If you're having a normal pregnancy, staying active with workouts like walking, swimming, or light weight training can help you stay fit and make your pregnancy go more smoothly.

Being active during pregnancy is generally safe and helps most women feel better, stay fit, manage their weight, lower their chance of getting gestational diabetes (especially if they're overweight), and feel less stressed — so doctors often recommend it for healthy pregnancies.

If a woman keeps exercising at the same level she did before getting pregnant, she’s less likely to run into pregnancy-related health problems than if she cuts back on exercise.

We don't yet know the best way for pregnant women to exercise—how hard, how often, or what kind of support helps most—and we also need to understand if working physically while pregnant affects the mom and baby's health.

Some pregnant women did strength training during the middle and later parts of their pregnancy, and nothing bad happened — so it might be safe, but we don't know for sure yet.

For healthy pregnant women who aren't very active, doing structured exercise three times a week plus some coaching about staying active doesn't seem to help them gain less weight by the time they give birth, compared to just getting regular prenatal care.