Fitness Editor Blog

So the count-down to my maternity leave has begun as I come into my 35th week of pregnancy. Only one more week to go and then I will be keeping very close to home for all fitness-related activities just-in-case baby decides to make an early appearance. I have had a chat with him though and I’m hoping he honours my wishes to bake just a LITTLE longer…

This week’s exercise routine was marred a little by this ongoing cough I have left-over from my chest infection. The infection has gone and the antibiotics are finished but apparently the cough didn’t get the memo that the infection had left the building. It’s now squatting illegally in my chest making for some very unpleasant and noisy coughing fits that draw looks ranging from horror to irritation to “OMG is she going to cough the baby out?”

It is also a very violent cough which leaves me shaking sometimes and has been nothing short of a full-body workout for the past 2 weeks. I have also spent the GDP of a small African country on tissues in the last 2 weeks.. and my poor tattered nose is ready to admit defeat and head for the hills.

HOWEVER, I have still been exercising. And despite what the nay-sayers may say, it’s been the only thing that has helped me feel better inbetween the bouts of coughing. And since I am no longer on antibiotics it is considered ‘safe’. Mentally though it has done wonders for me.

I only got back into it with Preggi Bellies on Tuesday and although I was initially a bit nervous because I know how harsh the cough sounds and I didn’t want to be barking in the corner and upsetting all the other ladies. But they’re all quite awesome and much to my surprise I didn’t cough much during the class at all. And I slept better than night than I have in ages – thanks mostly to the cardio loosening up my chest and all those ‘little- pulses‘ and lunges exhausting my body. 

It’s amazing that after just one week of not exercising at all how much harder I found everything. It’s not like taking a week off when you’re not pregnant, that sometimes helps you come back stronger. But when you’re preggers there is SO much that happens inside your body in a week that you can really feel it when you take a break and go back. Ouch!

I took some pics before class to show y’all what Preggi Bellies is all about as well and Sonja the instructor took some during the class too.

Some of the other pregnant chics at Preggi Bellies.

The instructor/slave driver (but we love her) Sonja on the floor in the middle.

Spot the ginger…. some of us doing dips. Its not so easy with a built-in weight belt and as the belly gets bigger the  legs have to spread wider.

Lunges… no-one loves them but if our bums all go back to ‘normal’ or better, it will all be worth it….

The plank position with a ball… and we all know how good my balance is on a GOOD day

Anyhoo, I felt SO unbelievably good after that class I suddenyl felt less like a sick pregnant woman and more like a normal person who jsut happened to have a big belly and a bad cough – if that makes sense….speaking of which, check out this pic of my belly hubby took at home before class. I only ever see my belly from the top, so I was shocked to see just HOW FREAKING BIG it is from the side. I look like I’m trying (unsuccessfully) to smuggle a watermelon…

So after the high of that class I decided to carry on and hit CrossFit the next morning. It was quite a workoutand looked like this:

Hang power snatch (skill) 3-3-3 – I didn’t push the weights and only made it up to 18kg. It’s kinda hard swinging the bar around this watermelon-smuggling outfit.

and the workout was the ‘Baseline’ workout that you do when you sign up to test your fitness. When I first joined I did it in jsut over 7 minutes. Then a few months later I did it again and did it in just over 5 minutes… THIS time? SIGH, jsut over 8 minutes and modified with knees-to-hips instead of sit-ups and push-ups on my knees.

As quickly as possible, perform:

• 500m Row
• 40 Squats
• 30 Sit ups
• 20 Push ups
• 10 Pull ups

Then on Thursday I saw the CrossFit workout for the day was a demanding team workout and I didn’t think anyone would want the coughing pregnant chic on their team so I waddled over to Virgin Active instead and did a CrossFit Mom workout there which was actually really tiring too  -and drew a lot of strange looks!

It consisted of:

• 250m row
• 20 squats
• 250 row
• 20 push-ups
• 250 row
• 20 pull-ups
• 250 row
• 20 knees-to-hips

Then this morning I headed back to CrossFit and did this workout:

Skill set: 

Front squat best of 5 - I felt strong like bull today and managed to do a whopping 38kg. Not too shabby!

Workout: 5 rounds with 2 min time cap on each

• 10 Pull ups – I used a green band
• 15 Push ups – on my knees
• 20 Sit ups – I skipped this one cause my hands were already taking strain from the pull-ups and I would have had to do knees-to-hips on the bar
• 20 Squats- only one I didn’t modify!
  

So that was my week. I m still coughing like a MoFo but the doctor has now said there IS a cough mixture I can safely use (Expigen apparently) so I’m hoping that helps. SOMETHING has to help!

Anyhoo, enjoy Braai Day tomorrow peeps and think of me as you crack some chilled wine or a cold beer… in fact, have one for me – I INSIST!

What’s grumpier than a sick pregnant woman with a sore coccyx? If you find out you might wanna tell my husband because I doubt he believes there is ANYTHING more grumpy! I can handle the coccyx pain when I’m sitting and I am honestly enjoying being pregnant, but the cold I had last week quicky morphed into a really ugly chest infection and left me with a deep scratchy voice and a rather alarming death-rattle kind of cough.

And of course all this means no exercise. And no exercise under ANY circumstances puts me in a grumpy mood. I even caught myself staring wistfully at a slow jogger as I drove home yesterday… poor man looked very alarmed at being stared at so longingly by a knocked-up chic with a big red nose and pile of tissues on the seat next to her. Fair enough.

As such I have no updates on my fitness regime while I’m preggers. Hopefully I will be able to get back to it next week without coughing up a lung.

In the meantime however the pregnancy is progressing well, I am now 34 weeks and according to our latest scan baby is 2.3kg with 7cm long feet. I don’t really have a point of reference on this but that sounds quite big to me for feet belonging to a baby. Maybe it mean’s he’ll be a super-fast runner! Or a kick-ass crossfitter? Either way this poor dude is destined for some future that’s full of sports and activity whether he likes it or not… he already has a lovely jogger pram I can’t wait to try out along the Blouberg beachfront and plans are afoot to get one of those baby seats for the back of our bikes when he’s old enough to sit in one without his head bobbing all over the place.

Anyhoo, I am going to try hit the gym this weekend for some swimming and see how that goes. Hopefully by Monday I will be strong enough to get back to CrossFit and Preggi Bellies on Tuesday. It’s only been a week that I haven’t been to either but it feels like forever.

Have an awesome weekend peeps!

PS Hubby and I got some gorgeous pics taken with maternity and baby photographer Sally Mellish of SoMe Photography, if any of you are looking for a photographer to do a shoot for you who will make you feel TOTALLY at ease and make you look less like a beached whale than you feel then I recommend her. Although she has developed a fascination with my belly button which has not popped yet… I can’t see it from way up here but she assures me it looks like a sad face

Apologies for the lack of a post last week, it was a busy one topped off by a visit to a chiropractor and the passing of my dearest granny a few weeks short of her 91st birthday. Emotions are rife during pregnancy so bad news is never a welcome addition to the daily roller-coaster ride. But she is happier now, of this I have no doubt. And she will be watching my exercise antics with the greatest of amusement too.

As such I only managed one Preggi Bellies class last week which I wasn’t too happy about as I am now a gut-busting eight months pregnant and I’ve realised how few classes I have left before the little gremlin pops forth. I am enjoying them so much I will be really sad when they come to an end as not only do I feel physically better after each class, but the camaraderie with the other women has also been really great.

Perhaps I have just been lucky enough to fall into a group where the women are all really nice and we have all clicked quite well, but I also think that the TYPE of woman who goes to a Preggi Bellies class is my kind of woman – one who is putting her health and interests of her baby first by realising how important exercise is during pregnancy.

Unfortunately however I have developed a super-painful coccyx (tailbone) pain which made a few of the exercises a bit impossible such as sitting on the ball. Not to worry though, Sonja is a very inventive instructor and promptly produced a step for me to work out on while the others used the ball. I’m not sure if I had an easier or a harder workout, but either way I left feeling happily exhausted and once again had a brilliant night’s sleep.

I’ve never really been a fan of exercising in the evening/afternoons because I prefer to get it all over with in the morning so my afternoons are free – I used to do running in the afternoons and I’m all for exercising twice a day, but I find if I don’t exercise in the morning there is BOUND to be some excuse or reason that will pop up to stop evening exercise too. And then that’s a whole day wasted. But I gotta say, it’s growing on me… the nights after Preggi Bellies classes are the only ones I sleep really well.

My coccyx has hindered a lot of my exercise, although it’s most painful when I sit down and stand up, it’s put paid to much time on the spinning bike or rowing machine and squatting is also not such a pleasant experience. I broke it four years ago but the cause of the pain is apparently because the baby is lying ‘funny’.

I’ve asked nicely but he’s refusing to budge. It would appear he has his mother’s stubbornness. Yay for me.

So on Friday I left the remaining shred of dignity I had at the door and went to the chiropractor to work on my bum. He poked and prodded and put some lovely vibrating machine on my back but it’s still quite sore. I am going back again so hopefully a few sessions will sort it out, I really cannot see the rest of my pregnancy being much fun if I have to hold my breath every time I stand up because it’s so painful.

The good news is that he said I can carry on exercising though because it’s not likely to make it any worse, or better. Which it doesn’t, most of the time I don’t feel it unless I’m sitting down. And sitting down defeats the purpose of most exercise anyway!

So last week at CrossFit I did a lot of hang power cleans, push presses and pull-ups. I am still using the bar rather than dumbbells and I’ve perfected the art of bringing the bar up around my belly which still makes the instructors smile. I can only assume it looks nothing short of ridiculous but at least I still feel like I’m doing something.

This morning was the finals of the Fran Challenge which started eight weeks ago (read my blog post about it here) and consists of:

21 -15 -9 of thrusters and pull-ups

Eight weeks ago I did the beginners part because I didn’t think I would still be going at this stage, and because pull-ups were starting to get a bit hard with my increasing weight. Little did I know how that weight was to increase in two months. Yowzers!

Spot me – I’m the one with the BEEG pink belly

Anyhoo, much to my surprise and delight I managed to shave three minutes off my time – eight weeks ago I completed the workout in 10:37 and today I did it in 7:37. So not bad overall. I am quite impressed I still have some strength left.

Hubby and I also started Hypnobirthing classes last week, all in the name of an easy, relaxed and natural childbirth. So here’s hoping all this residual fitness will stand me in good stead for that too!

Anyhoo, time to hit the chiropractor again.

And to buy myself a donut cushion if that doesn’t work.

I tried that last week and was nothing short of mortified when the kind woman at Dischem shouted out to her assistant across the shop that “Theeeees lady needs a donut – like for when you have HAEMORRHOIDS…. no, no…. HAEMORRHOIDS….”.

You could barely see my dignity as it fled in a flurry of dust that would make the Roadrunner proud.

Baby, I hope you appreciate what Mama is going through here…..