Exercising when pregnant

[BatKat]

Hi all. I am just over 14 weeks pregnant and thankfully my morning sickness is starting to ease off. I’ve felt so rough the last couple of months that exercise has been the last thing on my mind but I’m hoping to get back into it now that I’m hopefully starting to feel better. I did a lot of exercise before getting pregnant but it was mainly high impact contact sport so won’t be able to go back into that.

I was wondering if anyone would be able to recommend any YouTube videos or online classes (Zoom etc) that I could do at home. I’m not quite sure what I’m after and tend to like variety so I’m up for trying things like yoga/pilates and also more intense stuff like HIIT that is designed for pregnancy. Any recommendations would be gratefully received.

TIA :)

For yoga try Yoga with AdrIrene.

I did a davina McCall exercise dvd for pregnant women and enjoyed it until month 7 onwards when all I did was eat cake.

Another vote here for Yoga with Adriene - just read up a little first on poses to avoid when pregnant as her classes aren’t aimed at pregnancy - but once you know, they’re really easy to adapt. Also depends on restrictions in your area / budget / how you feel about going out, but might be worth seeing what classes are still available in person. I’m another high impact / contact sport lover here and one benefit of the social distancing restrictions is my martial arts class has gone non-contact so I’ve been able to carry on training when I thought I’d have to give it up. Bit frustrating not being able to hit any pads but have at least been able to keep my fitness and form up. Wishing you a healthy and active pregnancy x

Babyfit by amy on youtube is pretty good! Lots of different ones ro choose from, and she is by far the least annoying instructor for preggo workouts on there!

I use Results with Bump. They have a huge variety of workouts organised by trimester. It has stuff like Pilates, yoga, barre, HIT, strength workouts and resistance band workouts. I’m in my third trimester and have used this throughout my pregnancy alongside running.

I've been doing Mama & Me Fitness classes on Facebook, they're a mix of strength and cardio with pregnancy modifications. The classes are on Facebook Live and once you've booked a class you have a couple of days to do it - this is good for me as I need the motivation of a time limit

Another vote for babyfit by Amy! Bumps and burpees on Instagram has lots of short, fairly straightforward exercise plans, I tend to do 2-3 of their sessions at once. I tend to just go on YouTube and browse ‘30 min pregnancy workout’ and try lots of different things.

I was climbing and running. Doesn't have to be an online class, you can still do non-contact sports.

I ran until 16 weeks, then started swimming instead (too nervous now about that sadly as I live in a Covid high risk area). I find the online classes a bit dull (through body fit with Amy is ok). Instead, I’ve signed up for some pregnancy yoga classes over zoom and splurged a bit on a cross trainer...if you can spare a few quid I would recommend as an easy, Covid risk free alternative to other cardio!

Thanks everyone, lots of great ideas I’ll look into :)

Definitely agree with Bodyfit by Amy, she's really good. I'm 27 weeks and used to run a lot as well as gym/various classes but I stopped running in very early pregnancy due to issues with bleeding and although it wasn't the cause, it always made it worse but for some reason no other workouts did. I have been using quite a lot of Youtube workouts in general, I searched 'pregnancy tabata' and found a good one as well as Amy's one. I have also been doing the like of PE with Joe Wicks and adapting moves where I need to. Would love to go swimming but not keen with the current situation.