I've been a competitive swimmer now for 18 years (makes me feel old just to say it) and I'm pregnant with my first child. I keep reading that you don't have to modify your swimming workouts when you're pregnant, but in those same websites, I see things like "Try doing *** stroke to eliminate the strain of torso rotation" so I know they haven't the slightest clue about competitive swimming or real training.
So my question is, does anyone have any good resource for how hard you can push yourself swimming while pregnant? And don't tell me to ask my doctor because I'm guessing she knows even less about swimming than "babycenter.com". My primary concern is with becoming slightly hypoxic while swimming (during flip turns and underwater pull outs). I often come up a little breathless, but am okay within a stroke or two. If I weren't pregnant, I wouldn't think anything about this, but it's hard to know if that's "bad" for the little one.
Any thoughts or direction would be greatly appreciated.:drown:
I swam through 2 pregnancies, the first just recreationally (a mile a day, didn't belong to Masters yet) and the second I trained and competed through. I did normal workouts with flip turns during the 2nd pregnancy, although I was annoyed by having to take more bathroom breaks (and couldn't do dolphin kick during fly, so I pulled the fly). In the last trimester, I couldn't stop very long between sets or the baby would stretch out an arm or leg causing me pain when stretching during the strokes (I'd have to quit and get out). My teammates laughed at me because every week I got lower in the water. After she was born, I had the best flutter kick of my life just from keeping myself off the bottom of the pool those last months. In the first trimester I started races in the water because my teammates were freaked out and insisted "No blocks", but I swam so slowly that I went back to the blocks. At close to 8 months the doctor told me to stop going off the blocks (I complied). At 2 weeks past the due date, I volunteered to go off the blocks again (the answer was no!). In the 2nd trimester I was low on iron. When they increased my iron pills, I got faster even though I got bigger. I was fortunate to have progressive doctors who worked well with athletes, although I did still worry about doing something that would hurt the baby. However, I have a theory that pumping that blood through there during workouts helped her because she had a knot in her cord when she was born yet she weighed 10 pounds! The only place I felt normal during both pregnancies was in the water. Each pregnancy was different. The first baby moved during all of my swims and seemed to match my stroke timing. The second one seemed to roll up in a ball and get out of the way (except for fly). This is all just personal experience, every pregnancy is so different, and of course you have to check with your doctor.
I swam through 2 pregnancies, the first just recreationally (a mile a day, didn't belong to Masters yet) and the second I trained and competed through. I did normal workouts with flip turns during the 2nd pregnancy, although I was annoyed by having to take more bathroom breaks (and couldn't do dolphin kick during fly, so I pulled the fly). In the last trimester, I couldn't stop very long between sets or the baby would stretch out an arm or leg causing me pain when stretching during the strokes (I'd have to quit and get out). My teammates laughed at me because every week I got lower in the water. After she was born, I had the best flutter kick of my life just from keeping myself off the bottom of the pool those last months. In the first trimester I started races in the water because my teammates were freaked out and insisted "No blocks", but I swam so slowly that I went back to the blocks. At close to 8 months the doctor told me to stop going off the blocks (I complied). At 2 weeks past the due date, I volunteered to go off the blocks again (the answer was no!). In the 2nd trimester I was low on iron. When they increased my iron pills, I got faster even though I got bigger. I was fortunate to have progressive doctors who worked well with athletes, although I did still worry about doing something that would hurt the baby. However, I have a theory that pumping that blood through there during workouts helped her because she had a knot in her cord when she was born yet she weighed 10 pounds! The only place I felt normal during both pregnancies was in the water. Each pregnancy was different. The first baby moved during all of my swims and seemed to match my stroke timing. The second one seemed to roll up in a ball and get out of the way (except for fly). This is all just personal experience, every pregnancy is so different, and of course you have to check with your doctor.
