So when clients ask me what they should actually be doing in those first few weeks postpartum, glute work is almost always part of the answer.

Here’s why glute strength matters so much, why moving early can genuinely help your recovery, and the 3 exercises I program with clients in the first 6 weeks — plus exactly why each one makes the list

Why Glute Strength Matters for Your Core and Pelvic Floor

Pregnancy brings unique physical changes that make the glutes especially vulnerable toweakness. While these changes are completely normal, they shift the way your body recruitsand uses muscles, often leaving the glutes undertrained at a time when your pelvis and coreneed them most.

In postpartum, the glute-to-core-to-pelvic floor connection needs to be deliberately rebuilt and strengthened. This isn’t just about how your glutes look (although who doesn’t want peachy glutes?!) — it’s more about restoring the shared stability system that supports your hips, low back, and pelvis in daily life.

Why Moving in the First 6 Weeks Actually Helps

There isn’t a right time to start moving that applies to everyone. Some women feel ready to easeback in sooner, others need longer than 6 weeks — it’s individual, with real nuance, and itshould be based on your own symptoms and milestones, not just what week postpartum youhappen to be at.

That being said, healing isn’t passive, and rest alone doesn’t rebuild coordination between your breath, core, and pelvic floor. The goal early on isn’t intensity or bouncing back. Instead, it’s reconnection.

Done well, gentle movement supports circulation and tissue healing, keeps your nervoussystem familiar with basic movement patterns like bracing and hip loading, and can even helpease some of the discomfort that comes with those early weeks.

That’s why I program specific, low-load, fully supported exercises in the first 6 weeks — ones that rebuild the glute-core-pelvic floor relationship without asking your body for more than it’s ready to give.

The 3 Exercises I Program

1. Quadruped Rockback with Block Squeeze

How to do it:

• Start on hands and knees with a block squeezed between your thighs, just above the knees.
• Keeping the squeeze on the block, sit your hips back toward your heels
• Actively hold tension in your glutes the entire time you rock back, feeling them slowly lengthen — don’t let it go passive.
• Breathe into your back and sides as you sit back, then return to the start.

Why it’s on the list: This teaches you to find length through the glutes and hips from a fully supported position, without collapsing through the low back to get there. Keeping the glutes engaged as you rock back is a chance to practice loading them under a stretch rather than just passively stretching — a useful early skill. The block squeeze also cues the adductors, which work closely with the pelvic floor. And because the position naturally invites you to breathe into your back and sides as you sit back, it’s a great way to practice your rib-pelvis stack: keeping your ribs stacked over your pelvis instead of flared or arched, which is foundational for managing pressure through your core.

2. Glute Bridge with Band Serratus Reach

How to do it:

• Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, a resistance band wrapped behind you and held with both hands. For some, you may get better feedback using a light dumbbell or kettlebell.
• Lift your hips into a bridge, squeezing your glutes at the top, maintaining that reach.
• Lower your hips back down with control, maintaining that reach and tension throughout.

Why it’s on the list: You get the glute contraction and strength work of a standard bridge, but the reach adds a serratus and rib mobility component on top — so you’re not isolating the glutes, you’re integrating upper and lower body in the same rep. Reaching overhead against resistance while your ribs are moving requires a controlled exhale and some genuine rib mobility, which is exactly what most postpartum bodies need to relearn

3. Side-Lying Clam to Reverse Clam

How to do it:

• Lie on your side with knees bent and a band positioned just above the knees.
• Keeping your feet together, lift your top knee open into a clam — this is hip abduction.
• Without lowering the leg, rotate it into a reverse clam, moving into hip internal rotation.
• Move slowly and with control between both positions, keeping the leg lifted throughout.

Why it’s on the list: The clam moves the top leg into hip abduction and really fires up the glute medius, while the reverse clam moves that same leg into hip internal rotation. Holding the leg up through both directions is what makes this an endurance exercise, not just a strength one —that sustained hip endurance is a key part of what it’s training. It’s also a great entry point into low-load work: fully supported, minimal equipment, and easy to scale. For example, if the band feels too challenging, you can start by performing without.

How to Know You’re Ready to Progress

These three exercises are meant to be a starting point, not a permanent program. You’ll know you’re ready to progress when the reps start to feel easy to control, you’re not losing your rib-pelvis stack or bracing under load, and you’re moving through full range without pain, pressure, or heaviness. From there, we build in more load, less support, and more complex full body patterns

A Quick Note on Individual Recovery

Every postpartum body heals on its own timeline. Rather than watching the calendar, pay attention to your own signals — pain, leaking, heaviness, or excessive fatigue are all cues to slow down and check in, regardless of how many weeks postpartum you are. When in doubt, work with a pelvic floor PT or a coach who can assess you individually rather than following a generic timeline.

Ready for a Program Built Around You?

Not sure which program is the right fit for where you’re at right now? Take my quick quiz and I’ll point you to the program built for your stage: Take the quiz

Or if you need a more guided approach and a personalized program tailored to your goals and individual needs, you can apply for 1:1 online coaching HERE