How Soon Can Ab Workout Routines Be Done After Pregnancy?

Going through nine months of pregnancy, followed by delivery and finally getting to see the birth of a newborn baby is worth putting on weight and watching the stomach muscles become stretched. However, now that the birth is over, it is time for mom to start focusing on herself again. It is important that any woman who has given birth, to get permission from her doctor before starting her ab workout routines. Typically, doctors recommend six to eight weeks for a normal delivery and up to twelve weeks for a cesarean.

Women need to remember that even with an easy and healthy pregnancy and delivery, the body has gone through several dramatic changes. Therefore, if she were to walk out of the hospital in her normal street clothes and looked as if she had never had a baby, internally, healing must be completed before any type of workout routines could begin. Pushing things too quickly could cause serious damage so it is always best to follow the doctor's advice.

While women can usually begin with gentle exercises that require very small movements, it can take up to three months for a woman's body to heal completely after giving birth. Again, most women should not even consider ab or any other type of workout routines, even simple ones for a minimum of six months, and longer for a C-section. An excellent way to move back into your workout routines is with walking. This will help boost stamina and strengthen muscles. When ready, easy ab workout routines could be started and while they may not build the muscles as a hardcore workout would, they do stimulate flood flow so healing time is reduced.

Now, when the body is ready and the doctor gives the green light, normal workout routines could be started. However, the initial routines would still not be the strenuous ones the woman might have done prior to her pregnancy. Even so, she could use a resistance ball to do subtle sit-ups, use leg lifts to build and define stronger abdominal muscles and others. For the woman who works out in the gym, while it might be tempting to start using equipment with weights, at the six-week post-pregnancy mark, this would be too difficult on the body.

By the time three months rolls around, women can then get serious about their ab workout routines as well as their full workouts, doing much of what was done before. At that point, the doctor would have completed a physical examination to make sure the rectus abdominal muscles have not become separated during birth. With these muscles going under the rib cage to the pubic bone, these muscles are made to stretch, which makes it possible for a woman to give birth. However, it takes about two to three months for the muscles to go back into normal position and if the muscles were still stretched open, exercise would have to be put on hold a little longer.

For the woman who has been dedicated to her workout routines before becoming pregnant, it is very difficult to be patient. After all, she wants her pre-pregnancy body back! However, rushing things too fast could put these routines on hold indefinitely. Therefore, it is more important for women to be patient, listen to the doctor and ease into post-pregnancy workouts so the harder exercises can eventually be done.