Around this time my baby should weigh about 1 pound and she should be about 8 inches long. I just read that also around this time she is going to start gaining some serious weight and that it should actually double over the next 4 weeks. I definitely feel the weight difference when I exercise; yesterday during a run around the neighborhood I ended up going back home just to change my shoes because my calves were getting unbearably tight. Changing my shoes made a huge difference, the calf pain was gone immediately and I was able to maintain a more steady pace while running. Basically I just switched from my minimalist shoes back to my thicker ones with more support. Going swimming sounds great but I don't have access to a pool and I don't know that it's worth joining a gym just for that purpose since I currently work at a gym.
Today I did some weight lifting, although I was lacking motivation for it. I've been focusing a lot on keeping my joints strong. For most exercises I prefer free weights however there are 4 machines that I think are great for helping stabilize the knees and hips. Knee extensions, which I do one leg at a time so that the stronger leg can't cheat for the weaker one, Knee curls, again one leg at a time. Those machines are not very "functional" because they isolate that one muscle group and in life we are never just using one muscle group at a time we use multiple ones. But I'm thinking that as I'm gaining weight and my body is releasing the hormone relaxin it's even more important to make sure that my joints are stable. Relaxin is the hormone that causes the joints in a pregnant woman to become more loose. This is helpful during the birth process however it can make the exercising pregnant woman more prone to injury, for example through overstretching. I also like the Hip Abduction and Adduction machines, great for strengthening not only the hips but again the muscles that stabilize the medial and lateral portion of the knees. I'm also a big fan of the Chin up and Tricep dip assisting machine, for those of us that are not strong enough (yet) to lift our own body weight. So anyway I did those today plus barbell squats and have been pretty consistently doing those machines once a week, although I think 2 to 3 times a week would be best.
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