About Engaging Your Abs During Pregnancy
In Oh Baby! Fitness pregnancy exercise classes, we cue women to engage their abdominal muscles and to ‘hug their baby’ or ‘draw the baby up and in’. Watch to see what the correct engagement of the abdominals looks like.
When it comes to pregnancy and exercise one area where there’s a bit of confusion is abdominal work and pregnancy. If you need to know anything, this is it. You want to work your transverse or your interior and lower abdominals. Those are the muscles that are going to protect your lower back, help you hold the correct pregnancy posture.
A cue that we sometimes use when talking about the transverse abdominals in pregnancy is hug the baby high and tight or pull the baby up and in. It can be sort of confusing if you haven’t seen it before so I wanted to show you exactly what that looks like.
This is Reina, Reina is 30 weeks pregnant. So if you take a look here, this is where her abdominal muscles are all completely relaxed. The baby is sort of hanging low here. Her transverse and her rectus abdominis, everything is relaxed here. So when I cue hug the baby high and tight, you’ll see the baby actually move up and in. That’s the correct pregnancy posture.
This is taking the weight of the baby off her lower back. Her muscles are engaged and pulled up and in. That’s what you want to do when you’re pregnant and you want to do it a lot of the time, particularly when you’re an exercise class, but even when you’re just walking around and everyday world, this is a good posture to be in.
Let’s take a look again here. So disengaged, long long. She’s got a short lower back. This is all relaxed here. The correct way, hug the baby high and tight is pulled up in here. That looks great.
If you have any questions about pregnancy and exercise you can find us at ohbabyfitness.com.
