May 12, 2023
Be sure to consult with your healthcare provider when designing your prenatal and postnatal exercise routine.
One of the most common questions our in-house certified personal trainers get from users is “I’m pregnant. How can I keep up my Fitbod workout routine?” We also hear from a lot of users who’ve recently given birth and want to get back into exercising.
Now, with our new “Pregnancy” exercise category, you can easily select exercises that will work for your changing body. It’s packed with 30+ new pregnancy-safe exercises, each of which is accompanied by a follow-along instructional video featuring a pregnant person.
We did this to support our soon-to-be Fitbod parents who want to stay consistent with their training regimen and reap the benefits of prenatal and postnatal exercise.
We want to give you the best prenatal and postpartum recommendations possible, so we brought in our friend and expert Emily Huff, MS, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Pregnancy and Athleticism Coach. Emily not only selected the 30+ new pregnancy exercises, but she also helped us identify existing pregnancy-safe exercises from our library, all of which are available in the Pregnancy category.
And those of you who aren’t pregnant? There are still new exercises for you in this drop! Turns out many of the prenatal exercises Emily recommended are great additions to anyone’s workout routine.
Required Reading: Navigating Fitness During and After Pregnancy
There’s A LOT to say about working out while pregnant. But, so much of it is generic and tailored to people who are new to fitness.
That’s why we asked Coach Emily to create a comprehensive guide to training during and after pregnancy specifically for people who already have and want to maintain their strength training routines with Fitbod.
It’s full of great, easy-to-digest information compiled for pregnant people and people thinking about having kids.
And, there are a few sections that benefit everyone, like pelvic floor motor control, breath work, and general body positioning. Check it out!
How To Work Out with Fitbod During and After Pregnancy
As long as it’s safe for you, keep your body moving during pregnancy. It’s good for both prenatal and postnatal health. Read more about those benefits in our guide to training during and after pregnancy.
Your safest two training options are to…
- Do one of the many pregnancy-specific workouts we built with Coach Emily, which cover a variety of goals and levels. Check those out below and be sure to save them for later.
- Build your own pregnancy-safe workouts from scratch by using exercises in our new Pregnancy exercise category.
If, however, you feel confident that you can identify which exercises are NOT suitable for you, you can keep using Fitbod to generate workouts and swap out any unwanted exercises with ones from the Pregnancy category.
And, as always, please email our pro trainers at [email protected] with any questions about exercising during pregnancy (or anything else fitness-related).
Sample New Pregnancy Exercises for May ‘23
1. Bird Dog Rows
This is a great exercise for mid-back muscles, glutes, and core. Use your breath to connect with stability through your midline.
Pro tip: Maintain the stack position from rib cage to pelvis and slowly extend the leg outward. During the row, focus on driving your elbow back rather than raising the dumbbell. This slight shift in mindset can help you target the correct muscle groups.
2. Racked March
This is a great exercise to help you connect the breath with core stability in the stacked position. Can you breathe dynamically under load while marching? Can you maintain the stacked position and hip stability on one leg? This exercise, although seemingly easy, is hugely beneficial, especially for those looking to return to high-impact exercise like running.
Pro tip: If the exercise is too easy, chances are you are moving too fast and not maintaining the stack. To increase the challenge, slow down and REALLY focus on balance from the grounded foot all the way up to the shoulders. Maintain hip stability, stand tall, and use an exhale to stabilize the core as the knee draws up.
3. Reverse Lunge with 1/2 Kneeling Pallof Press
This is a fantastic exercise to use in warmups or within your workout. It’s an anti-rotational exercise that will help you connect with your ability to brace your midline.
Pro tip: This exercise is all about breathing! Use a long, slow exhale as the arms extend outward and feel the abdominal muscles activate in coordination with the breath. Don’t forget to switch legs between reps, and switch sides between sets.
4. Table Top Bear Crawl
This is a great full-body exercise that requires coordination, stability, and strength. The core is working but so too are the arms, shoulders, hips, and thigh muscles.
Pro tip: Although this exercise is sneaky-hard and might get your heart rate up, it’s meant to be done VERY SLOW. Focus on maintaining your flat back and stacked position as you slowly transition your weight back and forth as you crawl.
5. Diaphragmatic Breath with Pelvic Control – Sitting
This exercise isn’t meant to induce fatigue or cause muscle “burn.” Instead, it’s meant to hone in on areas within the body (rib cage and pelvic floor) that may need more motor control, expansion, strength or endurance. Diaphragmatic breathing should also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system helping you relax.
Pro tip: This exercise is all about observation. Don’t force anything, from the breath to the pelvic floor contraction. Instead, observe your tendencies. During the inhale are you able to find expansion in all areas of your ribcage? Can you feel the movement of the diaphragm and the relaxation of your pelvic floor? Can you exhale with purpose and engage your pelvic floor in a comprehensive way, with muscles engaging together and upward? As you exhale, and after your pelvic floor contracts, can you feel a slight engagement of your lower abdominal muscles?
Ready to Give ‘Em a Try?
If you’re pregnant or postpartum, you’ll want to open these on your phone and save each of these expert-built workouts into your Fitbod Saved Workouts library to use throughout your pregnancy and afterwards.
Bodyweight Pregnancy Workouts
- May ’23: 20-min Bodyweight Upper Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Bodyweight Upper Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 20-min Bodyweight Pull Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Bodyweight Lower Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ‘23: 30-min Beginner Bodyweight Lower Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Bodyweight Full Body Pregnancy Workout
Basic Equipment Pregnancy Workouts
- May ‘23: 30-min Upper Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Lower Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Push Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Beginner Push Pregnancy Workout
- May ‘23: 30-min Full Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Full Body Pregnancy Workout 2
- May ’23: 45-min Intermediate Upper Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 30-min Intermediate Lower Body Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 40-min Intermediate Full Body Pregnancy Workout
Supplemental Pregnancy Sessions
- May ’23: 20-min Flexibility and Mobility Pregnancy Workout
- May ’23: 10-min Hip Mobility Pregnancy Supplement
- May ’23: 10-min Pelvic Floor Pregnancy Supplement
- May ’23: 15-min Core Supplement
FAQs
Q: How can I add these exercises to my workout?
A: If you’re pregnant and looking for pregnancy-safe exercises, tap the “+” above your workout (next to the number of exercises in your workout), hit the “Categories” tab, and scroll to “Pregnancy.”
If you’re not pregnant but want to find these exercises, tap the same “+” as above and hit the “Categories” tab, then tap on “Recently Added to Fitbod.” This is a list of all of our newest exercises. These exercises, demoed by both a pregnant and non-pregnant person, are at the top of that list. Pick the variety you want, and add them to your workout.
Q: Can I just wait for the Fitbod algorithm to recommend these new exercises?
A: Sort of. The Fitbod algorithm will serve up our newest exercises, among those demoed by a non-pregnant person. But, with a library of 1000+ exercises, it may take a bit for these new exercises to show up in your workouts without a little push. If you want to do (or not do) any of them, tell Fitbod: Tap the 3 dots next to any exercise and choose “Recommend More,” “Recommend Less,” or “Exclude” from the pop-up list.
Fitbod will not serve up exercises demoed by the pregnant person. So, you’ll have to add them to your workouts manually or use one of the workouts linked above.
Q: Will the weights and reps for these new exercises match my ability?
A: They might not on your first go. Since these exercises are new to Fitbod, they aren’t perfectly calibrated to your fitness level. If the weights and reps don’t match your ability, adjust them! You’ll get better recommendations moving forward, and you’ll help Fitbod “train” these new exercises to level-set themselves for all our users.
(Note: We’re always improving our workout recommendation algorithm. Over time, we intend to get these starting values to match your ability from lift one.)
Q: How do you decide which exercises to add each month?
A: We weigh a few factors. The first (and most important) is the number of requests from our users. Fitbod is built for you, after all. Want to request an exercise? Drop us a line at [email protected].
The second most important factor is whether an exercise contributes to a well-rounded fitness program. For example, our trainers have said that they were getting a lot of questions about prenatal and postnatal fitness, so we decided to add these exercises and other resources to help support our users’ needs through different phases of their lives.
Q: Why am I not seeing these exercises in the app when I search for them?
Double-check to make sure that you’re on the latest version of the app: Go to the App Store or Google Play and install the most recent update. Then be sure to follow the instructions above!
