The Truth About Exercising During Pregnancy

Pregnant women who wish to continue (or start) exercising today are still bombarded by outdated recommendations such as “keep heart rate under 140 bpm when exercising” or “lifting weights will harm the baby," which have no real world evidence to support such ideas. Physicians who have never studied about exercise during pregnancy, do not always see the positive effects exercise has on pregnant women. The truth is, if you are having a normal pregnancy, you can still work just as intensely as you did before.  If you have never exercised in your life, you are just like any other beginner and what a wonderful world of benefits you are getting yourself into!

 

Benefits
 

Exercise during pregnancy can help lift your mood, correct posture and muscle imbalance, strengthen pelvic floor to prevent lower back pain, and speed up the recovery process after birth. Working out won’t hurt your baby but can exhaust your body faster than before. This is due to an increased volume of blood your body has produced during pregnancy that your heart has to push through.  A lot of times, women perceive this as being out of shape, and in many cases give up a good routine and accept the fact that they will gain weight like everybody else and will just have to work and diet harder later on.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

 

Another wonderful benefit to exercising during pregnancy is that it gives you more control over your body.  Due to many unknowns in various stages of pregnancy, you could gain confidence by working through a training routine where you experience different discomfort levels your body can tolerate.  This can help you realize that when performing daily tasks, you understand what is real pain/strain and what is simply part of the childbearing process.

Training

 

As you get heavier in the front during pregnancy, you want to pay more attention to your back side.  By strengthening the back (hammies, glutes, low back, and upper back), you’ll be able to better maintain your posture.  You will also want to focus on your core (this is not just your abs but your obliques, transverse abdominis, erector spinae, diaphragm, etc.) to be able to engage it more efficiently and have the ability to brace when lifting or push through heavy things (like your baby out of you!).

 

When training the upper back, exercises like inverted rows, standing cable rows, reverse flys, and face pulls, are all great movements to correct your posture from a chronic hunch-over position. This also applies to desk job junkies and meatheads who only trains what they can see in the mirror. 

Training the upper back will pull your shoulder blades closer together and down, thus lift your chest up and retract your scapula back where it needs to be. With a more pulled back posture, this will reduce the weight the torso is loaded on your lower spine, thus prevent low back pain.

 

At the end of your 1st trimester and at delivery, your body produces a hormone call Relaxin, which loosens your muscle, joints, and cervix to aid the delivery process.   However, this phenomenon can also cause you to be unstable (hip and lumbar area) due to hypermobility.  Using exercises like split squats, crossover step-ups, and back lunges can train your hip joints to be more stable.  

 

You can also train for spine stability by learning the proper way of breathing during a lift.  You can use exercises like wood chops, overhead bodyweight squats (or partial OH squats), half moons, suitcase deadlifts, single-arm farmer walk, side bends, etc. to train this area.  Just search "rotational' and "anti-rotational" exercise movements on google and you'll find something you can do.

 

In the second and third trimester, your abdominal muscles will be overstretched, and this can lead to very tightened (and shortened) hip flexors (iliopsoas, rectus femoris, adductors, etc.) and leave you with a weak backside.  This is where exercises like donkey kicks, lunges, split squats, and sumo deadlifts becomes extremely essential.  

 

On days you feel lethargic, opt for a day of having an easy hike down to the local park, jump in the pool, or simply show up at the gym to do some dynamic, non-ballistic stretching exercises and tissue work.  You can try swinging your arms around in a circular fashion back and forth, rotate your torso left and right, lunge side to side, or perform some lateral leg swings while holding on to something for stability.  You’ll be surprise how a 5 min total body warm up can put you back into training mode instead of skipping an entire workout.

 

One popular myth you might have heard of is that you can cut off blood circulation to the fetus if you perform exercises in the supine position (belly facing up while lying on the floor) like the hip thrust, bridges, or lying leg raises.  The truth is, you will feel very uncomfortable sooner than this phenomenon will ever occur.  If you’re one of those people that actually experience light-headedness, just sit up and it will go away.   If you’re holding a yoga pose in the supine position, try keeping it under 2 mins at a time.  

Also, to prevent urinary incontinence during and post childbirth, women should learn to engage the muscles around their pelvic floor.  Using pelvic tilt exercises like the lying pelvic tilt or goat bag swings will do the trick.

"I have had the pleasure to learn so much from him as well as watching my body transform in a way that not only is it visible, but my overall strength and healthy lifestyle has vastly improved. I lift heavier while toning and not getting bigger, I eat things that in my world would be considered “off limits”, and look better than I did even before I got pregnant with my son."
 

Exercise Programming

Since we’re not trying to set new PRs (personal records), especially for beginners, you can shoot for 10-15 reps per set when performing a movement.  Use a load that when you’re approaching the end of a set, you should feel fatigue and want to stop before finishing that set. If you don’t feel like your body is being challenged at the 15^th rep, you probably need to pick a heavier weight.

 

Perform 2-3 sets for each movement is enough to engage and strengthen the muscles.  As long as proper forms are learned and practiced, you can even lift heavier loads in the 8-10 rep range, especially with bodyweight movements and weights not held over your head or placed on your back.

Here’s an example of how your workout can look like if you train 3x/week with my sample routine A, B, and C.

Routine A

Warm up – 3 min brisk walk on treadmill and standing leg swing leaning against the wall to support balance.  Swing (kick) your leg up high from side-to-side 10x. Then switch legs.
 

Squat (bodyweight or loaded) 3x12
 

Inverted rows (bent knee and keep upper body above 45 degree angle from the floor) 2x10
 

Suitcase deadlift (20-50 lbs range) 2x8 ea side
 

Cable or free weight Wood chop 2x8 ea side.

Routine B:

 

Warm up: body weight forward lunges 2x10 total and bodyweight squat 2x10. You can alternate these.

Sumo dead (with dumbbell, plates, or kettle bell) 3x10

Single-arm Dumbbell row 2x8 ea side

Single-leg or two leg bridge 2x12 total

Half moon (10-15 lbs), 2x10 total.

This is what I call proper breathing :)

 

Routine C
 

Warm up: High Knee stretch (in place) 2x10 ea leg and shoulder swings 2x10.

Back lunges or Crossover back lunges (loaded or bodyweight) 3x12 total

Reverse flys (5-10 lbs) - 2x12

Good mornings 2x10

Side bend 2x8ea side.

To sum up, work the core by engaging the abdominals with proper breathing and lifting techniques. Most compound movements will engage the core (rows, presses, deadlifts, and squats). Pay more attention to your back side to correct posture and prevent low back pain.   Perform single leg or staggered stance exercises to strengthen your hip and knee joints even months after you had your baby.  Finally, do some trunk rotational/bending movements to strengthen spine stability.

Now that you’re loaded with a ton of knowledge and tools to grow a healthy baby while stay in shape, feel free to forward this article to friends and family who may benefit from reading this, too and possibly starting an exercise routine.

 

Use this link to learn how to appropriately perform the exercises mentioned above.

http://jyfitness.blogspot.com/2012/12/movements-and-muscles.html
If you can’t find them, a simple search on Google will do.

 

If you need more help, you can contact me at 281-433-4008 or send me an email at jem_yeh@yahoo.com for more questions or concerns.

This is my approach
http://jyfitness.blogspot.com/p/2012-transformations.html