Building Strength and Stability: 2nd Trimester Prenatal Workout for Upper Body and Core

Fitness, Prenatal

Should you still train your core during pregnancy? Absolutely! We need a strong abdominal wall to support our uterus for both our prenatal comfort and to support our baby's position.

Should you still train your core during pregnancy? Absolutely! We need a strong abdominal wall to support our uterus for both our prenatal comfort and to support our baby’s position.

But not every ab exercise is appropriate for pregnancy! When doing core-focused exercises (and exercise in general), we want to avoid abdominal coning.

Abdominal coning is when the center of the abdomen pushes out further than the rest of the abdominal wall, like a tent or dome down the center.

Why is this an issue? Coning is a sign that there is TOO much pressure pushing out against the connective tissue in between your six-pack abs. If this happens repeatedly, it can damage the connective tissue and make it harder to heal after birth.

In order to avoid abdominal coning, generally, we want to avoid abdominal flexion exercises such as crunches or sit-ups, core exercises that are too much for the core such as planks or hanging from a bar. Plus, some upper body exercises can cause coning if you are not mindful of your positioning!

In the overhead press and pull down exercises, you may find that you are coning if you are arching excessively as you press the weight overhead or pull the weight down! In this workout, we discuss some strategies to keep your rib cage down as you press weight overhead to prevent coning.

15-Minute: 2nd Trimester Upper Body and Core Workout

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In this workout, we walk you through 15 minutes of exercises that focus on strengthening your shoulders, back, and core during pregnancy. This workout can be done at any point during your pregnancy, but it is a preview of our workouts in the MamasteFit 2nd Trimester Prenatal On-Demand Workout Program.

In this upper body workout:

3 rounds of:
- 30 seconds or 10 reps of standing overhead press with dumbbells
- 20 seconds per hand grip of pull aparts with palms down, neutral, and facing up
- 30 seconds per side of side lying hip abduction with weighted rotation

This workout strengthens the shoulders with the overhead press–which you can modify by doing a seated variation if standing feels too challenging for you. If you are having trouble with preventing arching, lower the weight or press only one weight at a time so you can focus more on your rib cage.

Next, you will do banded pull-aparts with three different hand grips to strengthen the upper back. The upper back can round as the weight increases on the front side of our body–so strengthening the muscles up there can help you find a more upright position to support your comfort during pregnancy!

And then each round finishes with a core exercise, the side-lying hip abduction with weighted rotations. This core exercise targets the obliques, side abs, and is a great pregnancy “safe” core exercise you can do! There are a number of variations of this exercise that we include in our prenatal fitness programs.

Mamastefit: the number one thing I recommend to all my pregnant friends. I did the prenatal fitness program via team builder app and the childbirth education classes. Both were highly valuable, but the fitness program is what my husband and I attribute to my really fast and smooth postpartum recovery. The fitness program allowed me to feel limber and strong in my pregnant body. The program allows you to go at your own pace, your own chosen weights, and the ability to shorten/lengthen the workout day depending on how your body is feeling that day. The exercises were also great ones that I would not have thought of to do on my own. The childbirth education classes had a lot of great information and I was able to implement many of the labor movements and breathing exercises during labor. 10/10 would recommend and will absolutely be using their program again and again!

I just wanted to say thank you so much for all of your incredible content! I used your childbirth edu and prenatal fitness programs during my pregnancy and felt empowered to take on an unplanned induction. As a pelvic PT, I knew I wanted education that covered physiology and hospital birth interventions in a lot more specific detail and I felt the mamastefit program was comprehensive and easy to digest with the format you have. I will definitely use the prenatal fitness plan again for a future pregnancy and will totally recommend it to patients as well!

I had my final postnatal appointment and my midwife says she has never seen such a healthy postpartum pelvic floor, in fact if she didn't know better she would have guessed that I hadn't had any children. The whole team was amazed at my overall physical recovery which I attribute to your programming and the nutritional guidelines from Lily Nichols. They are recommending your program to more of their clients because of my great results. Thank you!

Prepare for Your Birth with MamasteFit Prenatal Fitness Programs

If you want more daily workouts to support a strong pregnancy as you prepare for birth, join our online prenatal fitness programs!

MamasteFit is unique in that we are one of the ONLY prenatal/postnatal training facilities in the United States. We develop our workout programs from our experience of working with in-person pre/postnatal fitness clients and work closely with physical therapists to refine our programming. In addition, we are birth workers, so we combine our experience as perinatal fitness trainers and birth professionals to ensure that our programs actually support your birth preparation and recovery!

Our prenatal fitness programs are offered in several formats:

40-Week Prenatal Strength Program in the Teambuildr App:
- This program is a self-paced workout with shorter demo videos. This is ideal if you like to workout in a gym setting and prefer a traditional workout delivery format.
- This program syncs to your current week of pregnancy, so you can start anytime, with one-time payment or month-to-month payment options.
- This program has a full and mini version, depending on how much time you have to dedicate to workouts!
Prenatal On-Demand Fitness Program:
- If you prefer to follow a video as you workout at the same time, this workout program will be the best option!
- This program syncs to your current trimester, so you can grab the trimesters you need!
Prenatal Yoga Classes:
- If you want prenatal yoga, join our prenatal yoga program! This also syncs to your current trimester.