Body Attack, combat & pump - pregnancy experiences

[kmini]

Hi

Anyone's experiences with doing these classes during pregnancy? How long were you able to do it for & what exercise group did you cut out?

Thanks!

Yeah... I had a lady who said she was a trained pre-natal fitness instructor tell me to 'only do half' on the core/ mat work because otherwise my placenta would split. Um....yeah, that's not a thing! Plus, you'd think if she actually believed that she wouldn't be advising me to do any core work at all! I mean, at what angle, in her world, would the placenta split? Would I only need to go over it once, or multiple times? People really don't know what they're talking about a lot of the time.

I think the placenta split thing might have been a misremembering about the potential to split the sets of ab muscles that run down the front of the belly (diastatis rectii or something - my post natal instructor was very hot on it) - they often split naturally as the baby starts to poke out but too many crunch type exercises will make this worse and make it harder for them to go back together.

The impact thing is to do with the amount of elastin(??) released to help your pelvis stretch open. I was fine first pg but had horrible pelvic pain from quie early in my second pregnancy and I do wonder if star jumps didn't help - it floods your system in the first tri apparently so worth taking some care.

Btw this is all my remembering of what my instructor told me I claim no special qualifications. The stuff about heart rate/body temperature is interesting.

I'm nearly 35 weeks and still doing pump regularly. And no plans to quit yet. As everyone else has said, you need to drop your weights, incline step and do other stuff in the abs track. Oh, and I get hot quicker so take a larger bottle of water.

Thanks you for all your responses. So helpful!

There is a LOT of mixed information out there. I have heard so many different 'rules' from so many trainers and most have very little idea. I think there is a bit of a fear because the research isn't there so trainers tend to err massively on the side of caution.
I'm a yoga teacher and pt and I still get nervous with pregnant clients..irrational perhaps as I know what I am doing but as a trainer you are also relying on the student to know their own body and to know when to stop and it is not always the case that they do!

pickle i think you raise a very good point. As pregnant women we need to listen to our bodies and also make it our business to get as much info as possible for ourselves and decide what we should/shouldn't do. Although an instructor is responsible for you from a h&s point of view whilst in a class, YOU have ultimate responsibility to yourself and tour unborn child and to rely completely on the advice of an instructor isn't wise. They don't all know what they are talking about.

At my gym i got different advice from 4 instructors and so i made sure i did some research myself too, then made decisions based on what sounded most sensible, and bearing in mind my own fitness level and capabilities etc.