Upper ab gripping is one of the most common compensation patterns I see through pregnancy and postpartum. This typically happens when the deeper core system, made up of the diaphragm, pelvic floor, obliques and transverse abdominis, are not coordinating efficiently.

This bracing strategy can make the upper abdominal wall look flat or tight, while the lower abdomen appears softer or more relaxed (what is often described as a lower belly pooch). The issue isn’t necessarily just a lack of strength. It more often a lack of coordination.

This is because, when the upper abs dominate, the body loses access to normal pressure regulation. What we should see is breath and pressure expanding evenly into ribs, back and pelvic floor. You cannot engage from the bottom up if the breath and pressure is not traveling there in the first place.

From here I then see women try to overcompensate for this and try to ‘fix’ it with an endless list of core exercises. Without addressing the underlying coordination, this just builds on top of a dysfunctional pattern which continues to reinforce the gripping strategy and women end up in a cycle of training hard without ever feeling like they are making progress.

By restoring breath mechanics, rib mobility and body awareness, you can retrain your core to stabilise from the inside out and then build strength on top that’s functional and evenly distributed rather than gripped from the top down.

3 Common Signs You’re an Upper Ab Gripper

1. Limited Rib Cage Mobility

One of the clearest tells is difficulty breathing into the sides and back of the ribcage. If your breath only seems to move the chest or belly forward, and the ribs feel stiff or restricted through the upper back, this is often a sign that the ribcage has lost its full range of motion and the upper abs have taken over to compensate for that lack of movement. This is probably what I see on most women postpartum.

2. Rib Flare and Rib-Pelvis Misalignment

When the ribs sit lifted and flared rather than stacked directly over the pelvis, the diaphragm and pelvic floor lose their ability to work in sync. This misalignment makes it harder for pressure to travel evenly through the trunk. For a strong exhale and lower ab contraction, you need a strong inhale down to be able to engage ‘from the bottom up’ — probably the most used core engagement cue in the postpartum space.

3. Compensatory Bracing

This shows up as a tendency to pull the ribs down hard or suck the stomach in to try and feel “held” or stable. The key with the ribs coming down is that they need to expand in the first place on your inhale. Second to this, they should be moving down through a controlled exhale vs you trying to manufacture by pulling them down.

Alongside this, many women find it difficult to activate, or even identify, their lower abs which reinforces this. Over time, this pattern often creates a visible line underneath the ribs, where the upper abs are doing the majority of the work.

As you sit here now, look down at your stomach and pull your belly button to your spine. Notice how when you do this, the middle abs are what’s holding tension while the lower abs are quiet?

How Breathing and Core Engagement Change During Pregnancy

As pregnancy progresses, the body’s breathing and core mechanics shift to accommodate a growing uterus. As the baby grows, the diaphragm has less room to descend fully and the ribcage naturally flares outward to make space. This change in ribcage position alters how the diaphragm and pelvic floor coordinate with each breath.

At the same time, the growing uterus places increasing pressure on the pelvic floor and abdominal wall, while postural shifts can change how load travels through the trunk. Many women also start to feel less connected to their deep core simply because the usual feedback and range of motion isn’t as accessible anymore.

These changes are a normal part of pregnancy. But they do mean the body often defaults to compensatory strategies, like gripping through the upper abs, to create a sense of stability when the deeper system feels less accessible. This pattern then carries into the postpartum period, where the same gripping strategy shows up again.

This is why breath work and pressure management matter just as much during pregnancy as they do postpartum. Building awareness of full 360-degree breathing now creates a foundation that carries through delivery and into recovery. Although you’re not trying to ‘fix’ these normal and expected changes, you can absolutely maintain mobility of the ribs and thoracic spine, work on breathing mechanics and overall core strength.

The Importance of Learning How to Manage Pressure for Well-Rounded Core Strength

Pressure management is the foundation that every other layer of core training builds on. Every time you breathe, brace, lift, or move, your body is generating intra-abdominal pressure and how that pressure is distributed determines whether your core functions as a coordinated system or defaults to some of these compensation patterns.

When pressure moves 360 degrees, expanding into the ribs, back, and pelvic floor, the deep core muscles can share the load evenly. This is what allows the diaphragm, pelvic floor, obliques, and transverse abdominis to work together automatically.

When pressure instead gets pushed forward (often from shallow, chest-driven breathing or a lack of rib mobility) the system loses that even distribution. The upper abs step in to create stability, the pelvic floor can end up managing more pressure than it’s prepared for and the lower abs stay under recruited.

This is why strengthening the core in isolation, without first addressing how pressure moves through the system, rarely solves gripping long term. You can build a strong set of upper abs and still struggle with connection, leaking, or a sense of instability under load, because the foundation of pressure management was never addressed.

Why “Zip Up From the Bottom” Doesn’t Work Without Body Awareness

Ahhh, now on to my least favourite core engagement cue.

“Zip up from the bottom” is a cue you’ll hear across the postpartum space and the concept behind it is sound: pelvic floor engages first (without you initiating a kegel), then that engagement travels upward through the deep core. But the cue only works if the pelvic floor has lengthened from your inhale, which is where how your ribs, pelvis, and breath are positioned in space comes into play.

If your ribs are flared and sitting out of alignment with your pelvis, or if your breath isn’t reaching the back and sides of your ribcage and lengthening your pelvic floor, there’s no clear pathway for that “zip” to travel through. You can’t consciously engage a system from the bottom up if the pressure and breath aren’t getting there in the first place.

Instead, the cue often gets performed as a surface-level squeeze: a pull of the pelvic floor, pulling in the middle abs, gripping ribs to move down.

Learning to feel where your ribs sit relative to your pelvis and how your breath moves through your torso gives the “zip” somewhere to actually travel. Without that awareness, the cue is, to be honest, pretty useless.

So how do we even begin to address this?

Exercises to Retrain the Upper Ab Gripping Pattern

Skin Rolling

Skin rolling is a fascial release technique that targets the connective tissue layer sitting just above the abdominal muscles. When the upper abs have been gripping for an extended period, this fascia can become restricted and less mobile, which limits how well the ribcage and abdominal wall can expand and move. Rolling this tissue helps restore mobility at the surface level, making it easier to access full rib expansion and breath work in the exercises that follow.

You can pause in sticky position and inhale into these spots. Spend a few minutes here prior to your workout.

Back Body Expansion

This position uses the deep squat and rounding of the upper back to create length through the back body, while ‘smashing’ the front side. This helps expand the back of the ribcage on inhale is one of the clearest ways to reduce reliance on the upper abs, since it gives pressure a full 360-degree pathway rather than forcing it forward.

• Deep Squat Sat on Yoga Block with Rib Smash

Rotation

Rotational drills restore mobility through the thoracic spine, which is frequently stiff in postpartum women but especially someone who has been stabilising through upper ab bracing. When the thoracic spine can rotate freely, the ribcage isn’t forced to compensate for that lack of movement, and the obliques and lats can share more of the load during rotational and loaded movements.

• Banded Thread the Needle
• 90/90 Weighted Side-Lying Thoracic Rotation

Side Bends

Side bends target the lateral line of the body (the obliques, intercostals, and quadratus lumborum) which is often shortened and restricted when someone breathes primarily into the chest. Lengthening through this lateral chain improves the ribcage’s ability to expand sideways on inhale, giving pressure and breath somewhere to travel besides straight into the upper abs. This is often one of the first mobility gains people notice when addressing gripping. You can do this with both mobility drills and targeted core exercises.

• Tall Kneeling Side Bend
• Elevated Lateral Line Stretch

Awareness of Positioning / Rib Stack

I always start someone in a supine 90/90 position to understand where the ribs and pelvis sit without much effort. However, we want to ensure that we are not just staying here and are able to maintain this awareness when in loaded position.

These drills layer light load onto a stacked rib-pelvis position, teaching the body to maintain that alignment while under more effort. This is the bridge between mobility work and functional strength, since it’s the first place gripping tends to resurface once load is introduced.

• Chest Press in 90/90 with Iso Adductors
• Tall Kneeling Band Pulldown

Final Thoughts

Upper ab gripping isn’t something you fix by adding more core exercises into your workouts. We need to restore breath, mobility and awareness. When the ribs can move freely, breath can travel 360 degrees, and the body understands where it sits in space, the deep core system can effectively manage pressure, rather than defaulting to the upper abs.

This is exactly the approach we take in Return to Strength. Before any loaded core or strength work is introduced, the early phase walks you through rebuilding rib mobility, breath mechanics, and body awareness first, so that when load and complexity is added, your system already knows how to manage pressure and stabilise from the inside out. Rather than reinforcing old compensation patterns, you’re building a foundation that lets your strength work actually stick. As well as core strength that feels like it is actually progressing.

Take the guesswork out of your postpartum training on my app — Return to Strength walks you through this exact process, step by step. Try 7 days free on the LWE app.