Pilates in pregnancy????

[SonyaSingapore]

Hello there - I'm due with my 4th baby in Jan 2005, and am wondering about what exercise I can do in this pregnancy. For my first 3 I did gentle walking/swimming/prenatal yoga, but in the last 7 months have got very into stronger abs exercises - needs must!!!! I have been doing lots of mat pilates, and have loved having ab muscles for the first time ever. But now I feel that I probably shouldn't do such strong, abs focused stuff. Can anyone advise? We live in Singapore so my info isn't always the best

I have seen that Pilates for pregnancy classes are becoming very popular, maybe if you ask at the Pilates assoc. in Singapur they may refer you to one. Pilates are great for pregnancy but not all the excersises are safe (specially if you need to put your legs up!). there's also a video you can get from Amazon but the woman directing them will bore you to death, no eye contact at all and it looks like a home made video. I don't know how good it was, I don't know if it were the hormonal changes but felt like sending it to the rubish bin just after one go.... bored to exhasperation

I did Pilates (Bodycontrol) until I was nearly 7 months pregnant (we then stopped for the summer anyway).

My instructor was just careful about which exercises I did and would often tell me to give an exrecsie a miss or give me an alterntive. She was happy for me to be on my back as long as I was comfortable. The pelvic floor exercsie themselves were not a problem - you should be practising them anyway! What I did sometime do in the "waiting out an exercise" times, was try some of the RELAXING the plevic floor exercises, eg having taken them "up" the lift, taking them back "down" the lift - all the way to the basement.

What she was more bothered about where an exercise using turn out or where my ligaments might be over stretched.

I also managed to do a fair amount of the "lying on your fornt" exercsie until quite late on, using lots of addtional cushions to support me around the bump! (... but then, I was quite neat!).

I did Pilates right until a few days before I went into labour (had to cancel my class!) and felt very very good for doing it. As my bump got bigger I virtually dropped most of the conventional abs exercises apart from:

diagonals (on back, head and shoulders slightly raised on cushions/wedge, legs resting on a support with knees bent, then rolling R shoulder towards L knee, back down, then rolling L shoulder towards R knee, and so on - sorry, can't remember what I did with my arms)

leg raises (on back as for diagonals, hands flat on floor beside, raising one bent knee at a time and putting back down without shifting weight)

bridging (flat on back on floor, lower legs resting on birthing ball (Swiss ball?) hands flat on floor beside, raise pelvis until body is in a straight line from knees to kneck)

Needless to say, neutral pelvis, stomach anchored.

Basically I continued with exercises that worked my diagonals and my back, but avoided exercises that worked the muscles at the front of the belly (the ones which separate as you get bigger).

HTH