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Can You Train With Diastasis Recti? The Midline-Gap Audit: The Door Where the Symptom Is a Ridge or a Dome Down the Middle of the Belly and the Internet Hands You Either the Never-Crunch-Again Script or the Close-the-Gap-in-Six-Weeks Program, Written for the Reader Who Trains, Has Been Told the Abdominal Muscles Separated, and Wants to Know Whether the Barbell Widened It and Whether the Gap Predicts Anything — Where the Census Column Puts the Gap at 60% of First-Time Mothers Six Weeks Postpartum Falling to 32.6% at Twelve Months With No Program at All, Where the Fear Column Meets Its Cleanest Instruments (Bø's 300-Woman Cohort: the Diastasis Group Had Stronger Pelvic Floors at Week 21 and Less Prolapse at Six Weeks; Benjamin's 2,242-Woman Review: No Link to Pain or Incontinence), Where the Cutoff Column Dissolves on a 1,840-Woman Reference File (Parous Mean 2.71 cm vs Nulliparous 1.52 cm, +0.42 cm per Birth), and Where the Treatment Column Is Told Honestly — 16 Randomized Trials Move the Tape −0.43 cm, the Best Blinded Trial Left the Gap Alone While Thickening the Muscle and Adding Strength, and the Surgeons' Own Delphi Puts Exercise First-Line With Surgery Beyond 2.5 cm

By RightRep AI Assistant · · 24 min read

Diastasis recti is the file where the internet's two default scripts — never crunch again, the gap will tear open and close the gap in six weeks with this program — both fail the reader at the exact door she walked in through, because this reader's finding is specific: a soft ridge or a doming tent of skin down the midline when she sits up, a separation measured in finger-widths by a midwife or a physio, a belly that still looks months pregnant months later — and what she needs to know is whether the barbell widened it, whether it predicts anything she should fear, and whether the program is the cure or the culprit. The never-crunch script dies on the census: 60% of first-time mothers carry the gap at six weeks postpartum and it falls to 32.6% at twelve months with no structured program at all [1] — this is the normal postpartum midline, not an injury — and the randomized file keeps finding that abdominal exercise, crunches included, does not worsen it and trains the muscle around it [13][14]. The close-the-gap-in-six-weeks script dies on the honest half of the same file: the meta-analysis of 16 randomized trials prices the whole exercise column at −0.43 cm on the tape (95% CI −0.82 to −0.05), which its own authors call small and not clinically significant [12], and the best blinded trial left the distance unchanged while thickening the rectus and adding strength [13]. So the fences come first. First: the red-flag column — a painful bulge at the midline, a lump that appears with straining and does not reduce, or pain that does not follow load — is a clinician visit, because the true midline hernia and the diastasis share an address even though they are different doors [19]. Second: this file assumes the postpartum reader has taken the giving-birth calendar first — the six-week check, the red-flag list, the tissue timeline — because that door owns the return and this door owns the midline. Third: measurement matters more than the internet admits — finger-width palpation agrees with itself only two-thirds of the time [4], so a number moving between appointments is not always a body changing. Fourth: the visible doming — "coning" — has no evidence file at all; no study has tested whether it predicts anything, and this guide will not pretend otherwise. With the fences standing, the evidence underneath is unusually kind to training — at this door the gap is a finding, and exercise is the column that thickens the wall around it [12][13].

The short answer: yes — the gap is a finding, not a verdict, and training is what the file actually supports

Strip the file to its spine. The census says this is the ordinary postpartum midline: 300 first-time Norwegian mothers followed with palpated separation at four sites — diastasis in 33.1% at gestation week 21, 60.0% at six weeks postpartum, 45.4% at six months, 32.6% at twelve months [1], with ultrasound work putting essentially every primipara at term — 100% at week 35 by a 16-mm definition, down to 39% at six months [8]. The fear column keeps coming back empty: the same Norwegian cohort measured the women with and without the gap and found the gap group had stronger pelvic floors and higher vaginal resting pressure at week 21, no differences at six weeks and six months, and less — not more — prolapse at six weeks (4.1% vs 15.9%, P = 0.001) [5]; the review of 12 studies and 2,242 women found no significant association between the separation and either lumbo-pelvic pain or incontinence [6]; and the Brazilian cohort that measured both columns found no correlation between inter-recti distance and pelvic floor strength at all [7]. The cutoff column has dissolved under its own reference file: 1,840 thirty-something Finnish women measured by ultrasound read a mean inter-recti distance of 2.37 cm three centimeters above the navel — 2.71 cm in parous women against 1.52 cm in nulliparous — with each childbirth adding 0.42 cm and 38.5% of the cohort at or beyond 3 cm [3], which makes a "2 cm = abnormal" line indefensible. The treatment column is real but small on the tape and honest about it: 16 randomized trials, −0.43 cm [12]; the blinded Norwegian trial, gap unchanged, muscle thickness +0.7 mm, trunk-flexion strength +9 Nm, and not one pelvic-floor outcome worsened [13]; the surgeons' own Delphi consensus — 105 panelists — puts exercise first-line and reserves surgery for separations beyond 2.5 cm with true abdominal-wall symptoms [19]. That is the audit in one paragraph: this reader needs the census read correctly (the gap at six weeks is the norm [1]), the cutoff discarded [3], the fear column retired [5][6][7], and a program that trains the whole abdominal wall while the midline does its slow, mostly automatic narrowing [9][10].

What diastasis recti actually is: a stretched midline strap, not torn muscles

The mechanics in a paragraph: the two rectus abdominis — the six-pack columns — are not one muscle split in two; they are two parallel muscles that have always been separate, joined down the middle by a strap of connective tissue called the linea alba. Diastasis recti (the literature says DRAM or DRA; the measurement says inter-recti distance, IRD) is that strap stretching and thinning under pregnancy's hormonal softening and the uterus months of forward pressure — the columns drift apart the way a belt hole stretches, and nothing tears [2]. The tissue calendar is measured: ultrasound on 115 postnatal women against 69 controls found the inter-recti distance largest on day one, narrowing sharply over the first two months, and still significantly wider than controls at twelve months — with the rectus itself thinner and recovering thickness on the same slow clock [2]. That calendar is the single most useful fact at this door: the first eight weeks are when the midline does most of its own closing, and it is also when nobody should be programming "gap repair" — the tissue is doing that job unassisted [2]. Which raises the question the whole fitness industry has priced its programs on: if the gap narrows by itself, what does a measured separation even mean? That is the next column, and it is where the 2-cm cutoff goes to die.

The census column: 60% at six weeks, one-third at a year — and it narrows on its own

How common is this door, really? Three instruments, one direction. Palpation, the clinic's method: Sperstad's 300 nulliparous Norwegians, separation ≥2 finger-widths at 4.5 cm above, at and below the navel — 33.1% mid-pregnancy, 60.0% at six weeks postpartum, 45.4% at six months, 32.6% at twelve months [1]. Ultrasound, the research method: 84 Brazilian primiparae followed from week 35 — with diastasis defined as ≥16 mm below the navel, 100% had it at term, falling to about two-thirds of that by the postpartum visits and 39% at six months, with no association to pre-pregnancy BMI, pregnancy weight gain, birth weight or abdominal circumference — and again no link to lumbo-pelvic pain [8]. The mode-of-birth file: 2,603 Chinese postpartum women put diastasis at 12.8% after cesarean against 7.4% after vaginal delivery (P < 0.001), cesarean carrying roughly 90% higher odds (95% CI 1.4–2.6) [20], and the 1,050-woman cross-section read 56.6% prevalence with cesarean and parity the factors that survived regression [21] — numbers that say birth itself, not training, is the exposure column. Put together, the census reads the way the prolapse and incontinence doors in this library read: the finding is the median postpartum state, and its default trajectory is spontaneous narrowing across the first year [1][2][8]. What the industry sells as a six-week cure is riding a curve the body runs on its own [9] — which does not make training useless (the next columns show what it does instead), but it does make "my program closed your gap" the weakest claim in this file.

The cutoff column: what even counts as a gap

Every internet calculator uses some version of two finger-widths = diastasis, and the reference file has quietly demolished it. The WENDY cohort — 1,840 Finnish women aged 33–37, population-based, ultrasound at the standard site 3 cm above the umbilicus — found a mean inter-recti distance of 2.37 cm (SD 1.19, range 0.35–9.86): nulliparous women averaged 1.52 cm, parous women 2.71 cm, each childbirth added 0.42 cm, and BMI added 0.061 cm per unit — with 38.5% of these ordinary women at or beyond 3 cm, 5.4% beyond 5 cm, and the 80th percentile at 3.24 cm [3]. The authors' own point, and this file's: a fixed cutoff labels over a third of a normal population pathological, and the number you were told at your six-week check is measuring where you are on a curve that already includes birth count and BMI [3]. The measurement file sharpens the caution: the systematic review of measurement properties found ultrasound and calipers reliable (ICC 0.78–0.97, agreeing with each other at r = 0.66–0.79) — but the finger-width palpation most clinics and every self-check uses agreed between raters only 63% of the time (κ = 0.53) [4]. The gym translation: a finger-width reading that moves between appointments is at least as likely to be the instrument as the tissue [4], the honest yardstick is change on the same instrument over months [3][4], and "closed the gap" claims priced in finger-widths are priced in noise. What the distance fails to predict is the next column — and it is the one the fear script is built on.

The fear column: does the gap predict anything?

This is the section that separates this door from the way the internet tells it, because the predictions the fear script sells have been tested, directly, and came back empty. Bø's cohort is the cleanest instrument: the same 300 women from the census, pelvic floors measured rather than assumed — and at week 21, the women with diastasis had higher vaginal resting pressure (mean difference 3.06 cmH₂O) and stronger pelvic floor muscles (5.09 cmH₂O) than the women without it, with no differences in any pelvic-floor variable at six weeks or six months, and prolapse at six weeks running 15.9% in the no-gap group against 4.1% in the gap group (P = 0.001) — the authors' conclusion in one line: women with diastasis were not more likely to have weaker pelvic floors or more incontinence or prolapse [5]. Benjamin's review stacks the sample: 12 studies, 2,242 women — no significant association between the separation and lumbo-pelvic pain or incontinence, a small association with prolapse, and at most a link between width and quality-of-life or abdominal strength measures [6]. The Brazilian cohort agrees from the other direction: 51 primiparae from Santa Catarina and Pernambuco, diastasis at the navel in 31.4%, weak pelvic floors in 60.8% — and no significant correlation between the two columns at all [7]. And the pain door specifically: Sperstad's gap and no-gap groups reported identical lumbo-pelvic pain at one year (P = 0.10) [1], Mota's cohort found the same null [8]. Read the column whole: the gap does not predict the pelvic floor, the pain, or the leak — the three things it is feared to predict [1][5][6][7][8]. The one association that survives is honest and small: width relates weakly to itself — wider gaps correlate with lower abdominal strength and worse self-image [6] — which is exactly the column the treatment file actually trains [12][13].

The load column: does training widen it?

The fear script's other half — lifting heavy opens the gap — has one epidemiological leg and a cohort that answers it. The leg: in Sperstad's cross-sectional data, women reporting heavy lifting ≥20 times per week carried higher odds of diastasis at six months (OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.05–4.52) [1]. Read that honestly, because the internet does not: it is self-reported frequency in a cohort whose heavy lifting is overwhelmingly infants, toddlers and laundry — not barbells; it is one timepoint of a moving measurement [4]; and the same cohort found the gap cost nothing in pain or function [1]. The cohort that actually watched training over time found the opposite direction: 504 postpartum women followed across the first year, grouped by exercise — non-exercisers, minimal low-impact, regular low-impact, high-impact — and diastasis fell in every group, exercisers and non-exercisers alike, while the non-exercisers got worse on everything the fear script claims to protect: more pelvic girdle pain, weaker pelvic floors, and stress incontinence that rose from three to twelve months while it fell in the low-impact groups [9]. The exercise-prescription file closes it: the 65-study postpartum meta-analysis of 21,334 women — the file this library's pregnancy and postpartum doors already quote — found structured postpartum exercise cutting urinary incontinence odds 37% (OR 0.63) and prolapse odds 56% (OR 0.44), with abdominal training reducing the inter-recti distance itself at rest and during head-lift [10]. And the exercise trials — including programs of head-lifts, curl-ups and twisted curl-ups done five days a week — report no worsening of the gap and no pelvic-floor harms anywhere in the file [13][14]. The honest summary of the column: there is no study in which a progressive training program widened a diastasis, and every longitudinal file that watched exercisers found them ahead [9][10][13].

The treatment column, told honestly: the tape moves a little, the muscle moves for real

The treatment question this reader actually asks — is there a program that closes it? — has a randomized answer, and it deserves to be told straight, because both internet scripts depend on it being distorted. The pooled verdict: Benjamin's 2023 meta-analysis, 16 randomized trials in 698 postnatal women — abdominal exercise reduces the inter-recti distance by −0.43 cm (95% CI −0.82 to −0.05) at moderate certainty, a difference the authors themselves price as small and not clinically significant [12]. The mode file inside it: the Brazilian-Journal-of-Physical-Therapy meta-analysis of 7 trials and 381 women found transversus-dominated training at −0.63 cm (−1.25 to −0.01) and curl-up training beating minimal intervention on very-low-certainty evidence — with the detail the industry skips: pelvic-floor training was no better than minimal intervention for the gap itself [14]. The best single trial is the honest one: Gluppe's blinded Norwegian RCT, 70 women six to twelve months postpartum with genuinely wide gaps (>28 mm at rest), randomized to twelve weeks of home head-lifts, curl-ups and twisted curl-ups five days a week — the distance did not move (mean difference 1 mm, CI −1 to 4), but the rectus thickened (+0.7 mm) and trunk-flexion strength rose (+9 Nm at 10°), with not one pelvic-floor or pain outcome worsened [13]. The network meta-analysis of 21 trials and 1,195 women ranks the add-ons: exercise alone −0.48 cm, a corset −0.65 cm, exercise plus electrical stimulation −1.12 cm — the stimulation combo ranking best [15] — while the smaller honest files keep the ceiling in view: the 96-woman antenatal RCT found a twelve-week abdominal and pelvic-floor program during pregnancy did negligibly little to the distance [16], the 40-woman trial found adding deep core-stability work to traditional abdominal exercise improved separation and quality of life significantly [17], and the 28-woman hypopressive-versus-conventional trial found both reduced the distance with no between-group difference [18] — the specific exercise brand does not own this outcome. The prevention leg is the strongest number in the column: antenatal exercise across 8 studies and 336 women reduced the odds of carrying the gap at all by 35% (RR 0.65, 95% CI 0.46–0.92) [11]. And beside the training column sit the honest adjuncts: binding — the pilot RCT found a corset-plus-exercise combination improving trunk-flexion strength (d = 0.7) and body image (d = 0.2–0.5) at six months [22], with the network file pricing the corset's tape effect at −0.65 cm [15]. Read whole, the column says something better than close the gap: training during pregnancy prevents the finding [11], training after birth thickens and strengthens the wall regardless of the tape [12][13], and nothing in the file — not one trial — made a gap worse [12]–[18].

The program in gym terms: what trains, what ramps, what stops

Trains always: the whole library, plus the midline treated as a wall, not a zip. Whole-body progressive strength two-to-three times a week on the ordinary ladder — squats, hinges, presses, rows, carries — is the column the postpartum cohorts rewarded [9][10], and the machines-vs-free-weights question answers to preference and comfort, not to the gap. The abdominal work that the trials actually ran is unglamorous and load-bearing: head-lifts, curl-ups and their twisted cousins at progressive doses [13], transversus-aware bracing [14], loaded carries and the breathing mechanics that manage pressure instead of hoarding it — exhale on the effort is the cue the pressure file keeps validating, and it costs nothing.

Ramps like a beginner, whatever your lifting age says: the first eight weeks belong to the tissue's own calendar [2] — walking, easy carries, the postpartum door's ladder — and impact plus heavy axial load climb on the ordinary progression from there. Doming at the midline during a rep is a pressure-management signal, not a validated danger meter — no study has ever tested coning — so the practical move is the same as any pressure cue: exhale on the effort, regress the lever (feet-down before feet-up, split stance before bilateral), and let the dome decide the rung, not the program.

Re-measures on one instrument, months apart: finger-widths agree with themselves two-thirds of the time [4], so the number that means anything is same-rater, same-site, months apart — or an ultrasound if the number matters clinically [3][4]. A gap that reads 3 fingers on Monday and 2 on Friday is the instrument talking.

Stops and refers: the red-flag column from the intro — a painful midline bulge, a lump with straining that does not reduce, load-independent pain — is the true-hernia door and a clinician this week [19]; and the reader whose separation runs beyond 2.5 cm with real abdominal-wall symptoms after a honest training block has the surgical Delphi's own threshold for a specialist conversation [19] — a door that stays closed for the overwhelming majority at this address [1][3].

Keeps one dated ledger: sessions, load, dome-or-not on the hardest rep, and the tape number with its instrument — one timeline is how a finding stops being a fear.

The Brazil anchors: the measurement nulls and the reference curves

The pt-BR twin of this file exists for a Brazilian audience, and the local file is load-bearing twice over. Fernandes da Mota's cohort — 84 Brazilian primiparae followed from week 35 with ultrasound — is the source behind this file's "essentially everyone at term" census line: 100% carried the ≥16-mm separation at week 35, falling to 39% at six months, with no association to BMI, weight gain, birth weight or abdominal circumference — and no link to lumbo-pelvic pain [8]. The Santa Catarina–Pernambuco cohort — 51 primiparae between 45 days and twelve months postpartum — supplies the fear column's local leg: diastasis at the navel in 31.4%, weak pelvic floors in 60.8%, and no significant correlation between the two [7]. And the meta-analysis behind the treatment column's mode file sits in a Brazilian journal — the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy meta-analysis of 7 trials and 381 women [14] — which is also where the pt-BR reader's physiotherapy culture meets the same honest numbers this file quotes. The pregnancy, postpartum, prolapse and incontinence doors already carry their Brazilian columns; this file adds the midline one.

So what do you actually do? The practical file

Six rules, every one sourced from the columns above:

  1. Read the census before the caliper. The gap at six weeks postpartum is the median state — 60% of first-time mothers [1], 100% at term by ultrasound [8] — narrowing on its own across the first year [1][2][9]. You are not broken; you are early.
  2. Retire the predictions. The gap did not predict the pelvic floor, the pain or the leak in any instrument that tested it [1][5][6][7][8] — the fear script sells three associations the data could not find.
  3. Train during pregnancy if you are reading this early. Antenatal exercise cut the odds of carrying the gap at all by 35% (RR 0.65) [11] — the strongest number in the file, and the one no postpartum program can retroactively buy.
  4. Train the wall, not the tape. The pooled exercise effect is −0.43 cm — small, honest [12]; the blinded trial's real yields were thickness, strength and zero harms [13]. Program for the muscle; let the distance be a finding.
  5. Manage pressure, not fear. Exhale on effort, regress levers when the domes show, ramp impact on the ordinary ladder [9][10] — and remember no study has validated coning as a danger signal; it is a cue, not a verdict.
  6. Know the two doors that are not this one. A painful or non-reducing midline bulge is the hernia door — clinician this week [19]; a separation beyond 2.5 cm with persistent true abdominal-wall symptoms after a real training block earns the specialist conversation the surgeons' Delphi defined [19]. Everything else at this address trains.

How RightRep fits into this

The diastasis file is, at its core, a progress-versus-finding question — a distance that drifts on its own clock [1][2] around a program whose real yields are strength and thickness [12][13] — and neither side of that ledger is answerable from memory:

  • The program is a training program. The winning trials ran progressive abdominal work on a schedule [13][14] — exactly the artifact workout tracking exists to hold.
  • The ramp governed by form. Postpartum return climbs a ladder [9], and camera-scored reps hold the movement standard while the load returns — a form check without a coach on the floor.
  • The pressure cue observable. The reps where the dome shows are the reps to regress; a camera that watches the rep watches the wall.
  • One dated ledger. Sessions, loads, and the tape number with its instrument — the timeline that turns a finding back into a fact at the six-month check.

The bottom line

  • The census: 33.1% at week 21, 60.0% at six weeks, 45.4% at six months, 32.6% at twelve months — 300 first-time mothers, no program [1]; 100% at term by a 16-mm ultrasound definition, 39% at six months — 84 Brazilian primiparae [8]; cesarean 12.8% vs vaginal 7.4%, OR ~1.9 — 2,603 postpartum women [20]; 56.6% prevalence with cesarean and parity the survivors — 1,050 women [21].
  • The cutoff column: mean IRD 2.37 cm at 3 cm above the navel, nulliparous 1.52 vs parous 2.71, +0.42 cm per birth, 38.5% ≥3 cm — the WENDY reference file that retires the fixed 2-cm line [3]; finger-width palpation 63% agreement, κ 0.53 [4].
  • The fear column: the gap group had stronger pelvic floors at week 21 and less prolapse at six weeks, 4.1% vs 15.9% [5]; no association with lumbo-pelvic pain or incontinence across 2,242 women [6]; no IRD–pelvic-floor correlation in the Brazilian cohort [7]; identical one-year pain, P = 0.10 [1].
  • The load column: heavy-lifting ≥20×/week OR 2.18 — an infant-and-laundry exposure read honestly [1]; diastasis fell in every exercise group and the non-exercisers got worse — 504 women across year one [9]; postpartum exercise: incontinence OR 0.63, prolapse OR 0.44, IRD reduced after abdominal training — 65 studies, 21,334 women [10].
  • The treatment column, honestly: 16 RCTs — −0.43 cm, small, not clinically significant [12]; the blinded trial — gap unchanged, thickness +0.7 mm, strength +9 Nm, zero harms [13]; network file — exercise −0.48, corset −0.65, exercise+NMES −1.12 cm [15]; prevention — antenatal RR 0.65 [11]; no trial anywhere widened a gap [12]–[18].
  • The specialist doors: Delphi 105 — exercise first-line, surgery beyond 2.5 cm [19]; the painful or non-reducing bulge is the hernia door, same week [19].
  • The Brazil anchors: Mota's 84-woman ultrasound census [8] and the 51-woman IRD–pelvic-floor null [7], cross-linked into the pt-BR twin.

The gap is the median postpartum finding on a self-narrowing clock [1][2], it predicts nothing the fear script sells [5][6][7], and the program that actually works trains the wall while the tape does its own slow arithmetic [12][13] — count those reps at rightrep.app.

This post was written by the RightRep AI Assistant — the same AI that counts and scores your reps at rightrep.app.

Sources

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  2. Coldron Y, Stokes MJ, Newham DJ, Cook K. Postpartum characteristics of rectus abdominis on ultrasound imaging. Manual Therapy, 2008;13(2):112–121. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  3. Marttila A, et al. Inter-recti distance reference values in a population-based cohort of women: the WENDY study. Hernia, 2026. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  4. van de Water ATM, Benjamin DR. Measurement methods to assess diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscle (DRAM): a systematic review of their measurement properties. Manual Therapy, 2016;21:41–51. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  5. Bø K, Markved S, Søgaard R, et al. Are diastasis recti abdominis and pelvic floor dysfunction associated 3 months, 6 months and 12 months postpartum? International Urogynecology Journal, 2016;27(11):1741–1747. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  6. Benjamin DR, van de Water ATM, Peiris CL. Is there a relationship between diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscle and lumbo-pelvic pain, incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse and quality of life? A systematic review. Physiotherapy, 2019;105(1):28–35. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  7. Kilian ST, et al. Diastasis recti abdominis, pelvic floor muscle function and sexual function in postpartum women: a cross-sectional study. Women & Health, 2026. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  8. Fernandes da Mota PT, et al. Diastasis recti abdominis during pregnancy and postpartum. Manual Therapy, 2015;20(1):189–194. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  9. Vesting A, et al. Early postpartum physical activity and pelvic floor symptoms across the first year. Physical Therapy, 2024. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  10. Beamish NF, Davenport MH, Ali MU, et al. Impact of postpartum exercise on pelvic floor disorders and diastasis recti abdominis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2025;59(8):562–575. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  11. Benjamin DR, van de Water ATM, Peiris CL. Effects of exercise on diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscle in the antenatal and postnatal periods: a systematic review. Physiotherapy, 2014;100(1):1–8. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  12. Benjamin DR, Peiris CL, van de Water ATM. Effectiveness of abdominal exercise for postnatal diastasis recti abdominis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Physiotherapy, 2023;117:1–10. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  13. Gluppe SB, Engh ME, Bø K. Effect of a postpartum abdominal exercise program on inter-recti distance, rectus abdominis thickness and strength: a randomised controlled trial. Journal of Physiotherapy, 2023;69(3):160–167. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  14. Gluppe S, Engh ME, Bø K. Effect of regular strength training on diastasis recti abdominis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy, 2021;25(6):654–667. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  15. Wu WC, et al. Non-surgical treatments for postpartum diastasis recti abdominis: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 2025;55(4):937–951. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  16. Theodorsen NM, et al. Effect of an abdominal and pelvic floor exercise program during pregnancy on inter-recti distance: a randomised controlled trial. Journal of Physiotherapy, 2024;70(2):115–121. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  17. Thabet AA, Alshehri MA. Efficacy of deep core stability exercise program on postpartum diastasis recti abdominis. Journal of Musculoskeletal & Neuronal Interactions, 2019;19(1):69–76. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  18. Soto-González M, et al. Hypopressive versus conventional abdominal exercise for postpartum diastasis recti: a randomised controlled trial. PLoS One, 2024;19(12):e0314274. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  19. Bracale I, et al. Diastasis recti abdominis: a Delphi consensus on diagnosis and treatment. Hernia, 2025. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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