Saturday, July 16, 2011

Pregnancy Workouts

I had a few requests to share my pregnancy workout plan, so I will oblige for those of you who may be interested. First, a little background. I don't like working out. It's not fun for me, I don't get this awesome energy boost afterwards, there's usually some level of pain involved, I'm not trying to become Super Woman, etc, etc. I workout because I know it's good for me. Period. So, I like to get the best possible workout in the lease amount of time. That's just the philosophy behind my exercises. So, here's what I've been doing:

Monday - Strength day: 2 sets of 8 reps each of body-weight chest press (essentially, a push up), rows, and single-leg squats
Tuesday - Cardio workout - Run or swim for maybe 20 minutes
Wednesday - Core day: Stir the pot, quad leg extension, and side planks. The sets and reps vary depending on where I am in my progression
Thursday - Cardio workout - same as Tuesday
Friday - Strength day: repeat Monday's workout
Saturday - Cardio workout, Core day - repeat Wednesday's core workout
Sunday - Rest. It is the Sabbath after all.

And that's it. Usually, I don't spend more than 20 minutes per day working out. Except Saturdays since I do cardio and core. It's pretty much just scaled back a little from what I used to do before I was pregnant. The cardio has been getting tricky. I've been doing some running or swimming, but it's getting to the point that running is becoming a ridiculous endeavor. And, swimming is fine, but I'm a terrible swimmer and it requires taking the cover off the pool by myself. Sometimes, I'm just too lazy for it. I have a spin bike on order that should arrive next week and I'm hoping that will be the answer to my cardio workout troubles. I used to do interval workouts for my cardio, but I was losing weight with those and that's not encouraged during pregnancy so for now I just do steady-state cardio and I'll save the interval workouts for losing the pregnancy weight after the baby comes.

Primarily, I'm hoping this will achieve the desired results of making the labor, delivery, and recovery a little easier. Fingers crossed!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing that Jenni!! Very helpful for me who happens to be pregnancy exercise challenged! :-)

Andrea said...

What is "stir the pot"?