Exercise During Pregnancy

Exercise During Pregnancy


You want to be as safe as you can, but you also want to stay fit – you need to know safe ways to exercise during pregnancy. What you don’t know is that there are lots of ways that you can stay fit and healthy while keeping your baby safe.

After all, regular exercise is good for you, and what’s good for you is good for your baby. By that reasoning, it’s good for your baby for you to exercise during pregnancy. With one caveat – you need to make sure that you’re doing it safely.

Most people would think that you would have to avoid this kind of exercise during pregnancy, but the truth is that you can do crunches and other abdominal exercises throughout your pregnancy. In fact, when you do crunches you’re actually building the muscles in your core, and that helps to strengthen the part of your body that is under the most stress through pregnancy. Strong abdominal muscles can also make labor, delivery, and the recovery afterwards much easier on you.

Up until your 20th week of pregnancy, you can perform crunches like you normally would. After the 20th week, you must modify the crunches so that you are either seated or lying on your side. One of the biggest adjustments to with exercise during pregnancy is learning how to listen to your body and modifying the way you exercise.Not only do you have to stop doing crunches on your back after the 20th week, but all exercises during pregnancy that were once done on the back must know be done on the side. Beause of the size of the fetus at that time, the weight of the baby and placenta can cut off the blood flow to your lower body.

Doctors will even tell you that you can’t sleep on your back anymore, either, you will have to start sleeping on your side.You can still lift weights as a form of exercise during pregnancy, but it is recommended that you reduce the amount of weight significantly and increase the repetitions.

That way, you can make your muscles stronger without straining anything. When you exercise during pregnancy, you need to make sure that you watch and don’t overdo it. The relaxin your body secretes while pregnant will make you more susceptible to muscle strains.


Exercise during pregnancy is important to both you and your baby. You can avoid many of pregnancy’s discomforts and aches and pains by staying fit and strong. You will just have to be flexible with your workout plans; you may not be able to do as much exercise during pregnancy, or push it as hard as you were used to.