Episode #47: Rhonda’s return to exercise postpartum story (+ an exciting announcement!)
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In this episode, Rhonda gives you all the information on the Strong at Home Membership, giving you more background into why and how she started it (which includes her return to exercise postpartum story), and filling you in on a couple exciting updates about the membership!
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PODCAST LINKS & RESOURCES:
🔹 Check out Rhonda’s BRAND NEW SOLO TIER of the Strong at Home Membership!
🔹 Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast
SHOW NOTES:
(0:52) - Strong at Home Membership (Solo Tier) - Open NOW!
(2:21) - Episode intro
(3:00) - Why did Rhonda start the Strong at Home Membership?
(5:20) - Rhonda’s light bulb moment while she was learning about rehabbing the pelvic floor
(6:44) - How Rhonda eased back into movement, postpartum!
(7:54) - Rhonda’s eye-opening (and challenging) mindset shifts
(12:17) - This is why the Strong at Home Membership exists (what it includes and what it’s priced at currently)
(13:44) - Working with Rhonda in a 1:1 virtual capacity
(15:00) - EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT FROM RHONDA - Strong at Home SOLO!
(16:43) - Episode Wrap Up
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Episode #47: Rhonda’s return to exercise postpartum story (+ an exciting announcement!)
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness, the pelvic floor, and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast. Rhonda here and today I am doing a solo episode telling you all a little bit more about the Strong at Home membership, giving you a little bit more background into why and how I started it, and also filling you in on a couple exciting updates about the membership.
So if you've been listening for a while and you follow me on Instagram, you might know a little bit about the strong at home membership. Um, but if you don't hear it is, and if you have heard about it, um, these updates might still be of interest to you. So why did I start the strong at home membership? So I have shared on the podcast before my challenge and struggle to get back into exercise after my second daughter, after my first daughter, I was able to, and now I.
Dislike this term, I was able to bounce back, quote unquote, pretty quickly, um, got back into pretty intense exercise almost right away. And basically tried to do the same thing after my second daughter and my body just was not ready. My mind was there, but my body was not there. And so I dealt with prolapse symptoms, a heaviness, sort of bulging, tampon feeling falling out, um, in my vagina.
I felt with, I dealt with abdominal cramping or like a tightness in my abdomen anytime I tried to work out and that was after a couple quite intense workouts. Looking back, I definitely did too much too soon, but live and learn. Um, and then after that sort of panicked and was confused and even as a physiotherapist and a longtime athlete had no idea where to go from there.
Um, Because I felt lied to because it has been sold to us in the fitness world that as long as you're fit and you're strong and you work out throughout your entire pregnancy, then you should be able to quote unquote bounce back without any issues. So when I had issues, I was confused, even as a physiotherapist, I knew nothing about my pelvic floor.
Um, I would say I knew about my core. But now thinking about it, the pelvic floor is part of your core system. So the fact that I had no education and training about the pelvic floor, I definitely did not know enough to rehab my own body or help other clients in their postpartum journey. So on that mat leave, I, yeah, stopped working out for two weeks, didn't know what to do.
And basically I always say I kind of went back to school during that time. Started following different pelvic health accounts online. Um, Jessie Mundell is one of them. Brianna Battles and started to just learn and was obsessed about learning about the pelvic floor. And I sort of had a light bulb moment when I was learning about rehabbing your pelvic floor.
That it. Very, it looked very similar to how I would help clients in my physiotherapy world. Rehab for back injuries, rehab from hip injuries, that type of thing. Just taking them back to the very basics of movement and building back up again. But that wasn't so, Sold to me. And that's not sold to us in the postpartum fitness world, because we are spoonfed and force fed these messages of that bounce back narrative and how, you know, we have to do anything and everything possible to lose the baby weight.
And I bought into that and I fed into that. And so when I made that connection that, Oh my goodness, I need to rehab my body and my pelvic floor. similar to how I would treat someone with an injury and maybe my ego didn't let me go there because it's the whole like athlete brain. I'm not injured. I'm pregnant.
I'm not injured. I'm postpartum, but it is a challenging event on your body. And I Wasn't giving my body enough respect to rehab it slowly. So once I learned all that information, my mindset on what exercise was going to look like for me totally changed. And I did just very slowly start easing back into movement, starting with breathing, core connection, breathing.
So learning that connection from my breathing to my pelvic floor, that was brand new information. And. Got back to the very basics of movement. So focused on mobility, focused on just movements on the floor, got back into just body weight movements, and just started to really tune into my body and sort of nudge, I say this to my clients, nudge the fences of my symptoms without breaking through the fence.
So just sort of like test the limits of my prolapse symptoms and my ab, my abdominal symptoms without. Making them worse. And then over time was able to add on more movements, more load, more volume. But this happened across weeks and months versus, you know, what I wanted to do was just jump back into intense, heavy workouts within days or weeks.
And so. Yeah, the physical rehab on my body was a huge part of it for sure. But it was the mindset shifts that I was having to make that were the most eye opening and the biggest challenge for me. So with having to go back to simpler workouts, less intense workouts, started to really notice how much of my identity was wrapped up in intense exercise.
And. Had almost like a mini identity crisis of who am I without intense exercise before having my kids. And then even after having Sadie, I worked at a CrossFit gym. So I was able to train and work out five, five to six days a week. So that was the story. I told myself that to feel my best. And, you know, if I'm honest with myself, look my best.
Um, five to six workouts a week was what I should be doing and should is not the great greatest word to use, as we know. Um, and also with that, I felt that workouts had to be super intense. So like seven to 10 out of intensity, or it didn't count. And so when I had to scale back. Yes, I had to really face those stories and dig deep and sort of explore the layers of why did I feel that exercise had to look that way to count and to feel worthy.
And so, you know, for me coming from a gymnastics background and then a CrossFit athlete, that is all I knew about exercise. And I think again, if I kind of think about the aesthetic side of it, that is what I felt it took to keep Maintain my body size or shrink my body size, especially in those early postpartum times, you know, it's again, force fed down our throats that our number one priority postpartum should be to lose the baby weight.
And now I know that it's just such BS and that is just the fitness industry trying to make us feel bad about our body and sell us things. And so when I started to unpack all of that and started to get. Deep into my mindset and my beliefs started to realize maybe I don't have to work out a certain way to feel okay.
So I parent, I always use the term I parented myself in those early days to only quote unquote work out three days a week and basically only work out for like 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Those of you with little kids, little newborns know that you have very limited windows of time to do anything for yourself.
So I would put 10 minutes on my watch and do pick a few movements and just move and have that be okay. And yes, in those early days, I was filled with guilt. I would be laying on the couch on my rest day, watching Netflix and thinking Rhonda, you should be working out. And then the gentle, compassionate side of my brain would say, no, Rhonda, Rest is just as important for your recovery as working out.
So this is what is okay to do right now. And so that was really what led me to create the strong at home membership. Yes. I wanted to create a program to help women get them back into exercise in a way that wasn't too intense, was going to be progressive and easy to follow to yes, build back that strength.
build back that pelvic health and just have you feel really good in your postpartum body, but also to help break down some of that all or nothing mindset. I started to realize I wasn't the only one when I started to talk about this mindset on Instagram. So many people resonate. And honestly, to this day, that is the biggest feedback I get from my clients.
Yes. I get feedback on how much better people are feeling, feeling stronger, able to do things with their kids without, um, feeling sore, all of that is wonderful. But I love getting the feedback that thank you so much for helping me dip ditch the all or nothing mindset. And this is the first program I've actually stuck with for a long time.
That means so much to me. So that is where the strong at home membership was born was out of a need for myself to slowly ease back into exercise, work on that all or nothing mindset, find an exercise program that was doable with two kids, which is so, so, so hard. So I will validate that if you're at home thinking, Oh my goodness, there's no way I can fit exercise into my life.
This is why the strong at home membership exists. And so I have since then helped over a hundred women through the strong at home membership in various capacities. And, you know, the strong at home membership, the original and what it exists right now is with full support from me. So I get everybody to fill out a pretty thorough intake form, get to know your history about your birth.
Your pregnancies, your symptoms. Um, I remind my clients, I'm a physiotherapist first and foremost. So I want to help you with your pain and symptoms. And then I am in there. So it's in a program called true coach, where I check in on my people once a week on Fridays to see how they're doing. You can comment on your workouts and let me know how you're feeling.
If you're having symptoms, I can give you feedback, modifications, send you physiotherapy exercises. If you need to. It's full hands on experience. Um, and that program right now is 159 a month and full transparency, why I priced it that way. So if you work with me in a one on one capacity, so I also work with people one on one virtually, those sessions and same concept, I help people get back into fitness.
Um, one on one virtually, it's 80 a month. So those clients see me once a week typically. So that works out to 320 a month. So that's one on one. So really the Strong at Home Membership is an awesome deal, 159 a month. I still am with you. It's basically a physiotherapy program that you do on your own time.
But I am there with you. coaching you, um, responding to your messages all the time. So that is why it's priced that way. Um, so here's the exciting announcement, um, alert. I, one of my values with starting my Business and with starting the strong at home membership is I want these programs to be accessible and I understand that 320 a month for one on one guidance is a lot of money.
And so is 159 a month I understand that. And so, Now that the program has exists for a while, I want to start diversifying my offers. And so exciting announcement that I am now going to be offering, um, it's called strong at home solo, and it's going to be a tier for 79 a month. You get the same awesome workouts that.
The existing tier gets, which is called full support. You got the same awesome workouts. However, you don't get that coaching from me. So I'm not doing the check ins and I'm not doing the modifications, simply the workouts, but that is still such great value. Again, it's basically a hand delivered physiotherapy program that you do on your own time.
And with that said, you can still follow me on Instagram. Instagram. I offer so many tips and advice and guidance on there. So you're still learning from me. Um, still, I'm still demoing all of the movements that you see. So you still see me, you still get, I call them Rhonda's reminders. So there are little tidbits of advice and wisdom to help you ditch that all or nothing mindset and help you feel really good about your postpartum body.
That is still all included in the program. Um, so yes, so the tiers now you can work with me one on one for 80 a session strong at home full support 159 a month and then the brand new exciting I'm so pumped to have this strong at home solo for only 79 a month. So, um, I'm so excited to offer this. And if you are interested, the best way to check it out is to check out my website.
So Rhonda Chamberlain, pt. com forward slash strong at home membership. And that will show you all the different options available right now. Um, thank you so much for listening and being here as always. If you have any questions, probably the best way to reach out to me is on Instagram. You'll find that in the show notes, but it's Instagram.
Um, my handle on Instagram is at Rhonda Chamberlain PT, and I would love to have you. I'm just so excited to continue helping women get really strong, feel really good about their postpartum bodies and ditch that all or nothing mindset to finally fit exercise into their busy mom lives. Thanks for listening everyone.
And I'll talk to you soon.
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