Cardio Exercise During Pregnancy (Running, Walking, Swimming, and more)
Pregnancy Podcast
Vanessa Merten
4.5 • 970 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode takes a deep dive into cardio exercise during pregnancy, including walking, running, swimming, cycling, and more. Cardio is a broad category that includes any activity that raises your heart rate. During pregnancy, normal changes to your cardiovascular system mean your heart is working differently, which often raises questions about safety for you and your baby. Find out how pregnancy-related changes can affect cardio workouts. Learn how current guidelines define safe exercise, and why intensity matters more than the specific activity you choose. This episode also covers practical ways to gauge effort using heart rate or simple body cues, along with clear guidance on when to slow down or stop.
Full article and resources for this episode: https://pregnancypodcast.com/cardio/
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Find more evidence-based information on the Pregnancy Podcast website: https://pregnancypodcast.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the pregnancy podcast with Vanessa Merton. |
| 0:10.4 | Thank you for tuning into the pregnancy podcast. |
| 0:14.7 | In today's episode, we're talking about cardio exercise during pregnancy. |
| 0:20.0 | We will take a deep dive and include everything from |
| 0:24.0 | walking, running, swimming, cycling, and more. Cardio is a broad category that includes any activity |
| 0:31.6 | that raises your heart rate. And during pregnancy, you have normal changes to your cardiovascular system that mean that your heart works |
| 0:41.1 | differently. And that often raises questions about safety for you and your baby. Find out how |
| 0:47.6 | pregnancy-related changes can affect cardio workouts, learn how current guidelines define safe exercise, and why intensity matters more |
| 0:58.0 | than the specific activity that you choose, and I will cover practical ways to gauge effort |
| 1:04.6 | using heart rate or simple body cues along with clear guidance on when to slow down or stop. You can find the full article |
| 1:14.3 | and all of the resources for this episode at Pregnancy Podcast.com slash cardio. |
| 1:24.0 | One of my favorite things about producing this podcast is that I get to do the heavy lifting of all the research so you can get the information that you need distilled down in one short podcast episode. |
| 1:37.9 | As much as there is to learn during pregnancy, there is an episode of the pregnancy podcast waiting for you to press play |
| 1:46.3 | on every topic you can think of. Become a pregnancy podcast premium member to get an ad-free |
| 1:53.7 | experience and access every single episode. This includes hundreds of episodes with evidence-based information that you |
| 2:02.5 | won't find anywhere else. Let me save you the time and hassle of researching the evidence |
| 2:08.7 | and sorting through conflicting information. Join Pregnancy Podcast Premium at |
| 2:15.0 | Pregnancypodcast.com slash premium. |
| 2:19.6 | As the number one baby monitor brand in North America, VTech is trusted by millions of |
| 2:26.1 | families to deliver crystal clear HD video, reliable performance, strong night vision, |
| 2:32.2 | and convenient smartphone access. The VTech VM901 baby monitor |
| 2:39.0 | makes monitoring effortless whether your home or away. Check out the VM901 monitor at |
... |
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