Staying active during pregnancy can boost your mood, improve labour and help you recover afterwards.
It’s commonly said that pregnant women should lift as little as possible. But for Krissy Cela, a personal trainer, fitness icon and businesswoman with an activewear empire, that simply wasn’t an option.
“After I found out I was pregnant, I kept doing what I had been doing for more than a decade at that point, which was strength training five times a week,” Cela says. “The gym had always been my safe haven, where I felt most myself. Having that stripped away from me because I was pregnant would have been devastating.”
Cela, 30, discovered that she was pregnant in the spring of last year. “I just didn’t feel like myself,” she says. “Something felt off, and I couldn’t get a grip of my emotions. I took a pregnancy test the day before my period was due, and when I first read it, I was terrified. Once those feelings settled I was excited to be a mum, but I still didn’t know whether I was ready and whether I’d make a good parent.”
From age 18, weightlifting was the one constant in Cela’s life. Going hard at the gym was the main way she blew off steam as a busy law student in London, and then her passion for strength training became the inspiration for her rapidly growing gym wear brand Oner Active, designed to fit and flatter women with muscles and curves. It’s no wonder then that she kept training right up until the birth of her son, Arlo, in October 2024.
Exercising with a changing body
For women less experienced than Cela, the thought of keeping fit whilst pregnant can be daunting and off-putting, especially with a lack of trustworthy advice.
“The first thing that women should do when they become pregnant is go to the doctor and get the all-clear to keep exercising, which is exactly what I did,” Cela says. “But as I’d already had a decade of training and understanding functionalities and moving my body through strength training, along with my qualifications, I was pretty confident in knowing what I needed to do, to feel my best and keep myself and Arlo safe.”
Cela’s mantra is “stronger not smaller” – encouraging women to get fitter, rather than to focus only on being slim. Yet she appreciates how daunting weight gain can be for pregnant women, too, especially for women who have worked hard to get in good shape.
“A lot of women when they get pregnant are terrified about gaining weight, and confused about whether they’ll be able to keep exercising at all,” Cela says. “In honesty, gaining weight was probably the last thing on my list when it came to the worries I had. When you’re pregnant, your body isn’t yours – you’re doing the most natural thing in the world, creating another human being. I focussed on that as my body changed.”
On average, a woman will gain between 25lb and 35lb (roughly 11-16kg) while pregnant. In reality, though, this can vary widely. Cela put on little weight in her first and second trimesters, “but I did gain a significant amount of weight in my third trimester,” she says, and “suddenly having a big bump in the way when I was squatting or doing deadlifts was jarring – I’d have to move my feet and adjust my lifts, and rewire my brain so that I could train safely and still get results. It was tough, but finding new ways to exercise kept me feeling like myself throughout the whole journey.”
Cela’s advice is not to compare yourself to other women. “Some women can gain 10lb while they’re pregnant and others will gain 50,” Cela says. “It really does vary, and that’s the case for women who strength trained before their pregnancies, like me, as much as anyone else.”
“You have to factor in how many of the extra fluids and organs and the new body that you’re creating,” she adds. “You’re swelling too, but all of that comes down after you’ve given birth. That’s good for you to know and park in the back of your head in case you start getting very overwhelmed with how much weight you’re gaining.”
The best exercises for pregnant and postpartum women
Remember to tighten your pelvic floor before lifting a weight. Keep the weights moderate and focus on correct form. Listen to your body and reduce the weight if you feel any pain.
Overhead press (seated)
This exercise works your shoulder muscles, chest muscles and triceps (at the back of your arms) while strengthening your back and abdomen. Sitting down rather than standing during this exercise gives you more stability and takes the strain away from your lower back. Practising an overhead press can help to strengthen your arms and improve your posture and balance, reducing the risk of falls.
Goblet squats
This exercise will strengthen your glutes, hips, core, and pelvic floor, which can help to reduce back pain and relieve symptoms like constipation and leg cramps. Strengthening these muscles may also make your labour easier.
Romanian deadlifts
A variation on the traditional deadlift, a full-body movement, Romanian deadlifts (or RDLs) target your glutes and hamstrings. They are better for pregnant women because they work to strengthen the posterior chain, running from your upper back to your calves, giving your spine more support as your baby grows. RDLs can also strengthen your core and pelvic floor and give your joints more support.
Static lunge
Static lunges engage your quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves, muscles at either side of leg, helping you to walk and run with more ease. This exercise also recruits your core muscles and lower back to keep you stable, strengthening your legs and mid-section and helping to relieve pain.
Why it’s important to exercise while pregnant
When it comes to exercising – and especially weightlifting while pregnant – “there are so many questions that you have, and it’s very overwhelming,” Cela says. “Sometimes people shame you for even wanting to stay active. Women often just end up doing nothing, because they don’t know what to do.”
That’s a shame, says Cela, because “there are so many benefits to staying active throughout your pregnancy and especially to strength training, for you and your baby too”.
NHS guidelines state that pregnant women should keep carrying out their everyday exercises for as long as they feel comfortable, as this can make labour easier, and help women to adapt to their changing weight and body shape. More than that though, Cela says, “exercising provides you with a spike in endorphins, and it’s so important to stay happy and focused throughout all the challenges that come with pregnancy too”.
Where safe, “I believe that every pregnant woman should be squatting, because that movement is amazing for opening your hips and it’ll strengthen your back, which can help so much with back pain towards the third trimester,” Cela says. “It’ll help you use multi-joint and multi-muscular movements, which are what you need when you push a child out.”
Arm and back exercises made up an important part of Cela’s training regimen, too, not only because these can be easier to perform with a bump in the way. “Your legs and core are important,” Cela says, “but your arms and your back are going to hurt when the baby comes and you’re carrying them about, rocking and swaying them. Keeping strong and fit across your whole body will make all of that much easier.”
When it comes to your abs and core muscles, Cela recommends “a lot of deep breathing, a lot of stretching, a lot of holding planks and static bear crawls, with your knees hovering above the ground”. She recommends “a lot of walking too, to help ease water retention around your stomach”.
She’s keen to state however that women who’ve never strength trained before shouldn’t pick it up as a hobby during pregnancy. “Strength training is a skill that you acquire over a long period of time,” Cela says, “and it’s very difficult at first. It’s safest to pick up strength training when you’re postpartum if you want to try it and have never done it before.” Instead, “focus more on low-intensity workouts like yoga, walking and stretching”.
Adapting to each trimester
While Cela kept up an impressive fitness routine right to the end of her pregnancy, she changed her regimen throughout each trimester to make sure that she didn’t put excessive strain on her body.
“In my first trimester, which I found incredibly challenging in terms of having morning sickness and fatigue, I was lifting the same amount as I was before my pregnancy, and I didn’t gain a noticeable amount of weight,” Cela says. “I loved being in my second trimester – I did a lot of hiking because I had lots of energy to work with, on top of my weights, as well as yoga, though it’s important not to lie on your back after 16 weeks, and to avoid excessive stretching, as this can make your ligaments more prone to injuries.”
The kinds of exercises Cela did change throughout her pregnancy too. “Before I was pregnant, I’d been training five to six days a week, for an hour at a time,” Cela says. “Four of them would be strength training, covering different muscle groups like shoulders and triceps, quads, biceps and calves. One session would focus on conditioning, so cardio and abs, and then the final one would be something more low impact like yoga. On my rest days, I really would rest, doing a gentle walk at most.”
“I kept that up until my third trimester, and after that I’d be doing two sessions a week, maximum three. In each I’d be strength training, for 30 to 40 minutes, and using lower weights to keep the exercise low-impact. Instead of splitting my workouts by muscle group, I focused on either my upper or lower body. I’m now working out for an hour again, but what’s been most important has been listening to my body and doing what feels right for me.”
When it came to leg workouts, “instead of a barbell squat, I’d do a goblet squat or dumbbell sumo squat. Instead of a narrow stance, I’d have a wide stance, because I needed more space.”
As for what she was eating, “I stopped focusing on eating a high-protein diet, which I was careful to follow before my pregnancy to meet my strength goals,” says Cela. “Eating a good amount of protein helped me to keep my energy levels up and balanced, but my goal became to feel good and take care of myself, rather than gain muscle, so my protein intake became less important to me.”
Besides, “you don’t really get to decide what you eat when you’re pregnant,” says Cela.
“There’s a monster in your stomach and if it demands Nutella on toast at 2am, there isn’t much you can do but feed it,” she says. “The active change I did make was to drink a lot of water, focus on eating more iron and take multivitamins so that I could be sure that my body had everything it needed to stay healthy,” while maintaining a varied diet with lots of fruit and vegetables.
Instead of obsessing over what you eat, “try to enjoy the process of feeding those cravings and eating things you usually might not”, while bearing in mind dietary advice from the NHS: avoid eating large amounts of sugar, as this can cause gestational diabetes, and avoid specific foods like liver, raw eggs, shellfish.
Bouncing back after labour
Before her pregnancy, Cela could squat with 100kg and a barbell on her shoulders, and deadlift 90kg. Having returned to strength training six weeks ago, the maximum weight she can squat now is 70kg, and she can deadlift 60kg. “I have lost strength since I became pregnant, but I’ve just been trying to focus on enjoying my time with Arlo and not put pressure on myself to get back to where I was,” she explains.
Cela suffered from preeclampsia at 34 weeks into her pregnancy. “So I was very swollen, and I had high blood pressure,” she says. “Arlo actually came a little bit early, at 37 weeks, as opposed to full term, and I had to be induced.”
“But minus that, I didn’t have any complications,” says Cela. “I pushed for 25 minutes – the pushing and actually delivering Arlo reminded me a lot of doing crunches. I was terrified to give birth, based on everything I’d heard about the process, but it went much more smoothly than I expected. That’s the thing about moving your body regularly, it prepares you for a lot of life’s obstacles.”
Cela was back in the gym a month after Arlo was born. “For four, maybe five weeks, I was purely recovering. I got the all-clear from my doctor to start exercising again after four weeks, and I spent two weeks just walking and strengthening my core and abs. Six weeks in I started strength training again.”
For those that have more damage to their muscles, such as diastasis recti, where a woman’s abdominal muscles split during labour, “the number one thing you should do is deep core training,” says Cela. “I’d advise that to any woman to rebuild her core strength, with the same exercises I recommend to build your abs and core before your labour. Unless you’ve had a C-section, it’s safe to start that with deep breathing and some mat work a week after you give birth.”
Ten weeks into being a mother, “I feel great,” Cela says. “I’m still rebuilding strength, but I’m up on my feet, running my businesses, travelling and socialising. I love my body as much now as I ever did before, maybe even more. I want to be able to pick up my grandchildren one day, and strength training is going to contribute to that.”
