Fitness As A Passion

From the time I was very young I was always motivated by sports, fitness, and the feeling of being strong and competitive. I grew up as a “tomboy” and Rocky IV (the one with the Russian) was my favorite movie. At seven years old I would run laps up and down my childhood home so I could hopefully be as strong as Rocky Balboa one day.

Near the end of elementary school I participated in competitive soccer and loved it. I was the only girl on most of the teams I competed in and usually spent the first few weeks of the season proving the boys wrong about me. I could run, score, defend, and pass the ball as well as they could.

When my family moved to Texas for my high school years, I became interested in long distance running. That love carried me through college and led me to competing in my first marathon in 2008. I was almost two years postpartum from my first child and training for a marathon helped me get back into shape and feel like myself again, but it was hard. The long runs wore on my body and it took a while for me to recover from each long distance race I competed in.

By the time my second child was born in 2010, I decided I was ready to shift gears again and compete in triathlons. Over the course of two years I trained and competed in various swim, bike, run distances. This led me to May of 2012, when I completed my first Ironman competition in The Woodlands, TX.

Ironman Triathlons are 140.6 miles long and must be finished by midnight. Split into three parts, Ironman consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and a 26.2 mile run (marathon distance) to finish. I became an Ironman in 2012 and then again in 2015 at the Ironman TX North American Championship competition in The Woodlands, TX.

But the 2015 race really wore on my body and my spirit. After that race, I really struggled with injuries, illness, and my mental health took a hit too. I kept running and swimming, but cut back on my distances as I tried to regroup and heal.

Then in 2017 I found out I was pregnant again for a third time. This pregnancy was a huge surprise, and at 37, it felt very different and way more taxing than my other two pregnancies from my twenties. I stopped training for endurance sports completely and invested in my first personal training certification with NASM.

My third kiddo was born in 2018 and I had an incredibly difficult time recovering from my third c-section too. With the personal training certification completed, I knew some basic information about resistance training and building muscle, but there was absolutely nothing in the books regarding recovering from pregnancy. That led me to start researching postpartum rehab and recovery programs.

Learning About Postpartum Rehab

My third pregnancy and c-section did a number on my core structure, pelvic floor, and hip complex. Which, in turn, effected my feet, my knees and my shoulders in a very painful way. The entire body is connected by the kinetic chain, so that is why one injury in one area of the body (hips, in my case), can cause pain and discomfort in other, seemingly unrelated areas of the body (like the shoulders or feet).

While researching care and recovery for postpartum women, I also learned that very few in the health and medical sphere truly understand how to heal and rehab postpartum women. There is way more information and resources now, but at that time it was more of a challenge to find.

It is important to understand that critical changes occur to a woman’s body structure as she carries a baby. Changes include, loosening joints, slower heart rate, higher blood volume, hormonal changes, brain function changes, major organs move to make room for the growing baby, and the kinetic chain is disrupted and altered as her weight increases and center of gravity shifts. The typical 6 week postpartum recovery period often prescribed by healthcare providers just is not enough time for all of that to return to normal, or optimal function.

When I learned just how inadequate our postpartum care is in the United States, I wanted to learn more and help more women regain function and form, if desired. Retraining your core muscles can help ease prolapse symptoms, improve orgasms, giver better bladder and rectal control, as well as improve mobility and stability while getting rid of the so called “mummy tummy”, “baby pooch”, “mom pouch”, etc.

Surprise, surprise, but that research also led to me learning even more about women’s health issues in the modern world.

Other Women’s Health Issues

Did you know that women were not commonly studied in research studies for medicine and science until it was mandated by the government in 1994?!?! That means that the majority of health and medical information and advice we are given is based off of men, mainly men ages 20-25!

Since mandating that both sexes must be included in health and medical research, we have learned that women have different heart attack symptoms than men, women need more sleep than men, and we have also discovered more accurate information regarding the female genitalia, hormone cycles, and the broader effects of hormonal birth control on women’s long term health.

Medicine and science still have not caught up with women, but women are leading the way in the field. I am passionate about sifting through the latest information and research regarding women’s health so that I can better support women’s health on a more acute level.

Why does this matter so much to me?

Personal History

Women’s health has been a dominating issue in my life since I was 16 years old, when my mom, at 46 years old was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She had gone into surgery to have her gallbladder removed when they discovered numerous tumors in her abdomen.

No one in her family talked about women’s health issues. We barely even discussed what it would mean to go through puberty and get my first period. There was a lot of shame surrounding the female body, so most everything was given a quick explanation and then swept under the rug. We didn’t know there was a history of ovarian cancer in my mom’s family until she was diagnosed.

Later, my maternal grandmother would also be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but still, I felt primarily in the dark. Very little was said and most of the education I received came from my mother’s oncologists or the eventual ObGyn I would start seeing.

Shortly after I turned 20 my mom passed away from cancer. I lost my grandmother about nine months later from the same disease. My anger and grief from losing them fueled a lot of my dedication to my physical and mental health. I did not want to leave my children without a mother until we were all much, much, much older. They deserve a mother who invests in her health so she can invest in them, and they deserve to know as much as possible about their bodies and health so they can be their own best advocates.

Women’s health issues aren’t just swept under the rug within families, but all across the medical community. Women are treated as “little men”, or “hysterical” in a modern sense through diagnoses like “anxiety” “just tired” “just a mom”. When in reality women are suffering unjustly due to a lack of research, education, and understanding about the unique female body and mind. Out maternal mortality rate in the United States is one of the worst in the world! The highest suicide rates amongst women are ages 45-55 because so many of their struggles through perimenopause and menopause are brushed off and misunderstood.

Our grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and girlfriends deserve better consideration and care throughout their whole lives. I want to help facilitate some of that care through my fitness programming.

My Mission

I want to help women claim physical and mental strength through effective fitness programming that takes into consideration every stage of life a woman evolves through.

How? I use the latest research and information to educate myself on how to optimize fitness in order to help women live their best lives. I am committed to learning about the female body, mind, life cycles, monthly cycles, and more so that I can help the women of the world become their own best advocates.

My Goal: To create fitness programs that support women in their beautiful, evolving, and unique bodies. Women are not small men and we deserve to be seen, heard, and respected for what makes us different.

Women’s healthcare is changing because women are learning more and seeking better care and consideration. My passion project is being a small fish in a this big pond for change in women’s health.

Join me and let’s change the world!