Exercising with Diastasis Recti-Seeking Safe core work & to share experiences

Hoping to learn more about safe exercises and other's experiences. My weight loss group has weekly challenges and this week was posting video proof of 500 scissor kicks. 25 killed me and I saw in the video a quite significant bulge in my abdomen. I've been diagnosed with a 4 finger DRA. However, I've never experienced such discomfort and even pain with it prior to attempting the scissor kicks. I've spent the day checking out some videos, and reading articles but would love some input on this.

Replies

  • smal48
    smal48 Posts: 102 Member
    Is it following pregnancy? With mine, I didn’t do any of the normal core exercises like crunches or sit ups (def not scissor kicks) until it was better and I was careful every time I stood up or got out of bed to not use my stomach muscles. I just did pelvic floor exercises. It took a month or so to close up and then I did all the usual core workouts again and built up the muscles again pretty quickly. Mine was also four fingers and it closed to nothing.
    I think you do need to avoid all core exercises completely while you have separation.
  • JaiNicole7
    JaiNicole7 Posts: 88 Member
    Not recently, my youngest is 17. But I've had 3 full term pregnancies & my babies were all quite large with my daughter being the smallest at a birth weight of 7 lbs 14 oz; all delivered via c-section. I'm also of small stature-5'2, and overweight, I retained about 50% of the weight I gained with each pregnancy. So I have a lot of contributing factors.
  • elizabethpittman80
    elizabethpittman80 Posts: 22 Member
    There is an excellent program called Momma Strong you may want to try. It deals specifically with DRA. Just google it and the website will.come up. Good luck!
  • glovepuppet
    glovepuppet Posts: 1,713 Member
    I'll be following this thread.
    My youngest, now 18yo, was 10lb 12oz. I'm split literally top to bottom (or ribs to pube) and don't want to make things any worse.
    I've read conflicting advice, it seems like everyone is guessing and assuming, so I just try to keep toned with gentle exercise and avoid anything that puts lots of strain on them.
    In leau of solid evidence based advice, I go with listening to my body when it tells me to stop.