Practical Strength Training Principles For Pregnancy

A viral video of a near term athlete lifting sparked a surprisingly supportive comment section and it signals a real shift: more people now accept that strength training during pregnancy can be normal, safe, and empowering when it is approached thoughtfully. We lean into that momentum and share the principles we use to help active moms train with confidence instead of fear, whether you are a recreational lifter, a CrossFit athlete, or someone simply trying to stay strong for everyday life. 

We start with the idea that there are no hard and fast rules for lifting while pregnant. Some people feel great bracing and moving heavier loads, others feel better dialing back intensity, range of motion, or volume, and both can be valid. The right approach depends on your fitness going into pregnancy, what movements you have practiced, and the specifics of your pregnancy. Our goal is to help you make individualized decisions rather than follow blanket restrictions that do not fit your body. 

Next, we break down the pregnancy changes that affect training: ligament laxity, rib and pelvis changes, shifting posture, and why muscles become your dynamic support system as your center of mass changes. Then we make “listen to your body” actually actionable by naming the signals that matter most for the pelvic floor and core. We talk about symptoms like heaviness, leaking, and pain as capacity cues that suggest adjusting load, effort, or technique, and we explain why coning alone is not always the deal breaker people think it is. We also challenge the outdated belief that pregnancy is never the time to start exercising, because smart, scaled strength work can make pregnancy and postpartum less punishing. 

If this helped, subscribe, share it with a training partner, and leave a review. What is the biggest question you have about lifting during pregnancy right now?

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Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome to the Barbell Moments podcast. My name is a product. I'm a public forfeit for the outfits from a researcher and exercise in fighting feet and a mom of the two who have competed in CrossFit, a power lifting, or weight lifting, a fight-like post-product, 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. Hello,

The Viral Lift And Culture Shift

SPEAKER_00 1:08

everybody, and welcome to the Barbal Mamas podcast. Christina Previtt here, and today I wanted to talk to you about the key principles or the six things that I would want you to consider if you wanted to lift in pregnancy in 2026. There is a reel that just went really viral of an athlete who was lifting at, I think it was like 40 plus four. Like she kind of went into labor almost immediately after she had done this last reel. And I checked the comments, as I always do as a researcher in this space. And one of the cool things was that the comment section totally passed the vibe check. And what is really cool about this is that we have seen just an absolutely massive shift in the understanding of the public and kind of the public acceptance of seeing a pregnant woman lifting online or sharing her lifting journey in pregnancy. And now the swing has almost moved entirely in the other direction, where we are now, thankfully, in a place where we can be encouraging people to lift. And this is just such an exciting thing for me to see. I am so pumped to see that this is the direction that this exercise piece is taking us in exercise and pregnancy. And so, what are the six things that I would want you to know about lifting in pregnancy?

Principle One No Universal Rules

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So, number one is that there are no hard and fast rules about when, how, or even should you modify your training because you are pregnant. What I mean by that is that we used to have a lot of ideas about needing to change our breath strategy or putting less strain on our core and pelvic floor, et cetera. And what we're starting to see is that for some people, how they are bracing, holding their breath while lifting doesn't feel good in later pregnancy. For other people, it feels amazing. For some people, they PR or have a personal record in their lifting journey during pregnancy. In others, they feel better staying at 50 to 75% or even lower sometimes with their weights in pregnancy. What this is starting to move towards, and we kind of saw this in our 2025 postpartum guideline, is that we are getting to a place where we can make personalized, individualized decisions on how you are exercising in pregnancy based on you. Your fitness going into pregnancy, including what you feel comfortable with or how often you are lifting weights and the circumstances around your specific pregnancy matter a ton when it comes to how and if you continue lifting in pregnancy. What that means is that what works for you may not work for your neighbor. What worked for your first pregnancy may not work for your second. And so we have these key concepts now around what we are looking for and what we want to do or how we might want to want to modify. But at what time or if you do those modifications is going to be completely up to you, which I think is really exciting. Knowing this, then now there aren't really any big rules of you can't do this or you have to do this, et cetera. The next step now becomes how do you become this empowered person to know what you're you should be looking for, what you should be listening for, et cetera. And

Principle Two How Bodies Change

SPEAKER_00 5:02

so my number two principle here is that I think it is a really good idea to understand how your body is going to change and shift through pregnancy. I think there's a lot of power in learning what to expect out of your body with pregnancy. And then I'm gonna do this like a 2B, is that it's really great if you also know what to expect around changes in your body or things that could happen more significant changes in the postpartum period based on your labor and delivery story. What I mean by that is knowing that, for example, because of the hormones going through your body, we're gonna see a bit of a relaxation of the ligaments around our body. Important, need to. It makes our rib angle bigger, it's why our bras might not fit, it makes our pelvic wider, pelvis wider so that baby's head can go into the birth canal. It also drops our arches, which is why our feet get bigger. When we see that change in static support, we need to rely on our dynamic structures, aka our muscles. Our muscles and our pelvis need to take up the weight of baby and the slack from those static structures. Pelvic floor and butt muscle is working harder. Our abdominal muscles stretch and lengthen in order to make room for baby in the pelvic or into the abdominal wall from the pelvis, low back arches, a little bit more anterior tilt with our pelvis to again shift our center of mass back to make room for baby. Knowing these changes in shifts and knowing that the magnitude of these changes is gonna be very dependent on your body. For example, those with a shorter torso are gonna have more lengthening of those abdominal muscles, probably a little bit of a bigger arch because baby's gonna move further out in front of you versus up into your rib cage. Um, that type of variability, too, is gonna be really important for how you make decisions in what feels good and what doesn't feel good for you in pregnancy. That's a very like quick snapshot, but those things are important because then you kind of understand potentially uh around, oh yeah, this is why this isn't feeling very good. I'm feeling this big stretch across my belly button when I'm hanging. That makes sense. You know, I'm having a lengthening of that tissue. I'm getting into a third trimester, it makes sense that I'm feeling that way. Um, it also is a very big justification as to why, um, for example, with pain around the pelvis or pelvic girdle pain, why a big part of your treatment plan is going to be strengthening up the muscles around the hip. Because if they're under more load, they're demanding more or in demand, I guess, then we need to meet that demand by making sure that we keep them as strong as possible. Another reason why just learning and understanding that can help with the management of anything that pops up in pregnancy, and then uh kind of thinking about those pregnancy-related changes with respect to our exercise routine as you get further into pregnancy.

Principle Three Listen With Context

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Number three is that the advice of listening to your body is actually a great piece of advice if you know what to listen for. A lot of people have kind of hated on the advice of just listen to your body. If you were active before, you can keep active being active now. I love that advice. I love that advice because if I have a power lifter versus a marathon runner, how they're gonna engage in exercise is not gonna be the same. They're not gonna get the same advice, right? I was a national level weightlifter when I was pregnant with my daughter. Running felt horrible. But a heavy snatch balance where I'm overhead squatting a lot of weight at 38 weeks pregnant felt amazing. And that's because my body has gotten very used to and has a lot of volume in one range of motion in one modality and not another. So listening to your body is really important. In pregnancy, I think, especially first pregnancies, everything feels foreign. Everything feels different. We're constantly Googling, is this a pregnancy sign? Yes or no? Where that advice needs to extend is let me tell you what to listen for. With impact and lifting, the big concern is around pelvic floor dysfunction. And so if you're feeling heaviness, pain, or leaking, that is your body telling you that it's hitting a failure point, like a muscular failure point, not a your pelvic floor is doomed to dysfunction point, and that it's at capacity. Like I've worked really hard today. I'm starting to have a hard time keeping up with what you're asking me to do. That means that it's giving us a signal of shifting uh load, maybe volume, maybe range of motion, maybe effort. It's telling us that maybe we need to shift something. Or I need a coach's eyeballs on me to see if I've accidentally gone into a position that's gonna make me more likely to feel those sensations. I've mentioned a lot on the abdominal wall side that coning in and of itself for me is not a reason, especially in the third trimester of pregnancy, to remove or eliminate exercises. Pressure, pulling pain across that six-pack line, belly button pain is.

Starting Safe Strength And Closing

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Again, we used to have this sentiment of, well, if you have never done it before, pregnancy isn't the time to initiate exercise. I think that is fundamentally untrue in pregnancy. It does not mean that I am getting a newly pregnant individual one rep maxing their deadlift, but I will get them doing some dumbbell exercises, some machines, getting them to do higher repetition, lower weight to start to gain proficiency and confidence and different movement patterns in order to keep their body strong, right? One of my go-to phrases is that pregnancy is hard, pregnancy deconditioned is harder. Postpartum is hard. Postpartum deconditioned is harder. Nobody ever goes into a stressful life event and says, Gosh, I really wish that I was weaker. That would make this so much better for me. Strength helps make life easier, and that is true in pregnancy and postpartum as well. I am so excited to see the change in our thoughts and feelings around lifting in pregnancy. It is so exciting to me as a researcher about how many people are interested in it. Gosh, I swear over the last couple of months, I've had almost like every big gym um guru talk about our studies as well. Like Lane Norton, Brett Contreras, um Dr. Pac, I don't know what it was first name. That's awful. Um, Ben Carpenter, like so many people, um, Marco Henson, like so many people have brought out our studies and have talked about lifting in pregnancy. And the more everybody keeps doing it, and I love that our male colleagues are too. I just, I'm so excited to see this shift happen. And we just have so much more to come for this year. That is all I got for you all today. If you have any other questions, comments, concerns, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your week, everyone, and we'll see you all next time.