[W298]Weight Lifting During Pregnancy

As unlikely as that may sound, it really did happen, I was there.
A few years ago when I was the photographer at what was then one of the largest gold gyms in asia if not the world, I had the pleasure of meeting a massive gentleman who worked in the capacity of a janitor at Golds Gym.
As massive as he was, this gentleman had a way of pulling his aura in real close, so unless you bumped into him, most times you even wouldn't notice he was even there. But he was the talk of the gym because he was consistently winning regional body building awards.
Weirdly enough, none of the other guys in the gym could remember this so called janitor ever having a strenuous workout. Sure, he was moving weights around the gym all the time, but all of us were doing that and wonders of wonders none of the rest of us were winning anything.
The talk even said that the body building janitor was on steroids and into illegal weight gain drugs. The more he won, is the strong the rumours grew. I was shooting ( with a camera ) many of the top models in the gym by then so I was more or less at the gym daily. It was easily four plus weeks before I thought I caught him working out one night.
Curious as I was, in my head I had already asked him for his secret.
"You are winning regional contests but rarely ever work out", I began.
I got a weird look from him and he asked why I mistakenly thought that he never worked out. I kind of stuttered and said that his lack of any visible workout routine were fueling rumours around the gym about steroid and drug use. Without blinking an eyelid, he coolly said, "Drugs don't build muscle and that at best some very few drugs might enhance the duration of the workout."
So, I waited patiently for him to tell me his story, but he just turned and went to pick up another stray weight on the rubber floor. It took me another month before I could corner him again on the topic.
Ahh ha, I thought as a month later I spied him in the middle of a preacher curl workout. In a rather nonchalant way, I unhurriedly, wandered over and by incredible coincidence happened to be right there in front of him as his reps were finished. To my surprise, without pausing he continued the conversation from the month before.
He was talking, but not quite about what I and the rest of the gym really wanted to know, so I tried to gently steer in the direction of -- how did he do it?
I couldn't help myself, I smiled as I thought he was finally going to tell me something earthshaking. Something so profound that the rest of the guys in the gym would just marvel. With earth-shattering stillness, he simply said the difference was in the interval. Oh yes, I thought to myself your interval is like once every 30 days. Aloud, I said patiently, is that so?
Quietly, he then revealed that the difference was in the workout interval.
He works out, monitors his heart rate and never works out again until his heart rate is back at "rest mode". If that takes 2 days or 3 or 4 he doesn't care. He simply waits. When his heart rate is back at "rest", he intensely works out a different muscle set.
Does this work for everyone? I can't say, but when I left Asia, this unassuming body building janitor was continuing to un-reluctantly body slam contest after contest to the near complete befuddlement of his competition training in the exact same gym. Gold's gym in this particular Asian country produces more body builder champions than most of the other Gyms combined.
If you are not a body builder and haven't left a few gallons of sweat in a local gym already this story is probably a total non-event. The "No pain no gain" mantra might have been one of those cutesy phrases that you have merely heard. The real point being made here is so many of us who exercise and have been doing it for years can get so sure that we know, we absolutely know the right way to do a particular thing. So, ohhhhhh no, we are not going to change what we are doing.
Perhaps if you are doing the same thing you have always been doing and planning on doing more of that "same thing", the change that you are looking for is simply never going to happen. A real change in results, most times requires a real change in the methodology.