Why Is My Trainer Having Me Do This?

When you are working with a trainer, know that we have both big and small picture goals running through our mind at all times. Sometimes in a jovial way, my longterm clients will say “whyyyy are we doing this weird wonky adductor (inner thigh) activation?!” I figured it may be helpful to fill you in on the “why” behind exercise selection.

Your sessions and programs have been chosen while carefully considering all the following:

1. Your comfort level. Despite the narrative that says “get uncomfortable” - you do, in fact, need to be comfortable. What that means is you need to feel a connectivity in your body, a softness in your joints, an activation of the right muscles and to feel SAFE. So, yes you can do hard things that are uncomfortable because they are challenging, but you should never feel vulnerable to injury or in any position that sets off your nervous system. You should feel safe, strong, capable, and comfortable with your trainer.

2. Functionality. We want you to be able to move well in your life without risking injury. We’ve seen many clients start with us after their previous injuries, and have heard about how the injuries have compromised their quality of life and held them back from things they love. Injuries are not worth it. Moving with strength and ease is important, so, functional movement patterns will always be prioritized in your personal training sessions. Plus, no matter what age you are when you train, we want to make sure you never get stuck on a toilet and unable to get off by yourself :)

3. Your goals! If your goals are to have a stronger, perkier butt, be aware that you may have to do some smaller glute muscle activations, deep core activations and mind body exercises ON TOP OF the larger glute players in order to fulfill your goals. You can’t just squat and lunge all day. Move in different planes, get the small and the large muscles working together, and you will have the best glutes ever. That’s a promise!

4. Your overall health. This means your cardiorespiratory system, your hormonal health, your vestibular health, your mental health — if we know of tweaks here and there that are going to improve these components, we’re going to include them. When it comes to benefitting your body and health, we want it all. Understanding interconnectivity is vital, and remains an integral thread to our approach.

Do not ever be afraid to ask your trainer why a certain exercise has been programmed, whether it’s in your self-led program or within your actual sessions. Your trainer should have several good reasons why a certain exercise has been selected. So much more goes into session structuring than many understand. We bring your health history, goals, specific biomechanics, emotional well-being and bang-for-buck into consideration at every meeting. We want you to get your results quickly, but without missing a beat. Without skipping over the important stuff.

We balance how you feel, with how you look (to yourself), with how you perform.

For professionals, it’s complex and simple at the same time. We are meticulous, and yet direct.

For you, you should feel clear about your body, your strength and your progress. Always, always ask.

Some Words on Fat Loss

Fat loss is a goal for many, yet something people are feeling ashamed to talk about these days.  In the interest of self-love and body positivity, it is in many circles considered taboo to discuss wanting to lose weight or lose fat. 

But you can simultaneously want to change your body, while accepting your body.  

After all, bodies change anyway. They are always changing. It’s whether or not we want to get behind the wheel and steer that change in a certain direction that is the question.  And when we do, let’s unpack WHY we may want it steered in the fat loss or weight loss direction:

Most people when asked why they want to lose weight will answer “to look better and feel better.”  Both of these things are outcomes of fat loss, when there is excess fat to lose.  But my question about the look better part is “look better for WHO?”

If the answer is for you, because when you like what you see for yourself you will feel better aligned, more aesthetically pleased and more confident… those are all fair reasons.  If the answer is for anything or anyone external, the problem with that is it could feel pressurized which often times ends up feeling terrible in the process.  And, for a process to be sustainable, it should not feel terrible. It should feel progressive and supportive.

Losing weight to feel better is always valid.  If there is excess fat to lose and one wants to lose it, it can result in more energy, a brighter mood, balanced hormones — and a very important one — ease of movement. Because when it is difficult to move around and perform activities such as looking after children, playing sports, or even just walking, that becomes a big and negative distraction that often results in extra stress.  Even if it’s subconscious.

{I would like to be clear that even if you have excess fat to lose, it does not mean you have to want to lose it.  All sizes and percentages of body fat can have a bursting-with-happiness, fulfilled life.  It is simply if you are feeling held back either by confidence, a feeling of incongruence in your physical vessel or by that of comfort / health concerns.}

If you are decided that you would like to lose some excess fat because you are lacking confidence, uncomfortable and in pain, or just not feeling quite like yourself and at your best, you can start here.

1. When you put your meals together, choose your protein and produce first. Then add healthy fats. Finally, add healthy starches when you feel you need them. (If you have trouble knowing what foods belong in what categories, stay tuned because I’ll be composing a guide to help you.)

2. Move more.  Both leisurely activity and higher heart rate activity count.  Just add MORE. It can be 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time.  Week by week, make sure you are moving your body around more than before.

3. Commit to exercise like you commit to brushing your teeth.  You can’t just skip several days and get all clogged up.  Maintenance is part of the life program.  Accepting that will make the lifestyle changes a lot easier.

4. Strength training. It’s probably the most bang for buck thing to add in for fat loss. Building lean muscle tissue improves your health in every single way, makes you want to move even more, makes you want to eat better, helps you sleep better, supports your hormones… It’s the best thing you can do for your life.

5. Stay hydrated. Start your day with two glasses of water to replenish thirsty cells, and keep them flushed with water throughout the day. Half your bodyweight (lbs) in ounces every day is a good guideline.

Although I’ve tried to simplify this approach, I understand implementation can be complicated.  I excel at helping clients fit these factors into their specific lifestyles and at working through the obstacles that can pop up. 

I want you well. Reach out if you ever need the help.

Feeling Anger While Working Out?

Let’s unpack this. An introspective client (a psychologist even) presented to me that she feels rage sometimes while exercising.

Anger or rage tend to come from one of two places, if not both combined: overwhelm and frustration. A lack of mobility, discomfort in the joints, fatigue, all of these things can provide an overall feeling of rust. What I mean is, it feels like added resistance. A topical extra resistance to something that is already something to push through.

It makes you feel, in a roundabout way, that the world is pushing back on you while you’re trying to move forward.

I wanted to touch on this because it can be a very common feeling at the beginning of your work with a trainer, at the beginning of your journey with exercise OR, if you have not tapped into the consistency that can help to wash that feeling away. It can be very normal, and acceptance is a key part of getting through it.

Obviously, quitting and never exercising is not the answer. You need to find a way through the rust.

1. Manage your overwhelm. If your fitness is contributing to an overall sense of overwhelm, simplify your approach. Adjust your program accordingly so that your exercise feels like a stress-busting release, not another daunting chore.

2. Likely the specific exercises you are doing need to be modified toward ones that help you experience self care. Maybe the exercises have more of a wrapping, tightening feeling than a heavy load. Often times gentle cardio boosts work well for these psychological instances as well - and core. Always core. Feeling energy generating from the core puts us in our power.

3. Your nutrition. Sometimes when we feel extra push-back and like we’re hitting a wall, we’re not eating in a way that makes movement feel nice. If your nutrition is heavily inflammatory, your body can feel like cement in your training. Lots of water, whole foods and balanced blood sugar makes a big difference for your chemistry — for lightening your mood and energy.

4. Name the feeling. If you feel rage or anger when you’re doing something that feels hard, just say it (it can be in your head). The simple awareness of it will help you to address it and make the necessary adjustments to turn a negative experience into a progressive one.

5. Consistency. If you feel rusty one day, adjust and move through it. The next day, come back and do something again (something maybe a bit different). Show up again. And again, and again. By day 3 or 4 you’ll feel like you’re smooth sailing in exercise, and likely grateful you pushed through.

I’m going to save what is probably the most important point for last: how you feel about your body shows up in your workouts, and it’s important to work on reframing your body image while you exercise. Sometimes people let negative self-image talk filter into their minds while they are exercising. You have to make a choice to catch this when it happens, and blow it away like you’re blowing a dandelion. You have to decide you are not going to permit negative thoughts about yourself while you exercise (or ideally ever!). Even if you have to force it at first, tell yourself how strong, how capable and how energized you are. How happy your cells are to be exercising. A negative mindset leads to discouragement that acts like a thick, brick wall against you and your health. BREAK THE WALL with encouragement and self support. Work with your body, to break through the rust.

Across the Continent

Ohhh how I’ve missed writing. I’ll have to be very careful not to spew out a whole year (or more)’s worth of content at you.  This is my revival post.

Now that the second child is out in the world and we are done making babies (!), I’m picking this baby back up.

The former blog had over 500 posts and I’ve found myself actually missing having that resource to shoot clients articles here and there that they would find helpful. Things like: great protein sources, proper portion sizes, snack ideas, hormone tips, dead lift tips, injury information, running plans… I had a lot of stuff.  When I deleted my previous websites I felt compelled to let go and start fresh. The videos were old, some of my form cues have shifted, some nutritional guidance has changed with my expanding and evolving understand of hormones.

My point is, although I felt maybe it was better to re-write a more current approach to alllll those blog posts, man what a task I have ahead for me. On one hand, I’m excited to explore all of these helpful topics with you. On the other, time is just tricker with two very young children.

The kids are 4 months (Otis) and 2.5 years now (Hugo), and we’re busy. I see around 5 clients a day outside of childcare. This means, Guillermo watches the kids while I see 3x 30 min clients each morning, and 2x 30 min clients each afternoon.  I’m fulfilled and grateful to be able to be present as a mother the remainder of the time, and to continue my first love (career) alongside.

Career continues to evolve. I am strictly virtual at the moment, and loving it.  It’s working. Clients are focused, consistent, diligent with following their programs in my app in between our sessions, and it’s a very successful arrangement. I do welcome in person clients to our new home in South Bay, Los Angeles, and am also happy as can be with my current arrangement.

Up next for me in terms of education will be more mobility training and Eldoa courses.  For those who don’t know, Eldoa is an approach to high tension myofascial stretching, intent on straightening the spine and creating symmetry in the body.  This is the simple explanation.  It leads to better biomechanical function, therefore fewer chronic injuries brought on by imbalances. The effects have been dramatic for me, and I’ve only scratched the surface.  My clients have been equally excited (in a roundabout way, because the poses are TOUGH) about this new avenue. They can feel the challenge, and they can feel the difference in their bodies directly after.

We are loving our new home - the warm weather, the year-round colour, the proximity to the ocean.  All of our reasons for this move were primarily health-focused. I wanted to spend more of my life outside, especially as a mother.  It was hard as hell, but we made it happen.  I am planning a more specific post on the details of our international move - the pros and cons, the hiccups, the process - at a later date.

Let’s start here. It feels good to be writing again.  I hope I can stifle my inclination to babble and to be most helpful for you in your health journey.

Love.

My One Year Old

Here I am, tail between my legs because SO MUCH TIME has passed since I last sat down to write on this platform.

Motherhood is wildly more time consuming than I expected. Guillermo and I often laugh about how I insisted during my pregnancy (pre-pandemic) that I would be back to seeing a nearly full client load at 6 weeks postpartum. Here I am, a year later and squeezing in as many virtual sessions as I can, which is still only about 10 sessions / week. I work both Saturdays and Sundays, and every weekday morning before Guillermo starts his work day.

During Hugo’s naps, I scramble to tidy, or workout, or nap if he’s gotten us up at 5am so that I can make it through the day. It’s physically much harder work than I ever thought it would be, I’m carrying him most of the time. The ol’ spine is crying out for alignment!

Now, it sounds like I’m complaining, and I am a little bit. I’m complaining just a little given my surprise at how little time there actually is to do independent Jessica stuff. Even like work! However, he is growing fast. And the fact that I have the privilege to spend as much time with him as I do is something I do not lose sight of, nor do I fall short on gratitude.

I am hoping to revive some presence here, to share more health-related tips moving forward. This is my goal.

Today’s post is a life update.

I am currently working on my ACE Personal Training certification course. Yes, I’ve been a certified personal trainer for 20 years, however with the Canadian company CanFitPro. ACE is more widely recognized, the recertification process and courses are much better — for these reasons as well as simply having a great refresh, I’m completing this course this summer. I don’t have an ego when it comes to this work, the more education the better, even if it may seem I’m going back to basics. I have a bit of a plot for a growth platform, so this is the first course for that broader plan :)

I chip away at this on weekends and after Hugo goes to bed.

Hugo had his first birthday party this past weekend! By party, I mean we had a small group of vaccinated friends over to play with bubbles, entertain the dogs and eat cake. After a very long year of lockdowns and limited socialization, I was really feeling the blooming love of community.

Here are some shots from the weekend:

My little toddler-in-the-making is about to wake up now, so I will leave you with this for today.

I hope you are all keeping well, finding ways to see the light and the joy in most of your days as we continue wading through the pandemic, difficult news headlines and challenging days amid work and family life.

No matter what you are feeling today, your feelings are valid and please remember that change is the only constant. The tide never ends, and with each wave it brings some new and takes some old. We continue to shift, our lives continue to shuffle. There is absolutely always a way forward, there is always a clearing ahead.

Feeding A Baby From Day One

Feeding a baby was sort of the last thing on my mind in preparing to be a mother. I was ready for sleep challenges, for crying… I was completely unaware of the extent of challenges we could face in just getting this baby fed, if I’m being honest!

Because I had a couple of breast surgeries (one reduction, lift and augmentation at age 23 and one explant at age 35 - see here for more info on this), I was prepared to have some trouble breastfeeding. I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to. And all things considered, I’d say I did a bit better than I expected to. However, we faced numerous challenges getting Hugo fed comfortably. Here is how it all went down for us.

Hugo was born a healthy weight of 7lb 9 oz. I found breastfeeding challenging for the first few days, as most new moms do. I certainly couldn’t tell how much milk he was getting. When the midwives weighed him on day 4, he had lost 10% of his weight. This, too, can be common, but the midwives do want to be cautious. If the baby gets to a 10% or greater loss, they may recommend supplementing with 30ml of formula at each feed, and this is what we were recommended to do.

Within a few days, his weight was coming back up very well, and so we were advised by a different midwife that we could then remove the formula again and carry on. Well, in came a confusing event. I remember distinctly on day 8, I began to cut back his formula. I also had a few slices of pizza for dinner. This is relevant because to this day I’m not sure if it was the cheese, the tomato sauce, or the drop in calories that caused this - but Hugo ended up hysterical for most of day 9. He wailed and wailed, broke out in full-body rash, and barely slept. For a newborn, this was alarming. The rash kept spreading and finally around 6pm we decided we didn’t want to chance anything and went to emergency.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll skip some of the details of this horrible emergency experience. In short, we were turned away everywhere and told to get to Sick Kids. Guillermo couldn’t come in with us - I had to be the one despite having a minor panic attack, because I had the only means with which to feed Hugo (my breasts). We were put in a hot room. I didn’t have any diapers, and neither did they. The nurse was harsh with me when I asked for one, saying they did not provide them. Nor did they provide water to drink, not even to breastfeeding new mothers. I stayed in this room from 8pm to 5:30 am, Hugo screaming. He had to have a catheter put in for testing, more screaming. We went from roasting hot to freezing cold, no blankets. We were checked on about once every 1.5 hours. Just another little story for the pandemic experience, I guess. The result of this visit was “We don’t know what the rash is from. Go home and monitor it.”

I kind of had to tap into my gut, and I wondered if Hugo had gone into a panic from the drop in calories when we removed the formula. I worried that he wasn’t getting enough milk from me. I decided we’d move from a syringe of formula to bottles, and continue to supplement every feed. I wasn’t taking any more chances. I also worried that he had CMPA (cow’s milk protein allergy). He did continuously react, in the form of gas and stomach pain when I would consume dairy, so I wrote it off pretty early. If you’ve ever experienced an innocent baby in pain, you know you no longer want to take ANY chances of providing something that could be the cause of that pain.

Next we entered many months of horrible gas pains, colic (an umbrella term for what is basically unexplained excessive crying, see my other post here on that experience), green feces (a sign of allergy) and my agony in trying to pinpoint the causes of the problems. We bounced around trying different formulas - from cow’s milk then to soy (NOPE!), then to a goat milk European formula. Hugo was slowly rejecting breastfeeding during the day, and preferring bottles ever since that hospital visit. This resulted in me pumping 3x / day or more, to try to derive as much milk as possible for his bottle feeds. I wanted Hugo to consume mostly breastmilk, but I could never quite produce enough, probably because both of us fell back on the formula out of fear too early on. Maybe I could have produced more if we had stuck it out a few more days, but after the rash breakout I was just too afraid to risk him not getting enough.

So, we ended up doing a combination of: accepting donated breast milk from other mothers who overproduced, an organic goat milk formula, and as much of my own pumped milk as I could muster. And the word “muster” is probably an understatement for the aggression I applied to this task. I was constantly chasing his appetite.

I ate the milk-production cookies, I got a tincture from my naturopath, I eventually went on Domperidone at the max dose (9 pills / day) just to make enough. The pills did finally work, or perhaps a combination of the cookies, drinks and pills - to this day, I have no idea. Something was increasing my production, and I didn’t want to risk it dropping so I just kept doing all of the things. Ummm, it sucked. That feeling — that pressure. If I had a low pump session, it would put me in such a bad mood. If I had a higher pump session, I would feel so proud. I was constantly evaluating what I was eating, what I might be doing wrong or right. It’s ridiculous, as I’m revisiting it all! And sure, I would have just put Hugo on all formula had his stomach been able to manage it. But he would spit up more, have more discomfort and constipation when we did.

Guillermo just walked in as I’m writing this and asked why I look so stressed - haha.

Here we are now at 9 months. A little over a month ago, I stopped pumping. I weaned off the pills, stopped eating the damn cookies and my milk production came down to a halt. With tremendous gratitude, we continue to collect donated milk from overproducing mothers, and Hugo’s bottles are about half donated milk and half formula now. Only 3 more months to go, and this wild journey will be over.

I wanted to share this rather complicated experience because breastfeeding, or FEEDING, no matter what route you choose can be incredibly hard. It can be overwhelmingly stressful. And that stress, especially as I look back on it now, can be very toxic and such a spoil to what is in so many ways one of the most beautiful experiences of life. Growing with, and growing a new baby.

Nothing is as simple as it seemed ahead of having a baby. None of it. But, and I really do mean this, the highs are the highest I’ve ever felt and the feeling of being a mother outweighs anything I imagined life had in store for me. Through my fatigue, I am grateful for this every day.