I'm Pregnant. Now what?
Everything you're wondering about training through pregnancy at Rêve, answered by someone who gets asked in the lobby about once a week, instructed many clients through theirs, and has been through her own.
Okay so you're pregnant. Congratulations, I am so happy for you. First and foremost, repeat after me; we are listening to our bodies, we are not comparing ourselves to other pregnant women, we are acknowledging every pregnancy is different.
If you workout regularly, somewhere in the first 48 hours of processing you’re pregnant, you're going to start wondering about your workouts. Will you still be able to do your Rêve class?? How much will you need to modify, can I still run? Do I do ab work anymore?? Will I have to slow down? Yes, you will, but there is so much we can do to make both birth and postpartum easier.Most women are surprised how long they can keep going.
Below is every question I've ever gotten, in roughly the order people ask them.
Quick housekeeping: I'm a fitness professional and I've been doing this a long time, but I'm not your OB or your midwife. Some pregnancies come with real medical reasons to modify or pause. Tell your provider what you actually do in here (the tread intervals, the springs, all of it, be specific) and bring their answer back to us. We'll build around whatever they say.
Second note- some women feel a lot worse physically and deal with extreme nausea or exhaustion. I will say it over and over again, listen to your body over anyone. These are my takes and approach to my own pregnancy and many clients who keep their workouts up. YOU WILL AND SHOULD MODIFY AND SLOW DOWN.
First, what's actually going on in your body
Nobody explains this part well and it makes everything else confusing, so.
Your blood volume climbs somewhere around 40 to 50 percent over the course of a pregnancy, and your resting heart rate goes up 10 to 20 beats per minute to move all of it around! Which means the number on your watch during a tread block is going to look alarming but don’t worry, you did not lose all your fitness in a few weeks.
You also get winded way earlier than you expect, because progesterone messes with your breathing long before your belly is anywhere near your diaphragm. I've had women come to me at eight weeks convinced something is wrong with them because they're gassed on an incline they used to walk while talking. Totally normal!! Slow your pace, take a slightly lower incline.
Then there's your center of gravity changing, which moves forward and up and changes weekly. Balance work gets way harder. Your low back starts doing more than its share. Single leg anything on the reformer suddenly requires a whole lot more effort and focus.
You'll also hear a lot about relaxing and how your joints are basically made of jelly now. I'll be honest, the research tying relaxation directly to injury is much thinner than the internet would have you believe. What's real is that you're carrying new weight in a new shape, so the DEEP sketches are worth easing off of, mostly because there's no reason to push it. Pilates is great because we focus on those stabilizing muscles, which are important to get stronger for this reason.
And your deep core and pelvic floor are under a slow constant increasing load for nine months straight. They're working hard, which is exactly why we keep training them. The question is just how, it’s very different but we still work them, which we will get to.
"Do I have to tell my instructor?"
Yes, please, as early as you're comfortable!!
I totally understand and respect waiting to share until you’re comfortable. Most modifications begin after 12 weeks or even once a belly shows, the main thing I’d avoid even if you’re not sharing yet is anything laying on the belly.
When you’re ready to tell us: your instructor can adjust your springs and your positions as well as pay better attention to how you're recovering, and she offers you options 1-1 instead of announcing anything to the room. Come five minutes early if you want the full conversation, we will keep it private and discrete.
"Can I still run? What about incline walking?"
If you were running before you got pregnant, you can very likely keep running. The biggest study we have on this followed almost 1,300 runners through pregnancy and found no effect on when babies came or how much they weighed, including for the women who kept running hard into the third trimester. (One of them ran a marathon the day before she delivered, which I have no interest in but, YGG)!
For clarity, pregnancy isn't the time to become a runner for the first time. If tread intervals were never your thing, incline is your answer and it's a genuinely great one. You can get your heart rate exactly where it needs to be at 3-3.5 speed and a 10 percent incline with almost none of the impact, and most women stay comfortable on an incline much deeper into pregnancy than they stay comfortable running.
Most of our runners end up moving over to incline somewhere in the second or third trimester and the reason is almost never cardiovascular. It's pelvic floor pressure, balance, or a heavy dragging feeling, or just really not loving the sensation of pounding anymore. When that shows up, take it seriously, it's information. And switching to incline is perfect, it's just the right tool for where you are, and plenty of women come back to running afterward stronger than they left it! (That takes time too, but we will go there later)!!
"How hard am I allowed to go?"
Use the talk to a buddy test. If you can get a full sentence out while you're working out, perfect. It doesn't have to sound pretty. When the sentence stops being possible, ease off a notch and let your heart rate come down. Not that we’re telling you to talk in class, please don’t ;)
The 140 beats per minute rule you've heard your whole life? That's from 1985 so don’t worry about that. Current ACOG guidance uses how hard it feels rather than a hard number, specifically because pregnancy scrambles your heart rate math. What they're after is roughly 150 minutes of moderate movement a week, which for most of you is three or four classes plus whatever walking you're already doing.
And if you came into this extremely fit, you don't have to artificially dial yourself down to "moderate" on principle. Athletes train hard through pregnancy all the time. The things that actually need managing are overheating, hydration, eating enough, and sleep. If you feel good, go for it.
"Can I lie on my back?"
The rule most people repeat is way blunter than it needs to be. The issue is the weight of the uterus pressing on the vena cava, which can drop your blood pressure and make you feel genuinely terrible. It tends to matter more from the second trimester on, and the longer you stay there the more it matters.
So in class, short bouts on your back are generally OK and we'll keep them short. As you get further along your instructor will start moving you to an incline (box, or the carriage on a wedge), or side lying, or all fours, and a lot of that work is honestly better for you at that point anyway.
The rule that actually matters more than any trimester cutoff: if you feel lightheaded or dizzy or nauseated or just sort of off while you're on your back, move and change position. Roll to your left side, sit up, take a second. We will cue you to not be on your back, use a wedge or adjust to side lying, all fours etc instead.
"What about core work?"
Keep doing it. A strong coordinated deep core is one of the best things you can bring into a birth and into a recovery, so we will still do it, just differently!
THE BEST CUE: watch your belly. If it cones or tents up the midline during an exercise, that's more abdominal pressure than you can manage right now, and that's your signal to STOP. This goes for when you’re not pregnant too tbh, but it causes more ab separation when you’re pregnant which you don’t want. Some women can do flexion work well into the second trimester without a hint of it, but many need to skip. Your instructor is watching for it, and once you know what you're looking for you'll catch it yourself.
What we lean into instead is breath work, deep transverse abdominis, side lying, all fours, glutes, and anti rotation etc.. Less crunching!
"Am I going to be the only pregnant person there?"
No. Pilates is SO good for pregnant women and postpartum you will be shocked how many in our community are at similar points as you are. We love that so much.
What each trimester actually feels like in class
Weeks 1 to 13. Physically almost nothing has changed yet if it’s your first one, emotionally and nauseously a lot may have, and this is usually the hardest stretch to train through if you're dealing with nausea. You're exhausted, possibly queasy, and you look exactly the same as always so nobody understands why you're sitting down. Never worry, you know and that is all that matters.
We usually don't change much structurally here. We watch how you're recovering between intervals and you have full permission to have a terrible week. If you get two classes instead of four, great job! What you do over nine months matters infinitely more than what you do over seven days. Consistency across those four months will look different than it did before for most of us. That is ok, actually GOOD and normal.
Weeks 14 to 27. The good one. Your energy comes back, the nausea usually lifts, you feel strong, and a lot of women have some of their best training in here.
This is where supine work starts getting shortened and then swapped out for incline or side lying. Balance work gets a handle or a bar to hold or a box on the side or to come down to. We start watching your core work more closely for that coning. If you're a runner this is often where you may slow down and may swap to incline walks. Springs mostly stay right where they were.
Weeks 28 to whenever this baby decides. Your belly is now a weighted vest added to every workout, and your ribs and hips have shifted. Your back is doing a lot of work and balance is hard.
I encourage wider stances so you have more balance, more incline and side lying, less overhead loading if your ribs are annoyed with you, and shorter work intervals with longer recoveries. You can skip things on tread or reformer at any time. Pelvic floor and glute work get more attention here, not less.
The through line across all nine months is that you're not losing fitness, you're spending a huge chunk of your capacity on building a person!! Your goal is to keep going so working out is easier to come back to, not the same as it was before you were pregnant.
When to stop and call your provider
Stop class and call your Doctor:
Bleeding
Fluid leaking
Regular painful contractions
Chest pain
Dizziness, fainting, or a headache that won't let up
Shortness of breath before you've even started working
Calf pain or swelling on one side
Muscle weakness that's messing with your balance
We’re SO EXCITED and happy for you, and we’re very passionate about being a part of your team along the way, and well after. xx Molly
