In November 2019, former Olympic skier Bode Miller and his wife Morgan welcomed twin boys. The happy couple expressed excitement about the additions to their family in the immediate aftermath, but Miller is now getting candid about some issues that arose after she gave birth. She recently revealed that she suffered from diastasis recti, the separation of the ab muscles.
According to the Daily Mail UK, Miller shared several posts on social media explaining her recovery process. She has been doing specific exercises in order to strengthen her ab muscles and get them back together. Miller shared close-up photos of her stomach, showing off bumpy and wrinkled skin. There was also a noticeable dent going down the middle of her stomach, which is a result of the ab separation.
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According to Healthline, “Diastasis recti is the partial or complete separation of the rectus abdominis, or ‘six-pack’ muscles, which meet at the midline of your stomach. Diastasis recti is very common during and following pregnancy. This is because the uterus stretches the muscles in the abdomen to accommodate your growing baby.” Diastasis recti can cause several issues including back pain, weak abdominal muscles, poor posture and difficulty doing routine tasks.
In order to fix these issues, Miller has to correctly do exercises that engage the ab muscles and the pelvic floor. She provided the example of crunches, saying that she must make her stomach go inward, creating that dent. Doing so ensures that the muscles are going inward.
Doing these crunches incorrectly can force the muscles outward, causing “coning,” a raised line down the middle of the stomach. These incorrect exercises put more strain on the stomach and potentially cause further issues in the future. Miller explained that it was important to keep doing these exercises “until we get strong enough to bring those muscles back together.”
In addition to explaining how she is working on strengthening her ab muscles, Miller also provided some insight into the physical issues that she faced. She had several stretch marks on her stomach from the pregnancy, which she tried to fix with microneedling. Miller said that this process was “so painful” but that her stretch marks have drastically reduced in the 14 months since giving birth.
“The twins did a number on my stomach,” Miller wrote, per The Daily Mail. “And after being a professional athlete where my body was my vessel in which I was able to perform the massive changes (including diastasis) was hard for me.”
