- Consult your physician before beginning a program of exercises when pregnant as your circumstances may limit the amount of physical activity you should engage in. However, most women get the green light to exercise. Safety guidelines include beginning each exercise session with a gradual warmup, keeping your heart rate below 140 beats per minute, finishing each workout with a cool down, avoiding getting overheated, staying hydrated, avoiding lying on your back after the fourth month and eliminating high impact or high-risk exercises and sports. Pregnant women are advised to engage in safe physical activity for at least 30 minutes five times a week.
- Probably the easiest and most readily accessible exercise for a pregnant woman, walking provides a great, low-impact cardiovascular workout. Walking at a moderate speed with appropriate warmups and cool downs will give a pregnant woman a good cardiovascular workout and help to relieve some of the aches and pains of pregnancy. Pregnant women should wear supportive walking shoes and loose fitting clothing appropriate for the outdoor temperature.
- Swimming is an ideal exercise to do when pregnant. Considered the best and safest of the pregnancy exercises by many physicians, swimming provides a weightless, virtually no-impact environment for women to perform both cardiovascular and strength building exercise. Swimming is one of the few exercises that women can participate in through all nine months of their pregnancy without discomfort.
- Aerobics lovers do not have to completely forgo their fitness routines when pregnant, but they do need to eliminate the high-impact aerobics routines. Low-impact aerobics are good exercises to do when pregnant because they provide excellent cardiovascular fitness routines but can be choreographed to limit excessive exertion or risky maneuvers. Another added benefit to aerobics is that most women participate in this activity in a group setting with scheduled classes, making participation more likely than women who exercise on their own.
