Lately, thanks to the "Toomey case," the pairing of CrossFit and pregnancy has become a topic of discussion for many, even for people who had never had an opinion on it before.
So, thanks to the media exposure that the multiple-time CrossFit world champion rightly receives, even people who have not the faintest idea of what really goes on inside a woman's body during those nine months, watching her recent pre-birth videos, wrinkled their noses and thought: "whoa, that's a bit too much!"
But is it really too much? What do we know about what a pregnant woman can or can't do?
What do we know about the real dangers you face when doing certain exercises, or rather, can there be any real dangers at all?
Let's clear things up together, starting from a premise: taking Tia Toomey as an example to talk about what you can do during pregnancy is like discussing a car's road performance by using a race-spec Ferrari as the example; in other words, if the car you drive is a Honda Civic, no disrespect, the conversation can't be the same.
I'd say we ALL agree that she is an absolutely exceptional athlete with abilities that, at present, can only be attributed to her.
So, starting from that premise, the answer to the first question is implicit: it's undeniable that for us ordinary "Civics" carrying a baby bump, it's UNTHINKABLE and probably dangerous to handle those intensities, those loads and those volumes, but in all likelihood, for her they are lower percentages than those she's used to handling and in which she is absolutely comfortable.
On top of that, I personally want to stress that on social media we see one percent of her real training routine, so you can see how hard it is to know what precautions she took during this delicate period.
The only things I'm certain of are:
1 Only she can do those performances while pregnant
2 Being an athlete is her job, and that means that on her scale the weight of benefits vs. risks is absolutely different from ours
3 As a mother, I'm sure that even though it seems like "too much" to us, she put her daughter's safety at the center of her decisions.
But let's get back to talking about us SUPER-STRONG "Civics," who after all are pretty great machines: do we run risks by continuing to train with CrossFit despite our condition?
The answer is: if done consciously it's very unlikely, but in any case it's strictly subjective!
In fact, what we can and can't do depends on several factors, first of all what type of pregnancy I have.
Is it a normal pregnancy? Does it have complications? What fitness level are we starting from? How do I feel when I move? Etc, etc..
I could go on until tomorrow! In short, it's clear that you can't have rules that work for every woman. Now, understandably, you'll ask: "are there things that are, without a shadow of a doubt, not recommended during pregnancy?"
The answer is "yes, of course," but to find out what they are, you'll have to wait for the next chapter.
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