Physio Sarah Fellows

23/01/2025

I’ll be chatting about all things Pelvic Health at this event and hopefully raising awareness about some stigmatised, normalised but potentially debilitating issues! Come and learn some stuff, ask questions, share stories and drink some fizz xx

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/ann-edwards-primary-pta

08/03/2022

Standing shoulder to shoulder with all my sistas out there for women’s equality; celebrating our differences and our diversity.

08/02/2022

🤰Lifting safely in Pregnancy Part 6.

🤰Signs and symptoms that you’re exceeding your capacity and mismanaging the increases in intra-abdominal pressure that physical / functional activity can bring into the body are:

👉🏿Hard coning / doming with or without tenderness at the abdominal wall. as your abdominal muscles separate (diastasis) to accommodate the growth of your baby, it’s normal to get some temporary doming on loading like sitting up, coughing, sneezing but what we want is to avoid repetitive and excessive coning brought about by high levels of pressure. This is essential to protect the diastasis

👉🏿 If you’re feeling a sensation of dragging / heaviness in the pelvis or va**na it’s a sign you may be over pressurising your system or breath holding so that force is going downwards onto your pelvic organs whereas they need to be lifted and supported.

👉🏿 The tissues in the body can become sensitive in pregnancy due to hormonal changes. Overload may bring about pelvic or lower back pain. This isn’t about taking out those movements necessarily but reducing the load until you find a level that your body can tolerate or resting to allow the tissues to settle.

👉🏿if you’re overloading or again breath holding during activity, your pelvic floor it will lose it’s capacity to respond to pressure increases with appropriate strength, flexibility and coordination. A sign / symptom of this can be inadequate support of bladder and bowl which can result in leaking of urine or faeces.

🤰If you’re worried seek advice from a pelvic health physiotherapist or reduce activity / loading to find the manageable levels for you. This will be different for everyone - regressions in pregnancy are not a failing they are critical to protect you.

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07/02/2022

🤰Lifting in Pregnancy part 5.

SOUND ON FOR VOICEOVER

This film is not indicative of what you should be doing but more outlining the principles of keeping you lifting safely in pregnancy so you can maintain your strength this will set you up well for all the lifting and carrying you’ll have to do when your baby is here!

🤰To keep you lifting safely in pregnancy, to manage those intra-abdominal pressures so you don’t exceed your capacity follow these principles

💪🏾choose an appropriate load - as you get heavier you’ll have to lift lighter. Regressions in exercise as your pregnancy progresses are key
💪🏾 lift from a good wide base of support
💪🏾check your posture and the position you’re moving from. Keep your spine long.
💪🏾 To get that deep inner unit / core / canister working together don’t breath hold!
💪🏾 inhale to prepare to move, exhale on the effort. Your pelvic floor should respond automatically but if it doesn’t, give it an additional squeeze on that exhale.

**If you leak urine or faeces, you’re lifting too much load and you’re not managing those pressures**

Happy lifting!

physiosarahfellows • Original Audio

05/02/2022

🤰Lifting in Pregnancy Part 4

🤰Here’s just 3 of many ways you can introduce movement after ‘activating your core’.

🤰It’s useful to attune to those deeper muscles which make up your internal ‘canister’ (see previous posts) before you lift heavier loads like weights in the gym, car seats, shopping bags, children, buggies etc.

🤰In all these movements feel the upward lift of the pelvic floor and the drawing in of the deeper abdominals and spinal muscles.

🤰Can you feel the increased support around your the deeper structures of and internal organs housed close to your spine and pelvis?

🤰When you lift heavier loads this should happen automatically if you’re breathing optimally. If you breath hold you’ll have the opposite effect.

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04/02/2022

🤰Lifting in pregnancy Part 3! “Engage your core to lift” I often see a brace to lift rather than the activation of the core / inner unit; those synergistic muscles which make up the internal canister (see previous vid).

🤰By bracing we increase intra-abdominal pressure prior to lifting the load, so we are effectively over pressurising an already pressurised system. When pregnant your system is pressurised further! Triple whammy!

🤰This has implications on an already lengthened abdominal wall and pelvic floor. We would be forcing that pressure through the front of the abdominal wall which may well already be separated to accommodate the growth of our growing baby and also placing a downward pressure onto our pelvic organs (already under pressure from carrying the growing load out front).

🤰Using your breath to ‘activate your core’ feeling you’re pelvic floor lift towards the end of your exhale in conjunction with the corset-like effect of your deep abdominals and spinal muscles gives you an inward and upward lift. This supports your internal organs and tissues to help you manage the lift.

🤰Protect your pelvic organs, pelvic floor and diastasis…..use your core to lift!

03/02/2022

Staying safe whilst maintaining strength in pregnancy - it’s all about pressure regulation. We want to avoid over straining the structures that make up our core / ‘canister’ which already under pressure! We do this through:
1) modify loads - lift lighter
2) breathe! Exhale on the effort
3) observe the position / posture you lift from
4) don’t exceed your personal capacity to lift - lifting in pregnancy is not about PBs it’s about being strong for motherhood!

31/01/2022

🤰 “You shouldn’t be lifting you’re pregnant” Part 1
I have heard this countless times in my 3 (uncomplicated) pregnancies. My answer “why? there’s no medical reason why I can’t” “You might hurt your baby”. It’s a historical, culturally entrenched myth that lifting is associated with miscarriage and it is simply not true. Very sadly, it is a myth that embeds fearful negative beliefs into healthy pregnant women preventing previously very active women from continuing their chosen activities or preventing pregnant women from becoming active. Wouldn’t it be such a cruel turn of nature that pregnant women have to stop lifting, cuddling and playing with their existing children for 9 months?

🤰The truth…… there’s no robust evidence to support the myth. In fact national and global exercise in pregnancy guidelines advocate resistance training at least twice a week and 150 minutes of weekly moderate aerobic activity for substantial health benefits for
mum and baby (CMO, 2019 & WHO, 2020). This is actually not vastly different to the exercise guidelines for health gains in non-pregnant populations.

🤰I was listening to Dave Skolnik talk on episode “is lifting bad for my back?” and it got me reflecting on the pregnant population. Dave discusses that lifting is part of life so we may as well be good at it. This could not be more true of motherhood, we are perpetually bending, squatting, deadlifting our young, car seats, buggies etc so it makes sense that we train ourselves to be able to do this and do it well throughout pregnancy and into the post natal period.

🤰So are pregnant women who stop lifting due to the fear of harm to self or to baby more predisposed to injury post natally? Highly likely. The more de-conditioned we become in pregnancy, the more of a shock to our musculoskeletal system it is when we find ourselves having to squat / lunge / deadlift for the thousandth time in a day. It’s a bit like knowing there’s a marathon you’ve booked into but deciding that you don’t really need to train for it. It doesn’t make sense.

🤰Pregnant women are robust enough to cope with load within their personal capacity to tolerate that load💪🏾

18/01/2022

I wish I hadn’t ignored these! I could have saved myself from so much sickness and injury! Our bodies tell us a story and give us warning signs, becoming attuned to those signs so we can give ourselves appropriate rest and recovery is vital for sustainable health & longevity. Ref: Beyond Training. Mastering endurance, health and life. Ben Greenfield.

17/01/2022

🥳New year gives us this psychological turn over a new leaf. Of the most popular are weight loss and getting fit. But does an increased NY motivation for change coupled with calorie cutting and increases in energy expenditure lead to healthy sustainable change?

🧐In the early part of the year, clinically we see an upsurge in (avoidable) musculoskeletal injury and also systemic illness. By trying to make positive changes for healthier outcomes, we could be welcoming over-exercising, hormonal depletion, poorer sleep and lowered immunity.

Consider…….

🏃‍♀️ Exercise
If you’re starting a new exercise programme think paced and progressive to give your body the chance to adapt to the load you’re putting through it. Too much too soon leads to overload, adaptation is bi-passed and injury is invited.
Consider progressing yourself by 10% each week
That’s 10% of one variable - the frequency you train, the time you train for or the intensity you’re training at.
Perhaps vary activities rather than just doing the same thing so you’re body isn’t loaded in the same way all the time

🥘 Diet
Think calorie source rather than calorie counting / cutting. You run the risk of depleting your body of vital macro and micro nutrients that you need for that increased energy expenditure and more importantly to fuel your recovery. It’s not about how much you eat necessarily but more about what the food is and where it comes from.

💦 Hydration
Hydration is vital for (amongst other things) basic cellular nutrition and function, to lubricate joints and soft tissue, to aid sleep, concentration and cognition . A great way to measure whether you’re drinking enough water is to check your p*e - pale like white wine you’re good, dark like cider or ale, you’re dehydrated so drink more water 💦

🛌 Sleep and Rest
These are of the most important for repair, re-building, growth and adaptation to occur in tissue. We load to stimulate & rest to adapt. If you’re not sleeping well look at why not - stress? Too much tech too late into the evening? Diet changes? Not enough exercise? Too much exercise? Not enough fresh air? Remember resting doesn’t = laziness.

Balance is 🔑