"I needed to somehow make this pregnancy different, to retain my discipline and love for working out."
When Kristin Auger got pregnant with her second child, she did not want to step away from CrossFit. “I scoured the Internet, looking for some assurance that I could keep CrossFitting safely throughout my pregnancy and I came up empty,” Auger recalls.
When Auger found CrossFit in 2010, she hated the gym. “I would go grudgingly because I was a fat-skinny single mom dating a hot guy with a six-pack and I was super self-conscious of my donut butt and chicken wing arms,” she says. “I wanted to firm them up.”
She arrived at CrossFit North Vancouver with her then-boyfriend, Corey. They quickly became drawn to the community of sweat and inspiration.
Auger became pregnant three months after she married Corey. She wanted to continue to CrossFit through her pregnancy. “I was proud of the strength gains I made since starting CrossFit the year before,” she explains. “I knew I wasn’t great at pregnancy. During my first pregnancy I felt like crap the whole time and gained 75 pounds. I needed to somehow make this pregnancy different, to retain my discipline and love for working out.”
Her doctor was not as enthusiastic. “Nobody’s done the long term studies yet on CrossFit and pregnancy. Medical experts will err on the side of caution,” Auger says. “My doctor told me to stay away from all heavy weights, maintain an ability to converse while exercising and refrain from any kind of position I could fall from.”
She modified this advice slightly, figuring she knew her body well. She lifted at 60 to 70 percent of her regular volume. “When I did Fight Gone Bad in my second trimester, I went in with a rep plan for each station and once I met that rep, I would rest. That way, I didn’t feel compelled to push harder than I should,” Auger says.
Auger found she couldn’t avoid challenging positions where she might fall. “I didn’t refrain from working out in any position where I could fall, because that eliminates 90 percent of CrossFit movements,” she says.
She did convert a few – box jumps became step-ups. She listened, and let her body guide her.
She had a number of expectations that turned out to be untrue. “I assumed the third trimester would be the most difficult to WOD through,” she says.
She discovered the toughest trimester was actually the first. “My cardio slid down the tube almost immediately. Running, a strength of mine, became extremely difficult way before I had any visible belly. Wall balls, which I could do ad nauseam pre-pregnancy, became a one-at-a-time kind of affair,” Auger recalls.
Standard movements were difficult right away.
Auger found CrossFit itself became even more challenging. “CrossFit, minus the competitive spirit and the all out effort, isn’t quite as fun. Its not quite the exhilarating sport when you're not trying to PR and push harder and faster all the time,” she says.
But it did keep her healthy. Instead of a 75-pound weight gain, she only put on 22 pounds of healthy weight. “It primed me to bounce back almost immediately post-partum, even though I’m well into my 30s,” Auger says.
One of the great discoveries of her pregnancy was that she could row. “I set a 2,000-meter PR on the rower at eight-and-a-half months pregnant without really trying,” Auger says.
Rowing was the only thing she could do as her due date approached, she says. “I rowed 5K two days before I gave birth.”
Auger blogged about her experience for Today's Parent magazine [http://www.todaysparent.com/author/kristin-auger] and gathered a following, resulting in numerous questions from other expectant women who wanted to continue to CrossFit during pregnancy.“I’m not an expert, and each woman has to decide what exercises still work for her and which don’t feel quite right.”
Post-partum, she has been cautious of sit-ups and encourages many women to do the same – as they tend to exacerbate abdominal separation. Her love of all things CrossFit strengthened throughout her pregnancy.
“I’m sure that my dedication to modified CrossFit in my pregnancy is the main reason I’m hitting PRs on almost everything right now, at six months post-partum.”