What They Didn’t Tell You: From Core to Floor

The Truth About Postpartum Recovery and Rebuilding Strength

• Millie Schweky

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Season 3 kickoff with a truth bomb on postpartum “recovery.”

 Dr. Millie Schweky and fitness expert Zoe Corin get real about what your body actually needs after birth... no bounce-back fantasy, just evidence-based steps that rebuild strength, protect your pelvic floor, and help you feel like you again.

You’ll learn

  • How to reconnect to core and breath so healing isn’t left to chance
  • The safe bridge from early rehab to real strength training
  • Alignment tweaks that reduce leaking, back pain, and prolapse symptoms
  • What the six-week check really means, and what it doesn’t
  • Green-light and red-flag signs as you return to walking, lifting, and life

Perfect for
New moms, moms-to-be, and anyone guiding postpartum recovery who wants a plan that honors the body and actually works.

One small step today
Pick one habit: 5 minutes of breath + core, or a posture reset during feeds, and do it daily this week. Small wins stack.


Links:
Follow Millie:  @milliedpt
Join the Core to Floor community:  https://millie-schweky.mykajabi.com/intimacy

Connect with Zoe Corin: @strongerwithzo

Hey sis and welcome to what they didn't tell you from core to floor. I'm your girl Dr. Millie Schweky, doctor of physical therapy here to teach you everything you need to know about your body. This season is super exciting because I have one of the most well-spoken and experienced guests on.

We have Zoe Corin who is a certified personal trainer and group exercise instructor who works with women across the lifespan from pre-pregnancy, during pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, and beyond. And on this season we're going to be talking about connecting to your body, the truth about exercise, a little bit about postpartum, and I just can't wait for you to learn everything that she has to share. It's gonna be such an amazing season and I'm just so happy that you're here.

Welcome Zoe to the show. Thanks Melz, I'm so excited to be here. This looks so fun.

Before we dive in because we have so much to talk about, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for those who don't know you yet? Sure, so my name is Zoe. I have a studio in Rwanana for women of all ages. I focus mainly on pre and postnatal, but recently in the last years I've done a lot of work in the menopause area.

Actually it's really interesting seeing the change in people's bodies and how we go from like, you know, being teenagers and kind of having all the body image issues to then becoming pregnant and extra body image issues on top of that etc etc and how to work with women basically and make them empowered and focus on feeling stronger and take away the focus of all the other kind of effects of life and how we've been made to think a certain body type is one way. So a lot of the work I do is I work with the emotional and physical side of strengthening your body and feeling confident in your body and yeah it's super it's amazing to see how women grow and change their whole attitude towards exercise. So that's really my focus as a trainer and it's it's awesome to be able to give that.

And they're so lucky to have you. Every time I'm by your studio I'm just thinking about how this community is so lucky to have someone like you who understands the body in the way you do and has the specific approach to strength that you do. So today we're going to be talking about the truth about postpartum recovery and kind of like how someone would get started if they've recently had a baby.

So I know there's so many myths that like everyone thinks like oh I have to wait for my six-week checkup to go to the doctor to start exercising again. So I just wanted to ask you if anyone's ever come to you before that time and if they didn't what either way like what would you do with someone before the six-week mark? Because I know I work with a lot of women before the six-week mark but as a trainer what would you do? So it's actually really funny. I get asked this question often from two different angles.

One angle like people that are really kind of exercise goers and want to jump back in probably far too quickly. And those ones you know sometimes you actually want to turn around and say to them like maybe the six-week mark is better for you. And then there's the other people that are kind of just like they're really hesitant to start exercise and you know will push it off.

So there's definitely things you can do before the six-week mark and have people come to me often even three to four weeks where we're just kind of working on their breath and restoring their kind of the core in a very low impact controlled manner. And obviously mobilizing because you know often they have other kids you're lifting your kids you're moving around you've got to stay mobile. But the funny actually really funny a small story a few weeks ago I had a girl come to class and she was like six weeks postpartum I think maybe like just before she had a doctor's appointment.

 And I was like fine you can come whenever. But it was like a hard class and I said to her like really really you can't like I don't want you jumping yet I really want to assess you first and whatever. And anything I said to her she kind of just was like like totally ignored me.

I like did whatever she want and it was really interesting because after I spoke to her and I said I appreciate I understand you want to like jump back into exercise but this isn't really the way to do it. And the next day she messaged me being like oh I'm really like feeling my pelvic floor today. So I think you really do have to find the right balance at the beginning.

I get the I totally appreciate the desire to like kind of get back to yourself and do what you can and push your boundaries because you kind of want to regain control of like you. But the first weeks are really important and you've got to give yourself time to heal. It's major like you've gone through a major body change.

Totally. I also think a really big factor is how active you were before. It's like one of the questions I ask someone when they come into the clinic so I'll give you a little bit like from my perspective.

 

I do have women that come to me before the six week mark just because they know they could. You know what I mean? Like they know they're going to come back to me after they get checked out by their doctor at the postpartum checkup because what their doctor is checking at that checkup is that there's no risk for infection anymore. When the doctor looks internally they're looking at organs and they're just making sure that you could put things in your vagina.

And once they tell you you could put things inside okay go have sex. Yeah go have sex and work out. What people don't realize is it means go back to sex gradually which we'll talk about on another episode.

But go back to exercise gradually. Not go back to the dance cardio running high intensity HIIT classes right away. But now you have the green light to work towards it which I totally appreciate that they give the green light.

However you could actually start working towards that before. So when I see someone in the... It also depends on the birth. I for example I couldn't do anything for weeks but like my second birth I was able to move around already from two weeks postpartum.

And it just depends on so many facts. Yeah rest and recovery is the name of the game. But the what you're doing in the first six weeks to be clear you're on your back for a lot of it. You're in bed. You're breathing. It's like things you're... Different things that are restful.

Like going for a light walk is restful. Correct. Correct. I just don't want people to think that when we say you could work out before that you could start getting back to things before six weeks that we mean going to a yoga class or a pilates class. It's more like you're working on your breathing. You're working on contracting the muscles.

Just reconnecting to the body which is what you and I have been working so hard to teach people about. So six weeks really doesn't mean go back to full exercise. But at the end of the day you and I could agree that before six weeks you could start working so that when you hit that six week mark you're actually in a really good place where you feel super connected to your body and you know what it's doing.

Like when you give birth it's so like your your like your whole time is no longer yours. And I feel like exercise and movement or even coming to you for that hour it's like something for yourself. And I feel like that is also really key in like in terms of exercising and self-care.

Like when you become a mom that kind of goes out the window at the beginning. And just regaining that kind of power of like I care about me is also so important. So giving yourself that time whether it's lying down on the floor going for a walk going to you for a checkup.

It's about you and I think that's something really important to that. Yeah it's funny because I personally can't relate to women when they're like oh my gosh I'm taking care of my kids so much there's no time for me. Like I it's just my personality like I have no problem ditching my kids leaving them with my husband or a nanny to be like I'm at the gym for the next hour.

Like I mean like I don't like like this is my personality and I know you also know how to make it happen. Like you're working all day and you get the hour in somehow. But there's yeah like otherwise I'd be on so many medications for my mental health.

They'd be paying in on the way so I might as well pay for basic. But for the other type of personality that gets so engulfed in their kids which I think is a beautiful trait to have. We just have to learn how to balance it by the way on both ends we need to learn to balance it.

But yeah just showing up for yourself is such a big is such a big idea in this in this time. Okay so I just to move things along what are the few let's like name your top two things that you're focusing on with women in the first 12 weeks when they're when they come to you like in the first three months postpartum? So as you know as you also agree breathing okay because it's totally ignored from most people and if you just jump back into a group class no one's going to tell you about it and it's the most important thing to. Rehabilitation something you can basically do 24 hours after giving birth so why not get to it two weeks later.

So it's rehabilitation and mobilizing so kind of moving through your range of motion feeling more comfortable in your body kind of moving into areas that may be both really stuck whilst you have like a big belly there or you had a side joint pain or whatever it may be that might be starting to calm down. So it's really kind of breath and mobilization. I love that.

I'm going to chime in with two of mine that are different. Mine overlap with yours those two as well I'm just going to pick another two which is just learning how to engage your core correctly so that everything's up. A lot of women when they think they're engaging their core they're actually pushing down as if they're pooping and that could cause all sorts of things like prolapse and hemorrhoids so I just usually make sure they have that coordination going and I actually do check internally like I'll have a finger internal while they're doing exercises to make sure that they're not bearing down during the exercise.

 A lot of the times they'll be like yeah I'm squeezing on the glute bridge and as they come up into the bridge I feel their bladder or uterus literally like coming down. It's really hard to know if you don't know. Exactly but once you have the connection my patients are so equipped like they could be away from me and at their own home I know exactly what's going up what's going down so just that coordination piece is one of the big things I work on and I would say the second thing I work on is giving them really practical tips like for example stretches to do after you feed your baby whether you're breastfeeding or bottle feeding like here's three stretches you can do after you're probably not sitting with the best posture or yeah chest openers and and strengthening the pec muscles also like the chest muscles and also I love teaching women the mechanics of like how to better pick up your baby how to transfer them into the crib on the changing table in the car all the things that you're doing anyway like just learn how to do them better so it's cool when they're going to someone like you at the same time because I'm teaching you how to hinge and hinge under load and then when they are doing it with you in a workout setting which is a little bit quicker now it's so much more effortless when they're doing it in their daily life because they've done it they've deadlifted allowing the foundation exactly actually one of my clients this week asked me like she took a picture of her bed like her kid's bed and she was like it's like kind of an angle and she was like how is the best way for me to pick up the baby and it was such a like great like it was such a great message it was such a great question it was like okay this is so practical like because you couldn't like kind of pick up regular bend them and pick up she had to like do it from a diagonal her back was pulling so I kind of like explained okay you need to get like you need to kind of get into this angle and like bend and like push your hip to that side I would even move the sheet I would move that move the sheet they have a bigger kid yeah a bigger kid okay anyway just really interesting I was like this is so practical I love that I love that the practical is so good because when you come to a personal training or therapy session that's just like an hour of your life but your life is happening around that so once you start seeing how it pours into everywhere else you see a lot of the good poor turnout so what are some signs that your clients would tell you are happening that you would tell them okay maybe like you should back off when I think obviously bleeding if you're still bleeding that's not something that we want to kind of enter we should kind of obviously the beginning that's light bleeding is fine but anything that's heavier than light keep that on the low down the exercise on the low down for beginning and also like general kind of pain I feel like for me at least I had a c-section for my first birth I couldn't stand up properly for a good while so a lot of people can't even sit properly wasn't even to like it wasn't even on the cards yeah so I think like it's just an element of like pain and discomfort bleeding pain and bleeding yeah my two signs I would say totally I agree some of my patients come in they can't even sit comfortably because of a tear they had this exercise isn't like what we were talking about at this point yeah totally um so just know that if you're listening to this if you're experiencing any of these signs and your early postpartum it might be a sign to back off a lot of people will feel fine also in the moment and then afterwards like what you were describing before they'll feel a lot of pelvic heaviness like something's falling out of their vagina or the bleeding picks up a little bit but you felt fine while you were doing it and a lot of what I try to tell people that are eager to exercise is just because you can doesn't mean you should because we need to be gradually your body is healing from a physiological perspective the cells are damaged even though you can't see what's happening there's a lot of happening and a lot of healing happening in the beginning and your body's working so hard and if you're using too much energy on exercising you're actually taking away that energy from your body doing the healing so it's a really fine balance that you need to find under the right supervision following the right kind of program okay so I actually get this question a lot a lot of patients ask me if I'm still in this healing phase how can I safely start strength training oh okay that's a good question so there's an elements to strength training right like we've been through both of us have been through kind of the rehabilitational side of strength training and you know there's obviously body weight work that you can do to start with there's kind of the if we let's talk push-up for example okay just give me an example there's a toad it's a totally different push-up doing a push-up on the incline like a high incline like a surface top to doing a push-up on like a lower bench to doing a push-up on the floor for those who don't know when you do a push-up on an incline it's a lot easier on the core and when you do it lower your core is working a lot harder so I guess the element is modifying so that it feels not overload not overloading and um and body weight so keeping it kind of very nice and body weight focused or using bands to start like light resistant bands and then you build it from there you use one weight you don't use two weights and then you add another way and then you maybe add the bar there's so many progressions here and and as someone that's uh you know if you if you do exercise I'm sure you can kind of realize how you modify the same way you modified throughout your pregnancy and you start you kind of pick it up even less than where you left it off usually but yes around the same area where you left by the way I find that fascinating that most women who exercise throughout their pregnancy are way more fit the day they go into labor than when they come back to you six weeks post and it just goes to show you how big of a physiological event birth is how much it affects you like the day before I gave birth to my daughter this past time like I was at the gym dead lifting probably like 75% of my body weight at the end of my pregnancy three hours before my birth yeah and then like I went back to the gym I think like five weeks later I was ready I actually went skiing five weeks later that was crazy my favorite day is knock them it's low impact it's low impact and I trained my there's a lot of opening the leg yeah I trained no my legs are super close when I ski my legs are super close yeah I love skiing and I actually trained myself in different positions in the first five weeks postpartum and during pregnancy so that I would be able to to ski postpartum but my point is that um or however more fit you are that I just was like wow my body feels so different going back to the gym postpartum like it was humbling and like I knew the strength was in there I was just like on this timeline that is totally normal and appropriate but it's so humbling to go from being so strong at nine months pregnant and then you are like four or five weeks out and you're like I'm just gonna deadlift the bar you also like I didn't take that much of a break yes just but then you realize the physiological aspects of the journey of birthing and looking after the baby after whilst trying to heal so you're not really giving yourself full healing because you're not sleeping properly exactly or the sleep deprivation makes its toll the sleep deprivation and also a lot of women are not eating properly when they give birth that's actually things I ask about when they come back like are you sleeping are you eating and it's like some sort of joke when I ask them they all lack in my place yeah but it makes it really affects the healing process your cells need nutrients and a whole nother topic for another time about nutrient deficiencies and in the postpartum period it actually affects how your muscles and your cells in your body heal some of the biggest fears that women have in this postpartum period are leaking prolapse diastasis what do you do when you structure your programs that helps them avoid these things because we know that if you overdo it in the early postpartum you could cause these things or worse than these things so what is it that you're doing from a personal trainer's perspective to avoid them you know going overboard but I think the first thing that you do when someone bodies I do when someone walks into my door is I assess so doing a full assessment so checking their diastasis um encouraging them to go see a pelvic floor physio because obviously I don't check them internally so I'm not really going to know how they feel other than they give me kind of a scale of heaviness yeah assessing their alignment seeing how they kind of if their rib cage is really kind of over there is over their hips could you explain that to people that don't know what what what that's actually a good thing like one of the one of the ways that you're helping women avoid leaking or prolapse is alignment so could you just describe like what good alignment is what it is that you're looking for again there's no perfect alignment but um when it comes to alignment we want to aim for our rib cage stacked over our pelvis and the reason being is that when we are in a stacked position we're using our core efficiently we're not bearing down as much we're keeping that thing our pelvic floor nice and um in in a good position to be able to contract and relax obviously which is really important and often people throughout pregnancy um find themselves in a very anterior pelvic tilt so they're kind of their back is very arched and then when they birth they start holding their baby and then they go into this kind of bum tucked positions that we call this the mum bum where like you're kind of in a pushed forward pelvis is tucked under and again both of these positions are really tough on our pelvic floor and they're really tough on restoring our core so proper alignment or i would say like you know let's aim for 85 percent good alignment um is is really essential for rehabilitating the body yeah i describe this to my patients i'm like you're giving your muscles the best opportunity to contract and relax in the right way because when you're not in a good position they just imagine like playing a football game and you're standing in the wrong place and you can't catch the ball how are you catching the ball you're standing in the right place so the same thing with your muscles they need to be in the right position to contract and to relax i i often say when like if we're talking about foundational exercise as it is like why do we want to have good form because good form means efficient exercise and we as mums don't have time to be inefficient so if we're doing exercise let's do it properly let's get the work done properly like there's no point spending an hour doing inefficient exercise when you could be spending 20 minutes doing efficient exercise and getting the maximum benefits yeah that's the way i see it the other thing that i like to point out is that in the postpartum period it really is crucial to rebuild our strength there's a lot going on with your bones also but you're especially if you're breastfeeding your body is kind of like in a state that's it's called catabolism and your body is actually breaking things down such as bone mineral density because of all the nutrients you're using on breastfeeding and also the sleep deprivation and you're probably not eating everything you need to and so underdoing resistance training can actually be worse than overdoing it in some cases and so what i like to tell people is that you don't just need something that's safe for postpartum but you need something that's effective for postpartum where you're actually going to be doing proper resistance that's going to build your muscle and bone density so that you know you could take care of your body in the long run because however you take care of yourself after giving birth is actually going to directly affect you in let's say 30-40 years from now when you're in that perimenopausal 30-40 i'm flattering myself we're so old but like in like 10, 20, 30 years from now like 10 years right um yeah it's a long term savings account on bone density like yeah we kind of move from this teenage years to young adulthood to like being really obsessed with kind of like oh we want to look a certain way so that's why we're exercising and then you get to have kids and you're kind of like i at least i feel like it's really amazing how you see how women transition into this like oh i just want to be really strong so i feel like i can pick up my kids to like oh i really need strong bones because i'm getting older so i feel like that transitioning i wish it would happen earlier in life but i think that's really important like the importance of bone density and its connection to strength training yeah that's that's something we should kind of keep talking about i think we're the ones pushing it i think it's us so if you're listening to this just know bone density and muscle mass go start going down actually once you turn 35 which is so young so the better you are when you hit that 35 years old mark the better you're going to be at preserving it as you get older just because it actually physiologically deteriorates as you get older doesn't mean you're doomed there's so much you could do such as working on your strength and it's never too late to start never too late to start i've seen women start like in their 50s right before menopause so you could totally get on it if you like this episode send it to all your friends drop it in the group chat rate it five stars leave a comment and we cannot wait to see you next time thank you so much zoe for coming thanks so much for having me this is so fun