Fitness During Pregnancy: Why Lowering Intensity Isn’t Enough

Exercise during pregnancy remains one of the most debated topics in fitness. Some women stop training almost entirely, afraid of harming the baby. Others keep lifting heavy weights well into the third trimester. Social media adds more confusion with one-size-fits-all workout plans and promises to prevent diastasis.

Anastasiia Shapovalova is a fitness trainer and nutrition specialist who takes a structured, evidence-based approach to working with women during pregnancy and postpartum recovery. We asked her where general advice falls short – and what actually needs to change as a woman’s body does.

What led you to focus specifically on pregnancy and postpartum recovery?

When I first started working as a trainer in Ukraine, I realized pretty early on how difficult it was to find professionals who really understood how to work with pregnant women. And it wasn’t just an issue in Ukraine. I saw the same gap in the fitness field more broadly.

There wasn’t really a consistent system or standard approach. In many cases, trainers would simply take a regular workout program and make it easier by reducing the weight, removing abdominal exercises, and calling it done.

As a professional, I wanted to understand the subject much more thoroughly because training during pregnancy is a completely different task. I’m helping prepare the body for a major physiological event, then for recovery, and then for an entirely new kind of physical demand in everyday life.

Fitness knowledge alone isn’t enough. A trainer also needs to understand nutrition, breathing, lifestyle, and even aspects of psychology because a woman’s body changes quickly, moving through very different stages within just a few months. It’s not enough to coach the exercises correctly. I also need to help a woman understand what’s happening to her body.

I wanted to become that kind of specialist. I studied the physiology in depth – research, clinical guidelines, pelvic floor function, diastasis – and consulted gynecologists, osteopaths, and perinatal nutrition professionals. I wanted my training programs to actually prepare women for childbirth and for the physical reality of caring for a baby, rather than simply repeating the vague advice to stay active that many women hear at routine medical appointments.

Prenatal yoga is a good example. Many pregnant women try at least one prenatal yoga class, and that can certainly have value. But in many cases, it provides more reassurance than structured physical preparation. A woman may feel that she has done something healthy for herself and her baby, but that isn’t the same as following a real training plan. That kind of approach is still uncommon, simply because there aren’t many trainers who specialize deeply in this area.

We also see the opposite extreme on social media, with women who are seven or eight months pregnant squatting and deadlifting fairly heavy weights. Is that actually safe? And does strength training really protect against diastasis or pelvic floor problems after pregnancy?

I’d separate those two questions.

Strength training later in pregnancy can be acceptable if a woman was already doing it well before pregnancy, has solid technique, uses a load appropriate to how she feels, and – most importantly – knows how to manage intra-abdominal pressure, meaning she isn’t holding her breath and bearing down the way she might on a max lift.

But it doesn’t “protect” against diastasis, visible veins, prolapse, or postpartum leakage. Those depend on factors training can’t fully control – connective tissue quality, pelvic floor function before pregnancy, genetics, how labor unfolds. A well-designed program can lower certain risks, but it can’t guarantee anything. So the goal isn’t to hold onto heavy loads – it’s to preserve strength, control, and movement quality as the body keeps changing.

If you built a program from scratch for a healthy pregnant woman, what would it look like?

First, understand her starting point: training history, how her core and pelvic floor function, whether diastasis or excess tension is already present. The stage of pregnancy alone doesn’t set the load.

From there, the program builds around skills she’ll actually need. Breathing isn’t a warm-up formality — it’s direct preparation for birth, teaching her to manage intra-abdominal pressure and relax the pelvic floor on cue. Strength work – squats, hip hinges, pulling movements, loaded carries – prepares the back, arms, and shoulders for carrying a baby for hours a day, and lets her move through daily life without straining her lower back. Pelvis and hip mobility matter too, because they directly affect how labor itself unfolds and how comfortable the third trimester feels, as joints naturally loosen with hormonal changes.

As the third trimester nears, the goal shifts from learning new movement to holding onto what the body already knows.

When can women return to exercise after giving birth?

There’s no universal timeline, but there’s a reference point: after an uncomplicated delivery, a check-up around six weeks confirms there’s nothing requiring medical attention – that’s when a gradual return can begin, not the return itself.

The biggest mistake is rushing back into ab work. Restoring breathing mechanics and coordination between the deep core and pelvic floor comes first; load builds gradually after that.

And there’s the reality of a newborn – most women don’t have 40 free minutes or a way to get to a gym. Ten to fifteen focused minutes at home is often more useful than a full workout: breathing work, gentle pelvic and core activation, simple floor-based movements to ease lower-back tension.

Is that why many clients move to online training?

Mostly because it fits real life – but it’s not for everyone. The biggest limitation is that a trainer can’t physically adjust a client’s pelvis, torso position, or range of motion in real time, and hands-on correction is sometimes simply faster to learn from. I usually recommend a few in-person sessions before moving online.

What online coaching does offer is ongoing support: reviewing technique on video, adjusting the plan to how she feels and where she is in pregnancy, and staying available for questions as they come up. Left alone, women’s training often stalls out of fear of doing something wrong, or it grows unchecked with no one flagging when to pull back.

If online isn’t the right fit, that doesn’t mean recovery has to wait until someone can watch the baby. More studios now offer classes where a baby can stay nearby – on a mat, in a bassinet – while the mother trains under supervision. Motherhood no longer has to mean a long break from movement.

None of this comes down to simply training less. What matters is knowing which movements and which intensity fit a woman at each specific stage – which is exactly why guidance built around the physiology of pregnancy and postpartum recovery, not fitness alone, makes more difference here than almost anywhere else.