Jacqui Wangari: How Pilates helped my postpartum recovery

"This is all Pilates. I have been doing a lot of Pilates during my post-natal period and blending it with a bit of strength training," she says with a smile.

It’s this combination, along with her strict diet, that she credits for looking less like a woman just from maternity leave and more like she’s stepped straight off a fitness magazine cover.

As she looks forward to her 40th birthday on September 20, Wangari isn’t easing up on her body goals. She is stretching, bending, and breathing more deeply into a life she has spent two decades shaping around movement and wellness.
“Right now my target is to lose about five kilos, so I want to start running again. I do a lot of walks though.” she says.

Wangari began her fitness journey at the age of 19.

“While living in Australia, a country heavily immersed in outdoor culture, I picked up running, and it became like a drug. It made me feel alive. I would do nearly 25 kilometres in a week. But all that pounding, without enough stretching or strength training, led to nagging leg injuries — shin splints, knee pain, and tightness in my TFL muscle,” she says.

A physiotherapist introduced her to Pilates, a rehabilitation method that in Australia is practically tied to physiotherapy. “From the first session, I was hooked. It felt like my body had found its missing piece.”

Now her dedication to her body’s recovery is no longer just a personal passion but has become her full-time calling. In March 2024, Wangari made the bold decision to leave her well-paying corporate job as a software engineer, trading algorithms and code for the reformers and wonder chair you see inside her Zuberi Pilates studio.

Armed with a diploma in Pilates Instruction from Australia, she transformed part of her large car park into a sleek, sunlit Pilates studio. It’s here that she trains daily and also welcomes a steady stream of private clients, mostly in their 40s and beyond, seeking not just toned muscles but rehabilitation for aching joints, postpartum recovery, and stiff backs.

“It’s the hardest thing (switching jobs) I’ve ever done in my life because it required relearning the human body from scratch after years of thinking in code, numbers and algorithms as a tech-savvy person. And I can tell you, understanding human anatomy is one of the hardest things,” she continues.

Wangari says the same techniques she trains her body with are the same ones she applies to her clients, especially women who have just had babies.

My methods are based on personal experience. All three of my children, aged 12, 10, and eight months, were born at home — a choice I deliberately made. My newborn weighed five kilos at birth, and I had a normal delivery. Practising Pilates for over 15 years helped me prepare for natural births by strengthening my pelvic floor, improving my breathing, and speeding up my recovery,” she explains.

From these personal experiences, she often has specific considerations when working with new mothers. “After giving birth, especially through normal delivery, women often deal with conditions like urinary incontinence, diastasis recti (abdominal separation), pelvic pain, and postnatal discomfort.”

Wangari observes that African culture normalises living with these issues after childbirth, but they’re 100 percent fixable with the right Pilate movements.

“African women are told to rest after birth, but not how to restore their bodies. Years later, many still look pregnant, suffer pelvic pain, or avoid intimacy because it’s painful. Yet these issues are fixable if women have access to the right knowledge and exercises.”

These conditions are generally caused by weakened pelvic floor muscles or nerve damage during pregnancy and delivery.

“And this is why Pilate movements is the most effective method to fix a weakened pelvic floor unlike strength training or any other form of exercise. This is because Pilates focuses more on improving mobility, flexibility by strengthening loose muscles rather than build them.”

These movements were invented by Joseph Pilates to rehabilitate injured soldiers during the First World War.

“When Joseph Pilates created these methods, it was for people who couldn’t move, like war veterans and the injured. That's why so many exercises are done lying down. The focus is on restoring function first and then building strength.”

Wangari explains that Pilates uses a combination of around 50 repetitive exercises to spur muscle exertion.

“Each exercise flows from the essentials, which are breathing, cervical alignment, and pelvic mobility and rib stabilisation. Each exercise is repeated at least three times,” she explains.

For a postpartum mother, Wangari says with one’s consistency, about 25 Pilate sessions will be good enough to fix the urine leakages and diastasis recti and rejuvenate the pelvic floor muscles.

“A stronger pelvic floor helps get rid of the pro-longed discomfort and pain. You might have come across women who say they still experience some pain down there even after it’s been years since they gave birth.”

Her clientele also includes stroke survivors and the elderly working to maintain balance and mobility, and also teenagers recovering from sports injuries.

“I have helped clients avoid back surgeries through consistent, targeted Pilates, particularly those suffering from slipped discs or chronic lower back pain caused by sedentary lifestyles and poor posture. Some are young athletes whose weightlifting injuries threaten to haunt them for life; others are seniors who want to stay mobile.”

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