My Pregnancy Exercises

Since I actively worked out and trained before I got pregnant, I knew I could more or less maintain the same intensity, if not tone my exercises down a little, until I give birth. I read that exercising helps improve the baby's cardiovascular health after birth. Plus, it kept me sane, in addition to the fact that exercising helped with the occasional back pains. I honestly believe that exposing yourself and your body to regular exercises helps it cope better to the stresses, fatigue and other physical and emotional changes brought about by pregnancy.

My personal pregnancy exercise rules/guidelines were simple:

(1) I didn't try anything new. Pre-natal yoga doesn't really count since it's not as strenuous.  This rule means that if you weren't a runner or a swimmer prior to getting pregnant, don't over-exert yourself getting into it during your pregnancy.

(2) If I'm already panting, I stop and rest.  Exercising during pregnancy helps the body process and utilize oxygen, which is important for the mom and the baby. But you don't want to increase your heart rate so much and make it hard for yourself and the baby to get oxygen. While I was trained to push beyond the pain to get more fitness gains, this can't really apply when you're pregnant. 

(3) I your my workouts to just an hour or less.

Just remember, you want to exercise during pregnancy to maintain fitness, and not to lose weight. 

My workouts varied between the first, second and third trimester, as my tummy grew bigger and it became more laborious to breathe during cardio exercises.  

For the first to around mid-second trimester, I engaged in a lot of core exercises while the baby wasn't big enough yet.  I also kept running and swimming so I didn't need to do a lot of arm or leg workouts.

Around mid-second to the third trimester, I made the decision to run less and just do easy swims. This is why I had to put in more arm and leg exercises and weights. I also started to do prenatal yoga with Asana (more on this in another post) around this time.

As a reference, I compiled below more or less the exercises I did during my pregnancy, other than yoga and swimming.