Episode #26: Our top tips when returning to running postpartum
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In this episode, Rhonda and Dayna share our top tips when you’re feeling the itch to return to running postpartum, such as:
1️⃣ The research shows that it might be beneficial to wait until the 3-month mark to return to impact movements like running, jumping and skipping.
2️⃣ Check in with a pelvic floor physiotherapist and/ or postpartum fitness coach if you have the means to assess your pelvic floor strength, tone and coordination.
3️⃣ It might be a good idea to start with strength training (especially single leg exercises) to build the stability and capacity of your tissues.
4️⃣ It might be a good idea to start with a run/walk combo and gradually increase your time and distance spent running to give your body time to adapt.
5️⃣ It might be helpful to slowly ease back into impact movements (i.e. hopping, jump squats, jumping lunges) to prepare your body for running.
🎙 Listen to the full episode for more helpful tips!
🏃🏽♀️We’re excited for you to listen to this episode and hope it helps you return to running with confidence!
We’re excited for you to listen to this episode and hope you find some of these tips helpful. Let us know in the comments!
Listen to Kathleen White’s Return to Running episode here (Episode #7)
Return to Run Screen by Tom Goom, Gráinne Donnelly and Emma Brockwell
Return to Run Screen by Carrie Pagliano
Rhonda’s Reel - Return to Run Screen
Link to attend Rhonda’s Pelvic Floor Relaxation Workshop!
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Episode #26: Our top tips when returning to running postpartum
Hey podcast friends, Rhonda here. Just wanted to start out with a little announcement before we get into today's episode. I have a really cool upcoming pelvic floor relaxation workshop that I would love for you all to attend. So this is for you if you might have been told by a pelvic floor physiotherapist that you have a tight pelvic floor, or if you deal with any of these symptoms like tight, sore neck, jaw, and shoulders, constipation, straining with bowel movements.
chronic hip pain, low back pain, tailbone pain, incomplete bowel or bladder emptying, pain with sex, urinary frequency or urgency, chronic stress and anxiety. So on that list, I'm pretty sure many of us would fit on that list. So I would love for you to attend. This is for you if you are pregnant or postpartum, even many years postpartum, it will be a one hour workshop.
with very practical strategies that you can take home with you to learn how to relax your pelvic floor. So this workshop will be on Wednesday, June 1st on zoom, and it's from 8 to 9 p. m. Eastern time. And it's only 29 to attend. And the really cool thing is there's going to be a recording. So I know you all are busy and might not be able to attend live, which is okay.
Um, I will be sending out the recording after if you can't make it live and also bonus, I will be sending everybody a PDF with a recording. Sorry, with, um, video demos for all of the exercises that we'll be doing in the workshop. So you have that to keep and you can refer back to it when you need to. All right.
So that's everything. Um, I will put the link in the show notes, or you can go to Rhonda Chamberlain pt. com slash relax webinar to get your spot today
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness, the pelvic floor, and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Hey everyone, welcome to the Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast.
Today, Dayna and I are going to be discussing some tips to help you all return to running postpartum. So we figured this is a timely episode. It's coming into spring, really nice weather here in Canada with a lot of us. Well, maybe not me, but some of you itching to get back running again. And so we would love to give you all some very tangible tips that you can try.
And just to let you know, before we dive into the episode today, Um, you can also refer back to episode seven where we chatted with pelvic floor physiotherapist, Kathleen White. She also provided us with a lot of techniques and things that you can do to manage symptoms with getting back into running. So you can check out that as well.
So why don't we dive into it, Dayna? Awesome. I love how you said, maybe not me. I mean, I, I don't mind running intervals. I was actually just talking about this with a client. I like doing intervals of running with strength training, but I'm not as much a person to just go out, go out for a long run. Yeah, for sure.
And I think, you know, as we dive into this conversation, a lot of these things can be or should be probably applied to any running. So intervals, distance running, if you have been off season, um, throughout the winter, uh, and you're just getting back into it, some of these will Um, so if you are postpartum, one of the first things to know about running is yes, at six weeks, typically we can start to add back in, um, forms of exercise, uh, moderate cardio, weight training, yoga, all of those sorts of things, but anything that's running, jumping, hopping, skipping, the research really supports us waiting until that three month or 12 week postpartum link, uh, link, yeah.
week. Oh dear. Um, and if you have the ability to check in with a pelvic floor physio or approach postpartum coach prior to that, it can be really helpful just to make sure that you're addressing any strength deficits or mobility issues, any pelvic floor concerns prior to adding that large load onto the pelvic floor.
Yes, for sure. And, uh, so we talked about runner's brain with Kathleen in our, um, episode, which I think is a special type of athlete brain where runners are usually very attached to running, understandably, and just itching to get back into it. And so, you know, we also preach body autonomy, so 100%, it's your choice to get back to running when you, uh, when you want to, but we're just, yeah, trying to provide you with some education and some information.
To hopefully get you back in feeling your best and not rushing that return to run. So with that said, there is so much you can do in that lead up. So if you are able to wait until about three months postpartum to get back to running, there's still a lot of ways to satisfy that runner's athlete brain by.
Getting back into some early stage strength training. So the first thing we talk about is working on pelvic floor, strengthening and relaxation. So Dayna and I talk about this a lot on the podcast that yes, it's important to strengthen the pelvic floor, but also equally important to relax the pelvic floor.
So we'll get a little bit more into that later on. So when it comes to strengthening, I always find it's very beneficial to start working on Single leg work. So running is very much a loading activity on one leg at a time. So we need a lot of strength and stability with single leg type movements. So things like lunges, single leg deadlifts.
Single leg glute bridges, hip thrusts, single leg sit to stands, single leg squats. You can see a theme, uh, step ups, step downs, that kind of thing. Anything where you're using one leg at a time. And so this is where working with a physiotherapist or a pre postnatal fitness coach can be super helpful because you might not be familiar with some of those or know how to do them well.
So that's a really good place to start to prepare your body for return to run. Absolutely. Uh, the next thing that you can start on again, sort of a lot of us start this earlier than six weeks, maybe, but walking or a good old fashioned walk, uh, jog, little interval and jogging again should wait closer to that 12 week mark, but.
I often hear from clients. I'm sure you do Rhonda too, that a lot of people will say, Oh, I'm only walking. Walking is fantastic exercise. It's good movement. It's generally out in nature. It's on your treadmill. It's fantastic. It's loaded. So it's very applicable to running. And when I say loaded, I mean, you're standing, you're upright.
You've got your body weight, gravity, your pelvic organs down on your pelvic floor. And so it is that. The same functional position as running is just with less load because you're not essentially leaping from foot to foot. Right. And then with your walking, you, whether you're on a treadmill or outside, you can play around with your time, how long you're walking for your distance, how.
quick is your speed, um, and things like that. And a good rule of thumb is increasing about 10 percent a week. And depending on how your body feels with all of these things, just to sort of reiterate a common theme that we have chatted about, you're always paying attention in your body for any sort of pain, leaking, pressure, um, and, and any sort of discomfort.
During the exercise, but also up to 24 hours after and that can sort of guide you when it's time to increase one of those things, time, speed, cadence, things like that. Yeah, that's good. And yeah, so reminding you all that symptoms is just your body's way of talking to you. So, you know, don't panic if symptoms arise, it could just be reminding you that perhaps you did a little too much too soon.
Or also reminder that there's other factors that influence symptoms as well, which we've talked about. So whether there's fatigue involved, whether there's hormonal shifts involved, all that comes into play too. So again, that's when it's helpful to work with a pelvic floor physio or a postnatal fitness coach to help sort of like navigate.
this time with you because it can be a little confusing and, um, might be a little scary if symptoms do arise and just having someone to reassure you. So the next thing we talk about when it comes to return to run is it might be a good idea to start by working on hills or an incline as a good place to start.
So reason being is this puts your upper body, your torso into a slight forward lean, which might actually help your pelvic floor work a bit more optimally. So we've talked about this before, even with like coughing and sneezing, if we do that slight torso lean at the hips. Um, it just kind of helps that, that system, that core system that we talk about just work a little bit better to support you.
So, um, I mean, it doesn't sound that fun to go and do some intervals on a hill, but again, if you're into running, that probably does sound fun to you. It doesn't really sound that fun to me, but for runners it might, um, but that's a good place to start. Or if you are someone that has a treadmill, then doing a slight incline on a treadmill might be a good.
Way to start as well. Absolutely important with the pelvic floor too, to just be putting it in a bunch of different positions under different loads. Just in general. I think everybody always thinks we have to be in these perfect postures, but life happens in imperfect posture, so it's important to kind of just.
Start to put yourself in these different positions with workouts and, uh, that can help overall with day to day tasks as well. Yeah. Okay. We want to ease back into impact type movements. So these are your jogging, your hopping, whether it's two foot, one foot or skipping. Um, There is a group, Tom, Goom, Graña, Donnelly, and Emma Brockwell, who have an awesome Return to Run screen that they did in 2019.
Um, and we will attach that in the show notes, as well as the Return to Run screen, uh, by Kerry Pagliano. They are fantastic tools, sort of summarizing, I think, a lot of what we're chatting about here, and certainly the exercises. But if you're interested, we encourage you to have a look at those, um, things.
Uh, but exercises similar to Rhonda was talking about with the, with the strength training, doing single leg hops or stair jumps. So, you know, if you're standing on the, on, The bottom, the floor, and you hop up onto one foot onto a stair or come down your stairs with a little bit of a faster cadence, you know, you're running up and down the stairs, essentially things like that are directly applicable to running jump squats.
Um, I often have people do like, I call it a running man where you take yourself back into a lunge and then you bring that back leg all the way up through and add a little hop at the top. Um, I have people jog on the spot, good old fashioned jog on the spot, um, and practice those things, maybe run on the spot for 30 to 60 seconds, you know, and see how those, always watching for symptoms, not being alarmed if you feel any, but using that as a guide to Return to those impact activities.
Yeah, and I, I did make a real I should make a newer one but I made one probably almost a year ago now with some of these return to run screen items and so I'll post that in the. show notes as well. So basically, yeah, with each item, it says sort of like a minimum amount that you should be able to do without symptoms.
So it's a really good way just to test your body's readiness to return to running. So if you're In that sort of three month phase and you're thinking like I'm feeling ready to run, but I'm not sure if I'm quite ready, have a look at those run screen tools and that will help sort of give you that answer that yes, your body's ready.
If you can run through all of those items without any leaking, any pressure, any pain, that type of thing, that's a good way to know that you're ready. So the next thing, so this is more or less when you are actually getting back into running now, um, some things you can do with your technique. So if you're getting back into running and you're finding you're having some symptoms, so whether that's leaking, heaviness, pain, that type of thing, um, you can test out some different techniques and different strategies with your run.
So one of my favorite ones, and it's very easy to remember, Is tips over toes, which Brie Battles coined that term. So just as it sounds, and again, similar to running on an incline, just having a slight lean forward of your torso when you're running. So again, it's just very slight from the hips. Um, so running should sort of feel like a fall into a run.
So that basically just having that torso lean forward, just brings your center of gravity forward as you run. So might be awkward at first. But it is surprising. This is one that I remind myself to do because when I was getting back into running after Tegan, I was getting some prolapse symptoms and having that slight lean forward really changed that for me.
For whatever reason, that one really worked. So try that one. Another really interesting one, and actually I learned this from, uh, Teresa Wasser and we're having her on, uh, or I think she will be on the podcast by the time you hear this one, um, about increasing your cadence. So again, I think there's studies to show that this is true, that increasing your cadence will help with symptoms.
Um, With, I think it's just the ground force reaction that helps. So what that means is not increasing your speed. It's just increasing your steps per minute rate. And there's some really cool apps that you can get on your phone to track that. So everyone's slightly different, but I think I remember from the research.
So anywhere between like one 60, one 70 steps per minute might be a good rule of thumb to try. So just try that. If you find you track your cadence and it's. On the lower end, just try to increase it a bit and just see if that changes symptoms as well. Um, another one is allow for slight rotation through your torso.
So we don't often think of it about our upper body's involvement with running, but we do want a little bit of a rotation. So I think it's 10 to 2 is kind of what you want in terms of rotation, if you think of that on a clock. So just having some rotation through that upper body. Make sure to breathe. It seems like a very basic one.
But, you know, even with exercise, I always am reminding my clients to breathe. We thought it's, you know, a habit when we get tired that will start to hold our breath. And a big one is don't hold a kegel. And again, sometimes people this is surprising to them because they think, well, If I pee when I run, then I'm just going to hold the pee in the whole entire run.
But we've talked about before that holding a Kegel for a long period of time will fatigue those muscles so that when the body is feeling like it needs to pee, those muscles are going to not have any energy left and then you will pee. So, not a great strategy. No. And just going in hand in hand with both those things, don't be pulling your tummy in the whole time either.
I think a lot of people think, okay, well, I've got this rotation and I can't do a Kegel, so I'll hold my belly tight. And that just can pressurize that whole canister and actually overwork the pelvic floor. So we want that breath, that nice fluid movement of that. Of your torso air in air out. Okay. So, and the other thing I wanted to add there as well to Rhonda is, um, and again, as, as not.
My distance is three and a half kilometers guys. Okay. That's where I'm happy. So it's not, I won't call myself a distance runner. Um, but if you are somebody who likes the longer distances, I always encourage to start with intervals. As you start or start with like a lower kilometer, uh, goal just in the beginning and slowly ramp up, use the principles of just exercise training and that progressive overload, our bodies.
And and running should really be approached that way as well, especially if you've been away from running for an extended period of time. It's not really reasonable to expect the muscles to go from zero to 15 kilometers right away. Like we there is yes, a cardio retraining component that we're Ignoring.
And I think if you're running 15 kilometers, you're amazing. Um, but it is really, truly a muscle retraining for endurance for that. And I think that sometimes that can be forgotten a little bit, even zero to 5k. I feel like I, you know, talk to runners and they. It's again, sort of that athlete brain. Well, it doesn't count if I don't run 5k.
Right. And so I think just a reminder to you all, you know, again, we've talked about athlete brain and the podcast with Brianna, we talked about athlete brain, it all counts. So if you're doing a run walk, um, you're not a failure, right? So if you feel like you're trying to get back into running and your body's not cooperating, it doesn't mean you have to quit, right?
So just doing a one, a run slash walk is an amazing way to start. And like Dayna said, just working into intervals. So doing a bit of a run. So like try a one K run maybe, and then walk for a bit and then try. a 1k run again, that type of thing to ease back into that distance. You're not a failure if that's what you're doing.
No, absolutely not. Which sort of just ties in, uh, with the next, uh, point here that we have, which is watch for these symptoms that we have mentioned. Um, again, any sort of leaking of bowel, bladder or, or stool, uh, during or after your runs in this case, up to 24 hours could be linked to the intensity of your exercise.
Um, any pain, of course, we want to pay attention to, or any of that pressure heaviness type sensation down into the pelvic floor. Um, and again, they are really just flags from your body to sort of let you know that you may have overdone it. And I'm not really referring to that normal Dom's or delayed onset muscle soreness that comes from, you know, that kind of good burn from an exercise.
Um, these are really related specifically to the pelvic floor and they're more discomfort rather than like, uh, a normal amount of muscle soreness. And it's important to note that this can come and go, especially if you're a postpartum. But really at any point, we are human beings, we have, we are multifaceted, these things can sort of depend on how much load you have on your body and load can come from stress, it can come from hormones, it can come from returning to work or changes in breastfeeding, um, it can come from a whole slew of things that can change sort of that dynamic in your pelvis or just your body in general.
So don't be alarmed if you're someone who's like, Oh, well, I return. I had no problem. Oh my goodness. I'm 10 months. What the heck is this? Still be paying attention to those symptoms and just maybe decrease the intensity. Try some of these, um, strategies. Maybe that means backing off for a little bit. Try some of our down training, uh, exercises in a prior episode for the pelvic floor.
It is totally normal to have these things kind of crop up from time to time. And I, I. You do yourself a service if you just listen to them as information and adjust accordingly. Yes. Yeah. It's all just information and it doesn't mean it's going to be that way forever. It doesn't mean that you've backtracked.
Um, again, that's just the ebbs and flows of healing postpartum. It's just going to come in waves. And so the last thing we want to talk about, and I sort of mentioned this at the beginning of the episode. Yes. Again, we want to work on all the strength pieces and easing back into that impact, getting back to running.
And we also want to prioritize. Down training of the pelvic floor. And with that can be hit mobility. So just making sure we have good range of motion, not necessarily just hit mobility, mobility in general. Um, another place to mobilize is the mid back. So I talked about that rotation piece. So some T spine mobilizations, that type of thing is important as well.
So Dayna and I've talked about this a lot. So if you want to go back to a previous episode, we talked about different ways to relax the pelvic floor. You don't think you might not think that running is taxing on the pelvic floor, but it truly is because you're using that core system to keep you upright and to help with the movements of running and the breathing aspect of running.
So it is a very tiring, um, task for the pelvic floor. So working on that relaxation piece is just as important. Sorry, I just want to add one thing, um, cause I remember back when I was getting back into running after Teagan, I had a bit of that prolapse type symptom, uh, in those first few runs. And if I would come back after the runs and do some zed lying or do some prone lying and work on that breathing, it was amazing how much that settled my symptoms.
If I just followed that up after my run. I, I frequently, in fact, I would say almost always encourage people to, if you're getting back into running or you're adding some of these higher level things in, uh, more impact type stuff to get in the habit for the first several weeks. Of getting in that zed line position right away when you're done, if you're able just to take the load off, I kind of always compare it to like doing a spin class and then stretching your hamstring out, like just as a way to completely let off the load in, in that body.
And it will, it will do a service for sure. Good way to finish your run. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, happy running. If you are distance, interval, uh, sprinter, stroller, boot camper, we hope that these tips and tricks help you to find some joy with running. Thanks for listening to today's podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation.
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