Pregnancy is one of the areas where I get asked the most careful, and sometimes the most anxious, questions. Can I still train? Will it hurt the baby? What about after, when everything feels different again? I'm pre- and postnatal qualified, and this is the honest version of what training through and after pregnancy can actually look like — not the Instagram version.
During pregnancy: adapting, not stopping
For most healthy pregnancies, with your doctor or midwife's sign-off, continuing to train is not just safe but genuinely helpful — for energy, sleep, mood, and how your body copes with the physical demands of labour and early motherhood. What changes is the "how." Programming shifts trimester by trimester: away from exercises that load the abdominals in unhelpful ways, towards building the strength you'll actually need to carry, lift, and recover. Intensity isn't the goal here — appropriateness is.
What a session actually looks like
Expect more attention to breathing and core function, pelvic floor awareness, and exercises chosen specifically because they transfer to real life — getting up off the floor, carrying a car seat, picking up a toddler later down the line. It's still proper training. It's just training with a different brief.
The postnatal return: slower than you think, for a reason
This is where I see the most frustration. You've had a baby, you want your body and your identity back, and the instinct is to push hard, fast. I won't do that with you, and here's why: your body has gone through nine months of change and then birth itself, and rebuilding — particularly your deep core and pelvic floor — needs to happen in the right order. Rushing it is how women end up with ongoing issues years later that a slower, more deliberate return would have avoided entirely.
What "the right order" means in practice
We start with breath and gentle core reconnection, rebuild from there, and only add load and intensity back in once your body is actually ready for it — not once an arbitrary number of weeks has passed. Every postnatal body is different, and the timeline is dictated by what I see and what you report, not a calendar.
You're allowed to want both things
Wanting to feel strong and like yourself again after having a baby isn't vanity, it's recovery. You don't have to choose between being realistic about your body's timeline and still having a clear plan to get back to feeling good in it. That's exactly what this kind of coaching is for.
If you're pregnant, newly postnatal, or further down the line and still not feeling quite right, get in touch and we'll talk through where you are and what makes sense from here.