CategoriesFemale Training

How To Maintain Your Back Squat During Pregnancy

Pregnancy can be an arduous and delicate time in a woman’s life. To be a bit more colloquial…shit goes down.

Shit goes down hard.

I’m a firm advocate of strength training during pregnancy. It’s a great way to keep the body healthy and strong during those nine months, and to (hopefully) expedite the recovery process once the little one arrives.

There’s a small sentiment out there that exists where women are told strength training is  bad or altogether dangerous during this time, and that it should be avoided at all costs.

Lifting weights during pregnancy dangerous? No.

Lifting weighs during pregnancy different? Yes.

Today’s guest post by Pre and Postnatal Exercise Specialist, Terrell Baldock, helps to shed some light on the issue.

Squats!

Copyright: viacheslavmaksimov / 123RF Stock Photo

How To Maintain Your Back Squat During Pregnancy

If you’ve been lifting for a while, you know the back squat is essential to any strength training program.

But What If You’re Pregnant?

Squatting will become a way of life in motherhood and you will need all of the squat training you can get during pregnancy. Squats are mostly known for their work in the lower body but they’re fantastic as full body movement as well.

A few years back, “I would have said absolutely no, there is no way you should be back-squatting during pregnancy.”

But I’ve come around a bit since then.

Instead of omitting exercises like the barbell back-squat all together, making modifications and learning how to safely execute a barbell back-squat is far more important.

The barbell back squat is fantastic to do during your pregnancy, but you will need to monitor your pelvic floor for any downward pressure as well as your overall stability.

You may also notice your “butt wink” creeping in. This is typically because as your belly is growing, additional weight is being placed onto the pelvic floor.

As a result, your hip flexors, adductors, and abductors tend to become tight and take on more work, plus your glutes become inactive due to the shift in your alignment.

In this article, I’m going to give you strategies to not only maintain your squat, but keep you back-squatting throughout your entire pregnancy.

Your Core

As your belly grows, your abdomen will begin the separation process known as Diastasis Recti. This is completely normal and there is nothing to fear, but you can minimize the effects and keep your hips more stable.

Diastasis Recti is classified as the unnatural separation of your left and right rectus muscles. This process is different for every woman, but research shows that 100% of women will have diastasis recti by their 35th week of pregnancy (Mota et al 2014).

Yes, you can still train your core during pregnancy, but this looks a little different than traditional core training methods. Personally, I like anti-rotation exercises like the Half-Kneeling Pallof Press because it provides both hip and core stability which is perfect for your entire pregnancy.

 

Many people commonly think of their core as the “six-pack” abdominal muscles, but it’s a bit more involved. Your “deep core system” is made up of your diaphragm, pelvic floor, multifidus, and your transversus abdominis and they need to work synergistically along with the glutes to provide a stable foundation for all of your movements patterns.

So if you happen to notice some coning, or tenting in your abdomen during your back-squat, you’ll need to address your lifting strategy.

Hip Mobility

Your hips can become tight to compensate for the weight of your growing baby. And this is a biggie for your squat pattern because that “butt wink” will be a result.

Not to worry my friend. If you see that “butt wink” it may not the end of your back-squatting days.

 

In this video, I’m 26-weeks pregnant and back-squatting 70 lbs in the 12 to 15 rep range. As I go into the eccentric part of the squat, you can see the “butt wink” almost right away.

Note From TG: To toss my keen coaching eye into the foray – and this is NOT to call out Terrell in any way, shape, or form – if you watch how she sets up to squat you’ll notice she starts with an aggressive arch (or anterior pelvic tilt) which means she’s likely running out of hip flexion “room” sooner than she normally has access to. As a result the lumbar spine is going to compensate by going into lumbar flexion (butt wink).

The “fix” may be to cue her to start with a little more posterior pelvic tilt first and then to squat with her hips more underneath her. Or, I can just STFU and recognize she’s 26 weeks pregnant and understand that things are a bit wonky at the moment….;o)

At 26-weeks in my most recent pregnancy, I had a “butt wink” in my back squat almost immediately. This is a good indication that I was dealing with muscle tightness in my hips.

At this point, I switched up my strategy by using goblet and sumo squats with kettlebells or dumbbells as well as incorporating soft tissue release of my hips, quads, hamstrings, glutes, abductors, and adductors.

To be perfectly honest, when I switched up my strategy, I had no intention of improving my back squat. I wanted to begin preparing my pelvis for childbirth by releasing the tightness, which is critical when it comes to labour and delivery.

Note From TG: Viola! Goblet Squat = more of an anterior load = anterior core turns on = posterior tilt = Tony does need to STFU.

However, at 33-weeks pregnant, I attempted a back squat and something pretty cool happened.

After down-training for several weeks, my squat improved. Same load, same rep rage and there was a significant difference in my squatting pattern.

Goodbye butt wink!

 

This means, you may not have to give up your back squat at all.

But if you notice your hips rolling under during your back-squat, it would be a great time to add some release work into your fitness regime.

Using a foam roller to roll out your hips and glutes are a great way to release the tightness. It may not feel good, so remember to breathe.

 

Your Breathing

A proper breathing technique can help to balance out the pressure in your core which will ultimately provide better protection to your core and pelvic floor. When you have a core and pelvic floor that is functioning well, you will have a strong and healthy foundation for all movement pattern including your back squat.

The breathing technique that you want to master along with your squat is a diaphragmatic breath with a light pelvic floor engagement or “kegel”.

  • On the eccentric phase or on your way down, inhale deeply through your nose making sure you have good expansion through your rib cage.
  • On the bottom of your squat, you’re going to begin your exhale through your mouth like your blowing through a straw, engage your pelvic floor, and then press yourself up. Julie Wiebe calls this “blow before you go” because this signals your brain to engage your core and pelvic floor naturally if your core system is functioning properly.

And there’s a lot more information in my Barbell Training For Pregnancy: Your 3 Step Guide For Maximizing Performance During and After Pregnancy.

It features simple and actionable steps to maximize your core and pelvic floor function, improve performance, and most importantly, avoid the complications that can arise from postnatal exercising.

Click here to access your free guide today.

Your Alignment

As your pregnancy progresses, you may find your pelvis starting to anteriorly tilt. Now, you want to nip this in the bud in your first trimester or as soon as possible because this can affect how you squat.

Not only that, but your alignment affects your breathing and your coordination.

Ideally, you need to maintain a neutral posture.

This means your ribs stacked over your hips. This keeps the diaphragm seated directly above the pelvic floor allowing it to work with the multifidus and the transversus abdominis together as a team. A neutral pelvic position will optimize the availability to the pelvic floor making it easier to for the pelvic floor to work in unison with the rest of the system. 

You know what else your alignment does?

It keeps your deep core system including your pelvic floor functioning optimally, helping to manage the intra-abdominal pressure. However, if you’re feeling downward pressure in your pelvis and your alignment is spot-on, it may be time to make modifications.

Here’s how to stand in neutral alignment in your back squat.

  • Stand with your legs just outside hip width apart (or a narrower stance if that’s where you’re comfortable) and toes angled at about 15 degrees and knees slightly bent
  • Squeeze your shoulder blades together, you don’t want the bar sitting on bone. It won’t feel good!
  • Stack your ribs over your hips and make sure that your pelvis is in neutral position and not anteriorly tilted.

Load and Range Of Motion

Generally speaking, you can continue to use the same load you were using before pregnancy during the first trimester and early into your second trimester (if you’re feeling up for it, of course!).

However, when your belly begins to grow, you will need to monitor your squat for pressure on your pelvic floor and range of motion.

It’s best at this point to lighten the load.

Let’s say you’re working in the 8-10 rep range. Drop the weight to where you can lift 15 reps comfortably.

The goal isn’t to work to fatigue.

If you find that you feel pressure in the pelvic floor after lightening the load, decrease your range of motion so that you don’t come down as far. If that still isn’t helping with the pressure, it’s time to modify.

Listen To Your Body

This is the most important step to any movement during your pregnancy. If you feel overexerted, fatigued, dizzy, faint, or you need extra support in your belly, it’s best to lighten the load or swap your barbell for kettlebells or dumbbells.

 

Additionally, pay attention to your pelvic floor. If you’re feeling bulging, heaviness, pain or pressure, or leak a little–or a lot, it’s time to modify. If it doesn’t feel quite right, don’t do it.

Seeing a pelvic health physical therapist (pelvic health physiotherapist if you’re in Canada), is a great defense in your prenatal and postpartum training. They can get an internal perspective of how your pelvic floor is functioning, look for any pelvic organ prolapse, and give you the best possible guidance when it comes to prenatal training when it comes to your pelvic floor.

When troubleshooting your back-squat (pregnant or not) make sure you start off unloaded to train the squatting pattern properly along with all of the strategies listed.

First and foremost is safety.

I suggest not training alone and working or consulting with a coach who is trained in prenatal and postnatal exercise. Pregnancy isn’t the time to set personal records and egos need to be set aside. How you train during pregnancy matters in maximizing your postpartum performance, maintaining a well balanced pelvic floor, and keeping you injury free.

About the Author

Terrell Baldock is a Prenatal and Postnatal Exercise Specialist in London, Ontario, Canada. She specializes in working with women with core and pelvic floor dysfunctions and prepares them for the demands of pregnancy, birth and postpartum recovery.

With over a decade of coaching experience, she trusted by Maternity Doctors and Pelvic Floor Physiotherapists as well as a regular speaker at the University Of Western Ontario.

If you have questions about training during pregnancy, feel free to reach out on Facebook, Instagram, or check out her website.

CategoriesFemale Training

Fitness During Pregnancy: What’s a Girl To Do?

It’s not lost on me I have a Y chromosome and that discussing pregnancy and how to train during and after it can be a bit, well, peculiar. I mean, it’s something my body will never experience, so how can I discuss the topic without coming across as some mansplaining a-hole?

Simple.

50% of the human population is female. Surprise!, roughly 50% of my clientele are female. And, as it happens, I have worked with several women through their pregnancies (and after) and have always felt it important to understand and respect the nuances that manifest during this delicate time in a woman’s life – both pre and postpartum. 

While I very much operate under the umbrella that every pregnancy is different regardless of one’s previous fitness level and experience and that how someone feels during any exercise or workout should dictate the path taken – progressions, regressions, loading, volume, etc – I also feel there’s a strong stigma that women shouldn’t train during and after pregnancy. 

Come on. 

The body is preparing for something a helluva lot more traumatizing than a set of squats or deadlifts. It’ll be okay.

What’s more, as my colleague and women’s health expert, Dr. Sarah Duvall, often says with regards to postpartum considerations: “women need to lift shit to fix shit.”

And it’s on that note I’m gonna take my little Y chromosome and STFU. I’m elated to introduce to you another woman whom I feel is generating a ton of useful information on the topic of training during and post pregnancy: Terrell Baldock.

She wrote today’s guest post and it’s awesome.

Enjoy.

Copyright: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Fitness During Pregnancy: What’s a Girl To Do?

With all the random misinformation out there it’s tough to know how you should workout – or heck, whether you should even workout at all – during and after pregnancy.

Here’s the good news:  The short answer is yes.

You should continue to exercise during and after pregnancy.

You can keep being the best version of yourself. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

But exercise during and after pregnancy needs to be done the right way.

Lindsey’s Story

My client Lindsey was a competitive volleyball player who wanted to get right back into hard training and competition after her daughter was born.

Then, reality set in.

Lindsey noticed when she was working at a high level of intensity, she’d pee a little.

Still, she pushed through.

That continued until she became pregnant with her second baby.

When she went through the same experience, Lindsey knew she needed to see her doctor.

Bad News: She had a grade-two bladder prolapse. She was told: “Lindsey, you can’t play volleyball anymore.”

Lindsey was crushed.

This is when Lindsey and I started working together. My role as a coach is to show women like Lindsey exactly how her prenatal fitness and postnatal fitness programming could affect her body both during and after pregnancy.

Unfortunately, women are cleared for exercise at the six-week checkup with little to no information regarding rehab, their core, or pelvic floor.

As you can imagine, women like Lindsey feel betrayed by their body. It’s as if they have an entirely new body to “figure out” as they begin their new lives as mothers.

I want to help you avoid common problems such as pelvic organ prolapse, incontinence, and even other issues such as diastasis recti that haven’t healed postpartum.

Training Before Pregnancy

With up to 50% of the female population experiencing pelvic floor dysfunctions like incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, the combination of pregnancy and childbirth along with high level exercise are leaving women vulnerable.

Even more shocking?

Most women who train hard during pregnancy never have symptoms until they’ve had their baby.

Training During Pregnancy

Generally speaking, you can continue to train the way you did before you were pregnant in your first trimester.

But adaptations need to be made in the second and third.

A common misconception that you’ve probably heard is that you can continue to do what you’ve always done during your pregnancy because your body is well conditioned.

Big mistake.

First trimester

Pregnancy brings on structural change that impacts your fitness performance and how you move naturally, which begins in the second trimester.

In the first trimester, the core and pelvic floor isn’t a big concern but this is a time where rapid change is happening physiologically. Energy is low and nausea may be a factor.

Women also tend to experience breast tenderness which may make exercise feel impossible.

If the symptoms are intense, exercise may be sporadic at best.

Second Trimester

In the second trimester, symptoms usually subside or disappear completely, and because of this, women are ready to return to their regular program. This is also where the body starts to visibly change and the Transverses Abdominis becomes inhibited (Hodges et al 2003).

Alignment changes begin to put more pressure on the core on pelvic floor. This is generally when the pelvis anteriorly tilts, the ribs shift and move behind the pelvis.

If this isn’t taken care of and training is continued, the glutes become inactive and the low back, adductors, abductors, and hip flexors take over.

Many women will begin to experience pelvic discomfort and/or pain like pelvic girdle pain, SI pain, and lower back pain which occurs in 45% of pregnant women and 25% of postpartum women (Wu et al 2004).

Third Trimester

In the third trimester, 100% of pregnant women will experience diastasis recti which is classified as the “unnatural separation of the abdominal wall” (Mota et al 2014).

DR is a completely natural part of the pregnancy process, but it can be exacerbated by the nature of the training as well as alignment in addition to the growing baby.

The pelvic floor is vulnerable, especially in the third trimester because of the physical and physiological changes. The pelvic floor isn’t designed to carry the load of a 200 pound back squat and meet the demands of pregnancy. This is where women experience issues postpartum.

Combine that with stretched and a weakened core and the impact of vaginal delivery (Sleep et al 1984), this can lead to pelvic floor complications like incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse if a woman returns to her fitness program before taking the steps to recover, rehab, and recondition first.

Training Post Pregnancy

The body doesn’t completely heal in six weeks postpartum.

It has taken nine months to adapt to the changes that occur during pregnancy. It takes at least that much time for the body to completely heal.

And that’s with rehab.

In fact, if Diastasis Recti hasn’t completely healed within the first 8-weeks postpartum, research shows that it won’t heal on itss own (Coldron et al 2008).

Whether you’re a lifter, runner, or enjoy taking classes at your local gym, you can still partake in your favourite activity. But you will need to cut back during your pregnancy.

Retraining following birth to optimize your performance long term.

New moms are often eager to return to high impact fitness, boot camps, or athletics before their bodies are ready.

Most skip the rehab and retraining process.

This leaves some of these women with less than desirable results like peeing their pants, pelvic organ prolapse (where the pelvic organs descend through the vagina), back/hip discomforts or pain, and lagging performance when working at a high intensity.

As your pregnancy progresses, you’ll find that you’ll need to make modifications to your lifts. In this video, I will show you how to modify your deadlifts using a barbell and kettlebells.

 

And there’s a lot more information in my Barbell Training For Pregnancy: Your 3 Step Guide For Maximizing Performance During and After Pregnancy.

It features simple and actionable steps to maximize your core and pelvic floor function, improve performance, and most importantly, avoid the complications that can arise from postnatal exercising.

Click HERE to access your free guide today.

About the Author

Terrell Baldock is a Prenatal and Postnatal Exercise Specialist in London, Ontario, Canada. She specializes in working with women with core and pelvic floor dysfunctions, and prepares them for the demands of pregnancy, birth and postpartum recovery. Check out her award-winning website Mom’s Fitness Boutique.