One Great Postnatal Exercise

This is a fabulous multi-tasking  postnatal exercise that will help you lose baby weight, improve your posture & give you lovely arms… interested?

I’m calling this The Gecko, because it reminds me of those lizard things that lift one foot off the ground at a time in an attempt to keep cool. I think it’s got a proper name like ‘prone arm row’, but having already christened the ‘Supermum’, I’m going to carry on taking blatant exercise-re-naming liberties & call it The Gecko. It’s a great postnatal exercise what do you care what it’s called?

This is your starting position – it’s a version of the Plank, or the first stage of a full press up (don’t worry. You’re not going to do one).

The Gecko starting position

Make sure your shoulders are directly above your hands, & that your core muscles are engaged (navel pulled through to spine & pelvic floor contracted) to support your back. From here, lift one hand off the ground, so you’re balancing on your feet & the other hand…

Try not to rotate your whole body as you lift each hand, but squeeze your shoulders blades together as you pull each elbow up & back.

Lift one side...

... & then the other!

A few reasons why it’s one of my new favourite postnatal exercises:

• It’s a big muscle group multi-tasker. The more & the bigger muscles you use per correctly performed bodyweight exercise, the more calories you use up to lose your baby weight

• You keep on using up calories after you’ve finished. Big muscle groups need more energy (IE calories)  to just ‘be’ than small ones. Do this great postnatal exercise 20 times in good form, & you’re toning lean muscle as you do it, & still losing fat when you stop!

• It’s a great core exercise. To maintain this position & the movement, you need to keep transverse abdominus (that the important muscle for a flat tummy) engaged throughout. Pull navel to spine, keeping pelvic floor contracted.
• It works the upper back, rather than the chest. For postnatal exercise, this is incredibly important for correcting the postural imbalances of pregnancy & motherhood (slouching, hunched shoulders)
• It’ll give you nice toned arms & shoulders

You can make it harder by holding a dumb-bell in each hand & lifting them as well!

So incorporate this one into your postnatal exercise programme either instead of, or as well as, press ups. Enjoy! (Or even if you don’t enjoy it, do it anyway. It works!