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High! Welcome to diet.com fitness, I am Darcel Kelly and I am here to help you out with our third installment of our pre-natal fitness exercises. The core is our new fitness buzz word and all of you should know it by now. It is basically anything to do with your abdominals, lower back into the glutes. Big, big question we get while we are pregnant, I get it all the time, can I do abs while I am pregnant? How can I do that? Am I going to squeeze the baby? Is the baby going to run out of air? What is going to happen to me or the baby? You cannot see my abs anyway so why should I bother. Yes you should do abs, it is essential to maintaining that strong central core. No you are not going to squeeze the baby. Here she is very protected in there little sack in there and they quite enjoy the movements so go for it.
Alright, I am going to continue on now by showing your our first core strengthening exercise. It is called a plank. You are going to come down, place your elbows down on the floor and start with your knees down, you are going to then extend your feet out so that your toes are on the floor and you are balancing yourself up on your elbows, your shoulder should be dropped down, your head should be on neutral alignment, pull that belly button into the spine, squeeze the glutes, keep a nice straight line. Start off by holding this for 10 seconds. And then take a break and come up, give yourself a little rest, catch your breathe and go down again. We strengthen the abs like this in a nice transition once you have come up as long as you are on your mat, when you are pregnant it is hard to get up anyway so might as well stay down here and do something else. You are going to bring your knees, bring yourself onto your hands and knees, belly button to spine, abs in tight, back straight, squeeze the glutes, drop the shoulders, and we are going to do some back extensions where we lift working on balance, strengthening that low back, pull the abs in tight, and come down. You are going to extend opposite arm and leg, hold for five to 10 seconds, and come down.
Here is the big one. How can I do my crunches during pregnancy? Now, crunches are not necessary during pregnancy, those planks are extremely effective in strengthening the abdominal muscles and low back muscles, but if you feel the need to continue on with your regular crunches, by all means let us hit it. So, come on down, you are going to be in about a 45 degree angle, your knees are bent again not going over your toes, it should be nice relaxed, hands come behind your head, belly button pulled to the spine and the spine really presses against that ball. Lift the chin. Do not look at your belly button, it is still there. It maybe very interesting now that it is popping out but you can look at that later. Lift your head up and crunch up tilting up in almost a C position and coming down.
One of the last exercises that I am going to have you do is called a bridge. You can place that your hands behinds your head if you feel so like you would like to do so or place them down beside wherever you feel most comfortable. i will bring them up, and your butts going to be kind of down and we are going to lift and squeeze those glutes, squeeze until you are up in a table top position hold it, and then come back down. Okay, so you are lifting up, hold for about five seconds and come down. Again, 10 repetitions, roll yourself up one vertebrae at a time, give yourself a break and repeat for another 10.
Looking forward to seeing you next time as we grow together and make sure to check out diet.com for any other questions or concerns you have regarding pre-natal fitness. Looking forward to seeing you again. Thanks. Bye.
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