The Ultimate Guide to Prenatal Core Workouts: Modifications and Benefits

Fitness, Prenatal

Should you avoid all core exercises throughout your pregnancy?? Absolutely NOT! You need a strong core to not only stay comfortable throughout your pregnancy but also to support your baby’s position for birth!

HOWEVER, there are some things we do want to consider when approaching core work throughout pregnancy.

During pregnancy, the abdominal wall is stretching and thinning to accommodate for our baby’s growth–this is referred to as diastasis recti abdominis (DRA) and it is a NORMAL part of pregnancy!

While DRA is a normal part of pregnancy, we still want to be mindful of the type of core exercises that we are doing to avoid abdominal coning–this is where the center of the abdomen pushes out further than the rest of the abdominal wall due to increased pressure in the belly.

If there is a consistent and repetitive coning, aka increased pressure pushing against the thinned connective tissue of the abdominal wall, then we could be damaging the abdominal beyond what is normal and this could lead to a more severe diastasis in the postpartum.

Protect Your Core During Prenatal Workouts: Coning Prevention Tips

Abdominal coning is when the center of the abdomen pushes out further than the rest of the abdominal wall. This is a problem because it is damaging the connective tissue more than is normal and can make diastasis harder to heal in the postpartum period.

The most common things that cause abdominal coning:

Arching in the back with exercises, such as overhead press, pull-downs, and horizontal press–more common with upper body exercises.
Abdominal flexion core exercises, such as sit-ups, crunches, and exercises where you are curling up with your six-pack abs.

Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to still effectively train our core throughout pregnancy to support a strong pregnancy and our baby’s position!

You can incorporate modifications in your upper body exercises to minimize coning, such as adjusting how you push weight overhead or adding in external feedback to maintain your torso position to prevent coning. And there are a lot of core exercises you can do in lieu of sit-ups and crunches to target your core (and honestly, these exercises are way better than sit-ups).

What we can focus on with our core exercises instead of crunches and sit ups, includes: anti- exercises, such as movements that resist movement in the upper body, and rotational exercises. Our core exercise focus is more on integrating the abdominal wall with the rest of the body, as opposed to training the core in isolation.

Let’s go through several core-focused exercises you can do throughout your prenatal workouts!

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1) Pallof DB Press with Banded Leg Resistance

The first core exercise that you can incorporate into your prenatal workout routine is the pallof dumbbell press with banded leg resistance. In this exercise, you are pressing a single weight with the outside arm while resisting a lateral pull from the resistance band on the opposite leg. This exercise targets the anterior oblique sling, which not only supports pubic symphysis joint stability (front pelvic joint) but also diagonally across the abdominal wall.

2) Side Lying Hip Abduction: Ball Balance

Next, we have the side-lying hip abduction with ball balance. This is another oblique strengthening exercise, but the set-up is in a side plank position. The side-lying hip abduction exercise is similar to doing a glute bridge on your side where you are pushing the hips forward to full extension, but it targets the side glute muscle of the bottom leg and obliques.

If you want to make this movement more challenging, add a pilates ball under the bottom knee to increase the instability.

3) Bird Dog: Row and Banded Variations

Next, we can look at quadruped exercises to strengthen our core during pregnancy. The bird dog is a great core strengthening exercise–when done correctly–and we can advance it with weights and bands.

When doing the bird dog, you must avoid arching in your back as you extend the arm and leg. If you arch in the back, you will lose the connection in the core and you won’t feel the core activation. Rather, focus on almost pulling the bottom of the rib cage and top of the pelvis closer together on the front side of your body as you extend–this will increase activation of your core!

You can add in a dumbbell row and/or banded lateral resistance for the opposite leg to increase the difficultly of this core exercise!

4) Farmer Carries

Another great core exercise for pregnancy, and it’s also incredibly functional for motherhood, is the farmer carry! This exercise is an anti-lateral flexion exercise where you are resisting a sideways movement of the upper body as you walk. Carrying one weight only on one side really increases the difficulty of this exercise, as well!

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.

5) Diagonal Pull Downs

Next, we can take a look at some rotational exercises to strengthen the core! These exercises are great for increasing the density of the abdominal wall (which is really helpful for reducing DRA in the postpartum).

The first exercise is the diagonal pull down. This exercise is a rotational exercise where you are pulling from up to down across your body. There are several set-up variations for this exercise, such as seated, half kneeling, and even standing to lunge.

6) Split Squat March with Rotation

Another rotational exercise is the split squat march with rotation. This exercise really fires the inner thigh muscles and core, and is one of my favorites right now in my own pregnancy.

In this exercise, you’ll rotate laterally from side to side as you step up from a split squat. We normally program this exercise as accessory work for one of our lower body workout days in our prenatal programming.

Keep Your Core Strong Throughout Your Pregnancy with MamasteFit!

You can absolutely still train your core throughout pregnancy! However, we do need to be mindful of HOW we are training our core, as we want to avoid abdominal coning that may be damaging our core.

Our focus in our prenatal fitness programs is to program exercises that target the anti–so resisting motion of the upper body as the arms and legs move, such as with the pallof DB press, side-lying hip abduction, and bird dog. And, we can incorporate rotational movement (yes, you can twist during pregnancy) as another safe prenatal core exercise option.

If you want more core exercises to stay strong throughout your pregnancy, check out our prenatal fitness programs!