How are you supposed to know if your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer in London or Surrey actually knows what they’re doing?!?

Are you a mum who uses a ‘general’ personal trainer, boot-camp or gym instructor who may be giving  you inappropriate or ineffective advice?

I have just completed another few days of back-to-back Mummy Tummy Masterclasses, & have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my knowledge so that pregnant women & mums can exercise more safely & effectively.

But the women I meet on these sessions (some of whom have, or have had, personal trainers) are often surprised to hear that certain exercises will make diastasis recti (split abdominals) WORSE… but these exercises have been included in their personal training or gym programme.

Does your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer encourage you to spend long workouts on cardio machines (treadmill, bike, cross trainer) at steady speeds? Does your pregnancy or postnatal personal training programme really address the postural shifts of pregnancy & mothering? Are you wasting your time with small muscle group exercise like bicep curls?

If so, you’re not getting the best advice & won’t get the results you’re after! I shall cover qualifications & credentials in a different post, but why not do a quick check on your programme to make sure that what you’re doing (& what you’re paying for!) with your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer or gym instructor is actually going to WORK.

• Forget the fat burning zone! IE long sessions of steady cardio. The most effective way to lose postnatal fat & build lean muscle mass is to INTERVAL TRAIN. You need to be constantly surprising & working your body by changing intensity, speed & duration of your workout.
• Pregnancy & mothering (feeding, lifting… & cuddling!) put us in a permanently hunched posture, shortening & tightening the muscles of the chest & front of the shoulders, whilst stretching & weakening the upper back. Strengthening exercises should concentrate more on working the upper back (IE rowing, or pulling type movements), than the chest (pushing movements). Aim for a ratio of 3:1 upper back work: chest. The upper back needs strengthening & the front needs stretching to ‘even you out’. Push-ups are great exercises, but need to balanced with upright rows, pull ups & the dumb waiter.

For the Dumb Waiter, keep shoulder blades relaxed & down, then move hands out to the side, keeping elbows in & squeezing shoulder blades together.

Dumb Waiter position 1

Dumb Waiter position 2

• Any crunch, sit-up or jack-knife movement will make diastasis recti (the gaping of the abdominal muscles experienced by up to two thirds of pregnant women) WORSE. Core work is absolutely vital during pregnancy & afterwards, & should concentrate on activation of the TVA & pelvicfloor muscles. You need to work the rectus muscles (the split ones) in a linear, not gaping direction. A plank is great, a crunch is not!

• For maximum efficiency, core strength & stability concentrate on large muscle group exercises using body weight. Examples are squats, lunges, pull-ups or planks. Or use multi-tasking exercises such as squats with a shoulder press or upright row with a resistance band. Standing there doing a bicep curl is boring, inefficient & won’t burn any fat!
• Your CORE should be involved in all these exercises, not just the specifically abdominal exercises. Again, multi-task your exercises, it’s what we’re supposed to be good at, & it’s realistic for busy mums!
• Are you getting expert instruction on dealing with your  symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) or back ache caused by postural & hormonal changes or imbalances?

For general safe pregnancy exercise guidelines see here, but if you’d like anything clarified or explained further, please just leave a comment here or contact me – I want to DE-mystify pregnancy & postnatal personal training & exercise so please let me know what you’d like more on!