Abdominal Exercises for Pregnant Women

Wanting to keep your abdominals strong during pregnancy is important, but how you do so is more important (for both you and your new little one). But before tackling which ab exercises you should (and shouldn't) be doing as your little bundle grows, it's important to start by understanding more about your deep core muscles.

Your deep core muscles play a key role in proper strengthening of your ab muscles. As pregnancy progresses, they can help you:

• Feel better during pregnancy
  
• Improve your posture
  
• Minimize aches and pains
  
• Shorten delivery time
  
• Speed up postpartum recovery
  

Strengthen Your Abs from the Inside Out

• Pelvic floor muscles (think kegels)
  
• Transverse abdominals (think lower belly)
  
• Multifidous (low back)
  
• Diaphragm (muscle involved in breathing)
  :

Properly Engage Your Deep Core

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When you engages your deep core properly, you should feel a very light core connection but still be able to breath deeply. Holding this light deep-core connection can help to strengthen your core daily.

Initiate every exercise you do with this deep-core activation to strengthen your abdominals during pregnancy. This can also help to minimize the severity of diastasis recti (abdominal separation) during pregnancy and improve healing after baby.

HOW TO DO IT:

1. Inhale to relax your pelvic floor muscles while breathing out into your sides and back (relaxation is key to proper activation on your next exhale).
   
2. Exhale to initiate "zipping up" your pelvic floor and lower belly. Lengthen through the top of your head. As Julie Wiebe, pelvic floor PT specialist says, “Blow before you go,” meaning start to exhale to lightly recruit your deep core muscles.

Other Ab Exercises That Are Generally Safe

• Squats (engage your abs/pelvic floor muscles as described above)
• Cat Cow pose
• Bird-Dog
• Single-leg kickbacks (on all fours)
• Glute bridge (1st trimester and 2nd and 3rd trimesters if you feel okay lying on your back)
• Standing rotational exercises (be sure to keep the weight low and rotate your hips with you)
  
• Standing or seated pelvic tilts :

Ab Exercises to Avoid During Pregnancy

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During your pregnancy (especially the later months), avoid exercises that create too much intra-abdominal pressure, such as:

• crunches
  
• deadlifts
  
• jogging,
  
• even some yoga poses

3 Questions to Ask Yourself About an Exercise

Everyone’s bodies are different. While some pregnant women can continue to do more challenging exercises during pregnancy, other’s may not. It’s important to listen to your body and pregnancy is not the time to push too extreme. Before doing a particular exercise, ask yourself:

1. Can you activate your deep core during that exercise?
   
2. Do you experience any leaking down there? (This is a sign that the exercise is putting too much stress on your pelvic floor.)
   
3. Do you see any coning of your belly? (This is when your belly creates more of a cone or ridge shape down the middle as opposed to a nice, smooth, round belly. This is an indication of too much intra-abdominal pressure.)