Exercise and Sports in Pregnancy: from CrossFit to Yachting, get informed
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Exercise and sport in pregnancy: don’t listen to the newspapers, or women’s magazines.
In every aspect of health, fitness and wellbeing we encourage you to take control, take responsibility, and get informed from credible sources. It’s no different when it comes to the beautiful status of pregnancy and ensuring good health for yourself and your child. There is little benefit to handing over your health into someone else’s care.
Balance Performance has a credible source on the team for you on in the form of Sally Murray – physiotherapist, and women’s health specialist (also the teacher and creator of our post-natal and womens only kettlebell classes).
Whether you’re a woman doing our kettlebell classes with Svetlana or Sally, you run around Clapham Common for fun and health, are an iron woman triathlete, or a CrossFit member like the Californian woman featured in this London Metro article, speak to Sally.
So if you’re pregnant or planning to start a family be proactive. Find out how your existing sports and fitness practices need modifying or if you’ve been misled by well meaning but misinformed friends, family, the media or even your doctor/GP.
It is inevitable that at some point you will have to make adjustments to your routines but to what degree is based on multiple factors. The stage of pregnancy, previous experiences of pregnancy, the nature of your sport or fitness practices, the experience you have in them, the skill you have in them – experience doesn’t mean competent!! – are just some of the considerations.
Life is not black and white, its a whole spectrum of GREY: physical practices should never be approached in a binary manner.
If you are going into pregnancy and are sedentary see what you can do to improve your health and that of your child’s.
Call 02076272308 to book straight into Sally’s diary or email her via our enquiry page:
http://www.balancephysio.com/book
Sally also offers Post Natal MOTs ask her about those too!
well if nothing else this article has got a great debate going about exercise in pregnancy! Sadly there are still a lot of myths out there. I know mostly it is assumed you should only walk or swim when pregnant but I don’t know where this comes from. In my experience there are 3 areas to pay attention to when planning your exercise in pregnancy. Firstly the pregnant pelvis dislikes asymmetry ( standing one one leg type activities). So for some pregnant ladies who experience pelvic girdle pain walking or even swimming breast-stroke can aggravate it. However training with kettlebells when done well is a great exercise as there is no impact (ie. bouncing) and keeps the pelvis symmetrical. It uses cardio and toning/control all in one so lends itself well to both ante and post natal training. The second area is the pelvic floor which will weaken as pregnancy continues. With excessive weight lifting then yes you could cause a further weakening of the pelvic floor leading to prolapse and continence issues. However if you are used to lifting and you have modified your weights then you will have a positive effective on strengthening your core and pelvic muscles which can only be a good thing. Finally some women find their rectus muscle which is the one that stretches over the front of your tummy can seperate in pregnancy. The worse thing you can do is lie flat on your back and sit straight upright as this encourages the seperation so needs to be avoided at all costs. It’s much worse for your pregnant body than lifting a weight over your head! Research is clear that bodies, even pregnant ones are better when moving so don’t be too quick to reach for the remote and the cadburys just because you are growing a baby 🙂