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

What No One Told You About Core Strength in Pregnancy

• Millie Schweky

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In this empowering solo episode, Dr. Millie breaks down everything you need to know about core strength during pregnancy, what’s safe, what actually works, and why your breath is the secret to it all.

Learn how to build strength, stability, and confidence in your changing body through simple posture shifts, mindful breathing, and functional movement. Whether you’re pregnant, postpartum, or just craving a deeper connection to your core, this episode will help you feel grounded, strong, and ready for anything.

Join the Free 5-Day Core Connection Challenge to start reconnecting with your body today.

Links:

Follow Millie:  @milliedpt 

Join the Core to Floor community:  https://millie-schweky.mykajabi.com/intimacy


Hey sis, and welcome back to What They Didn't Tell You From Core to Floor. I'm your girl, Dr. Millie Schweky, pelvic floor therapist here to teach you everything you need to know about your body as a woman. As you can see, today is a solo episode.

It's just me, Zoe will be back with me after next week's episode, and then we'll be back to normal programming. Today, we're diving into one of my favorite topics, which is core strength during pregnancy.

But before we jump in, we would love to make an announcement about our free five-day core connection challenge, which maybe you've seen on the socials. It's happening now through December 11th. You can sign up anytime from now to then.

This challenge is designed for any woman who's ever felt disconnected from their core, from their body. Maybe you go to exercise classes and you're feeling your ab exercises in your neck and your shoulders, or you feel like you can't take a deep breath or your breathing is super shallow. Maybe you feel like you're doing all the squats and deadlifts and you're not feeling it in your tush.

Maybe you're pregnant, newly postpartum, or it's just been a while since you've truly felt strong and centered in your body. Or maybe you feel pretty strong, but you're not quite sure if the muscles that you're working are the muscles that are actually getting worked because maybe your form is a little bit off. So this is the challenge for you.

 It's quick and easy. Each day, you'll get an email sent straight to your inbox with exactly what you need to do for that day of the challenge. It should only take one to two minutes and in just five days, you'll start to rebuild your core connection.

You might even improve your posture and just feel more stable, confident, safe in your body. And I'll put the link in the show notes and we would love to have you there. Jumping into today's topic, which is core strength during pregnancy, I just want to acknowledge some common fears and misconceptions, which is that a lot of women are told not to use their core during pregnancy or to avoid core exercises because you can't strengthen your core safely when you're pregnant.

But if you've been here long enough, then you definitely know that your core is not just your abs. It's a deep system of support that includes your diaphragm, your pelvic floor, your posture. And when we train it with intention, we're setting up a foundation for a less painful pregnancy or maybe a pain-free pregnancy, an easy birth, a smoother postpartum recovery.

 

And what I want to give you today is three reasons that you should strengthen your core and three really good tips on how to do it. So briefly, before we do our deep dive, let's just mention the three reasons why you should strengthen your core during pregnancy. One is that it's going to help improve your posture and alignment.

As we know, alignment changes a lot during pregnancy, so it helps keep excess pressure off your low back, hips, and pelvic floor and support the growing belly in a way that could possibly reduce discomfort and prevent that forward dumping posture where you're kind of like shoving your hips forward. It can also help you with pain-free movement and daily function. Your core is really like a responsive group of muscles that helps you move, lift, breathe, twist, turn without pain.

And if you have a stronger core, it can help reduce common issues like round ligament pain, pelvic pressure, back tension, things like that. One of the most amazing things that can come out of strengthening your core, this is reason number three, is that your birth and your recovery can actually be a lot smoother because your breath and your core work together to support good pushing and working on your core actually improves your coordination between your diaphragm and your pelvic floor, which can make both liber and postpartum healing. So let's do a little bit more of a deep dive into the posture piece.

So when your belly starts to grow, your center of gravity starts to shift forward, and many women start to lean into that excessive low back curve. We call it an anterior pelvic tilt, and that posture actually increases tension to your spine and your pelvic floor, and it can even lead to back pain, pressure, or shortness of breath. And if you strengthen your core, and I'm not talking about crunches, I'm talking about your deep stabilizing muscles, that's going to help your body adapt to these changes because your body is changing so much.

Every week of pregnancy, your body's changing more and more. Your belly grows, your chest grows, your posture changes, your breathing changes, the way you walk, sit, stand changes. And we want to kind of like keep up with it in a way.

So strengthening your core is going to be huge. And don't forget that it's a whole entire group of muscles. It's just not ab exercises.

So when you're strengthening this whole canister of muscles around the belly, kind of like holding it up in better alignment, and it actually supports the uterus from underneath rather than pulling on your spine or hips. Better posture and alignment also helps optimize how you breathe and move. It keeps pressure distributed pretty evenly through the system, which is a lot of what I focus on when I'm working with my patients.

Like how are we able to breathe and move evenly? Let's jump into number two, which is pain-free movement and daily function. I think a lot of people will tell you like, oh, it hurts. It's just pregnancy.

Like it'll go away and you give birth. But first of all, it doesn't have to be like that. And second of all, a lot of what causes discomfort is how you're managing your core pressure.

So you know how like if you're on a fast moving train standing up and it short stops, your body kind of like knows to jerk and keep you up instead of you like falling on the floor. It's like your body's natural response. Your core is supposed to be responsive like that and keep you stable during all daily movements from getting out of bed, lifting up groceries, picking up your toddler.

And when your deep core and pelvic floor know how to coordinate with your breath, your body can actually absorb and transfer this load without straining. And a lot of my patients that come in for things like round ligament pain, pubic symphysis pain. So that's pain kind of like in the front of the pelvis or low back pain, hip pain or a heavy dragging sensation in the pelvis.

We actually work on core strength a lot, and that usually offloads the muscles that are being overworked and underpaid. And just remember that I just don't want you to confuse a strong and responsive core with a rigid or braced core. A strong core means your body can adjust and support you dynamically throughout the day.

It's not always on making a muscle super tight. It's able to respond appropriately to the given stimulus. It's not supposed to be on when you're resting, like you shouldn't be sitting and sucking in your stomach all day, right? It should be on responding to your needs as they come.

Now we're going to jump into how strengthening your core can help with a smoother birth and recovery. If you know me, you follow me, if you've taken any of my courses or worked with me, you know that your breath and your core are absolutely the foundation for both birth and recovery. During labor, your diaphragm and your pelvic floor need to work together.

Your inhale relaxes everything and expands everything. Your exhale engages and supports everything. And when these two systems know how to communicate, your pushing during birth becomes more efficient and your body can open without overstraining and you're less likely to experience tearing or maybe like prolonged pushing that's ineffective.

 

And then the postpartum stage, that same foundation, is what helps your tissues heal and reconnect faster. If your core is coordinated, it helps you restore stability, reduce diastasis, and support your organs all while feeling a little bit more confident because you have that mind-body connection. You've been working on it.

So again, just don't forget that strength is not about muscle. It's also about everything just kind of working together because it's a system. So your breath, alignment, and movement all kind of need to flow together in that way.

Now we'll dive in to my top three tips for safely strengthening your core. And let's see if I go beyond three. Let's see how I'm feeling as I start rambling down my list.

So the number one thing I'm going to tell you, and I'm sure you guessed this already, to strengthen your core is going to be starting with your breath. You could even try this right now while you're sitting here. When you inhale, your diaphragm should lower.

So that's the main breathing muscle under your ribs. Your ribs should expand from side to side and front to back. And your pelvic floor should naturally lengthen down.

And when you exhale, everything should kind of automatically recoil. So you have to practice 360 degree breathing, which is actually one of the exercises we are doing in our five-day challenge where you're working on expanding your ribs to the sides and back. It helps regulate the pressure in your body.

It also helps calm your nervous system. And if you don't have this skill, it's going to be really challenging to build a true foundation for strength. So I recommend getting on that, pregnant or not, you're going to need that.

Breath is so underrated. I mean, in my world, it's not perfectly rated, but in other worlds, right, if you're not a pelvic floor PT, I'm sure breath work is underrated. It's such a good down-training tool, which means it could take you from like a really heightened, stressed state and help you feel grounded and more safe, connected to your body, which is something super powerful that I'm very passionate about teaching in depth.

And I'm just going to end this off by saying, start with your breath. That's the number one tool to help strengthen your core during pregnancy so that you could, in short, have really good inhales. And the better your inhale, the better your exhale, the more your core will turn on and then exhale.

So start with your breath. Once you have breath down, my second tip is going to be to work on your posture. Now, posture does not mean standing up straight.

 

Posture means finding a position where your body can breathe and move with ease. Ideally, we talk about your ribs being stacked over your pelvis, soft knees, so that your diaphragm and your pelvic floor can move in sync. That's part of what keeps your core responsive.

So my tip for you on this one is going to be, notice how you sit, stand, and walk throughout the day. You can make small adjustments to your alignment, and those are going to have a huge impact on how your core functions. We never force good posture.

It's more about finding balance in the body and understanding that our bodies are dynamic and move like we're never going to be like stuck in one perfect posture. It's just about being able to get out of like overly hunching yourself or flaring yourself forward and being able to move out of that and find balance. My third tip for strengthening your core during pregnancy is going to be learning how to integrate strength into your daily life.

You don't really need to carve an hour to work out your core, like that's crazy excessive. But what you could do is that every time you lift, twist, or get up from the floor, use that as an opportunity to connect. Think of integrating your breath with your movement.

So exhale on exertion, inhale as you release. So let's say you're picking up your toddler, inhale as you pick them up, exhale as you squat to stand. If you're picking up groceries, inhale as you bend down, exhale as you pick them up.

You could work on functional things like squats, lunges, and rotation with breath, making sure you're always exhaling on effort. So if you're already going to a class, you're following videos, definitely work on the breath. Sometimes teachers are too caught up in the class to remind you like when to breathe during the move, but the shortcut is exhale on exertion.

 This is not, you know, 100% of the time, but more times than not in like a standard workout class, you're exhaling on the part. In the five-day challenge, we actually go through some of this. We go through 360 degree core breathing, and we go through the rib stack.

So I'll just kind of like run you through that now. The 360 degree breathing, you could try it sitting with one hand on your ribs and one hand on your belly. If you try it now, I'm going to give you a second, and start by inhaling through your nose.

 

See if your ribs expand out and back. Let your pelvic floor soften on the inhale. And now you're going to exhale gently through pursed lips, kind of like you're blowing out a candle, and try to feel your belly rise from the bottom up.

You don't have to be pregnant to do this. This is like literally for everyone, but when it's pregnant and your belly gets bigger, your muscles are stretched out. So your mechanoreceptors or the cells that talk from, those are my top three tips for safely strengthening your core during pregnancy.

And I could just tell you that on the five-day challenge, we do work through the 360 degree core breathing, which I mentioned earlier. The rib stack, which again is making sure your ribs are lined up over your hips, over your knees, over your ankles. And again, if you watch the five-day challenge, you'll see us walk you through how to do this.

Another thing that I recommend is trying the 360 degree breath in different positions. So yeah, sitting and standing, but what about on all fours? Now your belly has to fight against gravity to engage. What about doing it in a deep squat? Avoid a deep squat for now if you have prolapse and you're not seeing anyone for that, but try in a deep squat.Try it in sideline. Try to get that top rib to move up, the one that's closer to the ceiling. They want to kind of like think about breathing into that top rib.

Try to think about doing some cat cows, inhaling as you cat and exhaling as you cow. I don't even know which one is the cat and which one's the cow to be honest. You're inhaling when you're looking up and exhaling when you're looking, you know, towards your chest.

These movements are key, small, intentional, thinking about connecting, bringing the whole body together, helping you feel in tune because birth and pregnancy are such intuitive time periods. Feeling in touch with your body is going to be such an amazing and powerful tool, something that we're all born with, but somehow with today's age become disconnected from. And one of my goals is to help you just feel more connected to it because it's totally your right to have that.

 That's why we created this challenge. It's hard for me to imagine being disconnected from my body. Like I've had periods of my life, like after a surgery that I had where I felt pretty disconnected from my body and I was like, I would do anything to get back in there.

 And it was a lot of like slow, intentional movements, breathing, posture, alignment, and implementing all these things into my daily life and movements that actually helped me get back on track. It wasn't just the workouts, which obviously like doing the workouts is important, but that's not the point of this episode. The point of this episode is to show you that you don't need to like put on exercise clothes and get down on the mat for an hour. You could take like these little nuggets and just implement them into your daily life, into your daily movements. So to sum it up, core strength in pregnancy is not about crunches or aesthetics. It's about support, connection, confidence in your body, using your breath, posture, and some strength.

 You can move through pregnancy and beyond feeling stable, powerful, and pain-free. If you liked this episode, or if you didn't and you hated it, still join our free five-day challenge. It's literally free. It's live now, the link is in the show notes. It runs for the next few weeks.

So sign up. You're going to get guided exercises, education, and a deeper understanding of your body. And I cannot wait to see you next week. I'll be back solo and then I'll be back with Zoe. Please rate this episode five stars. Please comment.

I see all of them. I love the feedback. There's a little send a text button or leave a send fan mail button on like Apple and Spotify.

I would love to hear from you there as well. Leave a comment, send it to your friends, drop into the group chat, send it to all the pregnant people you know. This will help us get more episodes out to you and we can't wait to see you next week easier.