Exercise have a positive effect in our life and health, pregnancy is no exception, many women tend to avoid exercise during pregnancy, in fear it my harm the baby, or cause miscarriage. And sometimes just plain laziness ?
Right exercises help have benefits for both you and your baby.

Benefits from exercising during and after pregnancy:

• It balances your hormones.
• Increases your energy levels.
• Better mental health and stronger focus, which help you to cope with trials of labor.
• Helps you ward off muscles stiffness, headaches, morning sickness and tiredness.
• Its helps with constipation.
• It strengthens the muscles which helps improve your posture sitting or walking. And good muscle to hold your baby as it grows heavier.
• Improves you are appetite.
• helps to promote sleep.
• Exercise during pregnancy also helps reduce the risk of many illnesses, and helps control and prevent gestational diabetes.
• It builds up strength and stamina to help you prepare for labor. They also help reduce time of recovery of the labor.
• It helps maintain your figure and staying fit during and after pregnancy.
• Studies show that exercises during pregnancy decrease the risk of premature birth by at least 50%.Many healthy benefits both physically and mentally can be gained through exercise during pregnancy. Even for your babies.

Healthier moms = healthier babies

Many women wonder what type of exercises suits them the most, and aren’t sure about which ones, and sometimes too shy to ask, so they end up avoiding doing any.
You can still do most type of exercise while pregnant as you were before, except for some that will be mention later in this article. The key is finding a reasonable level and intensity, which depends on how much active you were before getting pregnant and you shape and health before pregnancy.
In this article I will discuss best exercises choices for pregnancy:

Deep Breathing Exercises

Subconsciously we all do deep breathing without even realizing, but practicing deep breathing can have many benefits.

Benefits from deep breathing:

• Gives mental peace and regulate blood circulation.
• Helps manage morning sickness.
• Helps relieve the stress and tension of pregnancy.
• Helps you deal with physical discomforts of pregnancy.
• Helps you with labor and delivery.
• Great pain management tool.
• Helps your body manage swelling and congestion.
• Gives additional Oxygen for you and the baby.

How to perform?
First you need to practice you deep breathing as soon as you can, even before pregnancy.
The difference between normal breathing and deep breathing is that with deep breathing you are breathing from the abdomen and diaphragm, not the chest.
To practice that, sit comfortably in a good posture, relax.
Place your hand on you abdomen and inhale deeply through your nose fully into your abdomen. You should be feeling your abdomen moving outwards. If that doesn’t happen and you feel in the chest, then you aren’t doing it right and not inhaling deep enough.
Practice till you get it right. Once you inhale deeply pause for a few seconds. And then, slowly exhale though your mouth. Your abdomen will return to normal position. Repeat a few times, and do as much as you need.
You can use deep breathing whenever you’re feeling nauseated tired or experiencing tension or discomfort. Even during labor it’s a good technique to reduce the pain and relax.
If you getting dizzy while doing it, you probably breathing too fast, relax and breath slowly, make every part if you body relax.

Kegel Exercises

Invented by Dr. Arthur Kegel, very simple and effective exercises for all women, pregnant or not.

Benefits of Kegal exercises:

• Strengthen pelvic floor muscles, as well as uterus, bladder, urethra and the rectum.
• Helps with the labors, especially pushing out the baby and reduces the risk of muscles tears at the time of delivery.
• It facilitate the healing process after episiotomy during postpartum.
• Tone up the muscles of your vagina especially after giving birth.
• It helps improves the orgasm, even for non pregnant women.
• Better circulation of blood.
• It’s the best preventive measure to prevent pelvic surgery for women who have low bladder control.
• Women who continue doing Kegel’s exercises during and after pregnancy have a 40% less risk of urine incontinence than women who do not practice Kegel’s.

Kegel’s Exercise Technique:
It’s very simple, one should contract the muscles that hold back your urine, if you arent sure how to do this, next time you visit the toilet, you try to hold back your urine after you start, squeeze the muscles for 3 seconds and then relax, let the urine follow again and then repeat.
Once you get to know which muscles you contracting to stop the flaw, then you can start doing Kegel exercises.
At start you can do this contraction for 3 seconds for a set of 10-20 reps, and repeat during the day. As your muscles get stronger you can add up seconds and sets. Up to 10 seconds each time with 50 reps.
 What’s nice about Kegel exercises that they can be done anytime and anywhere.

Yoga

Yoga is a great choice for expecting moms, its deep breathing helps you relax, and keep focus. Yoga movements help tone up and strengthen the muscles in general.

 
Walking

One of the safest and easiest choices for expecting moms is walking. It’s so simple, can be done anyway and have lots of benefits.

Benefits from walking:

• Can be done for all expecting mom no matter their fitness levels.
• It helps improve circulation and oxidation.
• Helps tone up muscles especially abs and legs.
• Helps facilitate the labor because it strengthens you abs and hips muscles.
• Helps relief stress and lift your spirits up.

Walking doesn’t leave an excuse for any women out there, it can be done easily, no costs, very safe and with great benefits, so get your butt up from that couch and start walking.

Running

Running is similar to walking, but higher intensity, not recommended for all women; it’s mostly for the very active women prior to pregnancy and to limited point. It can be done safely in early stages; the more pregnant and the heavier you get you are the less running you should do.

Points about running:

• Make sure to wear a support bra.
• Recheck your footwear, because pregnancy may add up a little to the size of your foot.
• Avoid running in hot weather, and always stay hydrated.
• When you gain more weight, your balance will be different, so you may need to avoid running when this happens, so you won’t fall and injure yourself, you just switch to fast walking.
• As your weight increases, running may cause a pressure on your joints, and blood vessels, so again switch to fast walking.
• You should stop immediately and contact you doctor if you experience any of the following while running (chest pain, dizziness, breathing problems, any fluid leakage, vaginal bleeding, muscles contraction and any other health problem.)

Swimming and water exercises

Another great exercises for pregnant, it’s very safe, and in fact it’s one of the best exercises that can be done if you are pregnant. It also have little to no risk, as you are surrounded by water, making it impact free, no pressure on the joints or ligaments. In fact by swimming you tone up all the tissues, ligaments, muscles and joints, which will give you my support in carrying your baby.

if you can’t swim doesn’t mean you can benefits from water exercises, just walking and jogging in the pool is enough to give great benefits, the resistance of the water is mild at your body but has great muscle toning and strengthen effect, you lower back and abs get exercises just by moving in the water and balancing.

 Dancing

Yes, start shaking that ass and gain many health benefits.

Benefits of dancing during pregnancy:

• Dancing helps strengthen the muscles, especially legs and hip and keeping them flexible.
• No need for equipments, can be done anywhere, even at your home, just put some music on and shake that thing :)
• can be very fun and challenging when taking into aerobics dance classes.
• It doesn’t feel like sport, more of a recreational fun activity with lots of fun in it.

 
Weight training

Studies have shown that weight training have great effect on pregnant, it just need to be modified to less intensity to what you were doing pre pregnancy. It’s not recommended to start if you weren’t doing weight training before and don’t have a foundation of strong muscles.
pregnant who did regular weight training have fewer physical discomfort, gained less weight, had fewer injuries of complications, and didn’t need lots of medical intervention during labor.

These are just some of the best choices for pregnant women, exercising that can done are unlimited, Pilates, body weight training, aerobic classes and others.
I put here a big collection of clips showing various exercises for the pregnant women.
 

Click here for more
Exercise Clips for Pregnant

What to avoid?
Exercise to avoid are basically anything that may harm you or the baby, such as exercises that have a risk of your falling or causing any kind of trauma to your abdomen.
Other activities such as scuba diving should be a strict no, because they may be fatal to you baby. Snow skiing, snowboarding, contact sports, wrestling are some of the exercises to avoid.
One would know by common sense if the exercise have a risk for you or the baby, and at any type of exercises, you need to consult with your doctor first.

Important points for exercising and pregnancy:

•  Always consult your doctor before starting any type of exercise.
• Choose a reasonable training program depend on your prepregnancy activity level, if you were a lazy doing nothing person, don’t start becoming a super women now, go gradually and slowly.
• let your breath be the measure of the intensity you do, it’s very simple, if you are breathing so hard that you can talk, then you training too hard, slow doing and do less intensity.
• If you feeling sick or tired avoid exercising.
• Avoid exercising in hot and humid weather, and make sure to always keep hydrated during and after exercises.
• Don’t not wear tight clothes, and make sure to wear a supportive bra while exercising.
• Make sure to accompany exercise with healthy diet as mentioned in part 1 from this article.
• Don’t expect to lose weight during pregnancy.
• You can do more than one type of exercises, such as walking, yoga, kegal and swimming. It’s better than doing one only.
• To be sure that you baby handling the exercise you do, take sometime during the day to count on baby’s kicks, fetuses usually kick at least 5 times an hour if they aren’t sleeping, and they have 20min sleep cycles. So if they don’t kick 5 times, just check again the next hours, if it still not kicking 5 times, then check with your doctor.
• After you exercised you baby becomes more active, don’t panic if that happens, the baby just responding to more oxygen and glucose delivery to it during exercises, it’s temporary and normal.
• Stop exercising immediately and contact your doctor if you experience the following symptoms: chest pain, dizziness, headaches, muscle pain, contraction, vaginal bleeding.

This is the end of part two of how to stay fit during pregnancy, pregnancy is a beautiful thing, it’s creating life. Staying fit and healthy during it, make it even a better experience for you and your baby.

Shady Eid is a certified Personal Trainer, writer and competitive bodybuilders based in UAE, for questions and comments you can contact him at: Shady@arabianmuscles.com