Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be talking about pregnancy and fitness. This is going to be the first part in a two part series, so be on the lookout for part two coming soon. And if you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188
I don’t know if it’s something in the water, or what’s happened, but lately there has been an onslaught of people coming and letting me know that they just found out that they’re pregnant, which is great. It got me to thinking maybe that’s you. Maybe you just found out that you’re pregnant and you’re curious. Can you keep doing the same exercises? What do you need to change? How does this work? Let me give you a little background here.
I’ve been working with prenatal women as a certified professional since 2004. We’ve been going through fitness exercise as far as strength, cardio, balance, flexibility, you name it. We’ve done yoga. We do a little bit of everything. We work on fitness, we work on nutrition, we work on the lifestyle of it, the changes that are happening. What’s coming? How do we prepare for labor? How do we prepare for baby? What’s gonna happen whenever we’ve got a family to feed? How do these things work? We work with each client to figure these things out for themselves because each person’s so unique, and each situation is unique. This helps them to have an idea of what’s coming and how they’re gonna prepare for that.
As far as exercise goes it’s always a hot topic. What can I do? What can I not do? Well, the ACOG Guidelines, ACOG is the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and they are the ones who create the rules if you will for prenatal fitness, and many other things. But they’re giving out regulations on these things. The way that they state it is if you, and I’m paraphrasing here, if you’ve been exercising before you were pregnant it’s okay to continue that exercise.
Now if it’s something dangerous base jumping, or parachuting, or things like that it’s probably not so safe to continue because you would be risking two lives rather than one. If you’ve been exercising before, if you’ve been running, if you’ve been lifting weights, if you’ve been doing yoga, Pilates, whatever it is you’re fine to continue that for the most part. Now again, always listen to the advice of your doctor. Make sure that if you are high risk that you do have appropriate measures taken care of, but that your doctor or midwife is taking care of those for you.
If you’re in first trimester, and you just found out your first trimester what’s fixing to happen well exercise is fine to maintain. You may find that you’re less comfortable with high impact cardio. You may feel like you need to lighten that up a little bit, and that’s just fine. Always listen to your body. Your body’s gonna be your best friend. At this point your body actually cares about you less than it does that new baby. It wants to take care of the baby, so it’s gonna be sending you signals to let you know about that. What’s happening during that time? Typically people are feeling lightheaded, they’re feeling tired, and they’re feeling nauseous.
Where does all that come in? Well you get a rage of hormones changing. You’ve also got your blood volume that’s trying to double in volume. Your arteries and veins are expanding to accept the new blood volume, but at that time you actually lower pressure, right, your blood pressure lowers down because you don’t have the same amount of blood flowing through. It takes the first trimester to build up that blood volume to double what it was before. That’s where you feel a lot of the lightheadedness, so standing up a little slower.
If you’re doing a lot of exercises where you’re down and up, down and up, you may notice a problem with that, so you may want to change that pattern just a little bit. But other than that really everything stays the same. You want to listen to your body. If you’re not feeling well obviously exercise is probably not your best bet. But if it’s general light nausea sometimes exercise can help. It might be worth a try, so working through those things.
Second trimester again as always listen to your body. What happens in second trimester is really awesome. There comes a day where all of a sudden it feels like a light switched flipped. You’re like, oh my gosh I’m my normal self I can do whatever I want to. Use that with caution, okay. That comes from experience. I’ve had two kiddos of my own, gone through pregnancies working out, and a little less working out. I’ve seen all sides of it there. But, with the fatigue and nausea that come in you just want to … that’s a possibility if your overdue after that light switch comes on, so we want to back off just a little bit and not overdo, so that you’re not down and out for a few extra days.
So i’m going to end part one here. In part two we’re going to be talking more about fitness during pregnancy, and we’ll be talking more about the second trimester.
If can’t wait for part two, or you want to know more about Custom Fitness and what we do here, then please give us a call. If you’re wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, or you are pregnant and you are wanting guidance, then that’s what we’re here for. Our trainers are here to look out for you and make sure that you are meeting your goals in a safe way.
At Custom Fitness, we customize a plan for you. We sit down with you and find out what your needs are and then build a health and fitness plan around that. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.