Strength Training Expert Elizabeth Davies: The Postpartum Check Most Mothers Don’t Know They Need

0:00Zoe:At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead. With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Hey, it's me, Zoe. Welcome to this Motherkind Moment. The pressure to bounce back in motherhood can just be immense, can't it? So I'm so excited to bring you this week's moment clip, which is with fitness expert Elizabeth Davies. And we explore why exercise really should be an act of care for the person who you are and who you want to be, not something where we get to punish ourselves for how much we want to shrink down.

1:00Zoe:Elizabeth also offers so many, I think, just important reminders in this clip that we don't need to bounce back, that it's okay to prioritise rest over exercise, that motherhood is going to get in the way of exercise. That doesn't mean you're failing. It just means that you're living a realistic life. I really hope that this clip inspires you. I hope that it helps you take some pressure off yourself. Here it is.

1:28Zoe:I think so many mothers have had that same experience. The amount of classes that I've been to postpartum and I've not been asked, even are you postpartum? Have you had a pelvic floor check? Have you had your, I can't remember what it's called. What's the check where you put your fingers? Diastasis recti. That's right. I've never had that checked unless I'm in a specialist postpartum fitness class. So what did you, did you realize, okay, I need to go and get my pelvic floor checked. And can we go to our GP for that? Because it seems like it's still quite, you have to go private. And, you know, even then you don't know kind of what to book.

2:04Zoe:And it's still to me, and I work in this space, feels like a bit of a mystery. Yeah. The gold standard is going to be pelvic health physiotherapy. So there is a branch of physiotherapy that is dedicated to matters of pelvic floor health, just as if I had hurt my ankle skipping, I could have gone to see a musculoskeletal physio. For this issue, the right person to help me was a pelvic health physiotherapist, but I'd never heard of that. And it was only as I started my kind of online research mission that I found out about it. Your GP may be able to refer you, but it's one of those areas of healthcare where it's kind of a lot quicker if you can self-refer and pay privately.

2:52So that is one of the problems because of course, not everybody has the means to be able to do that. But that pelvic health physiotherapist will be able with your consent to examine your pelvic floor muscles, coach you on how to do isolated pelvic floor muscle squeezes, which is still the gold standard treatment for strengthening the muscles of the pelvic floor. They'll be able to check you for diastasis recti as well. and they'll be able to give you an individualized treatment plan. So for me, my thing is weightlifting. That's how I love to train. After my third baby, I had a fantastic functional assessment with my physio who actually checked my pelvic floor muscles whilst I was squatting and deadlifting because of course, life isn't done lying on your back on a kind of clinical plinth, is it?

3:45We need to kind of make sure that the way that we're assessing our patients is kind of reflective of their life and their training. So, you know, that was amazing for me to have that in 2019 after baby number three. And my return to exercise has been so smooth because I knew how to access that support and I could seek it out and I had the means to pay for it.

4:11Zoe:And if you were Elizabeth now with the knowledge, the empowerment and the kind of, you know, what you know now, and you were going to walk back into that circuits class, what would you say to that trainer? Would you be saying I'm postpartum? Because I think this is so, so many mothers experience this. Like what would you be saying and what would you do if you had that experience again? Yeah. So approaching this now, if I saw a skipping rope, any new activity that you're returning to postpartum, this is something I go through with all my clients, we're looking to see, have we kind of done the groundwork to expose our body, our muscles, all of our tissues to the demands of that activity we're about to do?

4:59So it's never to say that any movement is bad or off limits, it's really saying what is my readiness for that task. So looking at that circuit, I would have said, okay, skipping, that's an activity I haven't done for many years. It is going to require a lot of coordination for me to do that. It's a high impact, pretty high impact repetitive movement.

5:32If I was doing that with a client for the first time, I would start her off without the rope. I would just get her doing some bounds on the spot so that we can see, well, can she manage that? Because if she leaks just doing the little bounds without the whole thing of trying to get the rope over and coordinate the jump, then we can start there and we can get that leak free. And then we can build from there. So again, maybe not so feasible in a mainstream fitness setting, right? Which is why I was kind of thinking, well, this is bonkers. Like, you know, there are so many of us having babies and returning to gyms and there's no conversation.

6:12Would I have the confidence now to say to the instructor, I'm postpartum, I've not done skipping in a while, can I maybe set out that station and then explore it in my own time? I like to think that I would, but I don't know actually. I don't know if things have evolved that far that I would feel comfortable in a mainstream gym to have that. I still think we've probably got work to do. And it is perhaps easier if it's the professional, the person who is in the position of authority and power, who invites that conversation. And that's something I do as a coach, because I recognize it might not be comfortable for them to volunteer information.

7:02so I will always screen for this and on my form it will say you know if there's anything in the form that you don't feel comfortable writing we can chat in person and I will sort of say you know if during the session anything feels off if you ever experience any leaking or any sensation in your pelvic floor that doesn't feel right, just tell me. So I try and encourage this kind of relationship of openness, no taboo, no stigma, so that then if somebody wants to share something with me, they can. And then that's the first step in me signposting them to another professional who will be able to support them.

7:49Zoe:It's kind of wild that you can train as a PT and yet have no understanding about women's bodies postpartum. It's a while now since I did my training course, so I can't speak to the content. But I remember when I did mine, it was like two pages within a massive folder about special populations. And one of the special populations is postpartum clients. But also that incident in the gym, I was what, 18 months maybe postpartum. So a lot of people are kind of thinking first six to eight weeks. I think a lot of people are thinking just by virtue of the passage of time, when you get to 18 months, you've got no business being postpartum.

8:39but actually that is flawed. Yes, kind of your activities of daily life are going to sort of expose you to certain things that are going to kind of maybe strengthen you and rebuild you after having a baby. But when it comes to something like running or skipping or heavy lifting, we've got to be progressive. We've got to be gradual. You find a starting point that meets you where you are and you play the long game and you build up gradually. You know, that's what Couch to 5k is. It's a progressive walk to run program. So often I'll speak to someone who was a runner before having a baby and they want to get back to running.

9:20And that's great. I support it. I applaud it. I think it's so good for mothers to be able to reconnect with the activities that make them feel like themselves. But they'll say something like, so I'm going to start running again and I'll just go for 20 minutes easy. And I'm like, well, that's great. But going from doing no running for the last 18 months to going to 20 minutes, even if you do it easy, is considerably more impact through your body, not just the pelvic floor muscles, all of the muscles and the tissues than you're accustomed to. So I always signpost people towards Couch to 5k because it's a walk to run program where you do a little bit of running and then a walk, a little bit of running and then a walk.

10:06And it's this whole thing of just being willing to take the time. There is no rush. So often the fitness industry makes it seem like there's an end point and there's a hurry. And actually there isn't. So what if it takes you 12 weeks to get back to running? Like it's 12 weeks. Just be patient with your body and take the time. And it doesn't need to be a rush. None of this needs to be a rush. If we're lucky, we've got a long life ahead of us to enjoy this journey.

10:48Zoe:That was the episode. I hoped you loved it. If you did, please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time.