Core exercise for one year post birth

[solomonrulesok]

Hi
Am after some advice or info on what exercises might be good for me to do to strengthen my core now I'm one year on. I did the very gentle head lifts and pelvic curls, supermans, no ab crunching, planks etc and I'm now back into running quite heavily.
However I definitely still have diastasis. Worse above my belly button. Maybe 1.5-2 fingers. I have no problem with leakage but my stomach is not what it was so I'd like to work on really getting it back up to par! Am I ok to do planks and side planks now? Presuming lunges and squats also good. Any other exercises you swear by to help? I think I'll go see a woman's PR as well as am quite serious about getting my race times down so a strong core is going to be part of that.
TIA

As a pilates teacher I would emphasise that anything 2+cm for a DR used to be considered worthy of a problem, but now it's much more about the functionality or lack of, that it may cause. So for someone who is a serious runner, it is highly likely to be a contributing factor in the frustrations you describe. I would suggest you see someone who has experience in post natal teaching, (I've previously mentioned on here the BCP website to search someone only because I know a bit about their training), individual classes would be of most benefit too. Hope this is of some use.

Am in a similar position. My baby is 11 months old. I started doing side planks at 7 months and then doing full planks a couple of weeks ago. The side planks really helped me feel more stable but didn't reduce the gap. Also they don't put pressure on the mid line so they are fine to do. However since I started doing full planks ( doing 2x 10 seconds at the mo) I have noticed a big difference. Now down to 1/2 finger in the morning and 1 finger at night. I wouldn't have been able to start doing the full planks if I hadn't built up with the side planks

Pilates! But make sure that it's physio-led and make them aware of your diasisis so that they can make sure that you're not putting too much strain on the muscles, not doming etc. I'm a runner with a six month old. After number two child I had back pain when running but pretty quickly got pregnant with number three so did nothing about it. At two months post partum with number three I had a two cm diastisis. After four months of Pilates it's has definitely closed a bit and my core feels strong. Most importantly I ran 10k last week and no back pain! The physio who runs my Pilates class is amazing though!

I second pilates. Had bad SPD and struggled to walk for months and months after, and the pilates really helped improved things.

I would say that if it's a really big gap, can you get a professional opinion on it? Sounds quite severe.