Your Guide to Safe Prenatal Strength Training (+ 5 Pregnancy Safe Workouts Try)
Our method teaches that pregnancy and high-intensity exercise can exist in the same space. There are very few things you can’t do when you’re pregnant.
Growing and nourishing a baby is one of the most beautiful and powerful things you can do as a woman. Not only does this season of your life deserve the utmost appreciation, but it also deserves respect.
Here’s our take: your body is capable of so much more than you think. While it’s essential to use the right techniques for prenatal workouts, your commitment to movement can help protect and support your pregnancy body.
Is Prenatal Strength Training Safe?
As you read our guide to prenatal strength training, we want you to consider changing the narrative in your head.
Instead of asking, “Is strength training during pregnancy safe?”
We want you to consider: “What techniques can I use to guarantee my strength training protects and empowers my core?”
Your body is capable of maintaining your weightlifting and HIIT goals during pregnancy. In fact, prenatal strength training can even prepare you for a better labor, delivery, and postpartum experience.
The catch? These exercises must be done alongside foundational techniques, like diaphragmatic breathing, active core breath, and ab wraps. These are unique techniques we created at Studio Bloom to protect your body from injury while empowering you for the best pregnancy and postpartum outcome.
The Benefits of Prenatal Strength Training Workouts
Once you remove the fear surrounding prenatal strength training workouts, you start to experience the benefits. Here are some our moms regularly experience:
Improved Core Connection
When you’re weightlifting, doing pilates, or engaging in high-intensity workouts, you force your body into awareness. You learn how to fire and engage the right muscles. This skill is especially important during pregnancy, when you need a strong connection with your core and pelvic floor. Women who weight train can usually recognize their core connection quicker than those who don’t (it’s muscle memory!).
Faster Postpartum Recovery
You can prep your body for faster postpartum recovery by targeting certain muscle groups in your pelvic floor. Of course, these workouts need to be intentional and trimester-specific. The results you want come from both strengthening and lengthening the pelvic floor.
Keep Up with Regular Fitness Activities
Your pregnancy body isn’t fragile. You don’t have to stop running, lifting, swimming, or doing any of your favorite activities. Prenatal strength training workouts can keep you exercising, feeling your best, and doing the things you love even during late-trimester pregnancy.
Better Muscle Function
Prenatal strength training workouts are one resource you can use to improve daily muscle function. You may notice it’s easier to pick up your toddler, go grocery shopping, or get in and out of the car. These simple changes make a big difference in your daily energy and vibrance leading up to labor.
Improved Posture
This is one of the best benefits of prenatal strength training workouts. Better posture means fewer pregnancy injuries, less back pain, and an easier time adjusting to changes in your center of gravity.
Lowered Risk of Gestational Diabetes
When you use your muscles, you help your body synthesize insulin. Your cells become more sensitive to insulin and use it more intentionally. Whether you have gestational diabetes or you’re at risk for it, prenatal strength training workouts can help you manage and prevent it.
Will Prenatal Strength Training Cause Diastasis Recti?
You may have heard that prenatal strength training causes diastasis recti. This is technically true … but only if you workout with the wrong techniques.
Prenatal strength training is safe when it’s done right. As you’re lifting weights, you need to be aware of the pressure in your core canister. Too much pressure on the linea alba (the tissue between your six-pack muscles) can cause a diastasis recti injury.
Your goal should be to protect your linea alba by breathing and working out intentionally. At Studio Bloom, we prioritize our fundamental techniques — teaching women how to move and engage their muscles properly, so they can have more freedom in their fitness life and less risk of injury.
Fundamental Techniques to Protect Your Core and Pelvic Floor
Studio Bloom was founded on the idea that pregnant and postpartum women are capable of so much more. Our fundamental techniques were designed by fitness professionals and regular moms to protect and restore tissues that are essential for core function.
The Belly Pump Technique
This technique is an extension of diaphragmatic breathing. The goal is to activate your transverse abdominal muscle (TVA) as you breathe. Put one hand on your ribcage and one on your belly. As you inhale, expand your torso, focusing on lateral rib cage expansion and create length and flexibility in your pelvic floor. As you exhale, lift your pelvic floor and engage your deep core and pelvic floor.
Learn This Technique in Real Time
Active Core Breath
The active core breath helps you move out of diaphragmatic breath while holding onto the muscle activation in your core. This can be hard to master at first, but keep practicing. When done right, this method regulates the pressure in your abdomen, creating a protective barrier around delicate muscles and connective tissues (like the linea alba).
Learn This Technique in Real Time
Ab Wraps
This technique allows you to identify and engage different sections of your transverse abdominal muscle (TVA). This muscle is known as the “corset muscle,” and it wraps around your core and pelvic floor.
Ab wraps help you identify if areas of your core are weak or over-engaged. You’ll start with your diaphragmatic breathing and belly pumping. As you exhale, engage the lower section of your TVA and hold it in an active core breath. On the next exhale, engage the midsection of your TVA. Finally, engage the top, middle, and lower sections of your TVA with your active core breath.
Learn This Foundation in Real Time
5 Prenatal Strength Training Workouts to Try
Now that you understand how to protect your core and pelvic floor with our foundational techniques, let’s add in some prenatal strength training workouts. Remember, these are safe exercises only when you use the right breathing techniques to engage your core muscles.
1. Rainbow Raises with Squats
For this strength training exercise, you’ll need two dumbbells that are medium to heavy in weight. You’ll hold them at your sides to begin and squat as you inhale. Then, exhale as you stand back up and bring your arms all the way up in a “rainbow” motion, holding them over your head. Repeat this movement for ten sets.
2. Overhead Carry with Marches
For this exercise, you’ll need one dumbbell. Start with your knees in a comfortable position, about hip-width apart. Reach the dumbbell high above your head with both hands. Hold it there as you raise each leg, hinging at the knee for a “march.”
Remember, these are strength training exercises. You’ll want to do them slowly and steadily, engaging your muscles intentionally. Otherwise, they turn into cardio exercises
3. Weighted Forward Punches
This is a quick and fun exercise that builds both core and arm strength. You’ll imitate the motion of boxing by hinging your elbows and holding both weights upright (almost to your jaw). Keep your elbows aligned and your back straight, and extend one arm diagonally for a “punch.” Then, extend the other arm. You can include this in a HIIT exercise or track your progress in sets.
4. Hip Bridges with a Ball
Start by laying on your back with your legs stretched out above you. Then, bend your knees and put your feet flat on the floor. From here, you’ll put a ball between your knees and raise your hips and core off the floor for a bridge. As you raise, squeeze the ball tightly between your legs. You’ll also want to lift, wrap, and engage your core.
5. Overhead Tricep Extensions
This arm exercise is quick and effective. You’ll want to grab a medium to heavy weight dumbbell (just one!) and hold it above your head with both hands. Carefully hinge your elbows to let the weight drop behind your head and then lift it back up above your head. Repeat for ten sets. Inhale as you drop the weight down and exhale as you bring it up. Even though this is an arm exercise, it’s still important to use the foundational techniques and engage your core.
The Bottom Line: It’s Time to Rewrite the Narrative on Prenatal Strength Training
Strength training is one of the most powerful resources we have as pregnant women. It helps us build key muscles, increase our functionality, and even prepare us for labor and delivery.
The problem? Many women injure themselves during prenatal strength training workouts because they don’t know how to properly engage and protect their core. Because of this common injury, women are often advised not to continue with HIIT in late-trimester pregnancy.
Here’s our take: prenatal strength training workouts shouldn’t be avoided. They just need to be done right. And women deserve to have the tools, resources, and education to make these exercises protective and empowering.
If you’d like to learn how to do prenatal strength training workouts safely, check out our popular workout series, Mom Strong.
