EXERCISE DURING PREGNANCY | DO'S AND DON'TS

 Guys this is where we're at right now

this is my bump at 21 weeks because you 

can see the ABS is still there they're trying to hold on they have this little bump that's going on here hey friends and welcome back to my channel first up if you hit any kind of outside noise is because it is like 35 degrees outside and boiling I'm less than 5 months pregnant so I am sweating to the max so if it does get really noisy I will shut it if you do hear like any little bits of bees or flies then I'm really sorry otherwise let's get straight into the video I know this is my do's and don'ts of exercise while pregnant now I'm gonna put a little like disclaimer here I am a PT I have done my pre and postnatal course and I am pregnant however the whole world has very different opinions you may agree you may disagree you may have had previous experience of different views these are my views these are safe I believe and I'm happy for you guys to give these all ago but if you want to chat it through them please do leave me a comment in the box below now let's get on with the video first question can you exercise well pregnant yes now it is very safe to continue doing whatever you have done before throughout your pregnancy you just adapted which is something I'm going to be showing you how ever where I would say no is to pick up something brand new so if for example I'm not a runner so when I found out I was pregnant I'm not gonna start running every day or maybe joining a Run Club or thinking about doing a marathon I'm not a climber so I'm not gonna start doing that however I might swim because I've swum in my life and I was pretty safe in a pool I might walk because I walk every day I might even hike and I will continue with my CrossFit and my jimang but I'm not gonna try something brand new that is the main rule of thumb you can continue with what you were previously doing we're just gonna change the intensity don't start something new I hope that helps okay my next tip is trimesters obviously we have three although technically I would say four because I think post-baby is actually a trimester in itself but in with hormones and body changes but anyway each trimester is different but also all of                                                                                                                                        us are different I am not the same as

you you're not the same as your best 

friend mother so we're all gonna have very very different pregnancies and you really have to listen to your gut instinct so for example in the first trimester I was a little bit tired a little bit nauseous in the evening that was it I was never sick so for me I scheduled all my workouts in the morning I found it really easy to do this I wasn't overly tired for like I needed to go to bed super early so that was fine for me however if you are in your first trimester and you are vomiting throughout the day and you're exhausted or you feel dizzy or anything else then you need to rethink how you're gonna fit exercise in because you don't wanna be going and working out when you were vomiting or when you actually need to sleep so you need to figure out what kind of pregnancy you are having and how your body and your mind is behaving in each trimester and adapt the exercise to fit around your symptoms enjoy mister - I found I feel like superwoman I feel incredibly fit I feel very strong I have a lots more energy I'm just noticing that my center of balance is changing which is something I'm having to work on so in trimester - for me I've actually probably increased my workouts and doing a couple more because I'm not feeling so nauseous but what I'm making sure they do is I don't go so intense so you have to readjust go with how you are feeling is your trip trimester - if you've gone back to feeling super sick then we need to readjust it the next one is intensity you need to reassess what it is that you are doing exercise for now if you've previously only ever exercised because you want to lose weight you want to burn calories you now need to reassess that because that is not what we're doing during this pregnancy your main goal of exercise should not be because you want to burn calories and lose weight we're growing a baby up bodies are gonna change you have to accept that so the intensity needs to change so for example right now throughout my pregnancy I am aiming to maintain strength so I want to keep my strength and stay strong so that post pregnancy I still have that I want to maintain mobility so I want to be stretching I want to have good function of movement and I also want to take care of my lungs my joints my muscles my heart and of course my baby it is not they want to look really good in a swimsuit that is not what I'm focusing anymore so when you are training you now need to change what you're going for if you just ran on the treadmill for an hour probably want to change that and think of some movements you can do they're gonna build up your strength and take care of your muscles some compound movements so for me now what I'm going and do exercise and bring it down to about 75 percent depending on how I'm feeling so 75 hot-hot 75% of my maximum so when I'm doing a CrossFit workout obviously  they're generally wanting you to have about a hundred percent I'm bringing it down so I'm increasing my rest time to between like sixty seconds and a minute and a half I'm doing fewer reps or I'm bringing down the weight it's whatever you can do to still maintain the exercises but reduce the intensity so that you can still breathe you're not dizzy you're making sure that your baby is getting oxygen and that you're not gonna injure yourself next let's move on to the big question ABS I had ABS pride being pregnant and if I'm honest they're still there a little bit but they're not gonna be there for very long and this is really vital that you get your head around this we are no longer training for abs we are training for a strong pelvic floor we're training to make sure that our ab muscles do not split if possible we're trying to keep everything strong so we can take care of our child so with that in mind what you need to be focusing on is things such as breathing making sure that you are breathing from the stomach making sure that you're helping your body during the exercises so now when you do a squat I want you to make sure that you breathe in as you go down as you do the hard part I want you to breathe out this will help your muscles to contract stay together work as they previously word with a little bit less pressure also with your pelvic floor this all works together the stronger your perfect floor that easier it is for the bottom we're talking kind of bottom part to hold everything and we'll make it a lot easier later on with a childbirth so with that there's a really good app that I will pop below and it has levels from 1 to 20 and I've been doing it every day it's about two minutes and it's made set to ginormous difference you are actually squeezing from the butt all the way to the front through all those threes places so if you've been doing it in one you need to reassess this will make a really big difference now when it comes to AB movements during your first trimester for most part you can kind of continue with a lot of the ab exercises that you were doing before however if you notice any coning or any splitting which I've shown in a lot of my videos don't do it was the helm do you really need to do it is the other question up I would start to move to more lateral movements such as a side plank make sure you're breathing in pulling keeping it nice and tight no more plank trying to suck in that core because one we're going to be holding our breath to some idea and that's not something we need to be doing and two it's just not a great position to be in so when it comes to more ab movements I'm gonna show you some in the next two videos that are going to be coming up and also in my morning kind of wake up stretch routine but I would much more focus on side planks and actually just holding a core and breathing when you're doing compound movements I hope you enjoyed this video and if you have any constructive criticism or comments then please leave them in the scription box below I don't want to see any hate I don't see anything about it being dangerous to exercise while pregnant and that you will have a miscarriage which is something people keep telling me on Instagram that is not true miscarriages can happen no matter what you are doing the better we take care of our body and the stronger we are the healthier labor we are going to have if you're super worried then I definitely recommend speaking short GP and women's health advisor or perhaps Pilates yoga any type of instructor just to have a little chat everyone wants to help you through this journey but I promise you that continuing to do what you did before just reducing the intensity will make it so much easier for you to get back afterwards but also feel good during your pregnancy I hope this helps and I'll see you all for my actual workout videos which are coming up very soon bye guys