The Made 2 Move Podcast · Hannah Breal - Physical Therapist

The Truth About Exercise During Pregnancy & Postpartum with Dr. Margie Davenport

March 23, 2026·59 min·3 clips

Dr. Margie Davenport says the 140-bpm pregnancy limit “disappeared in about 1992.”

So, are we past the 20-pound limit? The host and Dr. Margie Davenport talk through how pregnancy exercise advice has lagged behind what active women were already doing. The short answer sounds like yes, with some careful context. Davenport says higher-intensity exercise, including HIIT-style training, has been studied in the work she describes and appears to be well tolerated during pregnancy. The guidelines have not caught up yet, but she expects better guidance on the top end soon. She also points out that older recommendations stayed below 90 percent of maximal effort, even though many women were already doing high-intensity intervals before pregnancy and wanted to keep going. That is the practical tension here. The episode is not telling everyone to push harder. It is asking whether movement got treated as dangerous too quickly. Lifting gets the same kind of reset. Davenport says the 20-pound limit should have been left behind long ago, while noting that Canada never had it and that the issue mainly came from American guidance. The host keeps bringing it back to real life. If someone loved lifting or intervals before pregnancy, the job is to guide them well, not scare them into stopping. Then the conversation turns to miscarriage risk, which lands heavily. The host names how painful that fear can be, especially when women start wondering whether exercise caused something they could not control. That shame is the thing the episode pushes against. Davenport starts with a 2007 study that linked high-intensity, high-volume exercise with higher miscarriage risk in a large group of women, then quickly says the study had issues the researchers acknowledged. The excerpt does not include the full answer, so the safest read is that the episode raises the fear and stigma around miscarriage rather than settling the whole question here. The ending stays close to the body: this research touches women, babies, exercise, and everyday decisions.

As heard by us

A clear look at pregnancy exercise, postpartum return, and research that has not fully caught up yet.

The Made 2 Move Podcast takes on exercise during pregnancy, postpartum, and preconception, with Dr. Margie Davenport sorting newer research on lifting and HIIT through a more practical lens.

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Why you'd press play

If pregnancy exercise advice has you second-guessing every rep, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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