When you become pregnant your body than becomes something it has never been, a home to your unborn child. This is a miraculous event as well as scary, most mothers make the comment that they don’t even know their own body anymore because of all the changes that are occurring. It is important to provide your unborn child with the best possible home while still trying to maintain the best body for yourself. Mothers tend to think not only about their current position which is an always growing belly but also about what happens after the baby. This is where Prenatal Pilates come into play; this will help you prepare your body for the delivery of your baby. While providing the best possible environment for your child to develop as well as help you so your post-baby body will be easier to obtain. While exercise while pregnant is widely accepted if you had an exercise routine in place prior to your pregnancy it is important to make sure that all exercises that you are partaking in are low impact.
Prenatal Pilates have many benefits to you as a soon to be mother, it will help you learn how to stretch correctly which will be a God send when you go into labor. While labor is very painful it is important to remember how to properly stretch out your muscles and relax portions of your body. As hard as it is to relax at the moment your contractions start it is important to try in order for your body to naturally prepare itself for labor.
Prenatal Pilates will also help you strengthen the muscles that you will use exclusively while you are in labor. These are muscles that are not used in your typical day and cannot be exercised at the gym while running on a treadmill. Instead they are very specific group of muscles that need to be targeted by doing very deliberate exercises which are included in Prenatal Pilates. The fundamentals of Pilates is that it uses a person’s own body weight and slow controlled movement in order to build targeted groups of muscles. While in this class which has been designed by trainers with the sole purpose of strengthening the muscles used in labor, you will be doing deliberate exercises that target those in your pelvic region because those are going to be the most used while in labor. This will help you build strength in your pelvic wall which is the main muscle used for pushing your child out.
Another great benefit of doing Prenatal Pilates is you will be able to obtain great breath control, which will be very handy when contractions start. It is very important for the mother to continue to breathe while the contractions are happening and because the contractions start out weak and get stronger it will be progressively harder to continue to have good breath control. The Pilates will help because while you are doing the slow and control exercises and feeling your muscles fatiguing you will be learning how to center your thoughts on the breath control that your are exhibiting. While in labor the nurses will let you know that the contractions are coming and that you will need to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth very similar to the same breath required for holding a Pilates position for any amount of time. This tends to be one of the hardest concepts for soon to be mothers to grasp while in labor, it seems that the pain takes over and all clear thoughts leave your body. If you have trained yourself on great breath control while in class your natural abilities will kick in without much thought being given, it will be more of an instinct rather than a thought process.
The last great benefit of doing Prenatal Pilates will be that your post baby body will be easier to get back because you have continued to have an exercise routine the whole time you were pregnant and your muscles are still very much active. One of the struggles new mothers have is to find the time to get out and exercise if you already have the support system in place with the class you will find it easier to continue to live a healthy lifestyle for you and your child.