Health and life stages · Pregnancy and postpartum
Week nine and week thirty are not the same problem.
Most apps have one tick box for pregnancy. This one knows how far along you are, and what you have earned back since the birth.
What changes, and when
A tick box cannot do this. A date can.
A pregnancy at nine weeks and a pregnancy at thirty weeks are one tick box on a form and two completely different training problems. So are a birth three weeks ago and a birth four months ago. VeraForma works from the date, not the box.
- First trimesterWeeks 1 to 13, the ordinary obstetric split. Your programme carries on, with the pregnancy rules already applied.
- From week 14Second trimester, weeks 14 to 27. More comes off the list, including work on your back.
- From week 28Third trimester. The list is shortest here and the programme stops pushing for more.
- After the birthYour tummy-gap checks start, on a schedule, and nothing comes back until a check says it can.
- From twelve weeksThe earliest point running is even considered, and only after the readiness checks pass.
Braced holds come out for the whole pregnancy — planks, wall sits and the rest stay off the list while the box is ticked, rather than being offered with a warning attached.
The rule behind all of it
Every rule here takes something away.
This is the part worth understanding, because it is the opposite of how most software works. Every pregnancy and postpartum rule in VeraForma can only remove an exercise or hold a phase back. None of them can give you something another rule has taken away.
So when two rules disagree, the more careful one wins, automatically, without anybody having to notice. A rule that would allow something from week 14 does not override the rule that keeps it off for the whole pregnancy.
There are exactly two things you can earn back, and both need a passed check. Curl-ups and the work that bends your spine under load come back after a clean tummy-gap check. Landings and impact come back after the return-to-running checks pass. Nothing else is given back, and neither is given back by the calendar alone.
The checks
Two questions, asked properly.
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The tummy-gap check
A simple self-check you log, on a schedule that starts after the birth and spaces itself out — it will not let you log two in the same fortnight, because a gap does not change that fast and a reading taken too soon just makes you anxious.
You record it in finger-widths, which is how the guidance it follows describes it. While the gap is wide, the work that bends your spine under load stays off. When a check comes back clean, it comes back.
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The return-to-running check
A set of movements you try before any running is programmed, with a short list of things that mean you did not pass — and the honest part is that a test you completed with one of those symptoms is a failed test, not a passed one.
Pass them, and impact work comes back. Do not, and the app keeps running off the programme and does not nag you about it.
Where the twelve weeks comes from, and the honest state of it. The earliest-return figure follows Goom, Donnelly & Brockwell, Returning to running postnatal — guidelines for medical, health and fitness professionals managing this population, March 2019, the first guideline written on the question. Two things you should know about it: its authors graded it Level 4, the weakest tier, because it rests on expert consensus rather than studies in this population — and a 2024 international Delphi consensus, which included two of the same authors, reached a more individualised position, describing a minimum three-week rest and then a gradual, individual timeline. VeraForma takes the more cautious of the two. We would rather hold something back a few weeks too long than give it back a week too early, and your own clinician’s instruction overrides the app either way. (The 2019 guideline is named in the app’s own source; the 2024 consensus and the Level 4 grading were read from secondary summaries on 14 October 2026, not from the papers themselves.)
Before anything else
Your midwife and your doctor come first.
VeraForma is coaching, not medicine. It does not diagnose, treat or cure anything, and nothing on this page is a clearance to exercise. Get that from the people looking after you, and then log what they told you — the app follows their instruction everywhere, on a free account.
All of this is free. The movement screen, the stage rules, the checks and the programme that comes out of them do not need a subscription.
