Healthy Activity

3. Curl-ups

The exercises in this section are intended to help strengthen your abdominal muscles. Strong abdominal muscles will help you to be more comfortable now and will help you during labour and delivery.

Before you do any abdominal exercises, you need to check for abdominal muscle separation. This separation occurs at the central connecting seam of the abdominal muscles. It may be slight or very noticeable, and it happens to about one of every three pregnant women. Ask a friend, your partner, doctor, or prenatal educator to help you check this out.

Click here to check if you have an abdominal muscle separation.

To do the following exercises later in pregnancy, you may want to put pillows under your upper back so you are lying on a slant. This will allow you to continue with your abdominal exercises and place less strain on your trunk.

To begin, this is how to do the curl-ups that will strengthen your abdominal muscles.

This is how to do the diagonal curl-ups - an exercise that strengthens your diagonal abdominal muscles.

CAUTION: Avoid this exercise if you have an abdominal muscle separation.