Surfing in Costa Rica at 9 weeks pregnant

Friday, October 29, 2010

Wow, it's been quite a while since my last post! I apologize but I was feverishly preparing to sit for my ACSM exam last weekend, which I am proud to say I passed!! So now I am officially a Certified Personal Trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine. I really can't say how much achieving this goal means to me, especially taking on the endeavor while pregnant, with a 3 year old, and working! I have many exciting things planned for the future, but I first want to welcome my new baby girl and enjoy my expanded family for a few months.

Despite my lack of postings I have still been getting in my 4 workouts per week and I feel great still. I am now 31 weeks pregnant and weight gain is 18/19 lbs as of Monday! I've had a few bumps along the way in the past couple of weeks which leads me to my topic for this week.

My workouts so far this week:
21-15-9 pull-ups, kettlebell swings 35#, overhead squats 65#

4 rounds 10 Touch & go clean & jerks 65#, 25 air squats

5 rounds 1 clean & jerk 75#, 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats


Third Trimester Words of Caution

As much as I have not wanted to give up performing certain Crossfit movements, minor injuries have made me get smart about listening to my drastically changing body. I have covered these topics before so refer to earlier posts for specifics regarding safe/unsafe movement for pregnancy. Ligament laxity starts to peak in the third trimester as your body prepares for delivery. About 6 weeks or so ago I started to wake up at night with shoulder pain...not good, so I recruited the help of my Physical Therapist husband in my recovery, who determined that I had a subscapularis (one of your rotator cuff muscles) strain. I have pretty much eliminated any power snatches from my workouts and also HEAVY jerks, I have capped my push-jerk weight at 75 lbs since that weight is safe for me as far as injury prevention, and I don't experience any pain with that weight.

I also injured a muscle/ligament in my groin area doing overhead walking lunges about 2 weeks ago. I hadn't done lunges in a while and since my belly had grown so much I noticed way more external rotation in my hip/leg to get around the belly. So I ended up limping and not sleeping well for quite a few days following that one, so no more lunges for me this pregnancy!

Remember, you may need eliminate ALL ballistic movements at this point and that may include the Olympic lifts, since they are considered a ballistic movement. Other items to caution against include box jumps (these shouldn't be done at all in pregnancy), jump roping (highly stressful on knees), possibly running, and kipping pull-ups. I have found no problem with pull-ups but if they feel uncomfortable to you, don't do them. Please always warm-up thouroughly at this point, it's so important for injury prevention.

Now that I'm through with my complaints, what you should take away from this is TO LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!!! If a movement doesn't feel quite right to you, just don't do it at all, it's not worth having an injury that lasts until after pregnancy and prevents you from maintaining your fitness and getting back in the saddle postpartum. After all, your pregnancy is really a small time frame in your life (although it may FEEL like forever sometimes!). You should enjoy every single moment of it, injury free!

In closing, I will be updating weekly and I fully intend to document my postpartum return to exercise as well.