Thursday, October 2, 2008

Fitness Solutions for Early Pregnancy

I was teaching a cycling class one day and we were taking our heart rates when I realized my heart was racing, nothing clicked, I thought maybe I was coming down with a cold. The next month we decided to try to get pregnant. My heart rate was still racing while I was working for that month. I took a home test when the time was right and it was positive to my surprise, it worked. After I went for my first ultrasound I realized I was already pregnant when we started trying. My high heart rate was explained, my blood volume was increaing putting demand on my cardiovascular system. Now What Do I Do. I followed the current heartrate guidelines for pregnancy and still do when training pregnant clients.
Some experts suggest using the rate of perceived exertion scale, but being in the fitness industry I guide people to push past their comfort limits daily. I thought maybe my perception of what is hard or easy was squed, so I personally decided to keep my HR below 150bpm. I still had many options for exercise in my first tiresome trimester as I was laying on my back still. I slowed down my current workout and dropped my anaerobic fat loss workout. I stuck to methodical strength training with some prehab exercises.

Second pregnancy wasn't much different. I was climbing the stairs to one of the gyms I worked at when I felt out of breath. I decided to jump on the bike that day at work (much to every one's surprise) and remember expressing to a colleague my cardio capacity had diminished. I thought "maybe my express workouts aren't as efficient as I thought", although I had never had this feeling before. Long story short number 2 was already in the oven, and I was breathless again. I decided to stick to my heart rate limit again and I did not have any energy to even think of going beyond that with the exhaustion of caring for a 20 month old as well. While performing weight lifting exercises my hr would spike over my limit sometimes and I was advised by one of the physicians I worked with that during short lifting exercises this is OK because the response was physiological and not cardiovascular (that causes your core body temperature to rise) putting stress on the baby. I stuck to short 20 minute express exercise sessions and added in much more foam rolling as my ligament and muscle pain was almost immediate during the second pregnancy.

Keep checking this post for 1st trimester and foam roller download, for samples.

2 comments:

FitAndBusyDad said...

Hi Jac!

Congrats on getting this up and running. If you need any help, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll link up to your site on my blog!

Chris

Jacqueline said...

Sounds great, and I will link to yours as well, I will try now but may need advice.

 
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