About Pregnancy Ball Exercises for Pelvic and Back Pain
Senior Oh Baby! Fitness Instructor, Kathleen Donahoe, helps answer all the questions we get about stability balls and exercise during pregnancy: What kind of Stability Ball is best for me to purchase when pregnant? How do I sit on the ball properly? What are the best exercises using the stability ball to prepare for birth?
If you’re pregnant one of the best tools that you can have is the stability ball. The reason that stability balls are great is two things. First and foremost, the stability balls are really good at relieving any pelvic pain or pelvic pressure that you’re having as well as any back pain. It’s gonna just sort of loose some things up, help you feel a little bit of relief there. Secondly, the stability ball is really great at modifying some exercises that become more difficult as you get more pregnant. We’ll talk about that part a little bit later but to start I just want to show you how to find the right stability ball for you and a couple of easy exercises you can do to deal with back pain and pelvic pain.
This is Maggie here. Maggie is 37 weeks pregnant. Have you had any pelvic pain or back pain? I’ve had some back pain. Back pain? Okay, we’ll see if this works. So to start in terms of the fit, what you want to do is find a ball that you sit on and you get 90 degrees in your hips. If your hips are too low down that means the ball is too small. Your hips are up way higher than your knees it means the ball is too big. If you look online they’ll have some guidelines about how tall you are and that’ll sort of show you what size ball to get.
So to start you want to come nice and square on the ball. Some people sitting on the ball will either hunch really far forward particularly when pregnant or they’ll swing their tailbone back and stick their stomach forward. You see Maggie’s got a nice straight back here. It’s perfect.
So what we’re going to do if you imagine your pelvic floor, it’s real big just like this, and generally the baby’s head is sitting right on top of it. Is your baby head down? Okay, so her baby’s head is, imagine it’s pressing into the pelvic floor just like that. Generally that’ll cause a sort of centralized point of pain or pressure particularly late on in pregnancy. By getting on the ball and moving around that’s gonna move that point of pressure around and give you some relief. How that works is you just want to come to big circles with your hips here. Nice and easy big circles, perfect.
The great thing about the ball is that you can have one at home, one at the office. You can do this while you’re watching TV. It’s gonna, this is going to be a lot more comfortable than sitting in a normal office chair at work.
That’s perfect, and go ahead reverse the circle the other way. I asked you this if you feel any sort of clicking or popping in your hips, your lower back, feel free to slow down sort of reverse back through that point. That’ll help some. Take one more that direction here. Great. The next stage of this is to come to a figure eight with your hips. Big figure eight here.
So these are helpful to do while you’re pregnant. If you’re having any back pain or pelvic pain, these are also great exercises to do when you’re in labor. If you’re at home, you’re having those first couple contractions, get your ball out have a seat on the ball. You do some big circles. It’s really going to help if you’re having any back labor, sort of the back pain that can happen particularly early in labor or any of that pelvic pain. Get on the ball sort of move things around you’ll find it really helps in those first couple hours of labor.
Go ahead reverse figure eight here. How does it feel? Feels good. Feels good? Any better on your back pain? Yes, great. Perfect guys, we didn’t even pay her to say that. It’s perfect. Take two more here. That’s it. And one more. Perfect and coming back square up here. So again stability ball really great to do if you’re having any pelvic paint or back pain.
If you have any questions about this or anything else pregnancy and exercise you can find us at ohbabyfitness.com.
