Women want to stay healthy throughout their pregnancy, both for themselves and their babies, but most aren’t exactly sure what they can do when it comes to their pregnancy and exercise. While you want to stay fit, your first priority is still your baby. Here’s a few easy guidelines you can follow to help you figure out how best to combine exercise and pregnancy for you.
Pregnancy workouts
With both exercise and pregnancy, it’s important to remember your limitations. This is especially true when it comes to doing any kind of exercise that involves straining or stretching. Examples of this include weight lifting, pilates, or yoga. If, in the later parts of your pregnancy you exercise, you are most likely to strain or pull a muscle or tendon.
This is because of the hormone relaxin, which your body secretes when you’re pregnant to help make your ligaments and tendons more pliable to accommodate the baby. The relaxin also makes all of your muscles, tendons, and ligaments more pliable, which makes it easier for you to push too hard and injure yourself. The number one rule pregnancy workout is to take it easy.
This is not meant to scare you off of combining your pregnancy and workout. On the contrary, staying active is one of the best ways to stay healthy for you and your baby. What you need to do is remember that your body is going through massive changes, and you may not be able to do all the things that you would before you got pregnant. But with a few modifications, you can do almost all kinds of activity during your pregnancy.
A great way to accommodate your pregnancy and still exercise is to take it to the water. Any kind of water activity, whether it be swimming or water aerobics, is a great way to take into consideration your pregnancy, and get the exercise that you need. Even if you’re late into your pregnancy and exercise is the last thing on your mind because you feel completely awkward and ungainly on land, you’ll feel graceful and light when you get in the pool.
Walking is another great way to take it a little easy during your pregnancy and still exercise. If you’re pregnant in the winter, take it inside by going to your local mall or walking track at the gym to keep going even if it’s too icy to walk outside.
