If you’ve gone through one or two pregnancies and haven’t yet addressed any abdominal separation, you may be dealing with it, but don’t worry, it’s not too late. The good news is that you can do exercises to fix ab separation and continue to strengthen your core!

During my second pregnancy, I was doing everything I could to prevent ab separation, but after I gave birth, I noticed that my abs were separated. I maintained a healthy weight but I had a very large baby which resulted in the damage. There can be many reasons for split abs and it’s actually very common. Around 60% of women who have been pregnant have some degree of separation.

Causes of Abdominal Separation:

Abdominal separation, or diastasis recti, is very common and can affect women of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels. It occurs when the two bellies of the abdominal muscles separate.

When you have this condition, it means there’s a gap between your left and right abdominal wall that’s widened due to the stretching of the connective tissue (linea alba) that runs down the center of your abdomen. The extent of abdominal separation depends on many factors, including gender, age and genetics.

Pregnancy is one of the main causes of ab separation. As the baby grows, the linea alba (the connective tissue between the rectus abdominis) stretches to accommodate baby growth. This is why many women get a “pooch”. The linea alba doesn’t have elasticity like skin does and doesn’t bounce back after pregnancy unless it’s rehabilitated with specific exercises in a slow progression.

Given the prevalence of this condition among women and its impact on core strength and posture, it’s important that women know how to safely strengthen their core with the right exercises. The good news is that there are several effective moves that can help improve abdominal separation.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of 6 core exercises that are safe for abdominal separation.

Yoga is a perfect fit for safely strengthening abdominal muscles , because many poses focus on strengthening the deep abdominal muscles without putting strain on the linea alba (the connective tissue that separates the rectus abdominis).

In today’s world, we rely a lot on our core for so many of our daily activities. The more time you spend doing ab exercises, the better your core will become at handling all of these activities.

While the best exercise for abdominal separation is one that focuses on tightening, strengthening and flattening the core, a lot of traditional exercises can make your abdominal separation worse.

Exercises like crunches only make it worse — a recent study found that doing crunches with a diastasis could actually increase the size of the gap between your ab muscles.

Abdominal Separation Exercises

The following exercises will help you strengthen your abdominal muscles and they’re safe to do with ab separation.

Pelvic tilts are a great exercise to start with if you have diastasis recti. They help activate and strengthen your deep core muscles, which can improve your posture and reduce back pain.

They also place less stress on your connective tissue than other exercises. To perform a pelvic tilt:

1. Pelvic Tilts: Lie on your back with your knees bent. Take a large diaphramatic breath in (expand your ribs outwards). Tighten your abs and press your lower back flat into the floor. Hold for 5 seconds, then relax. Perform 10–15 repetitions of pelvic tilts twice daily, or try holding for longer durations to increase difficulty.
2. Side Plank Obliques: Get into side plank position, with one hand directly under your shoulder. Raise up onto the outside edge of your bottom foot, keeping your body in a straight line from head to toe. Hold for 30 seconds (or more) and switch sides. Do 3-4 reps on each side. Side planks are great for strengthening your obliques (the sides of your core)
3. Lie on your back and feel just below your belly button for a vertical gap between the left and right sides of your abdominal wall. If it is at least two or three finger-widths wide, or if you can slide your fingers above and below each other in that space, you might have a diastasis. 

Make sure you take the class above to get further instruction on these exercises, plus more. It will help you narrow your gap so you can get back to doing the things that matter most to you.