This one stretch changed the game for me when I was recovering from a tough abs workout | Fit&Well

I halved my recovery time after an abs workout, and it’s all thanks to this one stretch

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Abs workouts are grueling, but they’re necessary if you want to maintain your mobility as you age. While many people think that abs refers to the six-pack muscles, they also include deeper core muscles of the torso, such as the obliques, which run down your flanks.

I’ve added some new moves to my regular workout routine to make sure I’m targeting all of these muscles effectively. My new and improved workout now involves weighted crunches, legs-up weighted crunches, and weighted Russian twists.

After the first couple of sessions, my lower belly was sore for days, sometimes up to five—I needed to figure out a way to stretch the area thoroughly. I looked into some yoga poses that could help and discovered the cobra stretch, which I only knew as part of a Sun Salutation. I decided to learn how to do it properly and incorporate it into my cool-down routine.

I asked Kait Ireland, a physical therapist and owner of Empowered Athletics Physical Therapy, to walk me through a cobra stretch (aka a prone press-up) and show me how to perform one correctly.

Ireland started her career as a strength and conditioning coach, before getting her Doctorate in Physical Therapy. She also has a Masters of Science in Kinesiology (emphasizing orthopedic rehabilitation and sports conditioning) and a Bachelors of Science in Physiology from UCLA. She runs her own physical therapy company, Empowered Athletics Physical Therapy, focusing on injury rehabilitation, athlete wellness audits and team health in California.

Physical therapist Kait Ireland demonstrates a cobra pose

Holding this pose and breathing deeply helped my recovery time and eased my sore muscles. I still felt the impact of the workout for a day or two after, but it wasn’t bugging me every time I tried to reach a high shelf up to five days later, as it had before.

I found that if I placed my arms further out from my body when doing the stretch, as demonstrated by Ireland, I really felt it in my lower belly. But I also found that if I brought my hands forward, to just in front of my hips, I could feel the stretch more in my upper abdominals (which the crunches had also targeted).

I now do the stretch immediately after my workout and then again for a day or two afterward to feel the full benefits. Every time I get back on the mat to do it, I find I can press deeper into the pose and give my muscles more of a stretch, loosening them and helping them relax. I even feel the stretch in my oblique muscles, although maybe not as effectively as a twisting stretch like a seated twist.

Start your week with achievable workout ideas, health tips and wellbeing advice in your inbox.

It's a good idea to have something soft rolled out when you're doing post-exercise stretches. The options below all feature in our round-up of the best yoga mats and will shield your hip bones from hard surfaces when performing this move.

Lou Mudge is a Health Writer at Future Plc, working across Fit&Well and Coach. She previously worked for Live Science, and regularly writes for Space.com and Pet's Radar. Based in Bath, UK, she has a passion for food, nutrition and health and is eager to demystify diet culture in order to make health and fitness accessible to everybody.

Multiple diagnoses in her early twenties sparked an interest in the gut-brain axis and the impact that diet and exercise can have on both physical and mental health. She was put on the FODMAP elimination diet during this time and learned to adapt recipes to fit these parameters, while retaining core flavors and textures, and now enjoys cooking for gut health.