An Ideal Pregnancy Exercise Routine

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If you’re like most women, you want to know what ideal pregnancy routine should be. Keeping in mind that when you exercise during pregnancy, your goal is to maintain your muscle strength and tone, not improve your fitness level through strenuous exercise. Although regular exercise is ideal due to your health or fitness level, most OBs recommend exercising between three and four times a week, thirty minutes or sixty minutes at a time.

So let’s look at what an effective exercise program should contain. I like to break down the routine into three different components. Number one would be your low impact aerobics. Aerobics such as swimming, walking or even dancing are a really great choice for pregnancy.

The second thing you should think about would be strength training or weight training. These are exercises that really encourage the muscles to stay strong. So, whether you use free weights, machines, Thera-Bands or even weighted balls, these are all really great things to do during pregnancy. Soon, you’ll be lifting much more than weights with all the baby gear that you’ll be lugging around.

And the third thing you should consider incorporating into your exercise routine to make it ideal are your pregnancy conditioning exercises. These are exercises that specifically target the muscles most affected by pregnancy and include exercises such as your Kegels which help keep your pelvic floor toned and strong throughout pregnancy as well as pelvic tilts. These simple exercises can really help you in labor delivery and even during the postpartum period. Pelvic tilts are absolutely wonderful while you’re pregnant because they really help keep your abdominal muscles nice and strong as well as your back muscles too. Pelvic tilts also help alleviate any of the soreness that you may feel in your lower back.

Always ensure that you always include a warm up period and a cool down period within your ideal exercise program. These are important because they gently elevate your heart rate and bring your heart rate down to a normal level. Gentle stretching during the cool down period can really help you avoid any soreness that you might feel post workout. And, importantly as well, always ensure that you exclude all flexion exercises starting from your second trimester onwards. Flexion exercises comprise of abdominal exercises, such as sit-ups and crunches.

Remember, once again, now is the time to keep your body strong, healthy and fit, and it is not the time to lose weight or try to improve your fitness level through strenuous activity.