Fitness
Listening to your body and the importance of exercise during pregnancy and beyond
“I always feel so much better after a workout,” 38-year-old Melanie Luu says.
Melanie is 32 weeks pregnant at the time of our chat. She’s been exercising at boutique gym, Sassi Fit, in inner-city Melbourne for several years, including throughout her pregnancy.
But training during pregnancy and after giving birth can be difficult to navigate.
Some personal trainers and instructors don’t modify exercises or their classes for perinatal people as they would for someone recovering from injury.
Some new parents may be unaware of particular movements to avoid, held back by morning sickness or fatigue, or daunted by the prospect of injuring themselves.
Cultural expectations about losing weight after giving birth, led by a plethora of “fitspo” Instagram content, can also encourage some mothers to fixate on “getting their pre-baby bodies back” as soon as possible.
Rosie Purdue is a physiotherapist who specialises in pelvic floor and continence physiotherapy.
She has more than a decade of experience and is the founder of Hatched House, which provides allied health services for women.
Rosie says that it’s not surprising how delicate the return to exercise after giving birth can be, given the myriad of changes that happen to the body.
“Anatomical and physiological changes affect every single organ system in the body. At no other time in life does this happen,” she explains.
“During pregnancy, the mother’s weight and posture changes, and there is a significant stretch of the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles.”
Rosie says that after giving birth, “internally the placenta organ detaches from the uterus. This wound takes a minimum of 4-6 weeks to heal, regardless of how the baby is born [i.e. via caesarean or vaginally].”
Exercise encouraged during pregnancy
However, it’s partly for these reasons that maintaining exercise during pregnancy and beyond can be very beneficial for the parent’s health.
For those with uncomplicated pregnancies, exercise is actually encouraged. Among its many advantages, exercise can improve mood, sleep, sense of well-being and, of course, fitness levels.
Exercise during pregnancy has additional benefits including a decreased risk of developing gestational diabetes, hypertension, and pre-eclampsia.
It’s why the World Health Organisation recommends those with uncomplicated pregnancies participate in at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week.
A recent University of Wollongong study surveyed nearly 700 women on their attitudes and beliefs around exercise during pregnancy.
While most believed that “regular exercise during pregnancy is safe” for themselves and their baby (94 per cent), many reported receiving “no or little advice from their healthcare provider”.
This meant that they were unaware of or not meeting the World Health Organisation recommendations about exercising during pregnancy.
“If you stay physically active and strong during your pregnancy, then your recovery is likely to be faster and you’re more likely to return to exercise and sport,” Rosie says.
Melanie agrees.
“As a first-time mum, I’ve enjoyed modified exercises during my pregnancy and have learnt what is safe for me,” she says.
While Melanie finds the idea of returning to exercise after giving birth “a little bit daunting”, she’s aware that she can, and should, ease back into it.
She finds the social aspect of group classes help keep her motivated.
Adapting and modifying workouts key to pregnancy fitness
Melanie’s trainer, Caroline Molloy, owned Sassi Fit for seven years.
Caroline aims to help women achieve their health and fitness goals in a non-judgemental environment, specialising in pre- and post-natal exercise.
She was inspired to pivot from her career as a teacher to start the business after having her own troubling experiences when exercising while pregnant and after giving birth.
“There was a big lack of understanding on the pressure that has already been on the pelvic floor,” Caroline explains.
For her, and many other new parents, this meant that trainers were prescribing exercises that added to that pressure. This had the potential to cause pain, discomfort, and even further damage.
“Some weren’t really understanding what it felt like to have just had a baby and then be asked to do a burpee or jump around with weights.”
Rosie notes that important modifications to exercise during pregnancy can include “making sure you can hold a conversation while you’re working out and avoiding exercising on your back during the later stages [of pregnancy].”
Shrugging off the pressure and taking it slow
Unrealistic pressure to return to pre-pregnancy weight and appearance is also something that Caroline has seen encouraged by some gyms and studios and repeated by clients.
This can include encouraging impractical fitness goals too soon after giving birth, and body-shaming or framing anyone who doesn’t achieve them as “lazy”.
“They’re often feeling that pressure of ‘fitspo’ stuff on Instagram,” Caroline says.
“Things like ‘I did this, and I’ve had five children – this is how I look, and you should be the same.’”
Caroline says it’s understandable that being bombarded with these messages may mean some new parents need reminding that no two journeys back to exercise will look the same.
“Everything that you can do is not the same as what someone else can do,” she says.
She recommends that perinatal people looking for a personal trainer, or even attending a gym class, ask if their trainers have qualifications in pre- and post-natal training.
“Even fitness instructors, I think, should be qualified in that, particularly when they’re running a group class,” she says.
Rosie recommends new parents “take it slow and listen to your body.”
“For the first six weeks try doing your pelvic floor exercises, stretching and building up to walk comfortably for 30 minutes,” she explains.
“When your baby is around six weeks, get a check-up with a pelvic health physio. They can guide your strength and fitness program for the next six weeks, before returning to higher intensity exercise.
“If something doesn’t feel right, then get professional help.”
ABC Sport is partnering with Siren Sport to elevate the coverage of Australian women in sport.
Danielle Croci is a policy officer and freelance writer and podcaster specialising in women’s sport.
Fitness
Business News Today: Stock and Share Market News, Economy and Finance News, Sensex, Nifty, Global Market, NSE, BSE Live IPO News – Moneycontrol.com
While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.
Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.
We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.
For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.
We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.
www.ucl.ac.uk | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Follow UCL News on Bluesky and LinkedIn
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
Subject of Research:
Article Title:
News Publication Date:
Web References:
References:
Image Credits:
Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from Virginia Tech’s 95-89 Loss to Wake Forest
Western Washington braces for wind, rain and hazardous Cascade travel through Thursday
‘Not a hiding place’: Ogden police lauded for role in catching Nevada, Wisconsin murder suspects
W.Va. lawmakers push through multiple bills as Saturday deadline nears
Wyoming Coaches Pick the Best of 1A & 2A Boys Basketball in 2026
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
EXCLUSIVE: ICE says El Paso detention facility will stay open under new contractor after $1.2B deal scrapped
Von der Leyen ‘acting outside of competence,’ Araud tells Euronews
Wheelchair curler Steve Emt’s path from drunk driver to three-time Paralympian
Map: 2.3-Magnitude Earthquake Reported North of New York City
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
-
Wisconsin1 week agoSetting sail on iceboats across a frozen lake in Wisconsin
-
Massachusetts1 week agoMassachusetts man awaits word from family in Iran after attacks
-
Pennsylvania6 days agoPa. man found guilty of raping teen girl who he took to Mexico
-
Florida1 week agoFlorida man rescued after being stuck in shoulder-deep mud for days
-
Detroit, MI5 days agoU.S. Postal Service could run out of money within a year
-
Miami, FL6 days agoCity of Miami celebrates reopening of Flagler Street as part of beautification project
-
Sports6 days agoKeith Olbermann under fire for calling Lou Holtz a ‘scumbag’ after legendary coach’s death
-
Virginia7 days agoGiants will hold 2026 training camp in West Virginia