A typical day in the life of the parent of a small child involves countless reps of getting onto the floor to play, to clean, to lift a child. And most of the time, your arms are full.
Invest time to learn how to get up off the floor without using your hands.
Here are 6 skills to practice to build your get-up skills.
1) Exhale as you stand.
Many people have a tendency to hold their breath and grunt as they stand. This can place excess pressure through the core and pelvic floor.
This breath-holding strategy might not be the biggest deal in the world for people who have never had a baby.
But if you’re pregnant or recently postpartum, your core and pelvic floor are already under strain from your growing a baby. Breath holding creates excess strain on an already stressed system.
Learn to manage the effort of standing with an EXHALE rather than a grunt. The Connection Breath is a great place to start.
2) Getting comfortable with lunging.
No matter how you get up and down off of the floor, you’ll take advantage of a lunge stance at some point.
For example:
If the reverse lunge is challenging, try a supported lunge. You can perform a band-supported lunge or a dowel-supported lunge.
Once you are comfortable lunging, you are ready to try:
3) Start lower. Try: Kneeling Hip Hinge to Standing.
The key here is to use your glutes (your butt muscles) to drive your hips into extension.
Take advantage of your breath to stabilize yourself as you come up.
Inhale to prepare, exhale to move.
You can (and probably should) reset your breath between the discrete portions of this exercise.
4) 90/90 or Z-sit to standing.
Here’s a variation on the kneeling hip hinge-start.
Although it looks a little different, still think about using your glutes to pop your hips up into extension. This can feel awkward if you’ve never done it, but it’s good to get comfortable with awkward when you’re a parent!
5) Pick up your baby.
Add a little weight to your get-up, because really- are your hands ever free?
You don’t need to be precise in your loading here. Just practice being deliberate about standing up and down with stuff in your arms.
6) Get up and down how ever you can for 5 minutes.
Try not to use your hands. Get creative. Get comfortable.
Let me know how it goes! I wish you the strength and confidence to get off the ground with ease.
Questions? Drop a comment or send me a message!
Learn the Connection Breath, step-by-step.
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My mission is to make sure that having a baby is not a reason why you can’t do all the things.
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