Exercise for Expecting Mothers
Post partum depression or post-exercise oxygen consumption?
The joy of pregnancy. Where you are creating human life and have to pee every 20 minutes. With your hormones surging and you’re craving a pizza covered in fried chicken skin, your prenatal experience definitely has its ups and downs. Ideally you can have a normal day, performing daily errands, but a lot of the time you encounter volatile mood swings. Most women take it easy, some are bedridden, but a lot of other women try to incorporate a little bit of light exercise to feel normal and to give them a boost in accepting their everchanging body. Low impact activities such as walking, swimming, prenatal yoga definitely help future moms with their cardiovascular conditioning and has multiple benefits for the baby in the womb. Whether in the first, second, or third, trimester, it is important for expectant mothers to be in motion and get the blood flowing.
When pregnant women exercise, they tend to reduce back pain, improve sleep, and feel more energized after a light walk with their partner. Just because you are with child doesn’t give you an excuse to be a couch potato or a lazy ass motherfucker. Women that are in better physical shape tend to have better deliveries. Haven’t you ever seen those pregnant lady water aerobics workouts at the rec annex? The temporary relief takes the pressure off the joints and lower back for these willing sperm recipients. Modern day mamas of all shapes and sizes head to the yoga studio which helps them focus on breathwork, body awareness, and reducing prenatal stress. Pelvic floor exercises, such as kegels, come in handy before and after delivery. Most healthcare providers encourage women to avoid high impact sports while carrying. Snowboarding, MMA, and base jumping aren’t necessarily the best activities to engage in for that special 9-month period, but it varies from woman to woman. Wanting to cash in on the pregnant lady exercise trend I’ve recently decided to invest in a gym that hosts CrotchFits specifically catered to pregnant women. Pregnant lady CrotchFits is for real and is the only exercise program catered to helping women lose 20-30 lbs. during gestation.
Starting a flagship location in San Diego, I set up shop and advertise for pregnant women of all ages to check me out on the corner of 34th and Conejos Street. Using street flyers along with social media, my marketing campaign has already yielded 2 dozen new memberships in the first week. Gals with barely a baby bump to women whose water will break any day now, show up motivated to my gym wanting to lose some of the pregnancy weight and put on lean muscle. First, we start off with barbell Olympic movements. Utilizing a 45 lb. bar we develop technique first before we start adding hundreds of pounds. If these gals want to hold and handle a baby, they’ll definitely need some better upper body strength. Once the movement has been mastered, I critique the preggers as they fire off sets of clean and jerk and snatch. One of my better students, Mary, is 8.5 months pregnant with a belly the size of a beach ball. She may look helpless but last class she was able to snatch 185-pound barbell over her head for 3 reps. The bun in the oven might be getting violently tossed around but I fully believe the baby will be born an athlete.
Moving on to extreme calisthenics such as weighted pullups and bear crawls I whip these pudgy women into the best shape of their lives. Most pregnant women have excess body fat during their maternity phase (due to biology). But after 4-5 intense circuit sessions a week for several weeks, most of my clients are sporting six packs. Filtering these mamas through high intensity intervals, the goo melts off, helping them attain svelte-like physiques. The bump is still there but with hardcore deadlifting and box jumps you can barely tell. Their core muscles are incredible, but it doesn’t always give junior room to grow. Running them through super intense WODs will have these women looking like superheroes and the extreme exercise will give them the confidence to shrug off post-partum depression.
There are times when the tummy does get in the way. During hang cleans and muscle ups I find that a lot of my clients bang their ever-expanding uteruses off of the hardware. That’s alright, I give them words of encouragement to keep going and power through their mistakes. Lots of chalk seems to help keep the baby bump flexible and bulletproof during the compound movements. When women are pregnant, with the estrogen flowing, their pregnancy glow makes them look beautiful. And there’s nothing more beautiful when a pregnant woman performs 10 reps of barbell thrusters where you go to a front squat to overhead press. Running uphill sprints, with their stomachs swinging around, and doing burpees with the stomach bouncing off the ground is a beautiful sight to behold for these future mama bears.
At Pregnant Lady CrotchFits we always have the latest and greatest equipment. Our state-of-the-art apparatuses are ideal for any person, especially if their packing twins. Our colorful displays of bumper plates, beautiful hanging ropes for climbing, and heavy ass kettlebells takes exercise during pregnancy to the next level. On the walls are inspirational messages customized to motivate pregnant women. Phrases such as Pain is temporary, pride is forever, Excuses don’t burn calories, and You think this sucks now, just wait to you blast a baby’s head through your vagina are just a couple of our original quotes to light a fire under these ladies’ asses. And with a dedicated housekeeping team, we run a mop and bucket through our floors twice a day to wipe up the sweat residue and the amniotic fluid that gets spilled when one of our client’s waters breaks.
We the staff at PLCF are passionate first wave feminists and truly believe pregnant women should work just as hard, if not harder as their male colleagues. From doing bar dips to keg carries on the outside parking lot, mothers need to be the same hardened motherfuckers you see in the SEAL teams. Just because you're pregnant is no excuse for lying down. Sure, your back hurts and your always tired since the fetus is sucking the life force out of you, but I’ll be the first one to say, suck it up candy ass. This ain’t the 50s where you are a bored housewife squeezing one out every year. 21st century motherhood has multiple demands from climbing the career ladder, juggling your cubs off to daycare, and being in phenomenal physical shape for your stay-at-home husband. Only alpha females that go through my 15-week PLCF regimen deserve to have their husbands take their last name. So, when you’re breast feeding in the near future, a simple pec flex will deliver mother’s milk into your baby’s mouth in explosive fashion.
With baby on board, you're not just working out for you, you're working out for two. Research has suggested the more weight added and reps that are cranked out will have your fetus looking its sexy best. All that blood flow from brutal cardiovascular workouts and rhabdo will be leaving your unborn baby with a six pack and dense muscle to fight off any abortion procedure. Babe will already be hardened and bulletproofed by your unnecessary exercise routine that any suction device or coat hanger, that makes its way in his backyard, will be met with swift punches and kicks. Junior is determined to be born and born to be wild. Once your toddlers cross over to the terrible twos, he can start going to the gym with my other concept known as mommy and me CrotchFits. Once your precious little person has become coordinated enough to walk, he’s ready to take on the rigors of doing 5 rounds of hang snatches, kettlebell front squats, and track sprints until he pukes up blood. If we want the youth of America to be ready to fight future wars, this is where it starts.
You think pregnancy is a game!?! Where you get to slouch around and slack off! Well fuck that. There’s no such thing as taking it easy or skipping the gym for nine months! I’m tired of pregnant women using morning sickness and low energy to get out of their daily WODs. You wanna be sick, go out and vomit in the back alley of the gym after engaging in a series of brutal fireman carries up 10 flights of stairs. If the workouts aren’t enough, you need to go on a strictly keto diet to build up some masculine shoulders and traps. Look, you’ve watched What to Expect When You’re Expecting, 16 times. You constantly boss the baby daddy around to go pick you up junk food and empty calories to fulfill your imaginary cravings for pistachio ice cream and fettucine alfredo from Olive Garden. Get ahold of yourself! Show some discipline if you want to go from flab to fab! Stop by today at my Pregnant Lady CrotchFits house of pain and we’ll make damn sure that there’s no post pregnancy weight at all!
Disclaimer: Not responsible for miscarries after you’ve carried 150 total lbs in intervals of farmers carries.
Brian Ss