What Is The Best Exercise To Do During Pregnancy?
What Is The Best Exercise To Do During Pregnancy?
Excuse the clickbait title. To be fair, it’s pretty relevant.
This one actually started life as an instagram post but I ran out of space and wanted to expand properly.
I was asked recently to talk about my pre/postnatal journey as part of a team training. ‘Sure!’ I said. And then immediately got to thinking, My experience was so personal, unique and complicated - I couldn’t share it all and so I had to figure out what the main takeaway points should be. As I got thinking about how best to go about doing this, I was reminded of several things:
There are no free passes!
I am fit and healthy and trained consistently from start to finish, modifying along the way. I had a difficult pregnancy and even more difficult birth. Training massively helped my body and mind throughout pregnancy but it didn't mean that Malakai just popped out as I sank into a water bath of maternal bliss.
Causality does not equal causation. If I had had an easier birth there would be no way I could confidently link all my training and birth prep to my birth experience. Likewise, if I had been sedentary, less mindful of my nutrition, and decided not to use hypnobirthing techniques or birth affirmations, that still wouldn’t be proof that any of my prep had made a difference.
We will never know which behaviours affect which outcomes (although I’ve seen some influencers swear blind that they had an easy birth due to all their hard work and training!). All we can do is make informed decisions about our birth prep in order to optimise our chances of a safe and comfortable(ish) birth.
Every body is different
We know this, right? Yet we could all do with a reminder, and I'm talking about any injury rehab really, but in particular pre/postnatal journeys. We have to find what works for us. For me, it was weight training all the way. Pilates fatigued my already tired stabilising muscles and all but finished them off, leaving me with hip and knee pain. The weightlessness of swimming felt glorious at the time and yet I paid the price upon leaving the pool - my muscles were so relaxed that they stopped supporting me and pelvic girdle pain set in...I loved the idea of pregnancy yoga but at each class that I went to felt intensely uncomfortable and developed pins and needles...yet pilates, swimming and prenatal yoga have helped countless pregnant people. You won’t know until you try, and although qualified professionals can guide you to make informed choices, ultimately there’s only one way to find out what makes you feel good during your pregnancy. For me the advice ‘listen to your body and do what feels good’ is a little wishy washy at the best of times, but there is a powerful amount of truth in this approach, especially when combined with some knowledge and an open mind too.
IT IS NOT ABOUT THE GAP!
I repeat, it is NOT about the gap. There is so much fear and fear mongering around diastasis recti, the completely necessary and normal abdominal separation that every pregnant person experiences to make room for the baby. This is a post in itself but in short, we need to be focusing on rehabbing the core rather than just closing the gap. Case in point - my gap has closed but I still have some things to work on with my functional core strength. I know many mums who still have a gap and yet have rebuilt a strong, functional core. We need to move away from this obsession with the gap, and focus more on rehabbing and performance as our desired outcomes.
There are no right or wrong exercises for pre/postnatal clients
Movement is movement and modification according to each individual is key. Rather than learn a list of exercises to prescribe for each phase, find someone equipped with the knowledge to help you modify along the way. Believe it or not, modified strongman training was my go to throughout pregnancy. It kept me strong, which did wonders not only for my hypermobile joints, but my mental health too. It is also the ultimate in functional strength training, and if there’s one thing you need as a new mum, it’s the ability to pick up unhelpful, awkward weights (known as babies) from unusual angles. (side note - I am NOT prescribing strongman training for all prenatal people! I had been doing this training for a while and was familiar with the techniques. If you are halfway through your pregnancy then rocking up to a strongman class might not be advisable. However, you can still reap the benefits by working with offset weights, different shaped objects and practicing functional patterns such as getting up off the floor while holding something in one hand).
For a good friend of mine, Animal Flow was her go to, right up to giving birth on both occasions! This left me in awe, as Animal Flow was something I had to stop very early on in my pregnancy due to abdominal doming and wrist pain, and could only return to one year postpartum. I know a few women who were able to run quite happily well into their pregnancies. Running would have destroyed my pregnant body, but then, I’m not a runner… the common denominator here is that every athlete (we are all athletes by the way) I know who has trained through their pregnancy has found a way to adjust their training program appropriately in a way that works for them. So the idea that any one workout is suitable for ALL pregnant women is just not feasible or helpful.
Recovery is as much physical as it is emotional
I made the mistake of dismissing my feelings of trauma/failure around a difficult birth and focussed purely on my physical rehab. Guess what? Two years later I am still chasing pain and dysfunction around my body because I have not addressed the trauma. My physical scars have healed but the emotional ones have not and the physical pain that they are being expressed as is very real. You can run but you can't hide.
I think I’ve found a way to work through this with the help of a specialist practitioner. More on this to come....
All in all, it's natural to want clear yes/no answers and an easy to follow plan but the truthful answer to so many questions on movement, lifestyle and exercise is 'it depends'. It is a never ending and intricate journey of finding our way. Best to enjoy the process and accept the beautifully variable learning curve, and yes, I'll let you know when I've figured out how to do that ;-)
Give me a shout in the comments section if this raised any questions for you or if you have a similar experience to share. Your passionate personal trainers in Walthamstow would love to hear from you :-)
