Pilates and Pregnancy
Did you know that Pilates can be safe to do during and after pregnancy? Because Pilates exercises focus on your core, practicing it on a regular basis can alleviate backaches, and ultimately help with labor and delivery—not to mention improve posture. By combining flexibility and strength training with body and mind awareness, Pilates can offer wonderful benefits throughout your pregnancy.
Three specific benefits of Pilates are:
It can help strengthen your pelvic floor. Pilates exercises can help improve the hammock of the pelvic floor, which supports the uterus, bladder and bowel as your baby moves down. Therefore, Pilates can help prevent those little dribbles of urine (incontinence) after you laugh, sneeze or cough.
It can help strengthen the stomach and butt (gluteal) muscles. Relaxin, a hormone released during pregnancy, can make your ligaments overly flexible. Unfortunately, this flexibility can make your hips and lower back (and the pelvic muscles) susceptible to injury. Pilates exercises can help you improve stability in the hip, pelvis and lower back, which means those injury risks are minimized, and your body is better prepared for delivering a healthy baby (and recovering afterward). These stability exercises can also help with balance!
It can help you relax, and feel less fatigue. Self-care is important, regardless if you are pregnant or not. All forms of movement can help you switch off the stress and relax, but I feel that Pilates is especially great at reducing stress because it’s non aerobic, low impact, and can be quite gentle. The focus on breathing as well as slow and controlled movements can help the mind and body connect, and bring some calm to busy days.
Doing Pilates while pregnant can help you with balance, coordination, and strength of essential muscles. I’ve taken the PeakPilates, Pilates for the Pregnant Client instructor led course to help me learn more about working with women in this stage of their life, and have had great success with clients after childbirth.
