Plenty of research shows that doing your favourite yoga class, workout session, or cardio will help to elevate your mood, reduces stress and will improve your cognitive behaviour.
When it comes to pregnancy, some things end up changing, sometimes it’s not as easy. However, with the help of Stephanie Newkirk, here are top 5 tips on staying active and fit during your journey.
Walk or do low impact aerobics 3 x weekly
Aim for 20 minutes at least 3 times a week. Activities to try might look like walking, swimming, or gentle dance or yoga classes. This is important at any time, but even more so during pregnancy. It’s a simple, but underrated form that underpins staying active. Each activity is easy on your joints and promotes healthy blood flow. This is a great place to start!
Do flexibility exercises or yoga stretching everyday
Since your body is adapting to your growing baby, your muscles are also being stretched to accommodate. By adding in flexibility based exercises or yoga, it’ll help promote ease in movement in day to day activities, and benefit more difficult exercises! Yoga movements such as Seated Piriformis Stretch or Cat Cow are excellent movements to improve back pain and promote blood flow.
Other stretches include yogi squat(Malasana), Wide Legged Child’s pose, Supta Baddha Konasana and Supine Spinal Twist. These can be done at any time and are a great way to balance emotional changes. Optimal time to hold each one is at least 30 seconds.
Strength train light weight with emphasis on deep core, back, and glutes
As your baby grows, weight becomes offset, making normal activities harder. A strong back, glutes, and core are the foundation for standing up tall, minimising back pain and making day to day activities easier. Deep core is essentially the muscles that run deep along your spine, and help you move safely, balance, and pick up objects from the ground.
Goblet squats, lunges, and deadlifts are excellent exercises for deep core, glutes, and back and require minimal equipment. Avoid crunches and planks as this could place extra pressure on the baby or compromise your back. Aim for at least 2-3 times weekly.
Keep the workouts simple, and in tune with your fitness level and stage of pregnancy
Pick 4-5 exercises that work your whole body and include a warmup and cool down. Exercises such as standing banded rows, lat pull downs, glute bridges, goblet squats and reverse lunges are a great example. They can also be done from home with resistance bands, a door anchor, and a kettle bell or dumbbell.
A complete example would be a 5-10 minute warmup, 4 exercises from above, and a 5-10 minute cool down. Perform 3 or 4 sets of 12-15 of each, resting 40 seconds in between, with each cool down movement being long held stretches.
Listen to your body
Ultimately, it all comes down to noticing how an exercise or stretch feels in your body. What does your body say? Is it too much or are you able to do more? If you need to modify an exercise to fit your changing body, that’s absolutely ok!
