Postpartum recovery often gets reduced to core work or pelvic floor exercises done in isolation. But recovery isn’t just about one muscle group, instead it’s how your whole body works together to manage load and pressure again. Glutes, hips, breath, and pelvic floor are all part of the same system. Leaving any one piece out of your training means the rest of the system is left compensating for it.

This is why a full body approach matters. Strengthening your glutes and hips isn’t separate from pelvic floor recovery, it’s part of it.

How the glutes function and a simple explanation of the pelvic floor

The glutes are one of the primary muscle groups responsible for hip extension, moving your leg behind your body, and for stabilising your pelvis when you’re standing, walking, or loading one leg at a time. Strong, well-functioning glutes help keep your pelvis supported and controlled during everyday movement (not just during training).

The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that sit at the base of your pelvis, supporting your pelvic organs and working alongside your diaphragm and deep abdominal muscles to manage pressure through your trunk. It responds to how you breathe, how you brace and how you move.

As a trainer, my role isn’t to assess or diagnose pelvic floor function, that’s the work of a pelvic floor physical therapist (and I recommend everyone sees one during pregnancy AND postpartum). What I can do is consider how you train and how movements like glute and hip work support the pelvic floor’s ability to function well within your broader training.

How they’re connected

The glutes and pelvic floor are connected through a real anatomical relationship. The glutes attach at the sacrum and function as a counterbalance to the pull the pelvic floor places on it. When glute strength is sufficient, this counterbalance holds. When it isn’t, the sacrum and tailbone can tuck under from the pelvic floor’s pull without enough opposing support, leaving the pelvic floor to pick up more of the stabilising work than it’s designed for.

Glute medius plays a similar role from a different angle. It helps keep the pelvis level during single leg loading, like walking or running. When it’s underactive, the pelvis can shift side to side with each step and that asymmetry places uneven, repetitive load through the pelvic floor.

This is often where an overactive, or hypertonic, pelvic floor develops, not from the pelvic floor being weak, but from doing more stabilising work than it should because the hips and glutes aren’t fully supporting the system. A pelvic floor working this way often struggles to lengthen and contract fully with breath and movement, which can show up as posterior tension. This would be diagnosed by a pelvic floor physical therapist.

That tension matters for training too. Posterior pelvic floor tension can limit hip internal rotation, and internal rotation is required for the glutes to reach a fully lengthened position. Without that length, the glutes can’t be loaded as effectively for strength. This is why addressing pelvic floor tension and hip mobility often needs to happen before glute strength work can be fully effective, and why the two are trained as one connected system rather than in a fixed order.

Categories to consider

Now the connection between glutes, hips and pelvic floor is more clear, the next step is knowing what to actually train. These four categories cover the full range the hips and glutes need to move through to support pelvic floor function well.

Eccentric glute control and length

Builds control through the lengthened range of the glutes, supporting how the muscle absorbs and manages load rather than just producing force. This ties directly into hip internal rotation and glute length discussed above, training the glutes through a fuller range supports the system rather than working around a restricted one.

RDL

The RDL loads the glutes through a hip hinge into a lengthened position, controlling the descent rather than just producing force on the way up. This eccentric loading builds the glute’s capacity to absorb and manage load through range, which supports length to the posterior pelvic floor muscles. Because this movement also requires hip flexion under load, it reinforces the hip mobility needed to access a fuller glute length and control.

High step up, eccentric (bodyweight)

This movement shifts the eccentric emphasis to a single leg pattern, controlling the lowering phase as the working leg lengthens through hip and knee flexion. Training eccentric control unilaterally adds a stability demand the RDL doesn’t, since the pelvis has to stay level while one glute manages the load alone. This directly supports glute medius’s role in controlling pelvic position during single leg loading, connecting eccentric capacity to the frontal plane stability covered in the hip abduction category.

Hip extension at end range

Builds strength and control at full hip extension. Glute max is the primary hip extensor, and it does the majority of its stabilising and force producing work at the end of hip extension range, the position most training programs skip in favour of mid-range movements like squats. Training end range extension builds the strength glute max needs to counterbalance the pelvic floor’s pull on the sacrum, which is the mechanism discussed in section 3. Well developed glute max strength here also supports pelvic stability during upright, loaded movement like walking and standing.

Lumbar locked hip extension

This movement isolates hip extension while controlling lumbar movement, ensuring the extension force comes from glute max rather than compensating through the lower back. This matters directly for the counterbalance mechanism discussed earlier, if the lumbar spine or lower back takes over the extension work, glute max isn’t building the strength needed. Locking out lumbar movement keeps the training stimulus specific to end range glute strength.

Hip thrust – Iso Adductors

The hip thrust itself trains glute max through end range hip extension under load, building the strength this category is centred on. Adding an isometric adductor squeeze layers in co-contraction between the adductors and glutes, which has a stabilising effect through the pelvis during the movement. This combination reinforces hip extension strength while also supporting the kind of coordinated pelvic stability that carries over into single leg loading and the frontal plane demands covered in the next category. Start bodyweight like shown and then progress to loaded variation.

Glute medius and hip abduction

Glute medius works primarily through hip abduction, moving the leg away from the body, and its main functional job is controlling pelvic level during single leg loading. Training it directly through hip abduction, rather than relying on it to work incidentally through compound patterns, builds the specific strength it needs for that stabilising role.

This matters because glute medius weakness is one of the more direct contributors to pelvic asymmetry during walking or running. When abduction strength is insufficient, the pelvis drops or shifts during single leg stance, and that repetitive asymmetry places uneven load through the pelvic floor.

Side lying hip lift

This works the glute medius directly through hip abduction against added resistance, building the strength for pelvic stability. Loading the movement in a controlled, more isolated position allows glute medius to be trained more directly, making it an effective starting point before layering in more dynamic, single leg loaded patterns.

Short lever side plank leg extension

This combines frontal plane control through hip abduction with a controlled return into hip flexion, adding an eccentric and coordination demand on top of the isolated strength built through the hip lift.

It’s worth noting this isn’t just working the top leg. The bottom hip and lateral chain are working hard to stabilise the whole position, which means the bottom glute medius is firing just as much, isometrically, to hold the trunk and pelvis steady while the top leg moves through range. This makes it an effective way to train both glute medius roles at once, dynamic control on one side and isometric stability on the other.

Single leg squat to box – Goblet

This shifts the demand into a loaded, functional single leg pattern, requiring glute medius to control pelvic level while the whole leg manages a squat pattern under load. The goblet hold adds an anterior counterbalance, increasing the coordination demand between the hips and trunk. This ties the isolated glute medius strength built in the first two movements into a more integrated pattern.

Hip rotation

Builds control through internal and external rotation at the hip, supporting pelvic positioning and reducing unwanted rotation through the trunk during movement. Since internal rotation specifically is tied to glute length and posterior pelvic floor tension, this category plays a direct role in whether the other three categories can be trained effectively.

Side lying clam to reverse clam (banded)

This trains hip external and internal rotation, building control and endurance through both directions. Moving between ER and IR under constant band tension asks the deep hip rotators and glutes to work through a full rotational range with minimal rest, building the kind of rotational endurance the hips need during repetitive, asymmetrical loading like walking or running.

Staggered RDL Foam Roller IR

This layers several demands into one hip hinge pattern. The working knee pressing into the foam roller against the wall creates a light isometric adduction demand throughout the movement, while the hinge itself trains the hip extension and glute loading pattern covered earlier in the post. Adding hip internal rotation as you lower builds controlled access to a fuller glute length, directly reinforcing the hip IR and glute length relationship, while training that rotation under load rather than in isolation.

Bringing it all together

Pelvic floor considerations don’t need to sit outside your strength training, they can be woven directly into it. Training through eccentric control, end range hip extension, glute medius and abduction, and hip rotation builds strength and control across the full range your hips and glutes need to support this system well. Understanding this relationship means your training can better serve you through this season, rather than treating pelvic floor and strength work as two separate goals (although as mentioned earlier in the post, it is 100% worth having that direct pelvic floor assessment from a pelvic floor physical therapist).

If you’re ready to train your body as one connected system, Return to Strength is built around exactly this approach. Start your 7-day free trial today and build strength through the full picture, glutes, hips, and pelvic floor included.

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