True Physio, Acacia Hills (2025)

27/05/2024

If you’re doing Murph this week, don’t be scared to use this as a scaling option for the push ups 😉

Everyone talks about how to scale the pull ups (banded or jumping) but a lot of coaches often forget that for a lot of people, push ups will need scaling too. And even then, the option given is mostly to do them on a box or incline or on your knees 🤷🏼‍♀️

This option, with a band across the rig safety bars*, can help you to keep full range of motion and (generally speaking) helps to build up your push up strength more than other scaling options 😉

To make it harder, use a skinnier band and/or do some reps without the band first. To make it easier, use a thicker band or raise the height of the safety bars. I’d usually recommend setting them up around your hip height at the top of the push up (mine could probably be a little lower) 😉

Remember, Murph is a BIG workout with a lot of reps and there are TWO HUNDRED push ups if you’re doing the full workout and that can be a lotttttttt, especially if you haven’t been doing any “Murph prep workouts” like we’ve been doing with 🤩

Have you tried this before? Will you use it this week? 🥰

*note - if your gym’s rig doesn’t have safety bars, you can use the J hooks but just make sure it’s not sliding off every break you take 🙈

As always, this post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice. By trying this, you acknowledge that you take responsibility for any injuries that may occur 😅

04/04/2024

Getting back to sit ups after a c-section can be tricky and there are so many things we can do to help you get back to them 🫶🏼

These exercises can be a great place to start in early postpartum - head lifts/mini crunches (you don’t have to go this high initially), single leg knee lifts, and lifting your knees off the ground in 4 point kneel (hands, knees and feet start on the floor and then you lift your knees slightly) 🥰

Doing these will target both lower and upper abdominals and start to rebuild your core strength (and connection to those muscles). Aim for 5-10 reps of each initially and build from there depending on how they feel 🥵

Start with small movements and build if they feel ok! 😉

Exactly how early postpartum you can start these is very individual and will change depending on how you’re feeling and healing and so many other variables and ideally, everyone would see a pelvic health physio before starting these but that’s not always an option 😅

For me, I first did these around 4-5 weeks postpartum and they were really tricky and 10 of each left me wrecked so I held off another 2 weeks before trying again 🫠

Remember, not everyone’s journey postpartum is going to be the same and we have to respect how our bodies feel and work with them. Going slightly too slow is probably better than too fast because you can always do more the next time 😉

Did you/will you try these? Let me know 👇🏼

This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

08/02/2024

Need help with your stiff back? Send me a message. Back doing a little bit of work and able to take on some new clients this month 😉
This lunge variation (lunge plus rotation TOWARDS the front leg) is something I’ve been playing around with a lot lately and finding that it’s quickly becoming a favourite exercise when people have a stiff back that also needs some rotational strength 😉
I’m particularly finding it is helping me a lot to get some more rotational strength (and mobility back) post c-section. Gotta keep reminding ourselves that we had 7 layers cut through that still need rehab! Yes, even this far down the track 🥲
We’re not doing this for heavy weight/load with this one. It’s more about loading rotation because we don’t do it a lot otherwise 😅
The key with this one is to really slow it down and control the rotation really well. Ideally, you don’t want your legs to move when you’re rotating the weight 😅
It’s harder than you think (see how I don’t have a lot of rotation and I’m struggling up/down; this was 10 reps in) 🥵
Let me know if you give it a try 👇🏼
Ps can you tell I had some hectic quad soreness here from heavy squats? 😅

08/11/2023

There are so many reasons you might see a physio during pregnancy 🤰🏼
From a birth prep appointment where we work through all things birth prep (duh) like checking your pelvic floor and helping you through relaxation/down training strategies for birth, chatting pain relief in labour, antenatal expressing, and so much more 🙈
Or a first trimester appointment chatting through what to expect in pregnancy and how to exercise through your pregnancy 🤰🏼
If pregnancy-related pain pops up during your pregnancy - friendly reminder that just because it’s common doesn’t mean you need to put up with it 😅
If you have pain, it’s important to get it checked out because there are often lots of things we can do to help 😘
Or just plain old injuries during your pregnancy - just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean you won’t sprain your ankle (or do any other injuries) 🩼
Perhaps you’re already seeing a physio and need to continuing your rehab/ treatment 🤷🏼‍♀️
So many reasons 😅
This week on Mum With Me, we chat through lots of those reasons in more detail 😉
Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎧
What questions do you have about seeing a physio during pregnancy? Pop them below or send me a message 😉
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

01/08/2023

IT’S WORLD BREASTFEEDING WEEK 🤱🏼
The aim of this week is to raise awareness about issues facing parents who choose to breastfeed and supporting the journey 🤱🏼
It’s not about making you feel bad if you couldn’t or chose not to breastfeed 🤱🏼
If you struggle/d with breastfeeding and need to mute posts this week, none of us will be offended. We’re trying to educate/help women be supported to feed but sometimes, you gotta give yourself the mental space from the things you need space from. My DMs are always open if you need to chat 🫶🏼
What was the hardest part of feeding for you? What do you need help with? 👇🏼
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

20/07/2023

BIRTH TRAUMA AWARENESS WEEK 🗓️
I’m pretty lucky that despite a bloody long and really tough labour and a need for an emergency caesarean that I don’t consider my birth traumatic at all 🤷🏼‍♀️
Long and hard? Absolutely. What I expected? Probably not. But traumatic? No 🫶🏼
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for many women around Australia (and the world) 🌏
In Australia, one in three women will describe their birth as traumatic - we need to do better 🫠
Birth can be traumatic for lots of reasons - even with a healthy mum and bub 🫶🏼
And it can impact both the birthing person and the partner so make sure to check in on both of them 🫶🏼
Sending love if you had a traumatic birth experience - please reach out if you need to chat 🫶🏼
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️
Picture shows the moment of sweet sweet relief from the epidural 😆

17/07/2023

THERE WILL NEVER BE A TIME IN YOUR LIFE WHERE YOU WILL GO INTO SOMETHING AND SAY “I WISH I WAS WEAKER” 😅
Being stronger makes pregnancy, labour and postpartum easier* 🤫
Why do we keep telling pregnant women not to do certain types of exercise? 😭
I saw a post from a very popular women’s health physio clinic posting that women should stop all lifting and high intensity exercise and only do “safe” forms of exercise such as Pilates and yoga and walking 🫠
Why why why? 🤦🏼‍♀️
There are no other times in our lives where we would tell someone to intentionally decondition themselves but why is it still the narrative in pregnancy? 😶
The research is catching up - we just need the professionals to read it 😆
We don’t need to be afraid of exercising - pregnancy, labour and postpartum are freaking hard and we need to keep our bodies as strong as we can 💪🏻
Provided you have no risk factors that mean you shouldn’t exercise and so on 🫶🏼
Tag your friends who need to see this 👇🏼
*in theory anyway* 😏
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

05/07/2023

COOL NEW STUDY* ALERT SHOWING HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING TO BE SAFE IN MID PREGNANCY 🤰🏼
How gooooooood 👏🏻
We know that both elite and recreational athletes have been continuing to complete strenuous exercise throughout their pregnancies with normal pregnancy outcomes and it’s so cool to have more research to actually back this up now 🤩
Lots of guidelines discourage high intensity exercise during pregnancy - NOT based on studies, just on expert opinion which is mainly due to the LACK of safety data 😅
This study compared 10x1 min on/1 min off vs 30 mins of steady state cardio 🥵
And showed that there were no adverse foetal outcomes before and immediately after exercise (looking at bub’s heart rate and umbilical doppler ultrasound - which can’t be done during exercise) 🫶🏼
It also showed that the pregnant mumma’s and bub’s responses were the same to both types of exercise - other than elevated heart rate and lactate levels for mum (duh, high intensity gets them higher) 🫶🏼
And at follow up, all babies were born at full term and healthy 🫶🏼
It’s important to note that this study only looked at exercise MID pregnancy (not early or late) so we don’t have all the data… yet. But it’s a good step in the right direction 🥳
Did you do high intensity exercise in your pregnancy? How did you feel? 🥰
*Ref - Wowdzia, et al., 2023 📖

08/03/2023

FIRST SQUATS BACK WITH A BARBELL AT 11 WEEKS POSTPARTUM 🤰🏼
Oooft, 11 weeks with no barbell is a loooooong time 🫠
But it’s exactly what my body needed 😉
Slow and steady wins the (non-existent) race 🤩
No, they aren’t perfect; yes, I could have changed a lot of things about them; but I’m moving some weight and my body feels good before, during, and after it 🤷🏼‍♀️
Aren’t our bodies amazing? Happy (belated) international women’s day - important to celebrate everything our bodies can do 🤩
Disclaimer - 11 weeks is how long until I could do this, everyone’s journey is different and it’s important to work with someone you trust who is qualified to help you get back to your sport and so on 🫣
Who’s squatting with me? 🏋🏼‍♀️
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

26/02/2023

DEADLIFTS IN THE THIRD TRIMESTER 🤰🏼
There’s more and more research coming out that continuing to train (at heavy weights and with intensity) through pregnancy is goooooood for us (thank you especially to Christina Prevett - more on her studies later) 😍
Remember that intensity and heavy are relative to the person 🫣
With deadlifting, my body gave me two options - 1. Go heavy with less range, or 2. Go lighter and full range 🤷🏼‍♀️
Training, for most of us, especially through pregnancy, is about continuing to be fitter for LIFE (not competing) so this is why I chose the second (most of the time)… it’s *mostly* more functional - as in, to be a good mum after I give birth, I’m going to need to lift things from the floor and it’s highly likely they won’t be 100kg 🤣
Yes, it’s not perfect movement; I could be squeezing my lats more blah blah but hey, it worked and kept me moving 🤷🏼‍♀️
Did you deadlift in your pregnancy? How did you modify? Did you need to? 🤨
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️
Thought I’d better post some of the videos I’d planned to post and never got to 🙊

08/02/2023

GETTING BACK TO TRAINING AFTER HAVING A BABY 🤰🏼
I always thought I’d be someone who wanted to train soon after having a Bub but let’s face it, we don’t/can’t really understand being a mum until we are one 🤯
Not to mention just how bloody sore and hard everything is after labour + a c-section (birth story will come at some point) 🫠
Today was my third “workout” at 8 and a bit weeks postpartum and I feel GOOD for it - felt nice to sweat before little man woke up for the day 🥵
Before now, I’ve needed to prioritise sleep and rehab, rather than getting sweaty 🤷🏼‍♀️
Today was some simple C2 bike intervals, core activation work and banded good mornings - and chances are I’ll be sore tomorrow 🫣
This is your reminder that it’s OK if other things have to come first, especially early postpartum 😅
I’ll share my workouts/training and the rebuild as I go but it’s important to remember that this is what works for me and everyone’s journey will be different and you should work with your physio on what you need to do and the pace you need to do it 🙊
How long did it take before you got back into regular exercise? 🤷🏼‍♀️
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

23/12/2022

✨ CORDELL ✨
Born via emergency c-section, weighing 3.38kg (7lb1) and 52cm long 🤱🏼
We’re smitten and slowly adjusting to the lack of sleep 😴

08/12/2022

STILL PREGNANT, STILL MOVING 🚶‍♀️
Albeit a little slower than before 🤰🏼
Why? Because I feel better for it 🥰
Plus, we know that exercising as close to delivery as possible leads to better outcomes - in labour AND postpartum, for mum AND Bub 😉
We should be changing what we’re saying from “is it safe to exercise in pregnancy” to “is it harmful to NOT exercise in pregnancy”* 🤨
*Provided you have no risk factors that mean you shouldn’t exercise - this is to be discussed on an individual basis obviously 🤷🏼‍♀️
How long in your pregnancy did you keep training until? 😅
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

15/11/2022

🥰🤰🏼
Let’s pretend that the third trimester actually looks like this and not me hanging out by the toilet 🤢
Did your sickness get better or worse as your pregnancy went along? 😅
Mine is definitely getting worse 🙄
📸

31/10/2022

BEING PREGNANT IS BASICALLY AN ENDURANCE SPORT* 🤰🏼
It’s kind of like running a marathon every day for ~280 DAYS* 🏃🏼‍♀️
Except no-one is there cheering you on and handing you lollies or sports drinks 🥤
We expect to feel tired because well, duh, we’re growing humans (pretty cool hey) 🤷🏼‍♀️
In order to do this, our basal metabolic rate (aka the amount of energy we need to function at rest) has to increase and on average, it increases by 2.2 fold 😱
The maximum a human can sustain is 2.5xBMR (before our body starts breaking down tissue) 😬
This study found that some sports (Tour de France riders, Arctic trekkers) achieve higher peaks than this but this is obviously across shorter time periods than an average pregnancy 🤔
Pregnant mummas can feel it in their resting heart rate and especially taking a load of washing up the stairs - am I right?! 🥵
Our bodies are working harder at rest so be kind to yourselves, especially in the third trimester - don’t forget to rest up 😴
Does this surprise you? 🤨
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

*Ref: Thurber et al., 2019 🎓

19/10/2022

LUNGES IN THE THIRD TRIMESTER AND WHY I’VE KEPT DOING THEM 😎
Training continues to change regularly and for me, the most important thing through this pregnancy has been continuing to move in whatever ways I can 🤔
Especially keeping as many “functional” movements in my weekly training routine 🤩
Lunges are particularly important as they help us to get up/down from the ground more easily 😂
For this reason, I’ve kept full depth lunges as long as possible - even if they’re changing a little as I get further along 😅
Earlier in my pregnancy they were weighted (as in, with dumbbells or a barbell) 🏋🏼‍♀️
Now, the little bit of tactile feedback with my hands helps to not fall over and to ensure I can keep the full depth 😉
Sure, I could do partial range and no extra balance cues and load them heavier BUT we’d argue that it’s more important to keep full range if we’re keeping them to help with keeping mobility through pregnancy, right? 🤷🏼‍♀️
It’s also important to keep in mind that if you’re experiencing pelvic pain during your pregnancy, lunges may not be the right exercise as they can really annoy things 🥺
Did you lunge through your pregnancy? 🤔
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

11/10/2022

A REALISTIC LOOK OF TRAINING IN THE FIRST TRIMESTER 🙈
Gassy and could barely breathe 🥵
And trying not to throw up - jokes, this has been me the entire pregnancy 🤢🙄
And a hell of a lot more “rest” than “normal” training 🥱
Pregnant women EXPECT to get out of breath during the third trimester as bub (and your tummy) gets bigger 🤰🏼
A lot of women don’t realise that it’s also really common in the first trimester 🤷🏼‍♀️
Especially around week 8-9 it would seem 🙋🏼‍♀️
Did this happen to you? 😅
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

06/10/2022

WHAT PUSH UPS LOOK LIKE AT 30 WEEKS PREGNANT 🤰🏼
At least, this is what they look like for me now 🤷🏼‍♀️
One thing that you’ll come to realise (when pregnant) is just how much push ups use our abdominal muscles 😅
Over the last 10 (or so) weeks, I’ve been slowly increasing the height of the incline as they just started to feel “wrong” on the floor 🥴
As in, it was pulling weirdly through my abdominal wall and also, now, my belly would absolutely get in the way of full range 🤣
By increasing the incline, it allows me to continue to train a horizontal pushing movement and maintain as much strength as I can through the rest of my pregnancy 💪🏼
When did you have to change the way you did push ups? 🤔
This post is not a replacement for seeing a healthcare professional and should not be used in place of specific advice 🙅🏼‍♀️

True Physio

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