Hi, my name is Chelsey and I am the owner of Slay Squad, fitness coaching, online for women, and what we do is Phoenix Personal Training and online nutrition coaching. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how we helped train our pregnant and postpartum client that is different than how you would train it typically, um, if you were working with anyone else with Phoenix personal training. First of all, when you are pregnant or postpartum, it’s very important that you choose to work with someone who is pre-impostnatal certified. So what this means, it means that the trainer coach has gone through the necessary certifications in order to understand the changes and modifications that are needed during pregnancy and postpartum. Your body’s changing very rapidly in just a few short months, and there are some modifications for safety and just comfort for you and baby. Um, as your belly gets bigger, and also postpartum that are gonna help you to, um, have the best possible results, feel strong after having babies, and ultimately just be in a place where you can feel really good, um, in your body after having babies. So a little bit about me, I have had 2 babies myself and I’m currently pregnant with my third. I’m very excited about this and I’ve continued to train and work out during all of my pregnancies. It does look a little bit different. But I’ve continued to do so, and I know it’s made all the difference in my pregnancy and postpartum journey and how I look and feel. And I’ve been honored to coach 100s of moms through a similar process to what I’ve done, um, in order to look and feel their best and just have that empowered privacy. Pregnancy is a tough time. It’s full of a lot of changes to your body. Um, rapid weight gain, um, changes even in like your balance. So many shifty, so many things shifting in your body in terms of muscles and organs and it can just be a lot. So learning how to navigate that is super important.
So the 1st trimester of pregnancy, as far as training, you don’t have to change all of that that much. You may think like, oh, I can’t do what I used to do, but actually, as long as you have gone to your doctor, you have been cleared that you’re not like a high risk pregnancy where there are limitations. As long as your doctor gives you the okay. They are almost always gonna tell you to continue to do whatever exercise and workouts you were doing pre pregnancy during your pregnancy. So if you were weight training before, if you were doing Pilates before, you can continue all of that. And in fact, you should continue all of that. And there’s not a whole lot of modifications that you need to make during the 1st trimester. You will have to start to make modifications once your belly grows just a little bit more. So 1st trimester, the only big modification that you may need to think about, it’s not really even a modification. is just a intensity thing. It’s maybe going at a little lower intensity. And the reason being is that you are simply going to be tired. Most people are very tired in their 1st trimester, and also you may find yourself due to hormonal changes, feeling short of breath, even though baby is tiny, and your lung capacity is still at its full amount, you haven’t had like any smashing up your lungs yet. You may still feel short of us due to hormonal changes. And so that might limit how hard you feel you can push during workouts. One thing I recommend doing is simply called a talk test, which means you just want to make sure that you can always talk during your workout. If you’re so short of breath, it’s too intense that you can’t have a conversation. That’s maybe a little bit too intense and the talk test is a great task to do. Um, with training and working out during pregnancy. With Phoenix personal training, we help modify these for our clients, to customize and personalize this for them and where they’re at with each stage of pregnancy. When modifications need to start coming in, is the 2nd trimester. Not even early on the 2nd trimester, this is really somewhat dependent on each woman and how their body is growing and responding. So it’s really, it’s when your belly starts to grow and you will feel that. So you will be able to see the changes, feel the changes. When your belly is growing, obviously anything that requires laying on your stomach is a no-go. So where I can think of this affecting you in the gym is if you were doing a machine like hamstring curls lying on your stomach. We don’t want to do that. We’re going to skip that. There’s no reason you need to do that. Skip anything that requires you lying on your stomach. Next up is training and modifying how you do your core work, your apps. So it’s very important that during pregnancy, you have strong core. You have strong, um, ab muscles, and the reason being is that the abs are what are going to keep everything together and help prevent diastasis recti, which is very common during pregnancy. It’s that little bit of separation down the middle line of your abs that can happen. Now, most women are going to get some level of this. A little bit is no big deal. Obviously the baby grows pretty rapidly. Your muscles are going to have to move and reposition. A little bit of separation isn’t a big deal, but too much separation can actually be a big deal. Um, cosmetically after baby will have kind of the odd looking stomach, it’ll look like a cone or a dome. Um, and it can also be very uncomfortable. It can cause, um, issues with the pelvic floor too. And it can be painful. and it cannot be a we cannot stabilize your spine. So with Phoenix personal training, we make sure that the core is a big focus of pregnancy. Now, how we’re gonna modify this and change this? Most people, when they think of training their core, they’re thinking of training their rectis abdominus, which are the 6 pack muscles that run down the front of your stomach. People think of like showing off their abs. This is what they’re showing, but really what they need to be training is the transfers, abs. So they’re training the muscles that wrap around your stomach, like a corset that kind of hold and stabilize your spine. So even if you’re not pregnant or postpartum, this is something that people should learn how to train, that I don’t think they really know how to train. Well, one thing we do a lot of with our clients is called core breathing. It’s this really deep breathing where you fill up your abdomen. So instead of filling up, like your chest, you’re filling up your abdomen, you take a deep breath, holding that, and then exhaling and pulling your belly button to your spine as tight as you can. And at the same time that your stomach is moving out and expanding, your pelvic floor is going to be pushed and moved down slowly and controlled. Then when you breathe out, your stomach is coming in. It basically making yourself as thin as possible, belly button to the spine, and then the pelvic floor is going to pull up. This is called a core breath, very, very critical that you’d be doing this. When you are pregnant, it’s going to help you not leak when you pee, or when you see he’s not pee when you sneeze, not link, not leak pee when you’re just doing things throughout the day, a lot of moms accept that as normal during pregnancy and postpartum. It is not normal. It’s very common, but not normal. It’s due to a weak pelvic floor, the pelvic floor is a muscle. You can train this and core breathing is a great way to train your pelvic floor and your transverse abs. And those transverse abs that wrap around your stomach are going to help stabilize your spine. It’s going to help keep you strong. It’s going to help with posture. It’s going to help reduce back pain. And with Phoenix’s personal training, we make this a big focus of our pregnant clients program and postpartum. So the cool thing about the core breathing and the core work that we train our clients to do is that stuff you can do your whole pregnancy, and then immediately postpartum to even help facilitate your stomach and your pelvic floor healing. So, other exercises that are pregnancy safe are more like bear holds, side planks instead of regular planes, what you dead bugs are generally okay, things you want to avoid are anything that would crunch your stomach. So imagine your baby, um, is safe in a little house there and you don’t want to crunch the house. You don’t want to land the house. So you don’t want to do standard crunches, sit ups, and then things like double leg lifts where both of your legs are moving up and down together, that can cause pulling or tearing sensations, the abs separation we spoke about earlier. So really important that as your belly grows, you are learning to train the transverse abs, not the rectus of Dominus, and you’re avoiding anything that causes that pulling or tearing sensation and just being very aware. Um, pregnancy, um, modifications at the very end, obviously, you’re gonna be more short of breath. You’re gonna be more tired, and your belly’s gonna be bigger than it’s ever been. So you’re gonna minimize, um, the ab workouts that are traditional even more and focus on like the deep breathing core breathing, bear holds, things like that that feel comfortable. Immediately postpartum, um, with Phoenix personal training, there are, we help our postpartum moms immediately postpartum. So many people think there’s nothing you can do until you go to your 6 week appointment and you get cleared, but that’s simply not true. Um, through the sleigh squad with Phoenix personal training, we help them understand that actually doing some of the core breathing and some of those very simple movements that we teach them, um, like standing leg marches, um, laying on your back and doing pelvic floor breaths. Um, heel taps. There’s things that you can do safely that can actually help facilitate the pelvic floor and the core healing and returning to normal that we kind of drip feed to our clients that you can do immediately is like the deep breathing, but then like 2 weeks out, just depending on how you’re healing, we can add a couple more things. 4 weeks out, we can add a couple more, 6 weeks out as long as you’re cleared. We can go back to actually exercising. If you follow these programs, um, with us with Phoenix Personal Training, you’ll be amazed at how strong you feel for labor, but also how quickly, um, you recover.