Fitness for them no longer means quiet breathwork while sitting on a medicine ball. Plenty of pregnant women want to keep up their weightlifting, running, dance, boxing and Pilates routines through all three trimesters. Absent complications, doctors say, they should.

Even with a doctor’s approval, stigmas persist. Many women feel more comfortable working out at home instead of in public. New online platforms encourage fitness during and after pregnancy, while educating moms about how to prevent or heal postpartum conditions.

For decades, doctors mostly told pregnant women to take it easy, says Margie Davenport, an exercise physiologist and professor at the University of Alberta. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists first published fitness guidelines for expectant mothers in 1985—and it has since increased its recommended amount and intensity of exercise.

The latest ACOG guidelines, published in 2020, recommend 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise a day, five days a week, barring risk factors like hypertension or preeclampsia. These guidelines match those recommended to all healthy adults. Vigorous exercise, like running and HIIT workouts, is also generally safe through the third trimester, especially for women who were doing it before pregnancy, according to research co-authored by Davenport published in 2023.

“It’s about continuing and maintaining activity levels when the woman can and wants to,” Davenport says.

They feel like dancing

After Megan Roup launched her online fitness program for pregnant mothers—which she recorded while expecting her first baby in 2021—one recurring piece of feedback surprised her: Moms-to-be wanted more dance cardio classes.

Roup, who was a dancer for the Brooklyn Nets before becoming a fitness trainer, offers high-energy, choreographed classes on her app, the Sculpt Society.

“When I got pregnant, I knew that if cardio was still feeling good, I should still do it,” says Roup, who stayed with the routines through 40 weeks of pregnancy, with modifications. “I just didn’t realize how many other people wanted that, too.”

Lindsay Eddy, who works in fundraising in Boulder, Colo., learned she was expecting her second son three weeks into pandemic lockdown. She exercised at home during and after her pregnancy using the Bloom Method app. It includes pre- and postnatal-friendly barre, boxing, HIIT, cycling and yoga classes. Eddy ran marathons before having kids, and says using the program made her stronger than she was before her pregnancy.

“When I got pregnant with my first son in 2016, there was still a very big narrative that you were fragile when you were pregnant and had to do these very low-impact exercises to keep you and the baby safe,” Eddy says. Using the app, however, “I’d walk away and say, ‘Oh, I can feel that.’”

Women who exercise while pregnant face lower risks for complications like gestational diabetes, hypertension and preeclampsia, and decrease their chances of cesarean section and postpartum depression, says Lisa Chasan-Taber, professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Still, not even a quarter of pregnant American women meet the ACOG’s recommendations for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week.

“Historically, a lot of the narratives were fear-based: You’re going to pee yourself, your abs are going to split apart,” says Brooke Cates, founder of the Bloom Method and a certified personal trainer who specializes in pre- and postnatal exercise.

Factors to consider

While the rise of pregnancy-fitness platforms has made exercise more accessible and more challenging for expectant mothers, it also comes with risks. Many platforms don’t screen or adjust for risk factors. And not all instructors collaborate with a doctor or researcher or receive extensive prenatal training of their own, Davenport, the researcher, says.

Cates says she spends a lot of her time educating clients and her social-media followers about toxic fitness culture, and regularly comes across unrealistic and often unhealthy “before and after” images.

“We have to do a lot of re-education for women on our app who are learning from a pregnant influencer on TikTok,” says Cates, who works with a team of pre- and postnatal fitness trainers, pelvic-health professionals and nutritionists.

Hollie Grant, founder of pregnancy-fitness app the Bump Plan, says she deliberately avoids discussing weight loss, aesthetics or diet as part of her workout plan, which 60,000 people have signed up for since it launched in 2020. “We want our members to be the strongest they can be and not worry about body shape,” she says.

Mindy Withers, a mother of four in Crockett, Calif., thought she might never feel as strong as she did before having kids. But after her fourth child arrived in 2022, she downloaded Every Mother, a fitness app recommended by her midwife. The app focuses on core and pelvic-floor exercises to prevent and repair abdominal separation, where the space between the right and left abdominal muscles widens.

“The program totally fixed my abs, which I didn’t think was possible,” Withers says. “I thought I would never get my body back. But now I can move, chase my kids and outrun my boys if I need to.”

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