After giving birth to my son, I took a two-month break from working out.
This was the longest pause I’d ever had from purposeful exercise. As a fitness professional, I knew how important it was to ease back in gently, but the thought of restarting a regular routine felt daunting.
A few days before I planned to return, I found a 20-minute full-body workout on Instagram by fitness influencer Kat Boley.
“This workout is perfect if you haven’t worked out in a while,” Boley says in her post on Instagram. “A great way to ease you in while giving you a challenge.”
That sounded like a good fit for my first workout back, so I gave it a go.
How to do the workout
You’ll need an exercise mat and a set of dumbbells for this workout. I used 10lb weights, which felt manageable for all of the moves.
There are eight exercises in total, most of them performed for 12 repetitions.
Boley suggests doing all the moves as a circuit, and resting briefly between each exercise, with a minute's rest at the end of each round. Aim for three rounds in total, but adjust this as you need.
If you’re returning to exercise after a long break—especially after giving birth—always check in with your healthcare professional first.
What I thought of the workout
This workout felt harder than I expected, highlighting how much work I have to do to regain my pre-pregnancy strength. Here are my honest takeaways.
It’s not beginner-friendly
This workout is a good re-introduction to exercise but perhaps more suited to those who were previously at an intermediate or advanced level of fitness. The moves require a good range of motion and challenge your deep core strength.
Even as a personal trainer, I had to go a lot slower than Boley and pay close attention to my form. By the third round, my quads and glutes were totally fatigued and I was very sore for the next few days.
I had to modify several exercises
Pregnancy can significantly affect your core strength, and this workout reminded me just how much weaker my abdominals felt. I couldn’t manage the plank jack combination or the single-leg V-ups at all. I swapped them for elevated planks instead and replaced the knee push-up with a wall push-up.
While I made it through two sets of the narrow and wide reverse lunges, by the third round I switched to standard reverse lunges. It was a humbling but useful reminder that modification is a smart way to train.
I needed to rest for longer
The rest periods that Boley suggests taking—brief pauses between exercises and one minute after each circuit—sounded reasonable in theory. In practice, I found myself needing more rest as the workout progressed.
By the final round, I was resting for a minute between each move and 90 seconds between each circuit—and that’s okay.
Doing this workout reminded me that it's okay to adapt these sessions to suit your own needs—you can slow things down, take longer rests or swap out exercises if you need to, and still finish the session feeling like you’ve achieved something.
