Is it really safe to exercise during pregnancy?
20/09/2010

Over recent decades pre and postnatal exercise has received an increasing amount of attention with its benefits now widely accepted by fitness professional and within the health care industry, lately BBC news, GMTV and BBC Radio 4 have all done stories promoting the need to exercise during and after pregnancy, but the question still remains – what exercise is actually safe to do during pregnancy?

Why is it good to exercise during pregnancy?

Research over recent years has shown that women who exercise regularly during pregnancy are more likely to:

• have a shorter labour

• have a drug free labour

• gain less weight during pregnancy

• have a quicker emotional and physical recovery

• have better energy levels

• have healthier babies

• have less incidence of gestational diabetes

• avoid getting postnatal depression

These are just a few of the huge array of benefits that active prenatal women are likely to get out of exercising, although its obvious how beneficial prenatal exercise is it still remains important to be aware of how to exercise – knowing what is safe to do, how to do it and at what intensity to exercise at is vital!

What exercise should I be doing during pregnancy?

During pregnancy your body undergoes constant changes, this coupled with all the lifting, feeding and carrying you will be required to do after the birth make it vitally important to do lots of weights, paying particular attention to strengthening (and toning obviously!) your bum, lower back, abs, upper back and chest. You should try to include dumbbell (DB) lunges, DB squats, DB lateral raise, pelvis bridge, deadlift and press up's on your knees. This along with some cardio exercise will help manage any weight gain, maintain the tone and strength of your upper and lower body and also ready you for the challenges ahead!

How far can I push myself whilst keeping the exercise safe and effective?

Fitness4Mum prides itself on exercising women to a level that is right for them, so rather than say do 2 sets of 15-20 reps, you may prefer to use the rating scale that we use. On a scale of 1-10 you should be exercising between a 5-7, if you didn't do much exercise prior to pregnancy then stay closer to the 5, whereas if you're a regular then closer to the 7. Using this you may find that performing 3 sets of 15 reps with 30s rest is fine or 2 sets of 12 may push you just as much. If you're not that confident using the scale you can always stick to this:

1^st trimester – 2 sets of 15-20 reps – 60s rest between sets

2^nd trimester – 2 sets of 10-15 reps – 60s rest between sets

3^rd trimester - 2 sets of 8 -10 reps – 60s rest between sets

We found that the women we come into contact with prefer the rating system, either way just make sure you stay properly hydrated, wear light breathable clothes and breathe properly during the exercise.

Is there anywhere I can get advice or do classes?

Fitness4Mum is a website that is dedicated to educating women on how and why to exercise during and after pregnancy. Our website allows you to post questions in its forum, read articles and download example exercise videos all free of charge. We also run some pre and postnatal classes, they are proving really popular and getting great results, at the minute we are based in Yorkshire but we are looking for other instructors to teach further afield. If you're not in a location where you can attend then you can always download one of our online training programmes, they're great if you want to exercise at home, travel a lot or simply want to take it to the gym. You can download them onto your desktop or Ipod / Iphone.

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