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:
Hey Sarah... best of luck to you on #2!
I just read in my pregnancy book from kid#1 (one of the Dr. Sears' books) that research has shown that the baby's heartrate doesn't increase until Mom's heartrate gets above 150. So that, I think, is where my doctor's 140 max heartrate number is coming from... Keep it under 140 and you're keeping baby's heartrate from increasing at all.
However, no clue what exactly this 'research' was. Are we talking a study group of 20 or 2000? One study? Multiple studies? Athletes or coach potatoes or some cross-sectional representation of society (which would be heavily skewed towards coach potatoes). I don't know exactly what my max HR is, but I know I've hit close to 170 using the totally inaccurate method of counting pulse for 6 sec and multiplying by 10. I think a % of max makes a lot more sense.
Swimwolf, I loved your long-winded post! Feel free to add more. Let us know if you manage to swim all the way up to delivery!
Former Member
My theory (and I'm not a doctor, so take it with a grain of salt) is that you can't go by some arbitrary HR limit. It's much more important to know what YOUR body can do. For me, I'm not having a problem if I get my HR to 140-150 because I recover pretty quickly (i.e within a couple of minutes). But for others, even getting up to 120 could be a problem if they don't recover for a long time.
This is what I wonder about too. Max HR changes with fitness/activity levels. Over the years my AT tested as low as 150, and as high as 171. When it was 171, I could hit 120 without doing much of anything (resting HR in the 70's). At 150, I had to work harder to get to 120 (resting HR in the 50's). So when they throw the 120 out there, what are they looking for? Shouldn't it be a percent of AT?
We're still trying to conceive #2, and I just started in a masters program (instead of going at it on my own). My hope is to keep swimming with them for as long as I can once I do get pregnant.
Former Member
Well, I have one month to go, but I'm still swimming. I am actually considering doing doubles now because it's so hot and humid here and swimming is the only thing that makes my poor swollen ankles shrink back down to a reasonable size. :)
I've definitely slowed down a lot, but I'm doing about 2000-2500 per workout and still swimming all four strokes. My breaststroke is totally out of whack now. I'm having a hard time doing a whip kick... I seem to be gravitating to a frog kick.
It takes me a while to warm up, but then I'm usually able to do one or two short main sets.
For example, this morning was...
600 mixed stroke warm up
6 x 100 free on 1:50
4 x 200 free on 3:30
1 x 200 IM easy
Still doing flip turns, however ungainly they look... the baby seems to fall right to sleep when I swim, especially with the flip turns.
I'm also finding that I'm having a harder time breathing (especially on my back), so I'm trying not to get my heart rate up too high. I had a bit of a scare the other day when I was doing a 100IM set. On my 4th 100, I started my backstroke and was a little out of breath and then suddenly my airway just froze. I couldn't breathe for about 15 seconds (which seemed like forever). So my solution has been to limit backstroke to no more than 50yds at a time, and to only do it when my HR is still relatively low.
I'm hoping to swim right up until the end... we'll see how it goes.
