The question that every pregnant crossfit woman asks: Can CrossFit® help us during pregnancy to cope with labor and delivery?
According to what reported in the CrossFit® training level 1 manual, CrossFit® predisposes athletes to every physical eventuality and prepares for the unknown and the unknowable.
As a woman and midwife I believe that birth represents exactly that; the path that the woman faces in the passage from single individual to dyad, first, and then two separate entities, is unknown.
Even if we are already mothers, the new pregnancy will still be different from the previous one and the birth will also be "unknown and unknowable"; in this regard, it is sufficient to think that to date we cannot accurately predict the moment in which the hormonal cascade leading to labor.
Every woman faces the birth path in a unique and unrepeatable way, but all report the experiential experience of the fear of not being up to the situation, of not being able to manage one's body, the pain, the sacrifice and the physical and metabolic effort required.
Raise your hand if you among us have not felt this way at least once at the box in front of the blackboard reading a particularly difficult WOD, of a RX load too high for us or in front of skills not yet ours.
The feeling of not being able to do it is absolutely acceptable.
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So what is the consideration?
If every time we face something unknown we do it with it spirit of pushing ourselves over the edge, to want face our weaknesses, di improve ourselves then we are using the CrossFit® mentality and we can make this our own and apply it to any context of everyday life and we can bring it into the delivery room.
With this background we can therefore coping with and managing the pain of labor of childbirth and give our all at the moment of the maximum expression of femininity.
In pregnancy our body not only requires one of us strong mentality but also a trained body; with the CrossFit® program you get the"Maximum possible adaptation to the 10 fitness modes" which are physiological functions of our organism.
In pregnancy, the respiratory capacity decreases since the uterus which increases in volume reduces the space of the rib cage, especially a at the end of gestation, dyspnea is physiological.
However, women trained with the CrossFit® program will have developed greater respiratory and cardiovascular resistance, useful for maternal and consequently fetal oxygenation.
La force, power, flexibility, balance, accuracy, coordination, stamina are undeniably useful characteristics in gestation first and in the role of mothers, later.
CrossFit® vs pregnancy and labor
The moment of greatest metabolic expenditure and maximum demand for Resilience of the woman, however, is certainly represented by labor and childbirth.
CrossFit® uses short and intense training sessions using compound movements, exactly what happens in the delivery room.
Labor does not trigger, in physiological cases, in a sudden and violent way but provides for an adaptation / warming phase that allows the organism to adapt.
La prodromal phase it is indeed un warm-up general during which the contractions are still irregular in morphology and duration.
This phase is followed by the dilating phase, now the contractile activity is more intense and painful, rhythmic and regular is the specific heating of what our WOD will be.
In fact, we are now learning the movements that our body requires of us to manage the pain of contraction which, like awave rises, reaches peak and then decreases.
Thanks to this phase the uterus has changed to make the fetus descend into the birth canal, down towards the waist.
Now the woman is ready to face the expulsive period: the wod of birth or childbirth.
Like a real workout, it is short and intense, requiring the maximum on a physical and mental level, concentration, power, force.
Constantly varied functional movements at high intensity ... and delivery!
Now more than mail, CrossFit® proves to be the great ally of birth.
The fundamental movement for childbirth
Lo squatting it is a “valid and essential movement, fundamental for the well-being of the individual, to improve elasticity and maintain functional independence”.
In my experience as a delivery room midwife I use the squat as much as possible to speed up the expulsive phase of labor and improve the compliance of the patient.
Women who are familiar with this exercise independently resort to this position and this happens because the squat is a natural movement, just like birth is.
Therefore, when the contraction arrives, the woman prepares to go down to the squat position, will push in squatting for the duration of the same, and then rise to an upright position rest until the next contraction.
It goes without saying that the greater the training of the woman, the better her performance and the shorter the duration of the expulsive phase: few valid thrusts.
Una crossfitter is mentally and physically trained to face "multiple, different, random physical challenges required for many sports that require excellent physical prowess" pregnancy, labor and childbirth require the closest to excellence and we can all prepare for this.
