Fitness Editor Blog

This week I am 22 weeks pregnant and according to our last scan the little man is doing just dandy! I have started feeling him kick and move around a lot more now and he’s quite active. I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised considering how much daily exercise he gets through me (AKA his incubator).

I am still exercising and to be honest I’m feeling better and stronger than I have in a while so this whole “honeymoon-period” that is the second trimester is really working out for me. I CrossFit three times a week and do spinning classes at the gym twice a week and still run and do CrossFit Mom workouts inbetween that. Albeit I am doing things a LOT slower and less graceful-looking.

I went back to the WCAC running club on Tuesday, it’s the first time I’ve run any real distance in a few weeks and even though it was a measly 6km it kicked my ass and took me a super-embarrassing  hour to complete. Considering at my last time trial I did 5km in 31 minutes I had to seriously give myself a pep talk about how I’m about 7kg heavier now (*CRINGE*) and the fact that I haven’t run in a while added to the bad form I had.

But still. An HOUR? For 6km?? It’s just ridiculous, and can (and WILL) be improved on, pregnant or not!!

I could be wrong but I think that not having run for so long had more of an effect than carrying a growing baby did, because after the first five minutes my calves started seizing up and cramping and I ended up walk/running for the whole distance. By the time I got back to the clubhouse my feet were also stinging they were so sore, which I guess can be attributed to bad form – as well as extra weight. So I definitely need more practice on the running front!

As for CrossFit I am still going strong and doing the normal class workouts but at a lower intensity.
 

I was SUPER motivated after going to the African Regional’s here in Cape Town recently. Just to see some of the awesome athletes competing and pushing themselves to the limit doing something that I understand and do too (just not as well clearly!). Even cooler was watching people from my gym competing… the focus and dedication and to see how far they’ve all come in the year that I’ve been there really is enough to spark a little fire inside me to keep me going through the pregnancy and beyond.

I took some photo’s and got some from my friend Ellie who also competed and kicked ass – check them out here in a slideshow.

This morning at CrossFit we did one of the workouts from the regionals, WOD4. It was intense…

The actual workout for the competition was for a team of 4 to complete

For time:
250 Chest to bar pull-ups
250 Kettlebell swings (24/16kg)
250 Double-unders
250 Overhead squats (95/65lbs)

Since there weren’t enough of us for two teams of four at the 6am class though, we did it in three teams of two. I gotta say, whenever we do team workouts I always feel sorry for whoever gets me… especially if they have even one competitive bone in their body…. I mean who wants the pregnant chic on their team? Show of hands….yeah! Thought so!

Anyway, this morning poor Justin was the unfortunate one who got me on his team, and given the intensity of this workout I think we were both more than a little worried. Even though Roland had scaled it back to “only” 125 of each exercise and I could use bands for the pullups and lighter weights for the kettlebell swings and overhead squats.

So the workout started and we took turns at each exercise, working it up to 125 of each before moving on to the next one (i.e Justin did 15 pullups, then I did 15 etc all the way to 125). The pullups nearly killed me, even though I ended up using two bands, they were actually too strong for me and I was bouncing all over the place, but my wrists and forearms freaked out after the first 30 and started cramping and spasming. It’s an interesting feeling.

However we got through it and moved on to the kettlebell swings and the rest of the workout and much to the delight and surprise of everyone we finished first in just over 22 minutes. Granted I had a lot of concessions, but still…. I haven’t been able to stop smiling about it all morning. I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow and everything is a bit sore I will be cursing it, but for now I feel fantastic.

Roland took pics during the workout too so I coudl prove that not only am I preggers but also still working out… so here they are:

 Warming up with the kettlebells.

 Note to self: Gotta work on your facial expressions…

It was tiring but it was FUN. And I now have even MORE respect for the bad-ass athletes who did the full workout in the competition. Pregnant or not, it’s a really hard workout. But the high afterwards? There’s nothing like it….

Just when I was starting to feel like hitting the half-way mark in my pregnancy might mean even more scaling back on my fitness regime.. CrossFit came to the rescue. Again.

This morning was the finals of the (Baby) Elizabeth Challenge which we first did in March. It consists of 15 -12-9 of Squat Cleans (14kg) and dips.
 Left: A squat clean. Very tiring…

  Left: Dips
 

It doesn’t sound too bad at first, and since it’s been two months since we did the first one I had forgotten how wiped out you feel by the time the second round comes around… your legs are shaking and your arms are a bit wobbly.

The first time we did this workout I was roughly two and a half months pregnant, so I wasn’t really even showing yet and very few people even knew then that I was pregnant. My time for this workout was 8 minutes 47 seconds.

And I was STUFFED at the end, I remember having to take a lot of breaks in-between as well. 

Today was the finals where we repeated the workout with all the same weights and movements and my time was a whopping 4 minutes 13 seconds!! That’s less than half the time I did and I’m now five months pregnant! Woo hoo!

I can’t even begin to describe what a boost that has given my confidence. I was begining to feel a bit disheartened as the more pregnant I get the less CrossFit stuff I can do during class (such as handstand push-ups and sit-ups and box jumps etc) and the more scaled my workouts have become. It’s inevitable I know, but it’s still hard on the ego.

So to do a hard workout like this and have such a good result - I am over the moon. Also goes to show that not only is the second trimester much more kick-ass than the first one, but it IS possible to workout throughout your pregnancy and maintain fitness and strength.

If I had known at the beginning of the challenge I would actually improve my time rather than get ‘worse’ as I had thought, I would have entered the challenge properly. But for now it’s enough to know that I did what is a hard workout for most people, and I did it with a 20-week-old bun-in-the-oven and managed to beat some of the other crossfitters too.

Cause what’s a challenge without a little competition right?