People often asked me after a personal training with Nadine whether pregnant women should and are allowed to do sports? Nadine is about one month away from birth. Despite that, she jumps rope, jogs and lifts weights. When I coach and motivate her from the side, I often get looked upon with criticism.
You can hear a lot of comments about doing sports during pregnancy, like "Do not lift more than 5 kilos!", "No more jogging!", "Pulse should not go over 140!" etc. As in most cases, there is no golden rule; everything should be decided individually. But basically it can be said, if it’s good for the mother, it’s good for the child too!
It would be quite absurd prohibiting the lifting of any weights from the first day of pregnancy if the mother was a weight-lifter athlete before pregnancy.
I must admit, one doesn’t often see pregnant women practicing weightlifting as a competitive sport in personal training, but it should be made clear how different the requirements can be.
You shouldn’t suddenly do more in pregnancy than you've done before, that's for sure, but it's not recommended to reduce the training load to zero! Sport keeps both mother and child healthy and in shape.
It’s also much easier for a woman who exercises during pregnancy to find her way back to her old form after giving birth. That alone should increase the motivation ;) A pregnancy is therefore by no means a reason to give up the sport, but a reason to be more disciplined and continue the training.
In fact, as soon as the stomach is visibly grown, many pregnant women hurry to jump or jog, but this is not always so, just as you already read above. If those core muscles are strong enough, it can be quite easy for a pregnant woman to do these sports.
There are also sports that should be avoided of course, even if the expectant mother feels capable of doing so. In short, these include all sports that have an increased risk of injury. Be it martial arts, skiing or trampolining. Even though this is sometimes less dangerous at the beginning of the pregnancy, it’s not recommended to do so at the latest from the 12th week of pregnancy.
It should generally be suited to make more repetitions with less weight during weight training. Well-designed strength training can make it much easier for an expectant mother to cope with the increasing load and maintain stability in the body and primarily in the spine.
In any case, there shouldn’t be any false ambition! Just because a pregnant woman can still jog, it doesn’t mean that she can do anything, especially not when pain sets in. The highest commandment is always to listen to your own body and to pay more attention than ever to a correct execution of the exercises.
It makes sense to train with a personal trainer during pregnancy, especially if you’re not sure about doing some exercises.