KEY POINTS.
- At your first prenatal care checkup, ask your health care provider whether exercise during pregnancy is safe for you.
- Healthy pregnant women need at least 2½ hours of aerobic activity, such as walking or swimming, each week.
- Regular physical activity can help reduce your risk of pregnancy complications and ease pregnancy discomforts, such as back pain.
- Some activities, such as basketball, hot yoga, downhill skiing, horseback riding and scuba diving, aren’t safe during pregnancy.
Is it safe to exercise during pregnancy?
Talk to your health care provider about exercising during pregnancy. For most pregnant women, exercising is safe and healthy for you and your baby.
If you and your pregnancy are healthy, exercise won’t increase your risk of having a miscarriage (when a baby dies in the womb before 20 weeks of pregnancy), a premature baby (born before 37 weeks of pregnancy) or a baby born with low birth weight (less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces).
How much exercise do you need during pregnancy?
Healthy pregnant women need at least 2½ hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week. Aerobic activities make you breathe faster and deeply and make your heart beat faster. Moderate-intensity means you’re active enough to sweat and increase your heart rate. Taking a brisk walk is an example of moderate-intensity aerobic activity. If you can’t talk normally during an activity, you may be working too hard.
You don’t have to do all 2½ hours at once. Instead, break it up through the week. For example, do 30 minutes of exercise on most or all days. If this sounds like a lot, split up the 30 minutes by doing something active for 10 minutes 3 times each day.
What kinds of activities are safe during pregnancy?
If you’re healthy and you exercised before you got pregnant, it’s usually safe to continue your activities during pregnancy. Check with your provider to be sure. For example, if you’re a runner or a tennis player or you do other kinds of intense exercise, you may be able to keep doing your workouts when you’re pregnant. As your belly gets bigger later in pregnancy, you may need to change some activities or ease up on your workouts.
If your provider says it’s OK for you to exercise, choose activities you enjoy. If you didn’t exercise before you were pregnant, now is a great time to start. Talk to your provider about safe activities. Start slowly and build up your fitness little by little. For example, start with 5 minutes of activity each day, and work your way up to 30 minutes each day.
These activities usually are safe during pregnancy:
- Walking. Taking a brisk walk is a great workout that doesn’t strain your joints and muscles. If you’re new to exercise, this is a great activity.
- Swimming and water workouts. The water supports the weight of your growing baby and moving against the water helps keep your heart rate up. It’s also easy on your joints and muscles. If you have low back pain when you do other activities, try swimming.
- Riding a stationary bike. This is safer than riding a regular bicycle during pregnancy. You’re less likely to fall off a stationary bike than a regular bike, even as your belly grows.
- Yoga and Pilates classes. Tell your yoga or Pilates teacher that you’re pregnant. The instructor can help you modify or avoid poses that may be unsafe for pregnant women, such as lying on your belly or flat on your back (after the first trimester). Some gyms and community centers offer prenatal yoga and Pilates classes just for pregnant women.
- Low impact aerobics classes. Low impact aerobics, you always have one foot on the ground or equipment. Examples of low impact aerobics include walking, riding a stationary bike and using an elliptical machine. Low impact aerobics don’t put as much strain on your body that high impact aerobics do. During high impact aerobics, both feet leave the ground at the same time. Examples include running, jumping rope and doing jumping jacks. Tell your instructor that you’re pregnant so that they can help you modify your workout, if needed.
- Strength training. Strength training can help you build muscle and make your bones strong. It’s safe to work out with weights as long as they’re not too heavy. Ask your provider about how much you can lift.
You don’t need to belong to a gym or own special equipment to be active. You can walk in a safe area or do exercise videos at home. Or find ways to be active in your everyday life, like doing yard work or taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
