Exercising throughout pregnancy has numerous benefits for both you and your baby. If you exercise throughout pregnancy, you tend to stay more comfortable, your risk of developing a prenatal complication is decreased, and your birth outcomes tend to be better. Your baby tends to be more resilient to the stressors of pregnancy and labor, transition efficiently after birth, and are leaner and stronger at birth.
But, how do you modify your lifts during pregnancy? Not every exercise is going to feel great throughout all of pregnancy, but do you necessarily need to omit your entire program?
Here are three ways to approach modifying your lifts during pregnancy!
Think About the Belly!
The first thing to consider is accommodating the belly! This happens usually before any other modifications are needed, and may even happen before you have a noticeable bump!! For many of our clients, we need to start making space for the belly in the first trimester.
As the belly grows, it begins to impede hip flexion, or the ability to bring the knee to your chest. The belly hits the thighs, and your normal response is to curl around the belly to complete the movement, aka coming into a flexed spine position under load (which is not ideal). We want to maintain a neutral spine range under load!
The easiest way to make space for the belly is to widen the stance. If you are squatting or deadlifting, transitioning to a wider or sumo stance is usually the go-to method.
Another option is to elevate the bar, so the range of motion is decreased, making it easier to maintain a neutral spine while deadlifting, or moving the bar higher on the thighs for hip thrusts. We use 3-inch blocks in our gym to elevate, but you can also use bumper plates!
Consider Stability Demands + Your Current Capability
Next, we want to consider what the stability demands are of the movement, and what your current capability is to complete that movement. If you find that the movement is exceeding your capability, such as your form is being compromised or you are having a hard time managing your breathing, then we may need to change the movement up.
Here are some ways to increase stability.
First, we can increase the support of the movement. This could include holding onto rings while squatting or lunging; holding onto a sturdy structure while doing step-ups or single-leg deadlifts, or increasing the base of support (1-leg to staggered or 2-legged).
Next, we can decrease the overall range of motion, or how much movement is being done. If we decrease ROM, we tend to increase stability due to less demand being required. This could include box squats, elevated deadlifts, landmine strict press or incline dumbbell bench press, and floor press.
We could also decrease overall movement by limiting how much the feet move. This could include shifting from a walking lunge to a reverse lunge (only one foot moving) to a split stance (no feet moving) to a squat (no feet moving, even stance).
Manage Symptoms
One of the last things we want to consider is managing our symptoms during exercise. Most importantly, we do not want to be in pain or discomfort!! This is a huge sign from our body that we need to modify our movement. If you are in pain, see the above modifications to find a variation that works best for your body, or consider omitting the movement.
Next, we want to decrease symptoms that are associated with pressure management issues, such as coning (too much pressure to the front) and heaviness of the pelvic floor/bearing down on the pelvic floor with exertion (too much pressure downwards). Pressure management issues can lead towards a more severe diastasis recti (DRA), symptomatic prolapse, hernias, and even leaking issues!
We can approach modifying our lifts throughout pregnancy by first considering the belly; then considering your stability demands + your current capability; and then managing our symptoms.
We break down prenatal lifting modifications and give recommendations in our 40-week Prenatal Strength + Conditioning Programming. You can start our program at any time, as the program will sync to your week of pregnancy. One-time and monthly payment options are available (pay for only the months you need).