Episode #70: 3 reasons it’s important to ease into a new exercise habit
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In today’s episode, Rhonda discusses a theme she talks about with her clients all the time - mostly with postpartum people! That gradual return to exercise is sustainable and approachable - and Rhonda will share more about it!
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LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN EPISODE
IG Post demonstrating why it’s important to ease back into exercise
Join Rhonda’s FREE Ease into Fitness Challenge!
Check out Rhonda’s Strong at Home Membership
PODCAST LINKS & RESOURCES
Check out Rhonda’s FREE Resource Library
Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast
Book with Dayna (Rebirth Wellness)
SHOW NOTES:
(0:49) - Rhonda’s special announcement: The Ease Into Fitness Challenge!
(6:20) - What we are talking about today - and why it’s important
(10:15) - Reason #1: This approach prevents injuries
(14:40) - Reason #2: This approach helps create consistency
(16:57) - Reason #3: You’ll be less likely to quit
(17:46) - Episode review and wrap up
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Episode #70 - 3 reasons it's important to ease into a new exercise habit
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!
Hi, everyone. I just have a quick announcement before we head into today's episode. So, I am trying something new this new year. This has been something I've been wanting to do for a while since I started my business. Um, but I guess didn't really Have a way to talk about it in a way that felt good for me and my values.
So this time of year, January, you know, of course we see all of these shame failed, um, intense, super hardcore, uh, workout programs that. Um, are focused on, you know, losing the holiday weight and making you feel bad about your body and sort of punishing your body for the food you ate during the holidays.
And that's just never been part of my values with my business, which you all know if you've been listening for a while. However, on the other side of the coin, I do understand that this is a time of year that many of us do have maybe extra motivation, um, to get back into a fitness routine from a place of feeling good.
And so this is why I love to help people do is just. Find that balance between, you know, wanting to work out for reasons to feel good and not using it as a way to punish or shame ourselves. And so I'd love to introduce my ease into fitness challenge as sort of like my way of doing things differently in the new year.
If you are looking for a program to get you back into exercise in a realistic, sustainable way. So this will be a completely free. 10 day fitness challenge and it's going to include 10, so 10 days, 5 different workouts and 2 dumbbells, um, the last 2 workouts will be with dumbbells, the first 3 will be bodyweight, um, zero focus on weight loss, just about finding that realistic, sustainable fitness program for you.
Sign up for this, we'll open Monday, January 22nd. And the challenge starts on Monday, February 5th. So the challenge itself, again, will run for 10 days from February 5th to February 14th. And how it works is you'll be sent, um, an email each time there's a new workout. So the emails will come on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that first week, and then Monday, Wednesday, the week after.
And you'll also get a PDF guide every time you get an email that will show you all the workouts. And have a YouTube link for each of the movements so you know exactly what to do. Um, it's me demoing the movements too with modification options as needed. This will be a challenge in the sense that there will be points.
Um, but if you, you know, you've been following me for a while, it's going to be sort of done differently. Um, a different way of looking at this point system. You'll get points. Yes, you'll get points every time you do a workout. You'll also get points for if you go for a walk, you'll get points if you do some mobility, get points if you do some pelvic floor relaxation.
And honestly, I will also give you points if you message me and you say, you know what, Rhonda, I'm sick today or I'm exhausted. I'm at my max capacity. In the past, I would have forced myself to work out, but today it's just not, I'm not feeling it. Um, I'm just going to rest. I'm just going to lay on the couch and rest.
I will give you points for that too, because you are honouring where your body's at, meeting your body where it's at, and, um, that is the name of the game. So you'll get points for those, all of those things. And at the end of the 10 days, I will put, every time you get a point, your name gets put into a draw, and I'll be drawing for three different prizes.
The first two are for my Strong at Home membership. Full support tier and solo tier. So full support tier includes messaging with me. Solo tier is just the workout. So no messaging. So the first one is one a 59 value. Second tier is 79 value. And then the third prize will be a 25 Amazon gift card. that you can use on anything that you want.
And so full disclosure at the end of this 10 day challenge, I will be emailing you all about the strong at home membership and opening up a limited number of spots for you to join. It is the next logical step. If you love the challenge and you love the workouts, that is my style. That is how the workouts will be delivered in true coach in the strong at home membership.
So I'd love for you to join and continue on. If you want to just do the challenge just to see what it's all about, see how it feels to kind of ease back in, find that realistic fitness program for yourself and just do the 10 days. That's also a okay. I would love for you to join either way. And so, yeah, if you are interested again, this completely free challenge.
Doors are open as of Monday, January 22nd. Um, head to my website. I will also put this in the show notes. So Rhonda Chamberlain pt. com forward slash ease dash into dash challenge. And, uh, you can sign up and join the challenge. And again, if you want to continue on after that challenge, I would love for you to join the strong at home membership.
If not, that's also okay too. All right. Check it out. And let's get into today's episode. Hi everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the pelvic health and fitness podcast. I'm doing a solo episode today and I'm going to be sharing with you all three reasons why it might be a good idea to ease back into exercise.
This is a theme I talk with my clients about all the time. I work mostly with postpartum people, um, so this is a theme that comes up postpartum. Just that gradual return to exercise is the, you know, long term sustainable approach and I'll get into reasons why in today's episode. But also would be applicable to you if.
If you have, you know, been away from exercise for a while for whatever reason, um, maybe post surgery, um, if you're, you know, entering into perimenopause or menopause and have reasons to kind of take it slow and need to ease back into exercise, um, basically any reason that you've been away from exercise and you're wanting to get back into it.
Um, and the reason I want to talk about it this way with ease as the theme is typically, you know, the new year brings a lot of programs that, um, have a focus on kind of like shaming us and making us feel badly about our bodies. Maybe about the choices that we might have made during the holidays with our eating and our lack of exercise and that really, you know, strong, hard, intense push back into fitness.
Not to say that that's bad, and if this is, you know, if you're listening and this is something that you've done before, you are doing, kudos. I think that's amazing. Anytime people get moving and add exercise to their lives, I will cheer for you. Um, the reason I'm sort of having a different view is just to let you know that there is a different way.
So you don't have to sprint back into fitness to make up for lost time. You can come at it from a place of gentleness and kindness and, uh, yeah, just respect for your body to have that slow ease back in. And this is something I've worked through myself. Um, I shared with this, shared about this on the podcast before.
That I very much had an all or nothing mindset with exercise where I would be either hardcore in or doing nothing. And then when I would go back to it, it would be, yeah, very like hard, aggressive, uh, sprint back into it from that place of like punishing my body and from a place of wanting to shrink my body too.
So. For me working through that all or nothing mindset and also improving my relationship with my body, with food and with exercise has helped me come to a place where for me, I think it's just the intention is different. So instead of looking at exercise as this punishing, intense, um, aggressive type approach.
Now I see exercise as something that enhances my life and adds value to my life, helps me feel just really strong and energized, able to keep up with my kids. It's turned into a really positive thing. And I have always enjoyed exercise. I am one of those people. Um, but I think just again, my intention behind it is so different that it even feels that much better.
And I don't have any like dread hitting into any workouts because it just feels really good. Not to say there are times that I don't want to work out. Um, and that's part of being a human too, but I think again, reminding myself, okay, I'm doing this because I'm feeling stiff right now. And I just want to get moving reminding myself the long term benefits of it.
Has really made a difference and learning the skill of easing back in time and time again has been so, so valuable. So I want to get into that today. So number 1 reason, um, and these are not in any particular order. Uh, but the 1st reason why it might be a good idea to ease back into exercise is it might help prevent injuries.
So when we gradually, um, introduce a new fitness routine into our life, it allows our body to slowly. adapt and build capacity and resiliency in our tissues to tolerate that new exercise, versus if we rush back into something, our body doesn't have that time, right, to adapt. So it might lead to injuries.
So I like to use a graph example. And this is, you know, if you're watching on YouTube, you can kind of see my actions, but I'll try to describe it too. I did a post on this. back a long time ago. I should do another post on it. Maybe I will. Um, so let's use postpartum as that example because that is the, um, the clients that I work with most.
So when, you know, after we have our six week checkup, for example, and we're like ready, eager, we're willing to get back into fitness and we dive right back in headfirst. So we sprint back into whatever it is that we're doing. And then we might have a setback. So say we have like prolapse symptoms like I dealt with, back pain, hip pain, knee pain, whatever it is.
And then, so then we stop because we're like, Oh, that doesn't feel good. So we stop exercise altogether, which again is what I did. And then you sprint back in again, cause you're like, shoot, I have to make up for those two weeks that I didn't do anything. Head back into fitness, uh, at an intense pace again, maybe we have another setback.
So we have this again, this sort of huge drop down where we don't do a whole lot. Then we rush back in again. So we have these huge dips and dives. So again, if you can kind of see my actions on YouTube in the end, our capacity, um, the progress that we've is pretty minimal. Because we haven't had the chance to really build anything right so we're having these huge dips and dives versus if we take it nice and slow, there's a gradual progression back in.
Yes, we might still have setbacks because it is part of being human that we're going to have, you know, symptoms pop up things that pop up, but they're not going to be as drastic so then we, you know, take it again another just like little progression back into more. And then maybe it's still a little setback, a little bit progression, but in the end we're going to end up further ahead, the capacity that we've built, the progress that we've made over that same amount of time will actually be that much more.
So the slow road to recovery is actually faster in the end. So that's what I mean when I say that. And so this is going to be a much more sustainable approach because it is so frustrating when you deal with those setbacks, right? you're going to be that much more motivated if you're going to keep feeling well instead of dealing with these huge dips and dives when we're rushing back in.
And like I said, this is just a really great skill to learn in our life because we're always going to have reasons that we might need to take it slow with exercise at times. And then we're going to, you know, transition back into it again. So whether that's injury or symptoms, like I said, Postpartum, like I said, um, sickness, whether you get sick or your kids get sick, um, you go on vacation, for example, and then menopause, like I said, menopause is another time where we might have to scale back our fitness routine at times.
And then having that skill of that slow ease back in is just so important to learn. Um, so, you know, there might be times where we can go back a little bit quicker. Like vacation, for example, you might only have a week away from exercise where you're resting. So you might not need to take it as slow. But again, still that first workout back, just having that different intention of like, I don't need to punish myself for to make up for the time that I missed when I was on vacation, I can just do like a nice easy workout for that first one.
Um, just to get the ball rolling again and just to feel really good. I think that's the biggest thing is just that intention and kind of where you're coming from. So yeah, um, that's the first one. Uh, number two for why it might be a good idea to ease back into exercise. It's going to help with consistency.
So gradually adding a new habit like exercise into your life. It's much more realistic to maintain when we, you know, take it slow and don't have these ginormous expectations on ourselves. Like an hour workout, for example, like one hour workout, five days a week, that might not be super sustainable, especially as a busy mom.
So I talk on Instagram about. Five minute workouts, and I was posting a bunch of those you can find those in my highlight reel under free workouts Let's talk about 10 minute workouts because this is kind of the more common approach that I follow myself and a lot of my clients follow So let's just say, so three 10 minute workouts each week is better than zero 30 minute workouts each week.
So, you know, it seems simple, but when you put it that way, you're like, oh yeah, that's so true. So when we expect ourselves to do these super long workouts, I know even for me. Um, I still, to this day, my kids are four and six. Most of my workouts are in that like 10, 15, 20 minute range because that is what fits in my schedule.
And that keeps the ball rolling for me. It keeps me consistent, keeps me moving and it's super achievable. Um, so, and 10 minute workouts can improve your mood. It can decrease joint stiffness, increase your energy and build strength and stamina over time. Transcribed So 10 minute workouts absolutely count every time you commit to that 10 minutes, you're building trust in yourself to keep going.
And this is how new habits are formed. Perhaps maybe when you have more time down the road, maybe your kids get older. Um, your capacity increases. Maybe you get some more support at home. Maybe you can add longer workouts. But again, like I said, maybe the 10 minute workouts is achievable and you want to stick with that.
That's pretty much again, what I have done and I still feel really good with that. Um, yeah. So it helps create that consistency. Number three, you'll be less likely to quit. So when we dive headfirst into a super intense workout program, it can be easy to feel discouraged because maybe You're going to compare your current self to like a former version of you that found those workouts super easy, and you might feel discouraged enough that you're like, this is not fun, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop because I used to be able to do this so well and now I'm sucking.
So maybe you stop, or maybe you do you join like a class or a program that's super intense. And you look around, you see everyone doing it so well and so easily, and you might be struggling. That can feel so discouraging too, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that. Um, so again, you might be likely to quit.
So starting slow, taking it easy, that slow and steady wins the race approach. Um, will just feel so much more encouraging because the workouts will feel doable and achievable. And so every time you, you know, finish that workout, even if it seems quote unquote easy, you're going to feel great. You're going to feel like you accomplished something.
And then over time by building up slowly. Each of those workouts should feel pretty achievable. And then over time that capacity, you're going to be surprised at how much you can do. when you take that slow, steady approach. Another reason so you'll be less likely to quit is because when we rush and we, you know, sprint back into something that is super intense, it might lead to some super sore muscles.
And we all have had that feeling when we get back into something. I know I have. That might be a little bit too much too soon. And then we might need like a day or two to recover. So especially as a busy mom, it's not a fun feeling. So you do a workout. The next day you can't even get up the stairs without pain.
Um, it's impossible to get down and play with your kids on the floor because you're so sore. So you'll, you know, take a few days off and you might lose that momentum and you might be. Um, discouraged to keep going because you're like, I don't want to deal with that. I have too many things to do. I do not have time to feel sore.
Um, so I love helping clients find that sort of like messy middle between challenging ourselves because it does feel also good to like push ourselves a little bit, um, and to feel like we accomplished something, but not so much to the point that we're sore for days upon days. So finding that messy middle.
So that you can still take care of your kids and still feel really good. So that is what I'm hoping this Ease into Fitness program is going to help you all with, um, that I talked about in the intro to this episode. It's going to be a 10, uh, 10 day free challenge to just show you that it is possible to ease back into exercise into a sustainable, realistic way.
Um, I would love for you all to check it out if you want to head to my website, Rhonda Chamberlain pt. com forward slash ease dash into dash fitness. I'll also put that in the show notes. Um, again, just that really great approach to show you that it is possible to fit exercise into your busy life as a busy mom.
So let's just review all of the points before we sign it off here. So three reasons why it might be a good idea to ease back into exercise. Number one, it might help prevent injury because it allows your body to build that slow capacity over time. Number two, it might help you find that consistency that you've been looking for with exercise, because you know, small bite size pieces are much more achievable.
And number three, you'll be less likely to quit. Because when you find workouts that feel doable, you're going to be much more likely to stick with it. Awesome. So I hope those help you all out. Um, just again, remind you all that all movement counts, that it doesn't have to be this big scary thing. Um, you can fit fitness into your life in a way that feels, um, doable, realistic and sustainable.
And I would love to help you do that this year. So yeah, reach out to me if you want to try, if you want to join that free challenge. Um, or if you want to find out different ways to work with me, I would love to hear from you. Thank you all so much, as always, for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to today's podcast, we hope you enjoyed the conversation.
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