Everyone's Question: When can I get back to running again?
The number one question I see in online forums, FB groups, and get asked in my DM's and by my athletes is…when can I start running again?
The answer is, as it is with everything pregnancy and postpartum is, "it depends!" Everyone's timeline is different and dependent on a large variety of factors including their overall pregnancy experience, their exercise during pregnancy, their birth experience, any complications they experienced, their healing, their mental health, their time, and their desire. The puzzle is unique to every woman and every pregnancy.
Remember that you're in it for the long haul. If you want to get back to sustainable training, jumping in too quickly will usually result in fatigue, injury, and plateus. Patience and persistence will always pay off far, far more in the end. You may get to that half marathon sooner if you start at 4 weeks, but that could lead you to being sidelined with an injury for a goal race 6 months later.
There are people who will get back to running before they're cleared. While medical clearance has gotten a bad rap for a lot of reasons, it is critical that the person who helped you deliver that baby take a look inside and see how you're healing. For this reason, I still recommend that women wait until they see their doctor or midwife. You spent 10 months (or more) trusting this medical professional to help get you through pregnancy and to delivery, don't dismiss their expertise after you cross the finish line. That said, the clearance is MEDICAL. It's not mental, emotional, and it doesn’t take into consideration anything other than the healing of your pelvis, in most cases.
Running is a high intensity exercise that puts substantial force on your body with each step. It requires careful consideration when returning, looking at the WHOLE athlete for readiness.
We hear all the time of pro athletes and even regular women getting right back to it. I even saw in a FB group someone who ran back and forth in their hospital room because they wanted to preserve their running streak on strava. (It's not THAT important! PLEASE don’t do that!)
The common myth that's out there is that running too soon can exacerbate or cause prolapse, incontinence, etc. While that CAN be true, the larger issue here is the whole slew of other physical issues that can stem from running before you're ready. Your body's physical changes substanitally impact your gait and your posture, both things that don't just snap back once you deliver. Your body is often still shifting and adjusting, sometimes up to a year postpartum. Often, things are permanently changed, right down to the size of your feet. Each step you take requires a lot of different muscles to fire, and they're all going to recruit a little differently after you've given birth. It's imperative that you take the time to:
Understand the differences in your body
Strengthen the larger core and leg muscles that are essential to walking and running to help avoid injury
Get re-fit for running shoes
Train these muscles to fire again and
Continue to refine and progress your pelvic floor rehab by working with a pelvic floor physical therapist.
Feeling finally ready?
Make sure you’ve carved out time and bandwidth to get back to running regularly! This looks different for everyone, but establishing a mental plan with opportunities for variance will ensure you can stay consistent.
Test that running feeling by doing a long walk with short :30 - 1:00 bursts of running every 5-6 minutes. Note symptoms, pain, or sensations, but don't overthink it!
After doing several of these, go on a "test run" of no more than 10 minutes. Yeah, I said 10, really!
SLOWLY progress your running by continuing to incorporate run intervals into your walks. Slowly increase that test run by a few minutes each week.
Do a dynamic running warmup EVERY time, waking up the glutes, hips, and mobilizing your ankles and feet. It doesn't need to go longer than 5 mins!
Start to shift the running intervals longer and walking, shorter. You may even want to keep walk intervals permanently, and that's OK! Walk breaks, or strategic slowdowns as I call them, are a great method of keeping little tidbits of recovery throughout your runs.
DON'T proceed through pain
DON'T proceed through incontinence (a bit may happen at first, and here and there, but if you're leaking consistently, we've got a little more work to do!)
DON'T sign up for a race too soon after your due date (this timeline also varies) but giving yourself too tight of a timeline, while it could seem like a fun goal, may in turn cause feelings of stress!
ENJOY the progression back to running again!