Strong Moms: Safe & Effective Fitness Tips For Pregnancy And Postpartum
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. My guest today is Gina Conley. She's a birth doula and founder of Mama Stay Fit, like Namaste, but Mama Stay Instead. We're going to talk about returning to fitness after birth and or training for two. So welcome, Gina. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, tell me a bit about your background and how you got into creating this yoga program and doing all the stuff you do.

So in 2017, I gave birth to my first daughter and I had no idea what to do during my pregnancy for working out. No idea what to do like after I gave birth to help my body recover from the big event of pregnancy and also of birth. And so I decided to go back to school and figure it all out. And there wasn't a lot out there at the time for perinatal fitness training. I

online, there were a few programs that were available, but they weren't very in-depth or it was like very few. Now there's a lot more available, but at the time there wasn't a lot. So I went back to school. I got another bachelor's degree in exercise science. I got a master's degree in exercise science and I began working with in-person prenatal and postnatal clients to kind of figure out

what it was that we needed to do during our pregnancy to move comfortably, to feel strong during our pregnancy, to help us prepare for birth, and then also how do we recover in the postpartum as well. And so I took my studies that I had for my education courses in addition to some independent courses that I was taking as well that were related to pre- and postnatal fitness.

pelvic floor physical therapy and things like that. And then also my experience of working with in-person clients to create Mama Save Fit with our prenatal and postpartum fitness programs. And then ultimately writing my book, Training for Two, which is all about how you can use prenatal fitness to support a strong pregnancy, a pain-free pregnancy, and help you prepare for birth and recover in the early postpartum timeframe.

And so after about a year of training exclusively in-person prenatal and postpartum fitness clients, you kind of figure out like what exercises made sense for folks, what exercises were helping them feel better in their bodies and to helping them have a more empowering pregnancy experience, more empowering motherhood experience. I became a birth doula and started to realize how important fitness was during pregnancy to help support our labor experience.

And so we began to incorporate more within our prenatal programs at that time to help folks be able to navigate their labors more comfortably, like ensuring that we had certain movements that we needed. Let's start with pregnancy. What can people do, you know, what can women do to have a better pregnancy in terms of the, you know, the malice, hay, fit stuff? So with pregnancy,

prenatal fitness, there are some misconceptions that exercising during pregnancy is unsafe, or the only thing that you can do is walk and like prenatal yoga. But there's a lot of exercises that you can do. And generally, there really aren't any harmful exercises unless there's a big fall risk within them. And so with prenatal fitness, the two biggest concerns that folks usually have is, is it going to impact the length of my pregnancy? Or is it going to impact my

my baby's development? And the answer is no to both of those based on a lot of research out there. And so exercise doesn't cause miscarriage. It doesn't cause preterm labor. And it's also not going to negatively impact your baby's growth by making them too small. And in fact, pregnancy, there's a lot of benefits to it, both for the mother and for the baby. And so for the mother or the pregnant person, the things that can be really beneficial is one, you're going to be more comfortable

throughout your pregnancy, you're going to have less pain, less pelvic pain, less lower back pain. And our pregnancy journey is long. It's nine to 10 months. Like that's a long time to just be really uncomfortable or in pain within our body. And so our prenatal fitness can really help to support us having a more comfortable and enjoyable prenatal experience. Exercise also tends to be one of those things that help us feel good, like mentally as well. And

which is incredibly important as we navigate into motherhood as well. When it comes to pregnancy, exercising during pregnancy can help to reduce the risk of developing certain prenatal complications like hypertension or blood pressure disorders, help to prevent developing gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and so things that can cause you to need more intervention towards the end of your pregnancy.

And so exercising during your pregnancy can help to reduce this risk by 30 to 40%, which is pretty significant. Now, obviously, it's not a guarantee, but it can to reduce the severity of it if you do develop any of those complications. And it can also delay the onset of these as well. And so exercising is really beneficial in that aspect. What in particular about your program is different or useful for people that are pregnant? And then in labor, we'll go into that. Okay, so the specific things within my programming that can help somebody during their pregnancy into labor is...

is that we incorporate movements that are required to create space within your pelvis. And so your pelvis has several layers to it. There's no one movement that opens the entire pelvis. Different types of movements create space within each of the pelvic levels.

And so there are certain types of movement patterns that we need to create space within the pelvis. And so the top, we need more external hip rotation, so wider knee-type movements. For the middle of the pelvis, we need more asymmetrical or one-sided-type movements where we have open and closed hip positions. And then the bottom of the pelvis, we need more internal hip rotation, our knees and ankles out, or like the general positions that we need to be able to accomplish in order to create space within our pelvis to help support our baby's position and to help

increase pelvic diameters. And so our prenatal fitness programs are going to incorporate all of those exercises within it. And so it's not going to be, all right, we're just going to do a deep squat hold here. We're going to be incorporating these exercises and these hip movements within our strengthening exercises, within our mobility exercises, because our muscles have the ability to pull our pelvis in different positions. So not only is the stretching mobility helpful, we also need the strengthening aspect to help create that space.

Our prenatal fitness programs incorporates those types of exercises to help you prepare for birth. We also incorporate pelvic stability exercises, which are essentially like our prenatal safe core exercises to help you feel comfortable during your pregnancy. So there are various special slings that run. Oh, quick question. So the pelvic floor work and all that, does that help in labor? Is the woman stronger and all her muscles are more toned? Does it help in natural delivery? So when it comes to birth preparation with the pelvic floor, we want it to be able to release and to let go.

And so different type of stretches can help to stretch the pelvic floor, which we incorporate within our prenatal fitness programs. But ultimately, when it comes to the pelvic floor, it's similar to the pelvis. There's no one movement that creates space throughout the entire pelvis. There's no one movement that's going to stretch the entire pelvic floor. And so we incorporate different types

types of exercises to help stretch the pelvic floor to release tension within it so that we can have an easier labor experience. There's a misconception that the pelvic floor needs to be really strong and tight in order to push our babies out, but the uterus is actually what is pushing the baby out, not our pelvic floor, and so we really just need it to release and to let go. But only doing one type of movement pattern is not going to stretch your entire pelvic floor because

Because the pelvic floor musculature is not just one single sheet of muscle, it's multiple muscles. They're in different directions. There are different attachment points. So we need different types of hip orientations to stretch different parts of our pelvic floor. And so we incorporate that all within our programming as well.

So what do women experience if they do your program while they're pregnant and then through labor and delivery? You know, what are they telling you that how does it affect the birth? The biggest feedback that we get about our programming is that folks feel really good during their pregnancies. They don't experience pain like their friends have tons of pelvic pain. Their friends have tons of lower back pain and they don't have any of that. They feel really good and comfortable within their body, which is helping them to be able to prepare for labor because now they're more comfortable. They

don't have pain when they spread their knees wide. And so they are going to have a more enjoyable pregnancy experience. So I would say that would be the biggest feedback that we have. The next thing is our program is not going to guarantee a specific birth outcome. So just because you do the MommaSafeCranial Fitness Program doesn't mean you're going to have a vaginal birth. You're going to have a medicated birth.

But what we do during pregnancy also helps to support us in the postpartum as well. And so our clients that take our prenatal fitness programs, regardless if they have a vaginal birth or they had a cesarean birth in the postpartum, they feel very capable because when we go into birth at a higher level of the conditioning, it's going to be easier to recover into the postpartum. So they're not dealing with as much diastasis or abdominal separation. They're not dealing with as many issues with the pelvic floor, such as incontinence or P.

peeing when you don't want to or pelvic heaviness or prolapse. And so their efforts during their pregnancy during our program

Good.

And then what about, you know, once a woman gives birth, you know, what needs to be brought back into shape, brought back into the right form? You know, what does the program look like there and what's the goal of it?

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So our postpartum fitness program is the main focus is to help folks feel more functional and capable within their body. It's never about shrinking the waist or trying to be smaller because being smaller does not equate healthier or more functional or better. And so a part of our program is about helping us kind of embrace this new motherhood journey mentally and emotionally as well. And so

There's no weight loss. There's no like shrink your waist. There's no bounce back kind of culture being pushed on anybody that's doing our program, which is an underlying tone of all of our social media and all the education courses that we offer is we are more than a body. When it comes to our fitness programming, really focus on building foundational strength first. So how well can your core maintain its positions as your arms and legs do things? And

And so once we establish that deep foundational core, then we're going to kind of build from there. And so it's not about doing tons of sit-ups or crunches. We're doing a lot of dynamic movement to help you feel better within your body. And so our program starts with this early postpartum recovery course, which is a free course that we offer. And it has diaphragmatic breathing, which is really the first core exercise that you can do. It has some gentle mobility to help you begin to move your body because you feel very stiff in that early postpartum. And then a general guide to the

incorporating core exercises, incorporating walks. And so the first four to six weeks postpartum is too short to rush back to the gym, but it's also too long to do absolutely nothing. And so we start our program with this gentle guide to help folks begin that reconnection process. When we come into our postpartum program, we're really beginning to focus on how can we

learn to stabilize and learn to build a strong foundation with our deep core and then add movement onto them. So it's very slow. It's a very patient process, but we're really rebuilding from a very deep core level. And so folks are learning how to breathe and to coordinate that breathing with movement. And our postpartum program now has fall long videos that folks can do because we were finding that the self-paced workout was not accessible to everybody. So we added in workout videos that you can just throw on your TV.

and you just fall at the same time, but it's very intentional and mindful. The program is going to incorporate different types of core exercises to help rebuild your core. It's going to incorporate different progressions to get back to lifting. The foundation of all of our programs involve resistance training and weightlifting because it's incredibly beneficial for us as women, especially during pregnancy, especially as we're covering postpartum, to help us be stronger because it's not just about our bodies right now.

But weight training is incredibly beneficial to helping to heal diastasis, to improve prolapse, to help with pelvic floor issues, in addition to supporting us in the long term when we get towards menopause. Because during pregnancy, there's a little bit of calcium that gets taken from the bones. It could increase your risk of osteoporosis, and weight training can help to reduce that long term. So it's

it's about now I'm feeling good now, but also how can all of these things help us in the long term? And a lot of us as women sometimes feel really uncomfortable lifting weights. It's not something we're as familiar with. And so our program helps to introduce weightlifting in a way that's very accessible, that is very mindful, and so that folks can feel more confident using a barbell or learning how to lift weights in that aspect. Okay. Well, what does it look like for women that have gone through the whole program before?

before pregnancy, during pregnancy, labor, afterwards, you know, any interesting case studies there? So we have a lot of folks that will go through our programs multiple times because we do offer lifetime access to them. So we'll have folks that have done two or three pregnancies with us, two or three postpartums with us. And the biggest thing that they, the feedback that we get is one, they feel really good in their body, kind of like I talked about before. They feel really capable within their body. They're not dealing with the same type of issues that their friends are. And

And they are not, and a lot of them are not bored with the programming as well. They know it's really intentional. They know it's really mindful and they're seeing results. And so our folks in the postpartum, some of them are doing their very first pull-up that they ever done. They're lifting heavier than they have before. They're running better than they did before. We had one woman that did our prenatal and postpartum program two times. And after her second time through, she went and climbed this like really big mountain in Peru. I don't know the name of it, but she sent me a photo and was like, I can only do this because of your programming.

A lot of folks will have tried other programs before they finally come to ours. And it's usually a really similar sentiment where they feel very capable within their bodies in the way they could have before. They always had lingering issues or lingering pains. Their hips hurt or their low back hurt or their C-section scar was hurt. And then they came into our programs and they're like, I feel good in my body. And that's kind of an overarching theme with our programming is

We want folks to feel good in their bodies because when we feel good in our body, we mentally feel good. And then we can go and do all the other things that we need to do within our lives. And it's going to help your mental health. It helps you physically. There's so much to it. But the biggest feedback that we get is I feel good in my body. I've tried other programs and they weren't as good as yours. This is the intentional. I'm very capable within my body. I can climb mountains in this body now. And I think that's really incredible.

What about the workouts for two, like mommy and, you know, maybe yoga and stuff? Like, do you have provisions in the program for that? Or what does that look like? So within our postpartum program, we incorporate some modifications and we incorporate some recommendations on how you can incorporate your baby into the workout. So we don't offer any like baby workout or like mommy and me type workouts. It's more of like, how can you work out with your kids nearby? Cool.

For some folks, they work from home, they stay at home, and when they're going to work out is when their kids are by them. And there needs to be a lot of grace and expectation management when we deal with that. And so we'll offer like different options on how to baby wear or to hold, have your baby in a carrier as you work out at the same time, how to incorporate your kids or your baby into your workout, and then also offering permission to pause or

or to understand that workouts are not going to look the same as they did pre-kids because our kids get a say in how our workouts go unless you have established child care

for somebody else that is watching your kid for you while you work out for a lot of period of time. So something that our program incorporates is just kind of giving folks that permission to accept that their workouts are not going to look exactly the same and kind of reframing what our goals are. Our goals are not necessarily go to the CrossFit Games or to compete in this high level event. Our goal is to be healthy at motherhood and to meet the demands of motherhood. And so we offer different modifications on like, oh, if you have to hold your baby, this is how you can do this workout instead or

if you have to baby wear, this is how you can do these exercises instead. But we don't offer necessarily like mommy and me type workouts. My book training for two is for pregnancy. Well, very good. What's next now that the program's in place now that it's helping women? Are there other areas where they have, you know, the things are missing that you want to work on? Maybe like perimenopause, et cetera. Is it, is this a women's health, you know, holistic thing that you want to do, or is it really going to stay centered around pregnancy and birth? It's

It's probably going to stay centered around pregnancy and birth and the postpartum because it's just like a really specific time frame. I think over the years, there's going to be more offerings out there for perimenopause or for menopause for folks as kind of my generation gets older and starts to hit those time frames. I think this perineal space really exploded with like my generation. And I think the menopause space is going to really explode with my generation as well. So I think we're going to stay specific to this time frame. We're

We're probably going to expand more on professional courses and helping other folks support women within this timeframe with

physical therapists, with medical providers, with nurses, with doulas, with other perinatal fitness trainers. So that's kind of like the next step for Mama Stay Fit is to really expand in the professional education realm and really just kind of go from there. My co-founder, she's training to become a midwife right now so that we can expand to potentially having our own birth center or birthing location so that we have that in conjunction with the fitness training as well. But yeah,

But yeah, so we're going to stay within this space, but we'll probably just continue to expand to support the professional in addition to the mother. Well, very good. And where can people get the program? Like what website or place they can go to? So they can check it out at monastayfit.com.

All our fitness programs are listed there. Our education courses are listed there as well. We do offer childbirth education as well. You can also find us on YouTube at Mama Say Fit and Instagram. We have a pretty large following there where we post tons of information, like free content for folks because we want it to all be...

accessible to all and you can also grab my book training for two on amazon or wherever you buy a book nice okay well very well gina thanks for coming on the podcast i appreciate it yeah absolutely if you like this podcast please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on itunes you've been listening to the finding genius podcast with richard jacobs

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