Meet Karianne, one of my Superstar clients who's worked hard to heal her diastasis, flatten her stomach and get strong again.
Karianne first came to me for help with healing her diastasis after the birth of her second baby.
She felt disconnected from her abdominal muscles and was suffering from lower back and hip pain.
Karianne did everything she needed to do to reconnect with her core and pelvic floor to heal her diastasis.
She worked on her glute strength and stabilized her hips so her pelvic pain disappeared as well.
She was strong and stable during core exercises on the floor…….
But Karianne still had a problem.
She wasn’t able to connect with her middle and upper transverse abdominal muscles (her deep inner core muscles) when she was doing standing exercises.
They just switched off …..like they had when she had a diastasis.
This left her with a pooch around her belly button which she felt made her stomach look bigger than it actually was.
Because we don't lives our lives lying down, this also told me that she wasn't activating her core muscles properly when she was busy looking after her kids or doing everyday chores.
To find out what was going on with how she connected to and braced her core muscles ,we went back to the beginning.
I took a closer look at how she was standing when she wasn't thinking about her posture.
I noticed her head was pulling forwards a lot which can actually turn off your deep core muscles (the transverse abdominal muscles).
When she was lying on the floor, her head was in a neutral position and she couuld activate and brace well, but standing up changed her alignment.
When she pulled her head back into line and tucked her chin down slightly, she could feel her stomach flatten out and she felt she had a better connection to the muscles.
It got easier for her to activate them correctly during standing exercises.
This was a great insight into what was going on for Karianne.
I set Karianne a challenge of working on her head position by releasing her tight neck muscles and strengthening the weaker ones for two weeks.
She put in the work and the results are in….
Without doing any extra core or abdominal exercises she can now activate her mid and upper transverse abdominal muscles while standing and her stomach looks flatter.
Karianne this thrilled with the difference and I’m immensely proud of her for trusting the process and not giving up.
She said:
“The last days have shown progress after working with my chin and head"
"I really should wish that all mamas got help to "rehab" after giving birth."
The takeaway for you from Karianne’s story is that the key to getting your abdominal muscles to work properly isn’t always by doing more core and pelvic floor exercises.
You need to look at what is happening in the rest of your body and how it might be influencing how you activate your core, as well as the strength of the muscles themselves.
Congratulations Karianne, I’m so proud of you for sticking with it and being willing to work through the process to get the fantastic results you’ve achieved.
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