Top Prenatal Exercise Tips: A Guide on Strengthening Your Body for Birth & Beyond with BUMPSTRONG founder, Lucy Young
As a mother and pre/postnatal exercise specialist, I’ve witnessed first-hand how overwhelming the advice can be when it comes to training during and after pregnancy. In over a decade in the fitness industry, I’ve noticed two common responses to prenatal exercise; some women continue with their pre-pregnancy training, uncertain whether the exercises they’re performing are safe or not; other women pull back on exercise altogether for fear they’ll cause harm to their baby. It’s a conundrum influenced by centuries of contradictory advice - from pregnant women during Victorian times being told that they need to remain bedridden to the last 30-years where pregnant women were advised against lifting weights.
Despite modern research supporting exercise during pregnancy as healthy, there’s still considerable confusion about what exercises to perform and to what intensity. Here, I outline some of my top tips for exercising throughout each trimester and ways in which you can strengthen your body for birth and beyond.
The Connection Breath
Proper breathing is unquestionably the most underrated part of pre and postnatal training. An effective breathing pattern not only mitigates a stressed nervous system, but also prolapse, hernias, incontinence, poor posture and diastasis recti (abdominal separation).
As pregnancy progresses, it can become increasingly hard to inhale deeply as there is less room for the diaphragm to move downwards. This is why mastering an effective 360-degree breathing pattern is ideal in the early stages of pregnancy. This breathing pattern ensures you learn how to utilise your ribcage expansion by breathing into your front, back, belly and sides.
How? Sit upright or lie down and place your hands on your ribcage with your thumbs pointed towards the back. Inhale deeply and notice where your breath goes. Many women are shallow breathers which means the inhale goes up into the neck and shoulders keeping the body in a state of fight or flight (even impacting digestion). Conversely, an effective breathing pattern helps stimulate the body’s ‘rest & digest’ nervous system which makes us feel calm afterwards. During pregnancy many women also experience a tight mid-back which impacts ribcage mobility and the ability for back-body expansion during an inhale. This is why 360-degree breathing encourages us to breath into our thumbs (as you cup your ribs with your hands) and promotes full ribcage mobility.
During pregnancy correct breathing helps the body manage intra-abdominal pressure which safeguards against additional stress on the pelvic floor and minimises or prevents abdominal coning (where excess pressure escapes through the midline of the stomach).
The 3 P’s
Across pregnancy and the postpartum period, the 3 P’s are a helpful way to ensure you are monitoring signs and symptoms that your training is appropriate. They are ‘pressure, peeing, and pain’.
Pressure: During pregnancy your abdominal muscles separate to allow room for baby to grow. The outer abdominals or ‘6-pack muscles’ are also held together through the centre by a fine connective tissue. If you are mismanaging pressure (e.g. performing an exercise that is too challenging during pregnancy), then pressure will escape through this centreline of your stomach. Please note, this creates a “Toblerone”-like shape through the centre of the stomach and is referred to as ‘abdominal coning’ or ‘doming’. It can also be more difficult to spot during pregnancy when the belly is firm and round, versus postpartum when the surrounding muscles are lax. Pressure always looks for the path of least resistance, so if an exercise generates too much intra-abdominal pressure, this pressure can also push down on the pelvic floor (sometimes feels like vaginal heaviness). If you notice either of these two reactions, it is time to regress or modify the exercise being performed. Also, become accustomed to exhaling during the ‘effort’ phase of any exercise in order to help manage intra-abdominal pressure (e.g. breathing out as you come up from a squat).
Peeing: Countless times I’ve heard women say “I cannot do high-intensity exercise because I’m a mum - I’ll pee myself”, as though leaking is a natural, and inevitable part of becoming a mum. Incontinence does not need to be accepted as part of a ‘motherhood package’. If you leak during exercise, modify/regress the exercise and speak with your pre/postnatal exercise specialist or women’s healthy physio.
Pain: This is the most obvious red flag indicating it’s time to modify or regress an exercise as most people have a natural tendency to pull-back when experiencing pain. I do caution that if you’re an athlete or avid fitness fanatic who is accustom to pushing through pain, pregnancy is not the time to embrace discomfort and “work through” any form of ache.
Understanding Workout Intensity
A crucial part of pre and postnatal training is exercising to the right intensity. While heart rate monitors can be an effective means for monitoring training intensity, my professional (and personal) experience is they are a less effective tool during pregnancy. Instead, using the perceived effort scale, which measures training intensity on ‘feel’ can encourage women to become more familiar with how hard they’re training and learn when to back off. For the BUMPSTRONG Perceived Effort Scale, we encourage exercising to a max intensity of 8/10 which involves being able to speak a sentence, or string a few words together while exercising, but needing to rest quickly afterwards. It’s important to note that this 8/10 is a max effort and should not be sustained throughout the entirety of a workout.
Hydration
While drinking water might not be the most revolutionary prenatal training tip, it remains an important one for many reasons.
Staying hydrated during workouts helps keep maternal and foetal temperatures down, thereby avoiding overheating.
It helps mitigate constipation which can safeguard the pelvic floor by ensuring you’re not bearing down when going to the bathroom, and/or contributing to pelvic organ prolapse or haemorrhoids.
Drinking lots of water ensures your body’s tissues are hydrated, which is an important consideration, particularly in the third trimester, when looking to minimise the risk of vaginal tearing during labour.
Prioritising Posture
As a woman’s belly grows during pregnancy her body’s changing centre of mass needs to be accommodated. Unfortunately, in attempting to balance the weight of her belly, many women begin excessively curving their lower back (lumbar spine) which can result in low-back pain. Thoracic, or mid-back pain, is also common as many women lose mobility in their upper back due to shallow breathing (resulting in limited back-body mobility on inhalation) and trying to accommodate the new weight distribution.
Prioritising good posture during this time is important as it translates to how we pick up and move with weight in the gym. Some helpful postural cues include ‘ribcage over pelvis’ to avoid excessive lower back curve, and ‘stand/sit tall’ which encourages a long spine (no excessive curving).
There are seriously positive reasons why exercise during pregnancy can be great for your health. It can help maintain physical fitness, reduce the risk of gestational diabetes, improve sleep, lower the risk of high blood pressure/preeclampsia, speed postpartum recovery time, alleviate lower back pain, and help elevate your energy and mood.
The lack of information and support for strength training was a driving force behind the creation of BUMPSTRONG, an online platform with pre/postnatal strength programs that help keep you safe, strong and unstoppable from bump and beyond. While pregnancy and motherhood can be a wild ride, staying active can be therapy for the mind and body. Know that if you need support and guidance to train safely and get stronger, help is out there.
See you at the barbell.
Lucy is a pre/postnatal exercise specialist and corrective exercise specialist (CES) with over a decade in the fitness industry. She is mother to her one-year-old daughter, Ocean, and the owner of BUMPSTRONG, an online and in-person platform with specialised programs designed to strengthen the body for birth and strengthen the core postpartum. BUMPSTRONG modernises the view on pre/postnatal exercise and to inspire women to build strength as they navigate their motherhood journey.
Website: bumpstrong.com
Instagram: @lucyolympiayoung