Endurance Exercises in Pregnancy Health Article

Endurance exercises increase your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time.

Build up your endurance gradually, beginning with five minutes, then working your way up to a level that increases your breathing and heart rate. Starting out at a lower level of effort and gradually increasing is especially important if you have been inactive for a long time. It may take months to go from a sedentary lifestyle to being more active.

Your goal of moderate-to-vigorous activity is equivalent to Level 13 on the Borg scale. This activity should feel somewhat difficult. Divide your exercise into sessions of at least 10 minutes at a time, as long as they add up to a total of at least 30 minutes at the end of the day. Exercising for less than 10 minutes will not give you the desired cardiovascular and respiratory benefits. Build up to at least 30 minutes of endurance exercise every day of the week, if possible.

How to Gauge Your Effort

• Expect to have difficulty talking while performing vigorous activity.
• If you tend to perspire, you probably won't sweat during light activity (except on hot days). But you will sweat during vigorous or sustained moderate activity.
• Your muscles may get a rubbery feeling after vigorous activity, but not after moderate activity.

How to Improve Your Strength

Very small changes in muscle size can make big differences in strength and performance. Most strength exercise involves lifting or pushing weights, with a gradual increase in the amount of weight. You can use a wide range of equipment: hand and ankle weights sold in sporting goods stores or household items such as emptied milk jugs filled with sand or water or socks filled with beans and tied shut at the ends. Most fitness centers also have special strength-training equipment. Resistance bands are available at sporting-goods stores for under $10-they look like giant rubber bands and help build muscle.

Tips for success:

• Do strength exercises for all of your major muscle groups at least twice a week.
• Don't do strength exercises for the same muscle group on any two consecutive days.
• Start out with 0 to 2 pounds of weight the first week, or you may risk injury. The tissues that bind the structures of your body together need to adapt to strength exercises.
• Gradually add a challenging amount of weight for the most benefit.
• Stretch after exercising when your muscles are warmed up. If you stretch before strength exercises, be sure to warm up your muscles first by doing some light walking or arm pumping.
• Breathe normally during strength exercises. Holding your breath while straining can cause changes in blood pressure, especially in people with cardiovascular disease.
• Use smooth, steady movements. Jerking or thrusting weights into position can cause injuries.
• Avoid "locking" the joints in your arms and legs in a tightly straightened position. For example, to straighten your knees, tighten your thigh muscles, which will lift your kneecaps and protect them. Breathe out as you lift or push, and breathe in as you relax. This may not feel natural at first.

Muscle soreness lasting up to a few days and slight fatigue are normal after muscle-building exercises. Exhaustion, sore joints, and unpleasant muscle-pulling are not, and mean that you are overdoing it. Do not exercise to the point of pain.

How to do each exercise:

Take three seconds to lift or push a weight into place; hold the position for one second, and take another three seconds to lower the weight. Don't let the weight drop-lower it slowly. Lifting or pushing the weight should feel somewhere between hard and very hard (15 to 17 on the Borg scale), not extremely hard.

Gradually increasing the amount of weight is critical to building strength. Start out with a weight that you can lift only eight times. Use that weight until you become strong enough to lift it 12 to 15 times. Then increase to more weight, beginning again with eight repetitions. Use this weight until you can lift it 12 to 15 times, then add more weight.

Go to Bodily Changes During Pregnancy, Who Shouldn't Exercise in Pregnancy, Create a Program in Pregnancy, and Postpartum Care: Tips for After Delivery.