Exercise After Pregnancy: How to Look and Feel your Best – Review {Giveaway Closed}

I have yet to meet a mom who is not concerned about their body shape after pregnancy.  Pregnancy takes such a toll on your body, stretching and pulling muscles out of whack, throwing off your posture.  Combined with less sleep, changing hormones, new demands on your body for nursing, and heavy lifting of baby and equipment, all leads to pain.

Helene Byrne has created three great products to help new moms regain control.  I will be reviewing and giving away all three of these items over the next three days :)
Today I am going to talk about the book: ‘Exercise After Pregnancy: How to Look and Feel Your Best” by Helene Byrne.
Exercise After Pregnancy starts out talking about the fundamentals of what happens to your body during pregnancy, that ultimately affects your postural habits and where and why you have pain (and how to fix it).  Then she goes into details about specific exercises with great photos showing the areas a new mom should be focusing on. 
The book focuses a lot on the pelvic floor, abdominal separation, and special postpartum abdominal reconditioning techniques. These techniques are not new to me; because I once belonged to a fitness studio where all classes were based and focused on this kegel/pelvic floor, pelvic tilt, and core strengthening for posture improvements.  After I belonged to this studio where they were constantly worrying about what muscles you were contracting inside your body – and then going back to the plain old gym where they just wanted you to run as fast or do as many reps as you can – I couldn’t stand the gym any more and ran right back to the studio.
The exercises in the book combine the mind/body methods of Pilates and yoga with cutting-edge fitness techniques – and can be started days after giving birth.  These exercises require no equipment; and is suitable for all fitness levels.
I love that at the end of the book; it gives very practical advice for every new mom (and dad too!) about good body usage in daily activities with your new baby: ergonomic breast feeding, baby lifting and carrying, lifting laundry and managing heavy equipment like car seats, strollers, and baby slings/carriers.
If you are not familliar with the methods of using your pelvic floor and pelvic tilt in order to achieve a flatter tummy; I would highly recommend this book.  This book explains in much more detail the techniques of doing deep kegel exercises and in return, essentially 'knitting' your body back together after pregnancy.
Buy it:  You can purchase the book Exercise After Pregnancy: How to Look and Feel Your Best from Amazon.com for $17.95

WIN IT!!!!

One Lucky Reader will win the Book Exercise After Prengnacy: How to Look and Feel Your Best.(MSRP:  $17.95)

This first entry is MANDATORY.  Visit the Be-Fit Mom website and tell me something you’ve learned about the Pelvic Floor.

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Open  to U.S. residents only. Giveaway ends March 24th, 2011 at 11:59pm. Winner  will be drawn by random.org the following day, and will be e-mailed. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new  winner will be drawn.  Winners will be announced on this blog after all have responded.  I received a product for review purposes. However, all of my opinions are 100% my own and are no way influenced by compensation received.