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Did you know that most babies are conceived in late fall/early winter? That means that this review couldn’t come at a better time as Fall is just around the corner and we’re all looking forward to lower temps and much more snuggling. Before I get into this fitness app review, I wanted to give full disclosure that I am a Nancy Anderson disciple. Thanks to her wisdom not only do I not pee myself when I sprint on the treadmill, but you can also barely see my c-section scar. So, with that out of the way here’s my review.
Move Your Bump is an online fitness platform designed for women trying to conceive, pregnant, and postpartum. It hopes to serve women as they make their whole journey through motherhood. With that in mind the workouts are made to help you get in the best shape possible before you get pregnant, help you maintain your activity as your body changes while pregnant, and ease you back into fitness as you recover from birth. A subscription will run you about $180 for a year or $30 monthly (they usually run a Free Trial of at least 7 days) . With your subscription you get workouts, meal plans, and core health resources.
Now let’s talk about moving your bump because that’s the part of the platform that I think most people will be interested in initially. The workouts range from bump-friendly circuits, yoga, strength training, pilates, and even kickboxing. These workouts are just challenging enough to keep you motivated but they’re also full of modifications to help you continue being active as you get further along in your pregnancy. Throughout the workouts the trainers remind you and show you how to properly engage your core, and give you exercises to help you get ready for delivery. I think this aspect is especially helpful for Moms-to-be that want to remain active but are unsure of a safe way to do it. There are also weekly meal plans created with a pregnant Mama in mind.
My personal favorite aspect of Move Your Bump is the 4th trimester resources, which you can use at any point postpartum, not just in the initial 3 months following delivery. As Nancy says “once postpartum, always postpartum.” Here you’re introduced to all the core rehab and pelvic floor recovery exercises. These are slow methodical movements that you do over the course of 12 weeks to get your core firing the way it used to (sometimes even better than) before you got pregnant. They also make sure to address your pelvic floor which regardless of delivery, vaginal or abdominal will have been impacted to some degree from the simple weight of having a baby sitting on it for several months. Speaking of abdominal births, as a c-section mother herself, Nancy Anderson made sure that Move Your Bump also contained tons of resources for the abdominal birth mother to help her recover from surgery, including ways to manipulate the incision site, things to do to diminish scarring and minimize internal adhesions. I found this invaluable in the early months of my recovery from my own abdominal birth and believe the subscription is worth it for these core, pelvic floor, and abdominal recovery aspects alone!
Once you’ve completed the Ab Rehab program as it’s dubbed in the platform you progress to your first postpartum workouts which ease you back into fitness without putting too much demand (initially) on your core or pelvic floor. You also receive meal plans designed to give new Moms everything they need to recover from birth while still shedding the baby gains. As a nutritionist Nancy Anderson includes a full shopping list for each week as well as the recipes to go with each meal. I personally didn’t make any of the meals while I was using the using the platform because my eating style was already very similar to what she prescribes but I think weekly meal plans would be very helpful for anyone who feels a little lost on nutrition, or just has pretty extensive Mom brain.
Finally, the trying to conceive aspect of Move Your Bump. I wanted to talk about this portion last because unless you find yourself having some difficulty in this department or you’re one of those super planners you probably won’t even think you need to do anything different until you conceive. I think this portion of the app is excellent if you feel like you want to get in good shape before you start trying but you also want to make sure you’re doing it in a way that won’t be depleting which can sometimes happen when you hit the gym too hard too fast. They cover proper nutrition for optimal hormone levels and even begin discussing proper core activation (because it’s honestly never too early to start thinking about your core).
So, I love the content! I love Nancy’s mission. I will use what she’s taught me for the whole rest of my life but I kind of hated the iOS app experience. To me it feels clunky and not intuitive. It didn’t always progress to the portion of the program I was supposed to be doing next, so I had to remember where I had left off. Things like the meal plans are just PDFs uploaded to the app, not a more interactive format. And if you’re a stats kind of gal there’s no integration with things like HealthKit on iPhone. It’s basically just the website in app form. Because of this most of the time I would just sign in on my computer instead. You can also view the site through channel apps for Roku, FireTV, and AppleTV. However, they do have something going for them that a lot of other fitness platforms don’t and that’s experts that you can reach out to when you have questions about form or when you’re struggling with movements or if you find that you’re not making progress. You can submit a video of yourself doing the movement and they’ll respond with an explanation and even a demonstration if necessary. This is pretty clutch when it comes to recovering from something like diastasis recti which can manifest itself in so many different ways in different women (it can even look different in the same woman from one birth to the next). It helped me a lot when I noticed that my abs were starting to overlap a tiny bit on top (you know me I’m an overachiever, so I closed my gap a little too well).
Overall, I would recommend this app to any woman considering becoming pregnant that wants extra resources when it comes to prenatal fitness and nutrition. If you’re happy with your current routine and don’t suspect that you’ll want to change it while pregnant than it’s definitely worth, the subscription to just use it for the postpartum period. So, I give this app two enthusiastic thumbs up!
Let me know in the comments if you have any additional questions and let me know if you like these kinds of reviews and I’ll keep doing them.
Remember to engage your core,
