This standing ab workout is great to work all the muscles of your core and build strength and stability in your body. We work through your transverse abdominis, obliques, back and hips. Your core is much more complex than you might realise and actually helps to support your lower back/spine and stabilize your pelvis.

Your core is required for all major movements and therefore focusing on a strong, functional core is extremely important for postpartum mothers. Your abdominal muscles, spine and pelvis go through huge changes during pregnancy, so taking the time to focus on rehabbing your core muscles when you are postpartum is the best thing you can do ensure you regain your strength.

Variety is important for building core muscles. Once your muscles adapt to the stress and load you require of them, they stop changing.  So it’s important to not only do a variety of exercises but to step things up a notch to more intermediate and advanced variations when you feel your muscles need more.

While many of my classes focus on floor abs exercises such as this 18 minute ab workout, it’s nice to change things and mix up your routine to keep you motivated. 

Standing ab exercises require you to focus on balance, which is great for building core strength. In order to balance, you need to stand tall and engage your core muscles. It’s great to add a standing ab workout to your repertoire as it offers you some additional benefits to floor work. The exercises focus on the core muscles as a whole, helps to improve your posture and energises you more as they tend to burn more calories and get your heart rate up.

I work on posture a lot with my postpartum clients to correct the curvature in the lower back that is often increased during pregnancy and to help with rounded shoulders that are common from things such as breastfeeding and baby wearing.

Give this quick 8 minute standing ab workout class a try and let me know in the comments section below how you prefer the exercises to the standard floor ab exercises.

Need a little extra core work once you’ve finished this class, why not get back down on the floor and try this 10 minute core workout.