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Room to Room Fitness

Exercise Your Way
Around the House

By Charlene Torkelson, Fitness Expert

During your pregnancy, you'll notice so many changes in your body, your mood and your thoughts. One of those changes may be to your exercise routine. You become tired and time consumed with all the details of the future birth and tired – just physically tired – often too tired to get all of the exercise you're used to.

What can you do to consolidate your time, your energy and your space to get in the fitness routine you know you should do without all the fuss? It's called "Room to Room" fitness. This enables you to exercise throughout your day as you move from room to room doing other things. All the little bits of exercise add up to one great fitness routine that keeps you physically and mentally on top of your daily schedule.

Consult your doctor before beginning any exercise routine.

As you lie in bed contemplating getting up, begin with a deep breathing exercise. Inhale slowly, hold and then exhale slowly. Do this deep breathing exercise three to four times as you rest on your back in bed. Before placing your feet on the floor, do two stretching exercises. First, flex your feet. You may flex both feet at the same time or each foot separately. This flex is wonderful for the calf cramps that are so common during pregnancy. As you do this flex, relax your knees, allowing the ankles to comfortably flex the feet back. For the second stretch, allow one hand to grasp the back of the other hand and press up toward the ceiling with both arms gently rolling the shoulders up and down and both arms straight up. Both these stretches should feel great and really get your day off to a wonderful start.

As you move to the bathroom, use the vanity as a support for a few plies. Plies are the knee bends ballet dancers do to get their legs in such great shape. Hold on to the vanity to support yourself, and place your feet about shoulder-width apart, toes pointed slightly outward. Slowly bend your knees, lowering your body up and down. The toes pointed outward will allow your knees to bend without hitting the sink in front of you. The vanity is a perfect height to allow you support without forcing you to bend over at the waist. Your torso should be upright – you can look yourself straight in the eye in the mirror during your bends. This position is called a second position. Your feet should be slightly apart. With this position, you may keep your feet flat on the ground while lowering to a comfortable bend – no need to go down farther than the knees and bottom, forming a straight-across line. You may want to start with only five plies and then move up to 10 or even 20. You will be working your thigh muscles and strengthening the area around your knees.

Want to see more?

• Get on the Ball: Bouncing into Prenatal Fitness
• Gentle Postpartum Fitness: You Can Start Right Away
• Off the Wall Fitness: Your Home Is All the Support You Need!
• Talk about it!

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