Best Exercises For Flat Tummy After A C-Section

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Start With Gentle Exercises
When it comes to postpartum fitness, slow and steady wins the race. Begin your return to fitness with walking and Kegels. Stretches can also help break up scar tissue that can contribute to a pouch or overhang of extra tissue at your c-section site.

• Plow pose: Lie on the floor and reach your arms and legs above your head.
• Sphinx pose: Lift your chest and head just a few inches from the floor while lying on your stomach.
• Bridge pose: Lie on your back, bend your knees and press through your heels to lift your lower body and back off the ground.

All of these moves stretch your stomach and strengthen your pelvic floor without being too aggressive. If they hurt, stop immediately.

Prioritize Cardio
Cardio burns calories so you shed excess baby weight that's contributing to a round belly. You'll have to work your way into it -- even if you were active for much of your pregnancy -- because of the time off as you healed from surgery.

Brisk walking, perhaps with the baby in a stroller, as well as swimming or cycling are examples of gentle, low-impact forms of cardio to add in first. Jogging may also be an option if your doctor says so. If you can only do 10 to 15 minutes at a time due to your stamina and baby's needs, do several of these short blocks throughout the day.

Tips

• Strengthening your pelvic floor keeps your lower back healthy and strengthens your bladder, so you don't have uncomfortable leakage. Kegel exercises — the same ones you likely did while pregnant — can be performed whenever you feel ready post C-section.

With several months of dedication, you can work your way up to longer bouts of cardio and even add in high-intensity intervals, which help you burn fat from your stomach faster.

A paper in the Journal of Obesity published in 2011 summarized numerous research studies showing that short bouts of all-out effort followed by short bouts of easy effort burns fat and improves markers of metabolic health, such as blood sugar and insulin levels, better than steady-paced workouts.

Perform a HIIT workout one to three times per week by cycling at a fast, intense pace for one to two minutes and then pedaling easy for one to two minutes. Include a warmup and cool down to complete 30 to 45 minutes of total work.

Strength Train
Lifting your baby and all her gear is sometimes a workout in itself, but isn't sufficient to flatten your tummy. Take just 30 minutes, a couple times per week, to strength train all the major muscles to increase your proportion of lean mass, raise your metabolism and encourage fat burn.

Muscle requires more calories for your body to maintain, thus you become a fat-burning machine all during the day — not just when you're working out. Even if you worked out with weights during your pregnancy, you've had to take time off during the six weeks post-partum.

Start with just one set of eight to 12 repetitions of moves such as squats, chest presses, rows and lunges. For the first several weeks, or even months, body weight exercises are appropriate; only add dumbbells or other heavy weight once you feel stronger and your doctor has cleared it.