When it Doesn’t Quite Go To (Birth) Plan – Re-Connecting With ‘You’

Chatting to a new postnatal personal training client yesterday about the particularly traumatic, & frankly pretty crappy, birth she had experienced, I was reminded yet again of how little of this whole pregnancy & postnatal ‘thing’ we actually have any control over.

DH has taken 2 kids & a dog for long walk, leaving me to my laptop & my pot of Redbush… bless him. So I’m indulging in some Sunday afternoon empathy for the sisterhood.

I had to change some of the wording of my advertising for my pregnancy & postnatal personal training business after I had my first child. You see I used to tell potential clients how easy their birth would be if they just followed the correct pregnancy exercise regime. How quickly they would pop out their baby with their finely tuned pelvic floor muscles & how swiftly they would zing back to energetic gorgeousness.

Then I had a go at that birth thing. And boy did I feel short-changed. In the weeks that followed I figured that it was just so unfair. I did everything right! I had eaten, relaxed & exercised by the book, so how come I didn’t get my perfect birth?

The lesson came shortly afterwards when my visiting midwife put it in perspective & stopped me feeling quite so sorry for myself. ‘You think most women can still hold a squat position after 24 hours labour?’ she asked. She reminded me of my aerobic fitness & stamina, of my core & lower body strength & of how my nutritional knowledge had enabled me to nourish my severely hemorrhaged self so quickly back to vitality.

That was 4.5 years ago & since then I had another baby (not exactly a walk in the park either) & my team & I have trained hundreds of pregnant & postnatal women. Many have had much more traumatic or physically damaging birth experiences than mine. Just as many of them had fantastic, unassisted & empowering experiences.

But the lesson Mother Nature & my Midwife taught me, & that I now try to convey to my clients, is that whilst there is an awful lot about labour & birth that really is in the lap of the Gods… there is also quite a lot we can do to help.

By looking after our physical well-being, we give our bodies the best possible chance of being able to cope with whatever is thrown at us, & of recovering our strength afterwards. By eating for optimum health, exercising correctly & having confidence & respect for our body, we allow it to do (& bounce back from) incredible things.

I work with postnatal personal training clients on ‘re-connecting’, especially when they have preferred to ‘cut off’ from certain body parts when faced with incontinence, flab or stretch marks. Your body’s ability to recover & look fabulous is still there, but again, it needs some help in the form of very specific exercise & great nutrition.  A flat tummy & restored body confidence unfortunately doesn’t ‘just happen’ for most of us!

I do hope you will leave a comment & let me know what you think! Birth is a very big deal, & I know only too well how many women continue to be affected by their experiences (good & bad) many years later. This post is not supposed to be about who has a ‘perfect birth’ & who doesn’t, but rather how a little self love & physical TLC can go a very long way, whatever the experience. Please share your thoughts!

Postnatal Exercise? Like You Have Any Time…!

My post today is intended to simply spread a little mummy-camaraderie, empathy &, hopefully motivation & encouragement!

At the mere mention of ‘postnatal exercise’, all mums will say they HAVEN’T GOT ANY BLOODY TIME. Believe me, I know. I’ve got 2 pre-schoolers, a business & a household to run, not to mention a very energetic dog…

But it is often assumed that my postnatal exercise regime, being a personal trainer & all, consists of regular hour-plus long structured workouts. Now I’m a little odd I admit in that I actually like working out. Nevertheless, I honestly can’t remember the last time I did one of those workouts.

That’ll be because I haven’t got any bloody time…

So I’m hoping you might get a couple of ideas from my ‘exercise routine’ that help you inject a little momentum into yours.

If I get to walk the dog sans kids, I put my trainers on & run. If I’m walking her with kids, they think I’m hilarious doing my walking lunges, or stopping to do some pull ups from a bar. We have races, I carry them on my back & run around… you get the idea.

If you wait for an hour ‘gap’ to ‘do your workout’, guess what? You will NEVER get that hour gap. Result: no exercise at all. Feel a bit *failed* & a bit rubbish. Result: eat biscuits.

I’ve got 2 suggestions on where you go from this obvious truth – that mums have no time -  both with a very positive outcome.

1. You can be disciplined with yourself & your other commitments, & schedule that hour. It’s your entitlement & you totally deserve to spend some time on it. Everybody is motivated differently, & it may help you to get changed into some ‘proper’ workout gear & do an exercise DVD you enjoy, or go to the gym , or to a class. If it’s in your diary, however hectic that diary might be, then you will find make the time.

2. So you’re looking at option 1 & shaking your head, ‘Ain’t gonna happen’. An hour? Plus travel &/or shower time? Forget it.

In which case, my suggestion is to do what I do & just take what you can get. By that I mean 15 minutes. 25 (even better). 5 minutes even. Use the ideas in the interval workout post, & simply DO any combination of lunges, squats, press-ups, a minute’s plank (come on, you’ve got one minute).

Do some core activation (learn how in this post) & pelvic floor exercises while you cook tea or do a jigsaw with the kids. Use tidy-up time to do some serious squatting in perfect posture everytime you pick something up. When you lift your little one, do so with your core fully activated & do some squats or raise her above your head in a shoulder press. Next time you’re in the park, grab the next railing & do some pull ups (your baby / kids will think you’re doing it purely for their entertainment). Don’t watch them run around – join in.

Get your heart rate going & work big muscle groups. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that to do some real good.

The key is to stop THINKING about doing some exercise, & just DO some. Just start. If DH gets home early or someone offers you a half hour break, grab your trainers & get outside – it doesn’t matter what you look like or how long you’ve got… I promise you’ll feel better afterwards.

When you’ve got a minute let me know how you fit exercise into your day! Do you MAKE it happen, or do you never seem to quite find the time?

Is Your Pregnancy or Postnatal Personal Trainer Any Good?

How are you supposed to know if your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer in London or Surrey actually knows what they’re doing?!?

Are you a mum who uses a ‘general’ personal trainer, boot-camp or gym instructor who may be giving  you inappropriate or ineffective advice?

I have just completed another few days of back-to-back Mummy Tummy Masterclasses, & have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my knowledge so that pregnant women & mums can exercise more safely & effectively.

But the women I meet on these sessions (some of whom have, or have had, personal trainers) are often surprised to hear that certain exercises will make diastasis recti (split abdominals) WORSE… but these exercises have been included in their personal training or gym programme.

Does your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer encourage you to spend long workouts on cardio machines (treadmill, bike, cross trainer) at steady speeds? Does your pregnancy or postnatal personal training programme really address the postural shifts of pregnancy & mothering? Are you wasting your time with small muscle group exercise like bicep curls?

If so, you’re not getting the best advice & won’t get the results you’re after! I shall cover qualifications & credentials in a different post, but why not do a quick check on your programme to make sure that what you’re doing (& what you’re paying for!) with your pregnancy or postnatal personal trainer or gym instructor is actually going to WORK.

• Forget the fat burning zone! IE long sessions of steady cardio. The most effective way to lose postnatal fat & build lean muscle mass is to INTERVAL TRAIN. You need to be constantly surprising & working your body by changing intensity, speed & duration of your workout.
• Pregnancy & mothering (feeding, lifting… & cuddling!) put us in a permanently hunched posture, shortening & tightening the muscles of the chest & front of the shoulders, whilst stretching & weakening the upper back. Strengthening exercises should concentrate more on working the upper back (IE rowing, or pulling type movements), than the chest (pushing movements). Aim for a ratio of 3:1 upper back work: chest. The upper back needs strengthening & the front needs stretching to ‘even you out’. Push-ups are great exercises, but need to balanced with upright rows, pull ups & the dumb waiter.

For the Dumb Waiter, keep shoulder blades relaxed & down, then move hands out to the side, keeping elbows in & squeezing shoulder blades together.

• Any crunch, sit-up or jack-knife movement will make diastasis recti (the gaping of the abdominal muscles experienced by up to two thirds of pregnant women) WORSE. Core work is absolutely vital during pregnancy & afterwards, & should concentrate on activation of the TVA & pelvicfloor muscles. You need to work the rectus muscles (the split ones) in a linear, not gaping direction. A plank is great, a crunch is not!

• For maximum efficiency, core strength & stability concentrate on large muscle group exercises using body weight. Examples are squats, lunges, pull-ups or planks. Or use multi-tasking exercises such as squats with a shoulder press or upright row with a resistance band. Standing there doing a bicep curl is boring, inefficient & won’t burn any fat!
• Your CORE should be involved in all these exercises, not just the specifically abdominal exercises. Again, multi-task your exercises, it’s what we’re supposed to be good at, & it’s realistic for busy mums!
• Are you getting expert instruction on dealing with your  symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) or back ache caused by postural & hormonal changes or imbalances?

For general safe pregnancy exercise guidelines see here, but if you’d like anything clarified or explained further, please just leave a comment here or contact me – I want to DE-mystify pregnancy & postnatal personal training & exercise so please let me know what you’d like more on!

Lessons From A Personal Training Client

I had coffee today with a friend who is also an old postnatal personal training client (well she’s not old. But then she’s not really postnatal anymore either). We sat right at the back of the coffee shop facing out so we could people-watch with impunity. Actually that’s mummy-&-baby-watch.

Since our postnatal personal training days Sue has adopted all sorts of Wendy-isms… She infuriates her poor husband with ‘But Wendy says…’ whenever he dares to offer some opinion on the virtues of a food or exercise regime, she mutters ‘nobody ever got fat eating brazil nuts’ to herself as she chomps on her omega-filled snacks, & always stands up straight, mindful of  the dreaded ‘buggy bottom’ when she’s pushing one of her 3 lovely kids around.

Sue is a typical client & a typical mum. She never has any time. We met during her lunch-break from the office, & by the time I’ve posted this she will have collected, fed, watered, cuddled & played & put her brood to bed.

But her attitude to exercise is now so positive. If she looks in the mirror & feels a little wobbly, she’ll tell herself  ‘Well, it’s not going to go away by me staring at it’ & will do a set of lunges, squats or press ups on the bedroom floor. Even if she’s only got 5 minutes, she knows that the only way most of us mums manage to exercise on most days, is to just fit it in when we can.

So today’s quote is from my dear friend Sue, who looked over at the other mums & quipped, ‘Well we’ve all got time to sit here having a coffee haven’t we? So we can find time to burn off some bloody fat’.

Charmingly put Sue. As always. X

Postnatal Personal Training Secrets: The Truth About Diets!

I was asked by a new postnatal personal training client today who wants to drop some weight: ‘Will I have to go on a diet?’ Then she added: ‘I seem to have spent most of my adult life on a diet, but the weight always goes back on…’

Which is why, IMHO, you should never go on one in the first place!

Here’s a postnatal personal training secret for you, with my compliments: Don’t Diet!

The best thing you can do to for your body shape nutritionally after having a baby (or at any time), is NOT to count calories or pick a ‘diet’, but to simply start to ‘EAT CLEAN’.

Make it a permanent change in the way you eat, not something you do or ‘go on’ for a few days or weeks.

Avoid processed foods & keep your food as close to its natural source as possible. By that I mean, if the original (natural) source of whatever you’re about to eat is un-identifiable , don’t eat it!

By the same token, if you can’t pronounce the ingredients list on the label… don’t eat the food!

White, refined grains such as white rice, white bread, & anything baked using refined flour are full of empty calories, which make you fat. They will also clog up your digestive system & may cause bloating… none of which is going to do much to lose the mummy tummy.

Switch to wholegrains for a lower GI & extra fibre, along with drinking plenty of water & herbal teas. This will help to keep your digestive system working efficiently & reduce bloating.

‘Diets’ by definition, always come to an end, & then you’re back to square one, whether they ‘worked’ or not.

I have this theory: if any of the ‘diets’ we’re told to go on actually worked, there’d only be one book. But there’s thousands. There is absolutely nothing remotely ‘magic’ about cabbage, or grapefruit, or any other wonder ingredient that we’re advised to eat exclusively for a set amount of time.

If you eat significantly fewer calories, you’ll lose weight. If you’re only eating a very limited selection of foods or food groups, you will by definition eat fewer calories (out of boredom if nothing else). The resultant weight loss doesn’t mean that a particular diet ‘worked’, it just means you ate less for a while, & lost some weight.

Diet ends… you go back to previous eating habits… the weight comes back. I’m not going to patronise anyone by listing the foods that make you fat.

This isn’t just about postnatal personal training, but about any personal training… if you’re being ‘put on a diet’, get a new trainer!

Every time you eat foods you know you shouldn’t (if you want a flat tummy that is) then you’re laying down an extra layer of fat. And every time you exercise more intensively & effectively, or eat cleaner, you’re laying the foundation for a lean, flat tummy.

Simple!

Note, I didn’t say it was easy. Simple. But not always easy.

What’s your story? What’s your ‘going on a diet’ experience? What has or hasn’t worked for you? Do you have ongoing struggles, cravings or battles with your food and drink choices? Please share your stories!

Mums… Forget Your New Year’s Fitness Resolutions!

Instead of setting grand, but vague, New Years Fitness Resolutions like: ‘I’m going to exercise more’ ‘I will eat more heathily’ or ‘I’m going to lose weight’ -  get specific, get measurable, & start NOW!

Here’s 3 to be going along with…

• ‘I am going to exercise for at least 15 minutes, EVERY DAY’. You can do this one! Starting today! You really can. Follow the advice here And if you start today you’ll have done 4 1/2 hours of exercise before that vague ‘must do more exercise’ swims guiltily around your head along with the New Year’s hangover!
• ‘I am going to make a conscious effort to drink more water’. Start with a glass before every meal of the day. It reduces hunger pangs, you’ll eat smaller portions & that’s at least 3 extra glasses for starters! Plus replace one coffee or tea every day with a herbal or fruit tea.
• ‘I’m going to eat real food’. Doesn’t sound too hard does it? If the next thing you reach for comes with a label, check it. If you can’t pronounce the stuff on the label, don’t eat it. Can you identify the food’s original source? IE when you look at the food you’re about to eat, can you recognise a real food in there? Meat? Fish? A vegetable? A grain? If not, try to find something a farmer grew or reared, & not something that was made in a lab or a factory.

Try it… yes, even over Christmas!

Enjoy a glass of wine if you fancy (unless you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, in which case go for a ginger beer or tonic with lime) – but match every glass with a tumbler of water.

Enjoy a few chocolates if you fancy – but don’t eat the whole box (you KNOW it just makes you feel crap).

Just ENJOY! Have fun & don’t feel guilty about anything. Instead make choices that give you pleasure & make you happy.

Daily fresh air & exercise, enjoying ‘real’ food & staying hydrated & relatively sober should meet all of those criteria!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Festive Pelvic Floor Exercises!

Try your pelvic floor exercises in time to Christmas carols today! I’m liking ‘Little Donkey’ for the long slow ones, ‘Hark The Herald Angels’ for some quicker ones, & for the impressively toned pelvic floors & undercarriages amongst you, how about ‘Deck the Halls’ (I’m squinting a bit on the fa la la la…)

If you’ve forgotten how important these exercises are, as part of your pregnancy OR postnatal exercise routine, check out this previous post… or try skipping or trampolining for a quick reminder!

Keep squeezing ladies – these muscles matter!!

Diastasis Recti, Pregnancy Pelvic Girdle Pain, Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction, Rectus Distension… What Does It All Mean?

Diastasis Recti is one of the causes of your mummy tummy, Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction means you can’t get out the car comfortably when pregnant… and then there’s the acronyms for all these pregnancy & postnatal aches & pains: SPD, PSD, PGP, DR, RD. You need a copy of Gray’s Anatomy just to give a name to your sore joints & back ache once you’re pregnant!

Confused? You’re not alone. A few new clients lately have been feeling a little flummoxed by some of the terms being used for whatever it is they’re suffering from…  sometimes midwives, antenatal teachers, doctors, personal trainers or your best friend, don’t use the same language.

So I’ve done a mini glossary of the ones you’re likely to come across or suffer from. Hope it helps, & if you have any others you’d like to know about, do ask!

Diastasis Recti, Rectus Diastasis or Rectus Distension all refer to a very common separation of the rectus muscles at the front of your tummy during pregnancy. I post frequently on this condition & here you can find some instructions on how to test for diastasis recti, which exercises are recommended & which ones you should avoid.

Diastasis Symphysis Pubis (DSP) is not the same as diastasis recti, it is an actual separation of the Symphysis Pubis Joint. This can only be confirmed by diagnostic imaging by a doctor or physiotherapist.

Pregnancy-Related Pelvic Girdle Pain (PGP) & Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (SPD) refer to the same thing.

Pelvic Girdle Pain is the term more used more nowadays, but both refer to pregnancy-associated pain, instability & dysfunction of the Symphysis Pubis Joint &/or the Sacro-Iliac Joint.

Pain may be a minor discomfort, necessitating some modification of movement… right up the scale to severe pain & disability. Make sure you consult a physiotherapist or professional trainer who specialises in this area, & don’t go to just any generic exercise class or instructor.

The joints affected are the ones at the front & back of the pelvis. You may feel pain over the front of the pubic bone at the front, across your tummy, or across one or both sides of your lower back, or down your legs.

You may feel a clicking or grinding in your pelvis & have difficulty walking, especially up or down stairs. This ’shearing’ movement (one leg in front of the other) or abduction (legs out to the sides) may also hurt, making getting in or out of a car, your bed, or any number of other everyday activities, painful.

Pregnancy-Related Pelvic Girdle Pain affects around 1 in 5 women, at varying degrees of severity. Around 7% of women continue to have problems postnatally.

In general:

You will be advised by your Midwife or doctor to avoid or adapt as many painful movements as possible. So avoid heavy lifting, go carefully & slowly up stairs; keep your knees together as mush as possible when getting on or out of the car; roll over onto your side to get out of bed…but many of these are part of life, & can’t realistically be avoided.

You can however help to alleviate pain with correctly prescribed core strengthening exercises.

The stability of your joints is affected by the pregnancy hormone, relaxin, but also by the strength of the muscles that hold them in place. Do NOT go to a generic class or instructor with PGP, they cannot be expected to accurately prescribe the correct exercises for you. But controlled, guided core strength & lower body resistance work will definitely help to strengthen & stabilise your joints, & reduce pain.

Let me know what else you need on these conditions – I know from my clients that they are  commonly diagnosed, but also often misunderstood pregnancy & postnatal considerations which affect the exercise you can comfortably undertake.

Goodbye Mummy Tummy -15-Minute Interval Training Workout For Busy Mums!

Every mum who attends one of my Mummy Tummy Masterclasses or starts postnatal personal training, says they need quick exercise solutions. None of us mums has the time (or the inclination ), to spend hours in the so–called ‘fat-burning’ zone of slow, steady cardio exercise. And what’s more it won’t get rid of your mummy tummy!

The lazy gym trainer’s mantra: ‘20 minutes on the bike, 20 minutes on the treadmill, stay in the FB zone, blah blah (while I stand here & watch MTV!)’ or run the same steady route, at the same speed week in week out – & your body simply gets used to it, you get bored,you reach a plateau of fat loss & motivation… and the mummy tummy stays put.

The good news is you don’t have to.

Interval training is the quickest, most effective way to burn the baby fat (actually, any type of fat… it really is all the same stuff!)

Here’s an example: Warm up running steady for a couple of minutes, run hard for one minute, reduce speed for two minutes, run hard for one minute, reduce speed two minutes, & then do it again, & again. That’s it – That’s intervals!

You need to keep ‘surprising’ your mummy tummy (in fact your whole mummy body) by making it work in short intensive bursts.

Here’s another variation: Start jogging gently for one minute (about 4 on a 1-10 scale of exertion, where 1 would be standing still & 10 would be as fast as you could run), increase it to level 8 for one minute, increase again to the level 9 for one minute, then run as fast as you can for up to one minute (level 10), reduce it back to 9 for one minute, reduce it again to to 8 for one minute again, reduce it to 7 for another minute. Like a pyramid with the most effort in the middle.

Go up the pyramid & down again for 10 to 12 minutes. This burns a lot of body fat & stimulates metabolism. Then you need to alternate this with resistance exercise.

You don’t need weights or equipment, the latest technology or fancy choreography. You just use ‘bodyweight’ exercises such as the ones below.

Resistance training builds muscle, & more muscle means you burn more calories & more body fat. Resistance training also keeps your metabolism high for hours after you’ve finished exercising. (So you’re still burning calories long after you got home & started making the kids’ tea!)

Here’s your first 15 minute workout to be going along with!

Warm up: run up & down the stairs a few times, do step-ups over the bottom 2-3 steps for 3 minutes, take the dog for a brisk walk or dance around manically with your kids for 5 minutes – just get your heart rate up!

Then do the pyramid described above –it doesn’t have to be running, you could run on the spot, or skip with a rope, air guitar with the kids, play something energetic on the Wii… It really doesn’t matter!

The point is to get some really intensive work into the space of about 8 minutes & to go up & down the scale of intensity.

Don’t rest! Now do 15 SQUATS, keeping your knees behind your toes, your back straight & your core strong. Push up through the outside of your feet & your heels (so you feel your butt work!). Breathe in as you squat down, & exhale & engage your core as you push up… pull that mummy tummy in!

Use your arms to keep heart rate up even more!

Don’t stop, straight onto LUNGES! It’s really important to keep your knees behind your toes & don’t lean forward into the lunge. Again breathe in as you bend your knees & lower, then breathe out, engage TVA & come up. Repeat 10 times on each leg.

A plank next: a great core exercise that really works the lower back as well (don’t try a full plank until you have mastered your TVA activation exercises & belly breathing). Lie on your front with your elbows bent to your sides. Tuck your toes under & push up onto your forearms, holding you body in a straight line. Keep TVA & PF activated & don’t forget to breathe! Your goal is to hold the position for 1 minute.

Still got some time left before the school run? Then do the whole thing again!

If you did all that in pretty quick succession, with good technique & correct TVA activation throughout – you just knocked the socks off an hour’s boring cardio in about 15 minutes – good eh?

And although there’s not a sit-up to be seen, every one of these exercises works your abs better than crunches ever will… Goodbye Mummy Tummy!

The Mummy Tummy… How Long Can you Blame Your Babies?!

That’s what women often ask when they get in touch or find out what I do for a living… ‘my youngest is 7… but I’m still blaming the mummy tummy (or jelly belly, muffin top, you get the idea) on my babies!’

‘Postnatal’ recovery… how long does the ‘postnatal’ (or postpartum if you’re reading this in the middle of my night) bit last?

Well in my experience (& my clients’), a correctly prescribed postnatal exercise programme will put your body back to where you want to be within a year of having your baby, including tackling the mummy tummy.

BUT… funnily enough… most women don’t actually have the guidance (or possibly the inclination) to really commit to a ‘correctly prescribed  postnatal exercise programme’ for the 12 months after their little miracle arrives.

(Can’t imagine why… anyone would think that first year was hard work, or tiring, or utterly overwhelming or something)

Anyway, point is, most don’t. Which means, that unless you are blessed with REALLY annoying (for the rest of us) genes, then that mummy tummy is going to be obscuring the waistband of your jeans for some months or years to come.

I have good news though! It’s never to late to start knocking those wobbly bits back into shape.

I can already hear your ‘I’m the exception to the rule!’ cries: ‘but my stomach muscles split!’ / ‘I’ve had 3 c-sections’ / ‘big bones’ or ‘my mother never lost hers either’.

Honest. Something can be done dear fellow knackered mum. Something CAN be done.

I’ve had mums at my Mummy Tummy Masterclass who are really VERY postnatal (17 years…  beat that anyone?), & who are benefitting now from learning how to engage their transverse abdominal muscles, knit those abs back together again, & then lose the fat that would have covered up all their hard work.

So the answer to ‘how long is my postnatal tummy actually postnatal?’

Until either your fairy godmother waves the washboard abs wand, or you give it some help.

If you live in London or Surrey, why not grab 3 or 4 slightly wobbly friends & book a Mummy Tummy Masterclass at your home? A whole world of strong mid sections, no back ache & bikini’s could be waiting for you!!

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