Prenatal and postpartum training
How I do prenatal training:
Step 1: Medical clearance
If you’re pregnant, you must be medically cleared for exercise by your healthcare professional (family doctor, PCP, OB/GYN, midwife, or other medical professional who is following up your pregnancy) prior to our first session. You and your healthcare professional complete and sign a form together called a PARmed-X, to screen for contraindications to exercise, then you send it back to me for review. If you are not medically cleared, I cannot legally take you on for exercise.
Step 2: Free consultation chat
During our free consultation, over phone or video call, we discuss goals, challenges, what type of training you’re looking for, how your pregnancy has been so far, and, if doing in-home sessions, what equipment is available in your home or apartment gym. You get a chance to get to know me and know what to expect from our sessions, and we make up a plan for what to focus on.
Step 3: Booking our initial session
Step 4 and beyond: Regular sessions!
All prenatal sessions with me are 60 minutes long, including warm-up, mobility/birth prep, strength training, and cool-down. After the session, I write up a program that you can follow on your own until we meet again. In-home/building gym prenatal sessions are $105 CAD each.
If we are doing in-home sessions, I bring all necessary equipment except for yoga balls as these are client height specific, including yoga blocks, pilates balls, resistance bands, and a mat.
Please note that prenatal training with me does not replace care or follow-up by your healthcare provider. I do not give medical advice. Training with me is meant to complement prenatal care, but any concerns about your health or pregnancy must immediately be brought to your healthcare practitioner.
Do I offer prenatal training online?
Online prenatal training is not available at this time, but I will soon have downloadable guides available for purchase in my store, with workouts and mobility routines for prenatal clients.
How about postpartum training?
Postpartum training - in-person and online - is largely centered around regaining contact with, and control over, your pelvic floor. After you have been cleared for exercise (typically at 6 weeks, but may be later!), we start with gentle bodyweight work, strengthening the core and pelvic floor, then gradually progress into resistance training, avoiding injury and addressing any postural issues or loss of strength and muscle that has occurred in the last few months.
For postpartum clients, I use the Get Active Questionnaire during our free consultation.
Are there gift cards for pre- and postnatal training?
Yes :) These will be available soon. Keep in mind that prenatal training is only available in-person in Vancouver for the time being.
Why prenatal training?
For many years, I thought I was the only one who deeply wanted to have children but was simultaneously terrified of pregnancy and birth, and found the entire ordeal to be mysterious, unpredictable, and scary. When I randomly found my social media feeds flooded with pregnancy and birth information a few years back, I gradually went from passively consuming information to actually seeking out educational material about the physiology of pregnancy and birth. A client of mine was pregnant at the time, and so my mission to train her correctly eventually led to receiving my CSEP specialist certification in pre- and post-natal fitness, as I found this area of fitness absolutely fascinating.
My own rapidly growing collection of knowledge had an unexpectedly positive effect on my own fear, dismantling a lot of it and helping me realize that the anxiety was rooted in a lack of information, and fear of not feeling autonomy during an extremely physically, mentally, and emotionally vulnerable and demanding event - something I think many of us can relate to.
A lot of the fear-mongering around exercising while pregnant stems from outdated fitness advice from decades ago, and yet these fears are still rampant today, despite a strong, growing body of evidence showing that exercise is highly beneficial during this time. As a kinesiologist, I’ve also seen the difference exercise can make in pain management and everyday physical function, which coincides with scientific evidence that exercise can help prevent and treat frequently recurring issues with pain in pregnancy, such as low back, hip, pelvic, and sacroiliac pain.
My approach is therefore both physical and mental, using movement, exercise, focus and mindfulness, in order to physically prepare the mind and body for labor, to increase confidence, and ultimately shift from feeling worried to feeling prepared and in-touch with your body.
Good habits and routines can be built early on in pregnancy. Within the last month or two, pregnant individuals are often inundated with information about everything from labor to birth to breastfeeding to how to care for a newborn. This is an overwhelming amount of information, and it’s easy to forget what we learned over a day-long course a month ago when we’re faced with contractions coming on every few minutes. This is why I emphasize starting labor and birth preparation movement as early as in the fourth month of pregnancy, so the client gets into the habit of movement that will ease any pain they might be developing as a result of their rapidly changing body, and also to remember some of these movements when they’re in labor and need ways to help ease pain and help their baby navigate through the birth canal.