Monday, August 31, 2009

Ignorance in Health and Wellness- Pregnant Women

I was able to catch up with a guy I went to undergrad with and is currently finishing his masters. With both of our full time jobs and life, it had been a while since a meeting of the meatheads had happened. One of the many topics we discussed covered people who know nothing about personal training giving PT evaluations, but that individual is a whole other topic.

What I want to focus on is one of the prospective clients that his coworker received... a pregnant woman. Now there is a lot of areas with this particular client that could vary... meaning, the program that is written for this individual would need to be very individualized to what SHE can do without too much fatigue. ***I want to throw out a disclaimer--- I have only trained a handful of pregnant women and all of them were very good at communicating how they felt and my complete focus was maintenance of fitness and health and safety of the child and moms***

My buddy's coworker was supposed to take the client she was given through a workout that should focus on that indiviual's goals while taking into account their present physical condition. So she aced it right???? Let's see a recap of how the workout started...

(No warm-up)
Lat pulldowns- forget the front of the seat pushing on your belly.... ridiculous, oh and thanks for the warm up
Leg Press machine- great, lets put a pregnant women in a supine position and tell her to make sure her knees hit her chest... because that wouldn't cause any undue pressure on JR or cause any unneeded intra-abdominal pressure

Needless to say this "trainer's" workout ended here when a couple graduate assistants started listing the contraindications of just the first two exercises... baffling the "trainer"

Just when it couldn't get any worse .... WRONG, sigh.... a full time staff member (said individual who has no business evaluating any one) defended the "trainer" saying that she had been doing leg press all summer so she thought it would be ok... did I mention moron full time staffer is prego?

If you haven't punched the computer screen yet in rage, I want to recommend that if you or any one you care about is pregnant, please make sure that physical activity is monitored by someone that knows what they are doing. Weights and cardio is fine, if approved by doctor, but you should stay hydrated, never lay on your back, ask your doc questions about heart rate and body temp recommendations to stay under... pregnancy shouldn't stop you from working out, but you should take the basic steps to maintain what you can and grow your baby!

If any one would like help with a workout during pregnancy, email me and we can get you one. Also, check out Cassandra Forsythe's blog

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