The Barbell Mamas Podcast | Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pelvic Health
The times are changing and moms have athletic goals, want to exercise at high-intensity or lift heavy weights, and want to be able to continue with their exercise routines during pregnancy, after baby and with healthcare providers that support them along the way.
In this podcast, we are going to bring you up-to-date health and fitness information about all topics in women's health with a special lens of exercise. With standalone episodes and special guests, we hope to help you feel prepared and supported in your motherhood or pelvic health journey.
The Barbell Mamas Podcast | Pregnancy, Postpartum, Pelvic Health
The Truth About Exercise and Pregnancy
Get ready to dive into a rich conversation on the Barbell Mamas podcast where we explore the intersection of pregnancy and fitness! Christina Prevett, a dedicated pelvic floor physical therapist and mother, unpacks her own experiences, shedding light on how motherhood impacts our relationship with exercise. This episode touches on crucial themes such as the influence of social media on pregnant women’s fitness decisions and the misconceptions that flood the narrative around safe practices.
Through Christina’s candid reflections, listeners will find clarity on the importance of listening to one’s body as an essential part of navigating workouts during pregnancy. She challenges conventional timelines and offers an empowering perspective that emphasizes personal readiness over strict guidelines. Whether you're an athlete or just looking to maintain your fitness, this episode will equip you with valuable insights tailored to your unique experience.
Join the conversation as we break down barriers, debunk myths, and build a community that embraces fitness in all its forms during the beautiful journey of motherhood. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help us reach more women on their motherhood journey!
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Barbell Mamas podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is Christina Previtt. I'm a pelvic floor physical therapist, researcher in exercise and pregnancy, and a mom of two who has competed in CrossFit, powerlifting or weightlifting, pregnant, postpartum or both. In this podcast, we want to talk about the realities of being a mom who loves to exercise, whether you're a recreational exerciser or an athlete. We want to talk about all of the things that we go through as females, going into this motherhood journey. We're going to talk about fertility, pregnancy and postpartum topics that are relevant to the active individual. While I am a pelvic floor physical therapist, I am not your pelvic floor physical therapist and know that this podcast does not substitute medical advice. All right, come along for this journey with us while we navigate motherhood together, and I can't wait to get started. Hello everybody and welcome to the Barbell Mamas podcast, christina Brevitt. Here and today I want to be talking about my pregnancy hot takes. So the last couple of weeks you guys have been seeing that I've had a lot more vulnerability. I've been going through my own kind of experience within the obstetrical space, but I'm just feeling kind of sassy today, so I thought I would turn the mic on and let's just kind of chat about my three pregnancy hot takes. So number one for the love of all things, holy, can we just unanimously agree that it is wonderful for pregnant influencers to share their experience of exercise and pregnancy and not to educate about exercise and pregnancy in general? Okay, here is what I see happens, and it happens over and over and over again. And this became my sassy point because I just saw another CrossFit athlete who announced that they're pregnant and then announced a pregnancy program that they've been following and then click yes and I'll send you the link. Blah, blah, right, and it got my blood boiling. So we know that there are a lot of certifications and there's a lot of education that can happen around exercise and pregnancy. I'm super here for it and I know that a lot of personal trainers and exercise professional, previous athletes or athletes who are in a pregnant period of their life are very passionate about exercise and continuing exercise during pregnancy. I think that is so great.
Speaker 1:When you are pregnant, it is also all consuming. I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter and all I was looping around in my brain that was like short circuiting myself was oh my gosh, I'm pregnant. Oh my gosh, I'm pregnant, like it was so wonderful and modifying around pregnancy is also incredible. And when you have that big baby belly in front and you're an exercise influencer or you're a person who shares exercise related content, I remember whenever I was, when I was towards the end of my pregnancies and I was showing like geriatric exercises, like kind of focused on our older adult content, I would always feel weird because everybody would assume that I was doing exercise and pregnancy related content because obviously I had that big baby belly and so a lot of people want to share the way that they're modifying or what their experience has been or if they've been feeling good or if they've been feeling bad. And I think that authentic portrayal of your experience with exercise and pregnancy is such a net positive right, because the more stories we have of individuals of all ability levels who are sharing their experience in pregnancy especially for me as a pregnancy researcher one, I tap you on the shoulder and ask you to come into some of our exercise studies but then also it starts to normalize people exercising in different ways, and this has definitely been true in the resistance training space. We're seeing more and more people who are exercising and lifting heavier weights in pregnancy. It is starting to normalize that a little bit.
Speaker 1:I don't see nearly as many comments that your baby's going to die or that you're causing inherent harm on those posts, like I used to, even two to three years ago. You know, I got my own feedback from some of those when I was doing Olympic weightlifting during my second pregnancy that your baby's going to die and if your baby dies, don't come to the internet Like all that horrific stuff that you used to see. You're just not seeing it anymore and I think that's great, and I think part of that is this social normalization of individuals who are choosing to do strength training in their pregnancy, and I think that's super great. Where it goes astray is that, because pregnancy is such a visceral experience and it takes over everything, that you gain a level of experience of exercising while pregnant. When you are pregnant yourself, however, you are one data point and how you feel in your pregnancy is not enough. To make generalizations or sweeping statements about your pregnancy and how it tends to go is people start with here's what I'm doing at week 22 of my pregnancy, and then it turns into here's what you should do at week 22 of your pregnancy, and there it lies the problem, because if you have never trained a pregnant person, then you don't know the amount of variability that can exist.
Speaker 1:And I am all for new learners right, a lot of people are, you know, reading things and listening to podcasts and becoming novice learners. However, on the flip of that, I think there's a certain level of responsibility that we have to acknowledge and influence our culture, where me, who has, you know, 10 years experience and I'm a pelvic PT and I'm a researcher in pregnancy I don't hold up to some of these influencers with 2.5 million people who are saying don't cone or don't do any sit-ups because you're going to ruin your abs forever. And I was a new learner too, and I have openly acknowledged on this podcast that there are things that I used to say that I don't say now. One of them is going to be one of my hot takes about something that I've really changed my mind about. But I think that there has to be and, from the public's perspective, we have to take that with a grain of salt right. And again, I have so much respect for influencers who are sharing their experience and I recognize that we've seen this, like grassroots education, come up in influencers for good, bad or indifferent.
Speaker 1:However, I think there's a huge difference between you sharing your experience and you educating the public, and the difference in that bridge should be your level of education, your scope of practice and your credentialing around your capacity to educate on this, and the reason why I say that is that so often, one of the things that really bugs me is that influencers who put medical misinformation or dangerous information online never have to deal with the consequences of that, and in pregnancy, most of the time, that means that we're very conservative with our recommendations. But the flip of that, for example, is that I see terrified moms all the time, like I see moms who have been told that they're going to ruin their pelvic floor and they're going to ruin their core, and what happens is they're scared. They're scared to move in pregnancy, they're scared to move postpartum, and then, secondarily, they get weaker during their pregnancy than they needed to be, and then they're further behind, they're further deconditioned, and that has its own set of consequences going into the postpartum period, which, in and of itself, is super hard and requires fitness. And so when I am educating online and I try so hard to be very aware of my language, one. I never talk in absolutes, right, I never talk in absolutes. There's always going to be an asterisk sign on everything, because everybody's experience in pregnancy and postpartum is different, and if somebody is speaking in absolutes, that makes me not believe them, because they don't understand the nuance that is, a person's different experiences and even like in complicated versus uncomplicated pregnancy, right, somebody with high blood pressure versus somebody without, somebody with placenta previa after 28 weeks versus somebody without, like, there's going to be so many differences there, and it's super important to acknowledge that. Nothing is ever black and white. And the other thing is that I try to acknowledge when I'm wrong or something that I've changed my mind on, and that isn't a sign that I'm a bad educator. It's a sign that I'm growing, it's a sign that more research is coming out and I'm changing my mind. And I recognize, too, that even my recommendations are to guide my clients and for them to acknowledge the amount of risk that they are willing to accept and not accept. Right, it's an informed choice, and so I think that it's super, super important for us, as consumers, to be mindful of that and, as influencers, to be very aware of their language and make sure that they are doing their due diligence when it comes to how and if they are sharing about their pregnancy online.
Speaker 1:Sassy hot take number one. Sassy hot take number two is there is not a set time that we need to modify, exercise or safe versus unsafe. When I got into this space, I tried to give. I never gave, like you should stop heavy barbell training after 20 weeks or you should stop running after 22 weeks. I would say, hey, the range at which people tend to modify this was between here and here and now I don't even agree with myself about giving ranges right. So I would try and give ranges with the thought process that how women carry their baseline level of fitness going into pregnancy is different, so they're going to carry different. Like example, somebody with a short torso, their belly is going to be bumping up in front of them a lot faster than somebody like me who's got a longer torso, and that would change. Like bar path, for example, of like when somebody would want to, you know, change away from snatching, because snatching you have to keep the bar super close to your body. And so I gave ranges. But I don't even agree with myself on that anymore, because I don't think that any of our data has really supported that.
Speaker 1:You know, removing exercise at X weeks is going to matter, or is going to be safe versus unsafe and, secondarily, so many differences in so many other circumstances come up in pregnancy that it's impossible for me to say, hey, stop lifting over X percent at this week's pregnant, stop running at this week of pregnancy. And we also see in terms of people's lived experience that you know, I was well trained in barbell sports when I was in both my pregnancies, so I kept lifting right up until delivery. Some people it just felt really bad. I was not a my pregnancies, so I kept lifting right up until delivery. Some people it just felt really bad. I was not a runner, I didn't train running and so I removed any running related activities very early in my pregnancies. Others are well-trained runners and they had to get rid of running really early in their pregnancy, and others are doing marathons at 28 weeks pregnant.
Speaker 1:And we are starting to see that variability and, and you know, part of that is because of our influencers who are sharing their experiences online, which is great, because it has made me see this not as even like this transition zone I used to have, like this black, don't do gray Like maybe you can do this for another couple of weeks in, like a green light zone, right? I guess I should have said red, yellow, green, but now I don't even do that, right, I've seen so. I've seen just as many people who have modified, for example, down on a deadlift in their second trimester as I've seen mamas who have deadlifted PR at 36 weeks pregnant. So there is so much variability and so anybody who tries to give you a list of safe exercises or a list of unsafe exercises, do not listen to them. The safe exercises they're going to be fine, and I have likely done this too. If you go back into my Instagram, I'm sure I have right and those they're fine, but I want you to understand that they're fine and every other exercise is fine if your body is ready for it. Right, if it feels good for your body.
Speaker 1:We don't have any research that supports that avoiding certain exercises in pregnancy is going to protect you from postpartum pelvic floor dysfunction. We see that those who have stronger cores are less likely to have core issues postpartum. We see that those who do pelvic floor muscle training to prevent urinary incontinence in pregnancy may have a bit of a protective effect, depending on what happens during labor and delivery in the postpartum period. But we do not have the set of safe or unsafe exercises, and why this is a sassy hot take is that it boggles my mind about how confident people are about certain things, like how confident you are that avoiding coning in pregnancy is going to protect your postpartum. I was like, where does confidence come from? Like, I don't have confidence in that because all the evidence is not supporting it, and so I have actually become way less confident, especially in the last five years, because I was one of those people who were like, oh yeah, let's avoid coning. And now I'm like, oh, I don't know, do we avoid coning or can you just send it the entire time and they're fine?
Speaker 1:And the relative low, less deconditioning you're going to have in your core is going to be better coning or not versus avoiding all core exercises and deconditioning your core wall in a time in a woman's life where they need that core strength and resiliency because the core is under more strain, and so having a lot of confidence on safe versus unsafe exercises, it's wild, and I even got into a really heated debate online with a big influencer with like 60 or 70,000 followers and it was not only me, there is a whole bunch of other very well respected researchers and thought leaders within the pelvic PT space because they said do not do sit-ups Hard pass, absolutely not. And I think it was during pregnancy or it was permanent, like pregnant and postpartum one of those things. And I was like what, how do you from a chair? And so a bunch of us were like trying to be very respectful, saying hey, this is kind of damaging, like a lot of people get a lot really scared about, like, getting up from a reclined chair. Like I've seen, you know, reels that are showing that you should roll over on a sofa in order to get up. And they said, yeah, I don't care. And I was like, well, okay, keep spreading your misinformation. But hopefully people are listening into the comment section of this and recognizing that this is definitely something that we need to take with a grain of salt. And I'm excited to be a researcher in this space because I am trying to figure it out and maybe Christina of 2027, hopefully I'll get my research papers out by then will maybe think something completely different.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, set timelines safe versus unsafe. Like we don't really we don't really have that, especially in uncomplicated pregnancies. Now, the asterisk sign to that is going to be if there's any sort of complication where we have to be a little bit more mindful about the impact and forces going through the body. But again, this might be controversial. Our evidence here sucks too Plain and simple, right, our knee-jerk reaction is to be conservative. Right, that is a lot based on theoretical forces going through the uterus and the pelvis. I don't even know if that's true, right, and and that's where we need research to back us up. Right now we're going to stay conservative because our evidence isn't there, um, but we also have to always balance that with the secondary piece of it is. Is that deconditioning helpful? Is increasing sedentary behavior that's going to put us into pro-inflammatory states, good for whatever chronic disease or complication that is going on? I don't know. I really don't know the answer to that question and I have about a million research studies that I want to run on exercise profiles in complicated pregnancies. It's difficult to get through ethics, right, so we always have to start conservative, even on our exercise dosage in trials that are working in complications of pregnancy. But still, we don't know and I think we're going to learn a lot in the next 10 years and I hope that we do, and I hope that we can broaden out some of our eligibility criteria and some of our research studies in order for that to be true. So we got some work to do. So right now 2025, when I'm recording this we don't have a set time to start modifying away and safe versus unsafe exercises don't exist.
Speaker 1:The third one, kind of piggybacks on this is my third sassy hot take as I'm sweating. Listening to your body is a perfectly acceptable thing to say. The asterisk being tell them what to listen for, right? People often hate on medicine for saying, well, if you were doing it before your pregnancy, you can keep doing it as a terrible answer. And I disagree. I think it's a great answer because body readiness is a very important variable for how I am recommending exercise to a person who is pregnant. Right, if you were doing absolutely nothing before your pregnancy and you're starting into an exercise program, I'm not going to tell you to run a marathon or one rep max or deadlift. But if you are a power lifter who is two weeks out from a power lifting competition and you have a positive pregnancy test, yeah, compete, max out your squat. Max out your deadlift, max out your bench press, use that belt. Valsalva. You're good, right, your body is ready for it. Your body has been priming and prepping for it and there is nothing that we know in the literature around exorcism pregnancy that it's going to lead to a loss, right, and so that body readiness is super important.
Speaker 1:And for those who are active, your pregnancy progresses relatively slowly. Those who are active, your pregnancy progresses relatively slowly and there is enough time, if you are consistently active, to counter or adapt to the changes in balance, the changes in position, the changes in belly growth that allow your body to continue exercising in the way that it's used to. And when your pregnancy is progressing, there may be hurdles and speed bumps and speed bumps, but like bumps along the road craters I don't know, that are going to cause you to have to pivot or modify. Exercise may look different than you had hoped or expected or wanted during your pregnancy because of your unique circumstances, but that is listening to your body and that is giving the person who is pregnant autonomy, right. Where I come alongside is I'm your roadmap, like I say okay, if you're feeling this, it's time to modify. If you're feeling this, it's time to modify.
Speaker 1:And even you saying this doesn't feel good or I don't like how this feels, is a perfectly valid reason for you to change your exercise. Right, there is no expectation. Right, I am on your side and you know a lot of people think, well, I don't want to stop exercising or I don't want to stop squatting, why Right? Maybe if you're an athlete who's, like you know, a carded athlete, or you're a funded athlete and you have expectations from your organization perspective of when you have to get back to sport postpartum, you may have a little bit more anxiety. But if you want to listen to your body and you want to modify away from intensity, great. If you don't want to modify away from intensity and you want to be doing the CrossFit open, also great. Like, all of these things are okay, and my job is to help you by sharing in some of my experience, educating on what to listen for and allowing you to adapt as appropriate.
Speaker 1:And so the only thing that I would say to our medical providers, to our physical therapists, is like yes, continue. Like, listen to your body. I think that's great. And then help them tell what they're listening for, right, what are things that they may be experiencing. That may be a reason for them to rest for an extra day or modify around it or take down intensity or take down impact, and that could change day to day. The other thing is that listening to your body is trends and data over time right. You may be, you know, 18 weeks pregnant and you go for a run and that run didn't feel good and that may mean that you want to change how you're running or stop running and switch to something lower impact, or that could have just been a bad day, and for some people it's going to be the former and for others it's going to be the latter. And so you know, trying to figure that out, um, it is great, and so you are safe. Like your body is safe, you are not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1:Like so many people come into pregnancy, and the way that the messaging comes online and even the way that us, as pelvic PTs, medical spaces is this hyper vigilance of fear, because our education has trained us to look for what's wrong and the way that that can translate into the experience of the pregnant person. I know I definitely felt this when I had gestational hypertension. Was this like stress and anxiety and hypervigilance of my physician who was trying her best to take care of me, made me feel very afraid and so kind of acknowledging both of those things and how important they are because if I did transfer into preeclampsia it would have been something bad is something that we want to be thinking about, and some of my goals of this podcast is that you feel informed, you feel educated, you acknowledge what we do and don't don't know, and it's okay that we don't know everything yet, like that's the scientific method, and we've only had 20 or 30 years where pregnant individuals were, you know, advocated for to be involved in research studies in general. And you know my rant about. You know where the scientific method is right now in the United States, with pregnancy research being something that could potentially be negatively influenced by some of the changes to the NIH. But where we want to acknowledge is here is the data, here is where we are at. You can make an informed choice and even if there is a complication right, we're not going to shame and blame choice. And even if there is a complication, right, we're not going to shame and blame. We're going to take the medical steps that we need to shift as necessary and hopefully give you a pregnant experience that you think of very positively. I'm sweating, but those are my pregnant hot takes.
Speaker 1:Like last couple of things, you probably noticed that I did not do a open post. I don't really know how I feel just yet about the CrossFit open. I had a lot of strong feelings about, you know Lazar's passing and you know Lazar's passing Um, and you know there there's a lot there, um, thankfully, from the 25.1 perspective, um, there was nothing that you needed to modify unless you had pubic symphysis or pelvic girdle pain, cause it was, um the burpee. You could just kind of keep your chest on the ground, keep your baby bump up, um and everything with the hang, uh, dumbbell clean and jerk was fine, uh, ditto with the lunge.
Speaker 1:But let me know I will, for you all, do any like pregnant postpartum modifications If you are interested, um, for 25.2 and 25.3, and I can talk about it on the podcast. If you would like, um, just message us through Instagram, um, and we can queue that up for you. All right, have a wonderful week everybody. Let me know if you agree or disagree with some of my sassy hot takes or if you like just me ranting and raving um, um, with the this type of podcast. Um, and if you want me to do something similar for postpartum also, let me know. All right, have a wonderful week.
