My experience in "healing" my core.
You can read my more in-depth story here. I started with a 4-finger gap and fascia that you could press your fingers into at least middle-knuckle deep. After 7 and 6 pound twins, a lifetime of less than ideal posture and body mechanics, and a history of overtraining my rectus abdominis (the six-pack muscles), and unknowingly neglecting the transverse abominis (the inner-most abs that act like a corset), I had the perfect storm for a hefty abdominal separation.
At about six months postpartum, realizing that my stomach looked continually "poochy," I discovered my diastasis recti and proceeded to find a pretty awesome pelvic floor physical therapist who started me on my journey to heal.
1 year postpartum, and about 6 months into my pelvic floor physical therapy.
1 year, 3 months postpartum…about 9 months into physical therapy. Still large separation, but you can see the pressure pushing my innards out improved.
Find a pelvic floor physical therapist in your area by zip code! Check it out.
It has been a hard fought journey to get my core strength to what it is today. I still measure about 2-fingers wide, but my fascia has much improved. Relaxed, I can get slightly deeper than the base of my finger nails. But here is the real measure of success—if I engage my core by using my core/pelvic floor breath, I can get a pretty taught fascia. Perfect? Nope. Strong? Yep.
Why the width of the gap isn't all that significant.
I'm not going to recreate the wheel here. Lorraine Scans from Pregnancy Exercise in New Zealand does a wonderful job summarizing research by the industry revolutionary Diane Lee. Give it a read! And if you want Diane Lee's more academic version, check it out.
The general idea is that being able to gain tensile strength…nice, taught fascia is an incredibly important factor in measuring healing. The gap might exist indefinitely, but you are "healed" if you can get that fascia that connects the six-pack muscles firing.
Simply put, if your fascia isn't firing whether you have a gap or not, your body will compensate with less than ideal strategies, resulting in lower back pain, pelvic floor dysfunction, hip pain, and more.
Here is another really helpful article by the Mutu system on why closing the gap isn't the end all.
Read up, and watch the video below to check yourself!