Graded, foundational, intentional rehab work is essential for healing. I want to say that clearly upfront, because nothing in this post is an argument for bouncing back. Learning to breathe well, find your rib-pelvis stack and reconnect your deep core and pelvic floor is the first step I teach every client…and it’s non-negotiable.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of women get stuck there: still doing the same supine core work, glute bridges and bird dogs months later, wondering why their body doesn’t feel stronger. If that’s you, the problem usually isn’t that you did something wrong early on. It’s that your program never asked you to progress.

Why Your Body Needs Progressive Challenge to Adapt

Muscle, connective tissue, and your nervous system all adapt to the specific demands placed on them. If the demand never changes, the adaptation stops. This is true after any significant physical event, not just postpartum: rehab from a surgery or injury follows the exact same pattern, starting gentle and controlled, then deliberately increasing load, complexity and intensity over time.

Foundational postpartum work is genuinely important, but it’s calibrated to a body that just went through pregnancy and birth—it is not going to stay appropriate forever. If you’re still working at that same level months later, your tissue and nervous system have no new reason to adapt. Strength stalls not because your body can’t handle more, but because it’s never been asked to.

“Diastasis Safe” Isn’t a Real Category of Exercise

A lot of postpartum fitness content is built around a fear based narrative; lists of “diastasis-safe,” “postpartum safe,” and “c-section safe” exercises, as if certain movements are inherently dangerous and others are inherently fine. In reality, whether an exercise is appropriate depends on how it’s loaded, how well you’re managing pressure through it and where your body is at, not on the exercise itself.

A deadbug done with poor pressure management can stall progress. A deadlift done with good pressure management and appropriate progression can be completely appropriate, even with a diastasis present. The exercise isn’t the variable that matters most. Your capacity, technique and progression are.

This matters because fear of specific exercises keeps a lot of women stuck doing the same small handful of approved moves indefinitely; “well if I have a diastasis I can’t possible to X movement without damaging my core”, which brings us back to the same problem: no new demand, no new adaptation.

Coning and Doming Are Feedback, Not a Stop Sign

Coning (a ridge or dome forming down the midline of your abdomen) is something many women are taught to fear and to stop immediately whenever they see it. But coning is information, not an injury. It tells you that in that specific moment, under that specific load, your system isn’t managing pressure well enough to keep the abdominal wall stable.

That’s genuinely useful feedback—it just isn’t feedback that means “never do this again.” It usually means one of a few things: the load is too heavy for where you’re at right now, your breathing or bracing strategy needs adjusting, or the position needs to be regressed slightly while you build capacity. Address one of those and the same movement pattern is often completely fine.

Treating every instance of coning as a hard stop, rather than a cue to adjust, is one of the most common reasons women avoid loading their core altogether—which, again, removes the very stimulus needed to build real strength there.

Signs Your Program Isn’t Challenging You Enough

A few honest questions worth asking about your current training:

• Are you still doing the same sets, reps, and load you started with weeks or months ago?
• Are you training to a genuine level of effort, or does every session still feel easy?
• Are you moving through more than one position and plane of motion, or still mostly on the floor?
• Are you adding dynamic, more complex variations over time, or repeating the same handful of static exercises?
• Are you lifting more than what you’re already handling in daily life—more than the weight of your toddler, your car seat, your grocery bags?
• Are you increasing weight gradually, in a planned way, rather than staying at the same load indefinitely?
• Are you avoiding certain positions or movements out of fear rather than reintroducing them gradually?

If you’re answering “no” to most of these, it’s not a sign your program/workouts are due for its next phase.

What Progressive Overload Actually Looks Like During Early Postpartum

Progressing doesn’t mean abandoning the foundation or jumping straight into heavy, high-impact training. It means deliberately layering in more demand once the foundation is solid: more load, more complex positions, less external support, more planes of motion, and eventually, real strength training—squats, deadlifts, presses, carries—built on top of the breath and pressure management work you’ve already done.

Done well, this is a gradual process that unfolds over months, with each phase asking a little more of your body than the last. That’s what makes it sustainable, and it’s exactly why programs that stay static, however well-intentioned, stop producing results.

It’s also worth noting that adding external resistance — even though it makes the exercise more challenging in theory — can sometimes actually improve someone’s form, spatial awareness and core coordination. For example, someone doing a hooklying march might feel very little connection, or struggle to produce a bottom-up contraction. Add a banded reach to that same hooklying march and although you’ve technically increased the resistance, the band now helps anchor the ribs, improves breathing mechanics and rib expansion, and ultimately supports better core engagement.

Progression in Action

Progressing an exercise doesn’t usually mean switching to something totally different. More often, it means keeping the same movement pattern and gradually removing support, adding load, or introducing instability—so the same skill gets challenged in a new way. Here’s what that looks like with two patterns.

Anti-Rotation Core

Supine Pallof Press → Tall Kneeling Pallof Press with Iso Adductors → Standing Pallof Press with Overhead Press

The supine Pallof press takes your base of support and gravity out of the equation, giving you a controlled position to build the challenge from and start connecting your breath to your core contraction. Adding a ball squeeze here is a simple tool that helps you pair a deep core contraction with your breath, and the position itself gives you a low-stakes way to practice better pressure management before anything else competes for your attention.

Moving to tall kneeling shrinks your base of support and asks your hips to help stabilize too—adding an isometric adductor squeeze here means you’re not just resisting rotation, you’re integrating hip and core control in the same rep instead of training them separately.

The standing version removes your base of support altogether: now your feet, hips, and core all have to react together to keep you from rotating, which is a much closer match to how your body actually gets challenged in daily life. You can then increase challenging by adding an overhead reach to demand more.

Lateral Chain

Side-Lying Breathing with Forward Reach → Side-Lying Hip Lift with Iso Adductors → Short Lever Side Plank with Iso Adductors → Short Lever Side Plank with Rotation

This one starts with breath and connection in a fully supported position, with no loading at all. Propped up on your forearm in side lying, you’re already challenging the lateral chain from a stable base. Reaching the top arm forward cues the serratus and improves rib positioning, helping you draw a fuller inhale into your ribs—which sets up a stronger core contraction from the very first stage.

Here, breath pairs with an adductor squeeze to cue deep core activation. You lift into a short lever side plank position and hold it for the length of your exhale—just enough to start building lateral chain endurance, without asking for a sustained hold yet.

Now you hold that same position for real, which demands far more from your overall endurance. This is where your bracing mechanics and pressure management get genuinely tested. Start controlled with 10 to 15 second holds, then build gradually toward 30 to 45 seconds.

Once you’ve mastered the isometric hold and can manage pressure well here, it’s time to add a dynamic layer. Reaching the top arm through underneath you keeps you in that same supported position while now challenging lateral chain endurance alongside thoracic rotation and mobility.

Where to Go From Here

If you’ve been doing the same gentle, supportive exercises for a long time and you’re not sure whether it’s time to progress, that uncertainty is common and it’s worth getting a clear answer rather than guessing.

This is exactly the gap Return to Strength is built to close. It starts with the same foundational work—breath mechanics, rib-pelvis alignment and pressure management—because that groundwork still matters. But it doesn’t stop there. From that foundation, the program takes you through a structured, graded progression: more load, more complex positions, more planes of motion, building all the way into real strength training (squats, deadlifts, presses, carries over a 20 week period) so you’re never left stuck doing the same beginner level work indefinitely.

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