Pregnancy Fitness With CE Exam

Package components are as follows:

• Pregnancy Fitness text

• Continuing education exam (accessed online)

The pathway to a comfortable, safe, and confident pregnancy begins with Pregnancy Fitness. This practical guide delivers the information, exercises, and workouts your clients need to maintain personal fitness and enjoy the best possible experience in welcoming their new baby to the world.

Written by three experts in prenatal and postpartum fitness, pelvic floor exercise, and core restoration, Pregnancy Fitness covers all physical and physiological aspects of pregnancy, birth, and recovery so your clients can enjoy peace of mind throughout pregnancy and long after delivery.

This book provides complete need-to-know information about hormones, body and posture changes, and common pregnancy aches and pains. Critical information on diastasis recti and pelvic floor health will help you protect your clients from core dysfunction.

The book offers a variety of stretching, strengthening, and functional exercises and outlines their benefits, procedures, safety tips, and variations. These exercises will allow your clients to progress safely through pregnancy and be physically prepared for birth and optimal recovery. Sample workout programs are provided for each phase of pregnancy, including postpartum, so you can help clients establish and meet personal fitness goals with comfort and confidence—all while earning continuing education credits with the companion exam.

Learning Objectives

After reading the book and successfully completing the exam, you will be able to do the following:

• Explain the effects of pregnancy on the body and how you can use exercise to support the body in pregnancy and best prepare for labor and birth.

• List and describe the effects of the hormones that affect the body most profoundly during pregnancy.

• Describe the changes that occur in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as skeletal alignment, during pregnancy.

• Describe the importance of fitness training related to the specific needs of each trimester, birth, and the recovery period.

• List the four key components of the Core 4.

• Describe the professional skills of a pelvic floor physiotherapist.

• Describe the function of the pelvic floor, possible effects of pelvic floor dysfunction, and techniques to prevent pelvic floor dysfunction.

• Demonstrate proper technique for performing Kegel exercises.

• Describe the abdominal changes during pregnancy.

• Identify the locations of the transversus abdominis, multifidus, diaphragm, and pelvic floor and describe their functions.

• Define tensegrity.

• Describe fascia and its importance related to pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.

• Demonstrate upper and lower body stretches and release work.

• Demonstrate perineal massage.

• Explain the goal of core training during pregnancy, and demonstrate core breath and exercises for strengthening the core.

• Explain how pregnancy affects the posture of thhe upper body, shoulder girdle, and neck and demonstrate strength and endurance exercises for the upper body.

• Explain how pregnancy affects the lower body and demonstrate strength and endurance exercises for the lower body.

• Demonstrate functional movement exercises for labor, birth, and motherhood.

• List the risks and contraindications for exercise during pregnancy.

• Describe FITT guidelines for each trimester of pregnancy.

• Describe recommendations for postpartum recovery and retraining.

• Design a program for each trimester for a beginner exerciser, intermediate exerciser, and advanced exerciser.

• Design an exercise program to restore the core for a beginner exerciser, intermediate exerciser, and advanced exerciser.

The authors are three highly qualified women's health professionals who are passionate about helping women improve their prenatal and postnatal fitness. After years of training individuals and running successful independent businesses, they started Bellies Inc., a global company dedicated to helping educate and empower women in their pregnancies, births, and recoveries. They bring to this book both their shared interest of helping women understand prenatal and postnatal fitness and their unique professional experience.

Julia Di Paolo, Reg. PT, received her physiotherapy degree from the University of Ottawa in 1997. Her practice is focused on the preconception, prenatal, intrapartum (labor and delivery), and postpartum stages and on all types of pelvic floor dysfunction at any stage of a woman’s life. Over the years, Di Paolo has established herself as the go-to physiotherapist in Toronto for pelvic health and recovery from diastasis rectus abdominis (DRA).

Di Paolo teaches courses on diastasis rectus abdominis for personal trainers, allied health professionals, and pelvic health physiotherapists. She has presented on DRA and the pelvic floor at the conferences of the Association of Ontario Midwives, the Ontario Physiotherapy Association, canfitpro, and the Certified Personal Trainer Network (CPTN, formerly Canadian Personal Trainers Network).

Samantha Montpetit-Huynh received her fitness leadership certificate from Seneca College in 2002. She has been a personal trainer for over 15 years, focusing on pregnancy and postpartum fitness. She is also certified as a fitness for fertility specialist.

Montpetit-Huynh is known extensively in her field and has appeared on Breakfast Television, CTV News, Canada AM, CHCH, and Rogers Daytime. She was also the resident fitness expert on the Marilyn Denis Show, an award-winning lifestyle show seen across Canada, from 2013 to 2017. Samantha also helped to create the Today’s Parent Healthy Pregnancy Guide.

Kim Vopni holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Western Ontario and a postgraduate diploma in health and fitness from Simon Fraser University. She has more than 15 years of skilled experience and is certified as a personal trainer, prenatal and postnatal fitness consultant, and fitness for fertility specialist, and she is a hypopressive method instructor. Vopni is a passionate speaker, educator, and promoter of pelvic health and is known as the Vagina Coach.