When it comes to core and pelvic floor recovery we’re often told to start with the basics and rebuild a foundation, first. But what does this actually look like?

After pregnancy and birth, many people are eager to regain their core strength but often, the focus goes straight to ab exercises or isolated pelvic floor work, like doing endless Kegels. While strength is important, what’s often missing in early postpartum recovery is coordination — the ability for the core, pelvic floor, breath, and surrounding muscles to work together as an integrated system.

During pregnancy, your body undergoes major structural and physiological changes that affect how your core and pelvic floor function:

• The abdominal wall stretches to accommodate the growing uterus, often leading to weakened or lengthened core muscles, including the transverse abdominis and obliques.
• The diaphragm becomes elevated, changing how you breathe and reducing the natural pressure system that supports core engagement.
• The pelvic floor bears increased load for months, adapting to support the weight of the baby, fluid, and uterus.
• Posture often shifts, with changes like anterior pelvic tilt, rib flare, and hip compensation, all of which can disrupt how muscles coordinate during movement.
• If you’ve had a vaginal delivery, the pelvic floor may be recovering from tearing, overstretching, or neurological trauma. If you’ve had a C-section, the abdominal wall and scar tissue may also affect muscle activation and sensory feedback.

Because of these changes, it’s not just about rebuilding strength — it’s about retraining coordination. The breath, pelvic floor, core, glutes, and even the upper body all need to re-learn how to stabilize, generate pressure, and respond reflexively to movement.

Simply strengthening your abs or squeezing your pelvic floor in isolation doesn’t address the root issue: the system has to work together.

That’s why I focus on strategies that improve not only muscle activation, but how your body coordinates itself under load — through breathing, positioning, and muscle synergy. When you rebuild coordination, strength follows and you’ll be more prepared for heavier lifting, running, or high-impact activities without symptoms or dysfunction.

The rest of this post breaks down some key foundational strategies that help re-establish that coordination — through movement patterns and muscle groups that are often overlooked in traditional core training.

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1. Hamstring Engagement: Lower Ab Connection Starts at the Hips

One of the most overlooked and underutilized strategies in early core rehabilitation is properly engaging the hamstrings. While hamstrings are often thought of as just “back-of-the-leg” muscles, they play a critical role in pelvic positioning, which directly impacts how well your deep core functions.

In the postpartum period, it’s common to see patterns like:

• Anterior pelvic tilt (hips tipped forward)
• Overactive hip flexors
• Difficulty engaging the lower abs and transverse abdominis

These patterns often develop during pregnancy to accommodate a growing belly and they don’t always resolve right away after birth. As a result, people often struggle to “feel” their core working, and may unknowingly compensate with their hip flexors or lower back.

This is where the hamstrings come in.

When you activate your hamstrings in a 90/90 position (hips and knees at 90 degrees, feet on the wall or elevated), they help draw the pelvis under, pulling it into a more neutral or slightly posterior tilt. This repositioning:

• Creates a more optimal environment for the lower abs to engage
• Reduces the dominance of the hip flexors
• Promotes a more stacked alignment of the ribcage over the pelvis
• Allows for better exhalation, which activates the deep core and pelvic floor

This isn’t just about feeling your hamstrings. It’s about using them as a tool to create the right setup for core and pelvic floor coordination to happen naturally.

In fact, many clients I work with are shocked at how much more core engagement they feel simply by learning to use their hamstrings effectively in supported positions.

If you’re returning to movement postpartum and find yourself feeling dead bugs or leg lifts mostly in your hips or low back — this is where to start.

Another set up tip if you are feeling a lot of hip flexor in your dead bugs:

Elevating the hips during a dead bug by placing a small yoga block or towel under the sacrum, can be especially helpful in the postpartum period. This subtle adjustment promotes a more neutral or slightly posterior pelvic tilt, which reduces excessive lumbar arching and helps quiet overactive hip flexors, a common compensation pattern after birth.

By positioning the pelvis more optimally, it becomes easier to engage the lower abdominals and deep core without gripping through the front of the hips. This setup also encourages better ribcage-to-pelvis alignment, which supports diaphragmatic breathing, pressure management, and core-pelvic floor synergy. For postpartum individuals struggling with coning, doming, or difficulty feeling their core, elevating the hips in a dead bug can enhance movement quality and help retrain the body to move from a more integrated and supported place.

2. Adductor Activation: Connecting to the Pelvic Floor

When it comes to core and pelvic floor rehab, the inner thighs — or adductors — often go under the radar. But engaging these muscles, especially during early postpartum movement, can create a powerful connection between the pelvic floor and the deep core.

Here’s why it matters: the adductors share fascial and neurological connections with the pelvic floor muscles. So when you activate the adductors — say, by gently squeezing a yoga block or ball between the knees — the pelvic floor often responds reflexively, without needing to think about a pelvic floor contraction. This makes adductor activation an incredibly effective strategy for re-establishing core-pelvic floor synergy.

In the postpartum period, when the pelvic floor may feel disconnected or hard to engage voluntarily, this kind of indirect recruitment is often easier, safer, and more effective than isolated attempts to “clench” or “lift.” It also helps restore the brain-body connection after pregnancy, birth, or simply time away from training.

What’s more, when the adductors are incorporated into core work, they also help:

• Center the pelvis and reduce compensations like external hip rotation
• Reinforce midline control during limb movements (such as in marching or dead bugs)
• Support a sense of internal stability, which is especially valuable in early core work

You’ll often see these strategies paired with breathing and alignment cues to help the nervous system relearn how these muscle groups interact.

Some of my favorite ways to incorporate adductor activation include:

• Side-lying adductor squeezes with reach (which also challenges core rotation and breath control)
• Glute bridges with a block between the knees
• Quadruped or bear hold positions with a ball squeeze — layering in both core and full-body stability

These seemingly simple additions can transform how supported your core feels, and they lay the groundwork for higher-level movement and load.

3. Serratus Engagement: Breath, Ribcage, and Core Control

When most people think about rebuilding their core, they focus on what’s happening from the ribs down — abs, pelvis, pelvic floor. But a huge part of effective core and pelvic floor function actually starts upstream, with how the ribcage and shoulder girdle are positioned and controlled. And that’s where the serratus anterior comes in.

The serratus is a fan-shaped muscle along the side of your ribcage that helps with:

• Protracting the scapulae (reaching forward)
• Stabilizing the shoulder blade
• And most importantly for our purposes — controlling ribcage positioning during breath and movement

In the postpartum period, it’s common to see a flared ribcage, elevated shoulders, or poor upper body tension, all of which can disrupt intra-abdominal pressure and limit deep core engagement. Without a properly positioned ribcage, it becomes much harder to coordinate the breath, diaphragm, and pelvic floor.

When you activate the serratus, especially through banded reaching exercises, you encourage the ribcage to gently wrap down and forward. This helps:

• Stack the ribcage over the pelvis, which is essential for core-pelvic floor synergy
• Support diaphragmatic breathing, which drives reflexive core and pelvic floor activation
• Establish full-body tension in exercises like marches, bridges, or dead bugs — making them feel more connected and effective

One of my go-to movements is the hooklying march with banded serratus reach, which combines breath, limb movement, and upper body engagement in a simple yet powerful way. Adding a light resistance band forces the serratus to engage during the reach, while the marching pattern challenges the lower core and hip control.

As strength improves, this strategy carries over beautifully into pressing, pulling, and even overhead work, helping ensure that the upper body is contributing to postural control and not creating compensations like rib flare or spinal extension.

Don’t underestimate the role of the upper body in core training. Sometimes the missing piece isn’t more abs — it’s better ribcage control, and the serratus is key to that.

4. Isometric Band Work: Postural Strength and Upper Body Tension

When we talk about rebuilding core and pelvic floor strength, most people think of isolated core movements but we can’t forget about the upper body’s role in posture, pressure, and stability. That’s where isometric band work — like band pull-aparts or pulldowns with a hold — can become an incredibly valuable tool.

These simple movements do a lot more than train your shoulders. When done with intention, they:

• Build postural awareness and upper body endurance
• Help you find and maintain a neutral, stacked ribcage
• Reinforce full-body tension and stability during core-focused movements
• Improve your ability to manage intra-abdominal pressure, especially under load

In the postpartum period, many people experience:

• A loss of postural strength in the upper back
• A tendency to overextend through the spine and flare the ribs
• Difficulty creating upper body tension, especially after months of chest expansion during pregnancy or nursing

When you perform an isometric pull-apart or pulldown (especially when combined with something like a glute bridge or dead bug), you’re not just working your arms — you’re reinforcing the connection between your upper back, core, and pelvis.

Holding that tension:

• Encourages more efficient breath patterns (no breath escaping through the chest)
• Activates stabilizing muscles like the lats, mid traps, and serratus, which help keep the ribcage grounded
• Promotes better alignment, so the core and pelvic floor can do their job effectively

A great example of this is the glute bridge march with isometric band pull-apart. It layers lower body strength, core coordination, and upper body tension into one integrated movement. You’ll feel this from your glutes to your ribs, exactly where you want to feel core work that transfers into functional strength.

These isometric strategies may look simple, but they help teach your body to work as a connected unit again, which is especially important when returning to heavier lifting or full-body movements later on.

5. Glute and Hip Strength: The Foundation for Stability

If there’s one muscle group that deserves just as much attention as your core during postpartum recovery, it’s your glutes — especially glute max and glute med. These muscles aren’t just important for squats or aesthetics, they play a critical role in pelvic stability, posture, and pressure regulation.

During pregnancy, the center of gravity shifts, the pelvis often tips forward, and hip stabilizers tend to weaken or become underused. Combine that with months of limited movement or compensatory patterns (especially if you experienced pelvic girdle pain or SI joint discomfort), and it’s common to see glutes that are “offline” after birth.

Why does this matter for core and pelvic floor recovery?

Strong, well-functioning glutes:

• Provide stability to the pelvis and sacroiliac joints
• Reduce strain on the pelvic floor, especially during impact, lifting, or carrying
• Support upright posture and spinal alignment, which improves core engagement
• Help control and transfer force between the upper and lower body during dynamic movements

In other words, when your glutes are doing their job, your pelvic floor doesn’t have to overwork to keep you stable.

The glute med (on the side of the hip) is particularly important for balance and single-leg stability — think walking, stairs, lunging, or running. The glute max, meanwhile, drives hip extension and supports the pelvis from below during loaded movements like deadlifts or bridges.

Some of the best postpartum-friendly ways to start training the glutes include:

• Side-lying clams and reverse clams (which target both glute med and deep rotators)
• Bodyweight hip hinges with resistance (to reintroduce posterior chain patterning)
• Glute bridge variations (especially when paired with upper body tension or adductor squeezes for core coordination)

These movements don’t just strengthen the hips, they reconnect the glutes to the core, creating a stronger, more functional base for return-to-impact or lifting work.

Why These Strategies Matter — and How They Scale

Each of these approaches does more than train one muscle — they help restore the mind-muscle connection that often feels lost during pregnancy, postpartum, or after injury. They lay the groundwork for pressure control, strength, and coordination so that your body is ready to handle more load, whether that means lifting heavier, running, or chasing your toddler.

Start small.
Focus on quality of movement.
And know that these basics aren’t “easy” — they’re essential.

Want to try this yourself?

Incorporate 2–3 of these movements into your warm-up or core training 2–3x per week. Stay focused on breath, control, and alignment. You don’t need high reps or fast movement to get results.

Rebuild the connection first.
Strength comes next and stays with you longer.

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