In case other people come here knocked up and curious whether/how they will be able to do NROLFW, I wanted to report on my experiences doing NROLFW while pregnant. This post is about the first trimester. Hopefully I can follow up on the second and third trimester when/if I get that far.
There is a very helpful thread
here on this topic as well.
I was two workouts out from the end of stage 2 when I got pregnant. This is my first pregnancy (at least the first one that stuck around for a while) and I didn't know any better what it was going to be like, so I figured I would just keep right on going with NROLFW, modifying it for pregnancy as outlined in
this fabulous article on stumptuous.com (the book
Pregnancy Fitness has also been somewhat helpful, though it is not focused on weight training specifically). Sure, there might be some nausea sometimes and stuff, but pregnancy is not an illness, and exercising while pregnant is now officially good for you, thank goodness. Plus, I love NROLFW. I was very curious whether it would be possible to continue lifting, whether I could up the weights or would have to plateau in pregnancy, and how closely I would be able to follow Alwyn's program despite the need to modify it for pregnancy.
The first thing that happened (though I didn't realize it right away), even before I knew I was pregnant, was that my thyroid stopped working. I was too tired to get off the sofa to eat, let alone walk to the gym. That got straightened out after a few weeks and then I was ready to hit the gym again, keeping in mind the cardinal rules of pregnancy exercise:
- Don't let your heart rate get too out of whack
- Don't go nuts on how tough your workout is
- Stop and take a break if you get dizzy
- Drink a ton of water, constantly
- Don't get overheated
- Stop if you get cramps or abdominal pain
- Don't hold your breath while lifting (I really have to think about this while doing abs work)
The first time I went back I just tried to do 15 minutes on the elliptical at a slow pace. This workout was a bit of a disaster, I was overheated in no time, at the same snail-like pace my heart rate wandered all over the map, and after about 10 minutes I started to get dizzy, end of workout. I figured that the thyroid meds had not 100% kicked in yet, so I waited a couple of days and went back to try lifting again.
Note: call me naive, but I was completely amazed / somewhat horrified to find out what huge changes pregnancy makes to your body, and especially your circulatory system, even when you are only just barely pregnant.
At this point about a month had gone by since my last lifting workout, so instead of continuing from where I had been, I decided to start Stage 2 over again. I made the following modifications:
- I reset all the weights to half the amount I had been lifting previously, as a conservative starting point.
- I got rid of interval training entirely because my doctor had nixed it, which at the time I thought was overcautious but I now think was pretty smart, at least for me - too much strain for my overextended cardio system.
- As stumptuous.com suggests, for lifts that get me short of breath or make me dizzy (e.g. squats), I split up the sets so that I would do the same number of overall reps but in more sets so I could catch my breath. E.g. instead of 2 sets of 8, I would do 4 sets of 4 with the full rest break in between.
- Deadlifts gave me cramps so sadly I cut them out.
- I used to go to the gym first thing in the morning with no breakfast, but now I ate something beforehand to make sure my blood sugar didn't get too low.
With these modifications, the program was definitely doable (and honestly, cutting the weight in half was about right for what I could handle at that point). I had some issues with dizziness, which I handled by putting in extra rest breaks whenever it seemed like my heart rate might be getting too high or if I started to get light-headed. For the rest, everything was A-OK.
... until the morning sickness really kicked in. I went to the gym a couple of times with morning sickness which was not really a big deal, the nausea didn't really seem to get in the way. But then my morning sickness quickly went from bad to worse and I was having trouble keeping down water and was losing weight fairly rapidly. I figured if I wasn't eating enough calories to maintain my weight, I probably wasn't eating enough to build muscle. And if I couldn't chug water, I couldn't stay hydrated during my workout. Sadly, I gave up exercising. And pretty soon I ended up in the hospital with hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme morning sickness). At this point my "fitness routine" consisted of dragging my sorry butt from the bed to the sofa and my diet consisted 100% of easy-to-digest carbohydrates.
This lasted for about 5 weeks. It was from hell, but it was a big consolation to me during this time that I had been doing NROLFW intensively beforehand and had built up a reserve of fitness, so that even if I was burning muscle now to stay alive, at least it was 'extra' muscle above and beyond what I had had before.
Eventually, the miraculous day came (around 11/12 weeks) that the nausea lightened up a bit, the barfing intervals became longer, and I could actually eat as many calories as I needed. So you know what I immediately thought - time to go to the gym! But my husband pointed out that probably I should be able to walk to the car before I tried to lift again, so first I built up some rudimentary fitness by going for walks around town. Once that worked ok, I went back to the gym for a test workout, my favorite 15 minutes on the elliptical. That went OK too (though I had to nap for an hour afterwards!) so a few days later it was back for lifting.
At this point I had obviously back-tracked in my fitness a LOT, so I decided to start NROLFW all over again, in stage 1. The best thing about this decision was that the first stage 1 workouts only take about 25 minutes... perfect length for an exhausted and nauseated pregnant gal. I made the following modifications:
- I started with totally, totally wimpy weights (OK, not the pink ones, but pretty close), for example squats with the empty 20# bar.
- Like before, I broke up sets where I typically get short of breath into more sets/fewer reps, i.e. instead of 2 sets of 15 I do 4 sets of 8.
- I could now do deadlifts without any cramps, so that got put back into the program.
- I have a ton of food aversions and problems with nausea, so I am not eating a diet that even remotely resembles the plan in the book - whatever goes down is welcome on board, and that's that.
- If I am barfing a lot or not able to eat a lot due to nausea, I (a) don't go to the gym that day, and (b) it also does not count as a rest day since I figure my body probably doesn't have the energy to repair muscle - so I may take extra days between workouts depending on how I feel.
- I drink two big glasses of water before the workout, take 1-2 breaks during the workout to down more water, and drink two glasses again at the end. For a 25 minute workout this might seem a little excessive, but it's really not.
I have to say, the workouts now are going a lot better than earlier in the pregnancy - I don't have much problems with dizziness or cramps, and in general I am starting to feel reasonably energetic. I think my body has gotten more used to being pregnant and I am also feeling more comfortable about knowing what my body can and can't handle - in the beginning I was super paranoid I would do something wrong and Kill The Baby, now I have a better feeling about what is normal for me now. I am able to increase the load from workout to workout, which may be mostly because I started the weights so low, but I think also I am really getting stronger, hooray at last!
The one issue I ran into with the workouts now is that at the end of the workouts (around about the point where I got out of the shower) I was getting extremely nauseated, I think because my blood sugar got too low. I tried eating a snack directly after the workout, before the shower, and that postponed the nausea a bit but it still hit a little later. Now, I actually take a break halfway through my (25-minute) workout to eat a snack, and also eat a snack at the end. That solves the problem, no more nausea.
So, after all this, here is what I think I've learned about doing NROLFW while pregnant:
1) You can do (a version of) NROLFW while pregnant, and you will really get stronger, hooray!
2) Follow the general pregnancy fitness rules, of course, and make sure to ratchet down intensity according to what you can handle at the moment (including lowering weights, splitting up sets, and taking extra or longer breaks).
3) Snack every 15 minutes or so, and drink tons of water.
4) Listen to your body, not in a paranoid but in a friendly sense. Everyone's pregnancy is different. It's great to aim for a super athletic pregnancy, but your body will tell you what it can and can't do. If you listen to it, you can still get a good workout.
5) There's something really fun about being in a free weight area with a bunch of guys sweating and lifting really giant weights, and even though your weights are wimpy in comparison you can think to yourself "but I am also creating a whole new human being with my body at the same time - let's see you guys do that!"
I know that I am not exactly following Alwyn's program - I won't for example be able to do the evil bodyweight matrix in stage 3 - and so I won't get the same results. But I am really happy to nevertheless have a good weightlifting program that seems to be working for pregnancy and that makes me feel great during and after my workout (except for the need for more naps
). It is really satisfying to be back in action again.
NROLFW while pregnant - experience report - 1st trimester
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