How to Get Back in Shape After a Pregnancy, According to a WNBA Player

• Napheesa Collier is a 3-time WNBA All-Star who made the All-WNBA First Team in 2023.
• The Minnesota Lynx forward returned to the court just 10 weeks after giving birth in May 2022.
• Collier told Business Insider she relied on core work and lots of protein to get back into shape. 

Napheesa Collier shocked the world, and her own teammates, in May 2022 when she made her return to WNBA play just 10 weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Mila.

But she had a goal in mind — one on which she wasn’t willing to compromise — so she put her head down and got to work on her recovery.

“Thankfully, per our CBA, I wasn’t worried about my contract because I didn’t have to play a game at all in order to receive my salary,” the Minnesota Lynx forward and three-time WNBA All-Star told Business Insider. “But I did just miss the game and yeah, I had a teammate who was retiring. I really wanted to be able to play with her.”

Collier announced her pregnancy in November 2021. Three months later — and just three months before Collier and her husband, basketball trainer Alex Bazzell, expected to welcome their first child — fellow Lynx superstar Sylvia Fowles announced that she would be retiring at the end of the 2022 season.

From then on, Collier made it her mission to play alongside the WNBA’s all-time leading rebounder at least one more time; Fowles, for her part, said she fought back against Collier’s plans for a speedy return out of fear that “it was unsafe” for the new mom to rush her recovery.

Collier won that argument, then immediately committed to “working her ass off to put herself in this position,” as Bazzell wrote on X — formerly Twitter — following her return to the court.

Collier credited ‘core work’ for setting the foundation for her speedy comeback

The former UConn Huskies star exercised through much of her pregnancy — to the extent that it was safe to do so — in order to give herself as good a chance as possible of rejoining Fowles on the court. But once Mila had entered the world, the nature of Collier’s challenge shifted.

The 2023 All-WNBA First Teamer noted that “when you have a baby and your stomach grows, your abs go to the side of your body.”

“Which is crazy,” Collier added with a laugh.

Ensuring her abs, obliques, lower back, and even glutes were “back where they needed to be” — both in terms of location and strength — was crucial to her ability to effectively train for basketball.

“Core work was definitely a big one,” Collier told BI. “Getting that in place was honestly one of the hardest parts for me. So yeah, I mean I was working really hard with our…