Columbia University Study

Spring 2005 - Volume 29 - Issue 1 - pg 11-16

How this research came about:

While teaching pregnant women the Tupler Technique® to prepare them for labor, I discovered that my program could make their diastasis smaller as their bellies got larger during my six-week program! This was important because a large diastasis can put a pregnant woman at risk for a C-section.

There was no research on the effects of exercise on diastasis recti so I contacted the head of the department at Columbia University Program in Physical Therapy and asked her if she wanted to do a study about the Tupler Technique® Program and its effect on diastasis recti during pregnancy. She agreed.

The study was completed and the results did show (as I knew it would) that the pregnant women that did my program had a smaller diastasis than the control group.

View the full Columbia University Study →

Key Findings:

• 90% of non-exercising pregnant women exhibited DRA
• Only 12.5% of exercising women had the condition
• Significant reduction in diastasis size across all measurement points
• P-value < .0001 for statistical significance

Study Design:

A 2-group, between subjects, quasi-experimental post-test design comparing 8 pregnant women participating in the Tupler Technique® abdominal exercise program and 10 non-exercising pregnant women.

Conclusion: The occurrence and size of DRA are much greater in non-exercising pregnant women than in pregnant women doing the Tupler Technique® Program.