Archive | December, 2012

Postpartum Workout – Step – 20 minutes

24 Dec

Logo - Play Step(1)

I love my newborn.  He is truly amazing.  But, wow having a newborn is way more challenging than I had imagined!  I knew it would be hard, but I guess it is something I couldn’t truly understand until I was in it.  So here I am!  Exhausted, nursing my baby for what seems to be 20 hours of the day, amid the postpartum hormonal shifts, and dealing with house renovations (please pardon the mess in this video).  It is all getting to me! The one thing that always kept me calm was working out and now there is limited to no time to do it.  Fortunately I have worked out a schedule with my husband where I can get a 20 minute workout in on most days. On days that I have missed a workout, I am, well, a mess.  I wanted to be real for you mothers out there…I now better understand what you have often expressed to me.

On the upside, I am getting stronger and stronger with each workout and I have been able to slowly increase my intensity and the amount of resistance I use.  Weight loss is and will be slow.  This is expected.  I am not going to stress that as I am feeling stronger each day and I am feeling quite healthy.  It is important not to focus on the weightloss and rather focus on maintaining a balanced lifestyle of fitness and health. The rest will fall together in time.

Again, please pardon the appearance of my space!

Advertisement

Postpartum Workout – KB 30 minutes

21 Dec

IMG-Play

After waiting to gain enough core strength and endurance, I was finally able to pick up a kettlebell again.  I had missed the feel of swinging the kettlebell and the intensity of the full body movements.  Again, because my core strength is still developing I am easing into my kettlebell routine by doing fewer repetitions and selecting movements carefully based on my current strength.

Postpartum Workout – Med Ball – 20 Min

18 Dec

Logo - Play Medicine Ball

Maintaining a workout routine during pregnancy did allow me to stay physically fit and it enabled me to recover from pregnancy quicker.  Pregnancy changed my body in so many ways.  First, it changed my center of gravity, so my muscles and movements altered to accomodate my pregnancy center of balance.  Because of this, I find myself getting off balance during my current workouts.  It will take some time to get use to my new center of gravity and find my balance again.  Additionally, my legs and glutes became stronger during pregnancy due to carrying the extra weight and working out with that extra weight.  I am finding it hard to maintain that leg strength now after pregnancy as I am not carrying that weight around with me at all times! Also, my already ‘hour glass’ shape became even more, well, accentuated!  My core muscles can no longer been seen nor found.  Because of this, I have to be careful when doing movements that require core strength.  As my core gets stronger, I will be able to increase the weights/resistance I use and ease into doing my core-dominated exercises that I was doing pre-pregnancy.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I have decreased my workout intensity postpartum in order to slowly, safely, and carefully become physically fit again.  You will notice as time goes by that the intensity of my workouts will increase. In the meantime, here is a lower intensity medicine ball workout routine.  Please pardon the appearance of my workout space.  It is a total mess due to the work we are currently doing on our home.

It is important to follow your doctor’s orders about when and how you can begin your fitness routine postpartum.  Your body requires time to heal and beginning a workout routine too early can hinder that and cause larger problems.

Postpartum Workout – Body Bar – 20 Minutes

12 Dec

Icon - KB Black WordPress

Getting back into a fitness routine postpartum is difficult.  Between recovery, hormones doing crazy things, time constraints and everything feeling out-of-whack (your body, your mind, and your life) it seems overwhelming.  But you just gotta work with what you got, when you can, however you can.  And this is just what I am going to try to do.

 It is important to follow your doctor’s orders about when and how you can begin your fitness routine postpartum.  Your body requires time to heal and beginning a workout routine too early can hinder that and cause larger problems.  For me, following doctor’s orders about  holding off on exercise what a huge challenge.  I watched people run and I was envious, when I was doing my very light/safe ‘workouts’ I would stare at my kettlebells longingly.  I didn’t know how to ‘take it easy’.  But, I did need to recover and I could feel that.  So I took it easy and learned a little bit about how to relax along the way.

Postpartum Workouts

11 Dec

11/12/12Sweetest faceI am back!  As you know, I worked out throughout my entire pregnancy.  I had such an easy pregnancy and I felt great the entire time.  I hoped that keeping fit through my pregnancy would make for an easier labor and delivery as well.  Unfortunately it did not.  This baby did not want to come out and play so I had to be induced at 42 weeks.  I was in labor for 24 hours.  I finally delivered a healthy and handsome baby boy and was beaming.  Some complications with me ensued next and I needed a bit more recovery time than I had expected.

What I have learned from it all is that working out through pregnancy does help to ease common pregnancy aches and pains.  However, it does not necesarrily make for an easy labor and delivery!  On the upside, staying fit through my pregnancy did enable me to recover more quickly and allowed me to ease back into a fitness routine postpartum.

I began with very slow walking, then about 2 weeks postpartum I was walking more briskly, then by 3 weeks I was doing light workouts intended to move my joints in their full range of motion again, then by 4 weeks I was using equipment again.  Now I am gradually increasing the resistance and the intensity of my workouts.  Most of my time is spent caring for my adorable son, so due to time constraints my workouts have generally been 20 minutes on most days.  Because workouts are shorter, I have to workout more frequently and I have to have very focused workouts in order to see results.

During pregnancy I gained about 32 pounds.  One week post partum I had dropped about 20 as most of the weight was ‘baby weight’ and water weight.  My plan is to slowly and healthfully lose the last 12 pounds over the next several months.  We will see how that goes!

Please come back to view my postpartum workout videos which should be up in the next few days!

PIC- Exercises Advert(1)