Pregnancy Doesn’t Make You a Better Athlete – It Can Make Exercise Harder
Serena Williams may have been pregnant when she won the Australian Open, so New Scientist asked if her pregnancy helped – as if her previous 38 major titles were fluke. But this is a myth that has been in the air for a while, so let’s talk about how pregnancy actually affects the athlete’s body.
Duringpregnancy , a woman’s bodyproduces more blood . Similar changes occur to athletes during training. The more blood, the more oxygen to the muscles. Does this mean pregnancy improves performance?
It’s a shame that there is no evidence to support this idea. The experience of pregnant athletes is usually the opposite. I got pregnant while preparing for the marathon and found that although I continued to exercise, my fitness began to wane. You usually train faster; I was getting slower. My long run pace dropped from 10:30 a mile to 12 minutes, and I was always the last person to finish group training. In my fifth month of pregnancy, I thought that I was lucky to overcome the marathon in the six hours that the track opened. Average pace: 13:09.
Why do we slow down even with more blood volume? Probably because the extra blood and oxygen of the pregnant woman does not activate the muscles; it goes to the child . It seems that people worried about the increase in blood volume and oxygen consumption have forgotten this important fact. And that makes Serena Williams’ recent title all the more impressive: if she were eight weeks pregnant, she may have been dealing with reduced stamina. And she won anyway.