There’s a common assumption that early postpartum means one of two things: complete rest, or waiting until you’re “cleared” to jump straight back into strength training. Neither reflects what your body actually needs in this window.

The first weeks postpartum call for gradual, intentional movement. This is a stage with its own purpose: reconnecting the systems that carry you through recovery and into strength work, rather than skipping past them.

That’s the piece that often gets missed. Recovery isn’t just isolating the core or ticking off a few ab exercises you saw on instagram. Instead the focus should be restoring how several systems work together — breath, pressure, rib cage mobility, hip and glute function, upper body integration — so that when you do progress to loaded strength training, your body is actually ready for it.

Why a full body approach:

Postpartum recovery isn’t a single muscle problem, so it doesn’t have a single muscle solution. In the early weeks, your body is managing pressure differently, breathing differently, and moving through a pelvis, rib cage, and hips that have all adapted to the demands of pregnancy and birth. Strength training built on top of that, without first addressing it, tends to load a system that isn’t ready to receive it yet.

That’s why my postpartum programs focus on these areas, each to a system your body relies on to move well: breath and pressure management, deep core control, rib cage mobility, upper body integration, posterior chain and hip function, adductors, glutes, and length through the glutes and pelvic floor. Together, they’re the foundation strength training gets built on.

Breath and Pressure Management —Rockback Breathing

Everything downstream starts here. Your diaphragm and pelvic floor work as a pressure system, moving together with every breath. In the early postpartum weeks, that coordination often needs to be re-established before anything else progresses.

This starts in a child’s pose position, rounding through the upper back with a ball or pillow placed against the front of the ribs. As you inhale, the pillow blocks expansion at the front, directing the breath toward the back of the rib cage instead.

Most people default to expanding through the front ribs and lose access to posterior expansion, especially in the postpartum period. Re-establishing that back-of-ribcage breath is often the first piece to restore before layering in more complex core or pressure work. You cannot get a true 360 expansion if the back of the ribcage won’t move.

Length to Glutes and Pelvic Floor — Quadruped Rockback with Ball

From all fours, you sit back toward your heels while holding a block between your thighs, without losing your pelvis position. The goal is length, and priming that hip hinge pattern from a supported position.

This targets glutes and pelvic floor together, both of which often become short and overactive in an attempt to compensate for reduced pressure management in pregnancy and the postpartum period. Restoring length here supports the pelvic floor’s ability to lengthen and reflexively contract, which is just as important as its ability to hold tension.

Rib Cage Mobility — Thread the Needle

From quadruped, one arm reaches underneath the body, rotating through the upper back as the opposite hand supports your weight. The rib cage moves with the arm and spine, rotating rather than staying fixed.

Rib cage mobility is often overlooked in postpartum recovery, but the ribs need to move well for the diaphragm to work properly. If the rib cage is stiff or asymmetrical, breathing mechanics compensate around it, which affects pressure management throughout the whole system. Restoring rotation here supports better breath, and better breath supports everything else on this list.

Alongside this, it can be helpful for the aches and pains that come with nursing, feeding and carrying your baby.

Deep Core and Rotation Control — Pallof Press – Supine

Lying on your back with a band anchored to the side, you press the band straight out and hold, resisting the pull that wants to rotate your trunk. The core has to work to keep you still rather than to create movement.

This is anti-rotation work, and it belongs alongside anti-extension work as one of the foundational demands placed on the core. Rather than training the core to flex or crunch, this teaches it to resist force and hold a position under load, which is the type of strength that underpins everything progressive core work is built on.

Hamstrings + Rib Pelvis Stack — 90/90 Breathing with Reach and Hip Lift

In the 90/90 position you breathe first to establish a rib-pelvis stack, keeping the ribs from flaring and the pelvis from tipping out of a neutral position. From there, a reach and hip lift adds proximal hamstring activation, pressing through the heels to lift the hips while maintaining that stack.

This combination matters because the hamstrings, closer to their attachment at the pelvis, play a direct role in positioning it well. Layering that on top of a maintained rib-pelvis stack means you’re training hip extension and pelvic control together.

Adductors — Supine Bent Knee Band Adduction

Lying on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the ground, a band around the knees provides resistance as you press in against it. Keeping the feet grounded allows you to control the range of motion while maintaining pelvic control throughout.

This is a modified, isolated way to load the adductors without asking the pelvis to manage more than it’s ready for. It gives the adductors direct work in a position that keeps everything else stable, making it a suitable entry point before progressing to more demanding positions.

Serratus —Serratus Push Up

From quadruped, you push through the hands to round the upper back slightly, protracting the shoulder blades away from the spine before returning to start. The movement is small and controlled, coming from the shoulder blades rather than the arms.

The serratus anterior often gets overlooked in postpartum recovery, but it plays a key role in shoulder stability and connects into the same rib cage and breathing mechanics addressed earlier in this list. Training it here supports upper body integration alongside the core and pressure work already in progress.

Glutes and Hips — Glute March with Band Reach

With a band looped around your body and held in each hand, you march one knee up at a time while maintaining pelvic position, reaching both arms forward over the chest against the band’s resistance. That reach asks the serratus to work to maintain rib positioning, even as the lower body moves.

The marching itself trains the glutes and pelvic control, while the reach layers in the upper body and rib work from earlier in the list. It’s a natural closing point for this stage, asking the whole system to work together rather than isolating one piece at a time.

Bringing It Together

None of these eight areas work in isolation, and that’s the point. Breath and pressure management, deep core control, rib cage mobility, upper body integration, posterior chain function, adductors, glutes, and length through the glutes and pelvic floor all feed into one another. Together, they’re what makes strength training worth building on top of, rather than something your body has to compensate around.

This stage is the groundwork for what comes next and how I approach postpartum recovery in my Return to Strength postpartum program.

Early postpartum sessions are just 15 minutes, and you can start as soon as you’re ready postpartum—yes, as early as your first few weeks. From there, it takes you through six phases, building up in duration (30–45 mins), volume and overall challenge:

• Phase 1 — Foundational & Rehab: deep core, rib mechanics, and the breathing patterns that underpin everything that follows.
• Phase 2 — Rehab & Reconnect: the same foundation, now under more load and in more demanding positions.
• Phase 3 — Early Build: your first real strength phase, with supersets, RPE targets, and progressive loading that treats you like someone who is capable of getting genuinely strong.
• Phase 4 — Progressive Build: 4 training days a week for the first time, with plyometric introductions and loading that reflects how far you’ve come.
• Phase 5 — Strength Integration: a dedicated 4-day split across upper body, lower body, full body, and a glutes and hamstrings day. This is where it starts to feel like serious training.
• Phase 6 — Building Capacity: the final phase. Heavier, more athletic, more demanding, and built on a postpartum foundation that makes it sustainable. This should feel like a strength program, not a rehab program, with a solid postpartum foundation underneath it.

There are also 3 program variations—gym, home, and an advanced barbell track for anyone working toward returning to compound lifts. The original program was always adjustable based on equipment, but the home program now takes the guesswork out entirely, making it even easier to follow.

This version doesn’t stop just as you’re getting started. It carries you all the way into the strength phase of training, where you can really feel the difference a proper foundation makes.

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