Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - Pregnant & Powerful: Busting Fitness Myths from Bump to Beyond

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Kat Suchet - CEO & Founder of Hatch Athletic Ltd - joins us for an honest, evidence-based conversation about training during pregnancy, returning to fitness after birth, and the myths that still scare women away from movement. Kat is a women’s health physiotherapist, former CrossFit athlete and coach, and the creator of one of the UK’s leading pre- and postnatal strength programmes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get no frills, delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for 250 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca. Welcome back to another episode of Just As Well, and today's guest is the wonderful Kat Souchay. She's the founder of Hatch Athletic.

She's also a former CrossFit athlete and coach. She's worked in both Australia and the UK, and now runs her very own clinic in Wiltshire. That platform Hatch Athletic is brilliant. It offers strength and fitness programs for women who are either trying to conceive, who are pregnant and postpartum, or who are in period or menopausal.

She's a mum herself, and like many of us, she was just sick of the age-old myth about it being game over when it comes to health and movement after you've had a baby. She was also my go-to in postnatal training for both my babies.

Welcome, Kat. Thank you for coming along. Thanks for having me. It's really lovely for you to be here. Obviously, on a personal level, you help me so much in both my post-pregnances. And you help me with your programme Hatch. What was it that made you want to start Hatch Athletic? Yeah, that's a good question.

I think very much from both a professional and a personal perspective. From a professional perspective, I'd been a physiotherapist for a long time, and I'd developed my specialist interest into women's health. And at the time, I was also, like you've mentioned, training quite hard as a CrossFit athlete and a CrossFit coach. So I was in both the realms of the healthcare sector, but also very much embedded in the fitness sector. It was always very, very apparent that there was this miscommunication between the healthcare world and the fitness world, in that dialogues were just not happening between the two. So you would have a lot of CrossFit athletes, a lot of functional fitness athletes and fitness races,

getting injuries, going to physios or healthcare professionals, and those healthcare professionals saying, stay clear of these exercises, stay clear of these crazy weightlifting fads that might be out there, they're no good. And then these athletes then coming back into those sports and being trained by trainers that didn't really understand or have that expert knowledge

on how to rehab people that have had injuries. And so they would be missing those conversations and there would be a gap of knowledge between the healthcare sector and the fitness professionals. When I then became pregnant myself, it became very, very apparent from my background that there was very much lacking information, specific evidence-based information and factual information in the fitness industry to support me in pregnancy and postnatally. And as a women's health physio, I decided to create a hatch athletic, which would be a very straight-talking, evidence-based platform and community

where women could come and get myths busted and get the right advice that they needed to continue their training in those environments, functional fitness, weightlifting, gymnastics, and actually have the right advice given to them. Because there's a lot of fearmongering, isn't it, when you get pregnant, and you do go down a rabbit hole. Obviously, you worry for you and your baby. It's a very confusing time. It can be, and there's so much misinformation out there.

And for such a long time, there was no evidence either. There was no evidence around there. And even now, like you say, there are women that can be exposed to communities or maybe they'll come across some propaganda, or depending on what their social media algorithm feeds them, they may still be hearing that, like you say, exercise in pregnancy or lifting in pregnancy or running in pregnancy isn't safe. But as healthcare professionals in the industry that have worked with women for a very

long time in pregnancy, and with this exploding body of evidence that is now there, we were thinking, yes, of course, women can exercise within the recommended guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate intensity every week. Not only that, but we have some very robust evidence now to suggest, yes women can exercise at higher intensities in pregnancy that exercise in pregnancy does not cause miscarriage that women can continue to run and lift and continue to do exercises on their backs in pregnancy and actually they can lift quite heavy in pregnancy and those that do so actually end up with better perinatal outcomes than those who don't it's kind of like depending on as well what you did prior.

I mean, you look at someone like Teaclair Toomey, who got so much grief for training in pregnancy. I mean, she's like the world CrossFit champion, do you know what she's an insane amount of shape and she's got strength and she was just doing what her body was used to doing for practically all of her life, but she was just doing it whilst carrying a baby. And the amount of grief she got online,

I remember reading the comments, all these horrible things that was going to happen to her baby. She now takes her little girl, Willow, into the gym with her, Willow's health, she's happy she's fine and she's still training but I think for me when I trained with you during my pregnancies and postpartum what I found I scaled back on the on the lifting I was doing just because I felt like I couldn't because I was just so physically like I mean I put on a lot of weight with both my

kids but for me mentally the movement helped me so much and when you're pregnant you feel like your body's not your own anyway changes but for me to have that time I mentally felt in such a better place and I felt more prepared for motherhood somehow just from having that time. I mean, do you get feedback from women? Because I imagine if you've trained your own life and then they say, right, for the next nine months you can't do it. You're like, what the hell? Well, what do I do for me then? I think for many of women who train very regularly, they do it first for the mental health. And secondary is all of those lovely physical impacts. I think for those of us that love to train. It's an outlet. It's a time during the day that we can have for

ourselves. It's important for endorphins. It's important for our sense of self-worth and ownership. And then on top of that, we get those physical benefits. I think in pregnancy, this is only more important, especially when you may be holding down a job or already looking after family members with so many different responsibilities and there's a lot on women these days, so much on women. And a lot of women don't have these professional teams around them to support them. Exercise and accessing exercise in pregnancy is so important for mental health and for their sense of well-being. One thing I remember reading a lot or being told a lot is that you shouldn't start something new in pregnancy. So if you weren't to run it before, don't start running in

pregnancy. If you weren't lifting weights before, don't start doing pregnancy. Is there any truth in that? I actually think that's been debunked as well. And I think it will put a lot of women off from taking up a physical activity in pregnancy, which I see as so important. Yes, there is a limit to this. And I think a woman shouldn't join the gym and start trying to do a one rep max in her third trimester. Yeah, I get it. There are definite risks and limitations to advice like that. But if we're saying if you've never run or you've never done a hit class or you've never done an exercise class, now's not the time. I think that does a disservice to a lot of women that want to get fit in pregnancy. And there's loads of exercises you can do in pregnancy and start in pregnancy

that's very safe. I just think a woman needs to be really aware of her own body. She needs support systems like Hatch and the other lovely evidence-based communities that are out there to teach her where her personal fences might be in terms of pushing the limits. I think all women should have access to education and fitness in pregnancy, whether they've done it before or not. And it comes with the confidence, I think, with experience, like with my first pregnancy, I was nervous about carrying on normal things. I was nervous, you know, I stopped coffee immediately and I was going insane.

But then with Tio, I spoke to my healthcare professional. I was like, I really missed a coffee in the day. And she was like, still do it. You know, I've been, don't have two, three, four, five, of course. But there was things that I was more confident with the second time round. And training was one of them as well because I knew my body a lot more. It was just kind of, for me, the relief of not having to stop what I love because I was pregnant. And women's health, we talk a lot about mummy MOTs, don't we, like postpartum.

unfortunately with the NHS being as stretched as it is the six-week check-up is high and by for those that don't know what is the mummy MOT and why is it so beneficial well the actual mummy MOT is a branded name for six-week check that's very comprehensive and is usually carried out by a healthcare professional usually a women's health physio who will take you on a full hour or an hour and a half even sit down with the mum only and and assess the birth story, your pelvic floor history, your pregnancy history, your birth history, and then assess you physically for any musculoskeletal injury,

postural changes, you should really have your abdominal wall physically screened and your pelvic floor physically screened. And if you've had a C-section, that scar does need to be checked as well. And then relevant advice should be given to that mum. the incredible NHS GPs, they do try, and this isn't bad-mouthing them at all. They just don't have the time to do this, so it's really important to them to make sure that

baby is safe, and they'll often ask the mum, are you okay? But very often, when I get my postpartum MOTs into my clinic, the woman hasn't even been physically checked at all, and if that's a C-section, or if that was an instrumental delivery or something more complex, she needs a hands-on assessment in order to be able to get back into that exercise and to be able to be a great mum, to be honest, and to handle things post-party. I do think it's incredibly vital and I feel like that five, six-week, MOT check should be offered as a standardised pathway for all women. I have women message me saying they can't want a trampoline without wean themselves,

and it's the pelvic floor, you know, and if it had been assessed. And I remember lying on my kitchen floor with you on FaceTime and I was doing my diastis rectise. Cat was talking me through how to do it myself. And I remember I could get at the time three fingers between my abdominal wall. And this was after Tiago.

And before he was born, we did like breathing techniques together again on a Zoom. And it put me at such an ease of knowing you can't control the outcome of a birth of a baby. All you know and hope at the end of it is that you'll be okay and your baby will be okay. And so many people, myself included, plan of birth, down to I want music, I want candles, I want a water birth.

The opposite for me was an emergency C section and a hemorrhage, it was horrendous, but the outcome was still the same, me and me are okay. But the rehab I needed after, you gave me a specific core rehab which wouldn't affect my scar area and if there was any pulling or pain, you changed it, you said stop, do this.

It was so hands-on, even from just Zoom sessions, and it saves so much hassle down the line for me. Because had I gone ahead without that, I could have caused serious damage. So people can't get that on the NHS, then they can't. No, unfortunately. Especially when it comes to C-section or birth injuries in general, there isn't a standardised pathway unless you have immediate symptoms. So for someone that's had an uncomplicated C-section, like with Tiago,

I would imagine there was no direct follow-up really often. offered by the NHS at all and that's what we see is that women with uncomplicated C-sections or relatively uncomplicated vaginal deliveries there's no follow-up at all let's look at different scenarios then so if you had a very uncomplicated vaginal birth I did with both of mine never had anything checked don't even think I knew that was a thing but how long would that have taken me it's different for every single person and ultimately it really doesn't depend a lot on what you do believe it or not it will it will depend mostly on your tissue type and how big your bump was during your

pregnancy so I'm assuming the bigger the bump the bigger the space that's what we understand about lasting diastasis at the moment is that if you had a very big bump say twins or you just carried very out front or you know you know those women that you see have these most beautiful bumps and they're very very big bump and they're very big very tight around their obliques and that bump is all out front. That's a women's health physio's sort of red flag. Obviously, the only tissue that can stretch right at the front is that delicate linear alba. So those big bumps, that lovely, beautiful, stretchy tissue type are the ones that tend to get the lasting diastasis.

There is definitely stuff that you can do, but the rate at which you heal will be different for every woman. Would the size of your hips have anything to do with how front you carry your bump? More the ribs, actually, in my experience. So smaller, narrower ribs and shorter torsos tend to have very big bumps. So the smaller girls, the more petite girls that have very, very narrow ribs, tend to have these beautiful but very out front bumps. And the ladies with wider hips that may have a higher body mass index or maybe a bit taller, they tend to have the smaller bumps.

and I've seen a correlation with that. I won't say that there's an evidence base behind it, but from a clinical perspective, I've seen that. When I was carrying, everyone used to say to me how big it was, but it turned out when I went for my scans, my placenta was at the front. So it made it look even bigger. And I was like, what do you mean?

Is it the front? Is that okay? And they were like, yeah, it's just there. That's where it is for this one. So they used to struggle, they had to like move loads of things to try and get a good scan because he was blocked by this placenta so it's so unique to everybody and it's such a shame with the ab separation because a lot of people aren't aware of it they don't correct it and then they're always i get messages about c-section pooch how do i get rid of that i'm like what do you mean a pooch and it's because they've not had the rehab what could someone

do first of all if they can't have access to her mummy mott is there a way they can physically try check themselves if they have got the separation? There is, although knowing what to do with the results is always a little bit tentative, I think. The gold standard would be to seek someone out that was a professional to be able to tell you what to do with the results. But there's definitely a way to crudely assess yourself for a separation. It involves lying on your back, doing a little mini crunch

and popping your fingers in between your rectus muscles, which are essentially your six muscles. Yeah. What you'll feel if there is a separation is, is you'll feel the heads of the rectus muscle on either side and then a gap in the middle. Now, as physios, what we're concerned about is the tension of that gap. So does that gap feel very, very deep and soft and spongy? Or is that athlete, is that woman,

is that client able to generate really good tension across that gap with her deep core muscles? And that then will guide us on how best she can rehab herself or with us as part of an exercise program and it very often does involve deep core exercises such as what's a deep core exercise well they're very pilates based rehab focused exercises so things like single leg toe taps lying on your back making sure that you work with your breath and that you're getting your transversus abdominous muscles on which are very very deep core muscles that help to create that tension across the

because tension and force applied to a soft tissue is what helps it to heal and helps it to get stronger. It's that zip effect, isn't it? You've got to imagine zipping everything up. And when I had my internal after me, I remember, it might be TMI, but it's what we're here for. She put her fingers inside me, bless her, and she had me clench. Yeah. And I had to hold it for like 10 seconds while she counted down. and I remember with Mia she went from 10 and it was like two

and then I couldn't hold it and she was like that's really really good and I was thinking in my head well I had a C-section you know I've not done anything down there with Tiago she did the same thing it was a much bigger baby and again I went in thinking

well I've had a C-section surely it won't be any damage I couldn't get past like six seconds well so you physically couldn't clench your muscles just relaxed if I clenched now I mean my pelvic floor so I'm clenching now I can clench for days I think we're all doing it now.

Yeah, we are, yeah. I physically, she was literally doing an internal and she said, clench, and I said I am. And I wasn't, and I, the panic I had that, oh my gosh, I've got no elasticity, I'm going to be weeing myself, my sex life is going to change, all these fears. How is that linked to, if you had a C-section?

That's what I thought. That was going to be my question, because I said, I mean, obviously I now know from Kat and my physio, it's the weight, it's the weight bearing. I was nearly crying, I said, but I've not, vagina delivered. Can you explain why that would have happened? We've still been pregnant twice for nine months and that is quite an experience for the pelvic

floor in itself. Your hormonal profile changes through pregnancy massively. You produce 100% of your life's worth of estrogen in one pregnancy alone, which is your stretchy hormone, basically. So your pelvic floor, even with a C-section delivery, will have stretched and elongated quite considerably towards the end of those nine months, twice for you with two pregnancies. So even though those women that have had C-sections definitely need to be mindful of their pelvic floors and ensure that they get the right assessments, or certainly if they're symptomatic or they're leaking or they're having any concerns about their pelvic floors, even if they've had a C-section, it could well be that they do need to do some rehab for their pelvic floor.

Yeah, well, she gave me a rehab plan. And I went home to Gork and I said, right, I said, this muscle is getting tightened. Like, I am, and he was like, but you didn't use it. I said, well, it turns out I did. And this is, this is awful for every Sunday I used to say to Gorka, right, what is she going to say? Put your finger.

I said, I used to say, put two fingers and count genuinely. And he'd be like, oh, hey, yeah, but honestly. Just killing, killing the sex life, that's it. Yeah, but he would count and I'd be like, can you so feel it right? Yeah, yeah. And then I went back. it was about two months later I went back in and I got everything ready brace myself and she said right clench and I did and I did the full ten seconds and she

said that's because you've you've done the exercises you've done the work and I thought why does not every woman know about these simple exercise I was doing them driving to work I was doing them in bed it was the simplest thing that if you're consistent with can rehab like any other muscle in the body and it really upset me that not every woman knew about it. Well, I now know what you and Gorka did, so I can't get that huge out of my head. I will say, though, with pelvic floor exercises, it's not for 100% of women, and there are women out there that should not be doing pelvic floor exercises that can make their symptoms worse. Really? Really? In what cases is that? So some women that have

had rectal prolapse or anterior prolapse, so prolapse of the bladder, may find that squeezing all day every day is not the solution for their symptoms. It can actually make your pelvic floor very, very grippy and I guess we could say stressed, which means that it becomes very tight and overactive, and it can actually pull the pelvic organs down into the vaginal canal in the wrong way if you have a pelvic organ prolapse. And also those women who have constipation or long-term experience of pelvic pain, like those endow girls. So ladies that have had very, very complicated pelvic histories, if we are telling them to squeeze all day long, all day every day, we might be causing more problems than doing good.

That's the thing that's annoying. A check after a baby would let them know what symptoms they have and what is right for them to do uniquely. And that is the problem at the moment that we have is that generic advice is not a one-size-fits-all for women's and pelvic health. and we can't just download the NHS Squeezy app and think, well, I better do my pelvic floor exercises because everyone has to do their pelvic floor exercises. Everyone's different and we do really do really need to know about our own pelvic floors and our own bodies

in terms of how we attack our rehab or whatever exercises we're wanting to do. Another thing we worked on and spoke about was birth positions because everyone sees in any movie, anyone's having a baby, they're on the back, up in stirrups and it's the complete wrong position to be in isn't it both in terms of gravity and for pain relief with the mum can you talk to us about about that yeah I mean the more primal the better to be honest our skeletons haven't really changed very much since caveman days and yet

we have developed lots of incredible apparatus and equipment in hospitals like plinths and stirrups and all sorts but it's a very unnatural position to be in to give birth. The ideal positions to give birth are as wide as you possibly can get the pelvis, which is something like a very deep squat or a high kneeling position or crouched over a bed or in four-neal, four-point kneeling, a bit like an animal would do really. But it's not the most glamorous to look at. So I guess that's why the media has portrayed this image. And I think the healthcare system has also, which was very male dominated for a very long time, put with on their backs because it was easier to contain all of these women in a hospital environment.

I remember when I was in slow labour with Mia, I was comfortable on all fours just slowly rocking. If I went on my back, I'd be like, no, the pressure, it was awful, but if I went on all fours, everything seemed to just move, and it was more of a relief. And when you do think about it, if you're, you know, gravity, if you want something to physically come out of you. Yeah. If you're squatting, it's going to come out a lot easier than if you'll lay on your back with the opening upwards, you know? Absolutely. And it gets the baby in a better position as well for delivery. Your baby needs head as close as it can be onto the cervix for that cervix to ripen and open. And without the baby in the right position, then labour can actually stall or slow down. And so a lot of ladies on their backs or having baths very early, for example, on their backs might find. that actually those behaviours slow or stall their labour when actually moving around squatting being in those more primal positions can keep it going well it's my

term for TMI but my second I had a very quick birth with my first but my second I went into the hospital my water's broke went in and they said you're two centimeters and I wasn't I knew I was and I just knew I was I was in a world of pain you know I was getting quite animalistic about it and and they were No, you're two centimeters, we can't give you anything. And they just left me. And I just knew I wasn't. So I went into the toilet and sat in the toilet, and the head come out.

Really? Yeah, and I called the emergency call. And I said, Dan, down to my husband. And I said, the head's out. And he thought I was joking. You're not joking at that point. No, no. And then I called the emergency call.

And they came in, and I went, you know, head. And they just about got back to the bed, and I was on all fours. baby come out so it was from two centimeters to delivering in six minutes oh gosh you weren't at two centimeters at all we're not no no you were at ring of fire territory yeah you do hear these stories about babies being born in toilet so that almost happened to me and that's the thing with you knowing you knew your body you knew what was happening but had that been your first baby you probably would have said

okay then I'll come back can you imagine now but and then when the nurse come round and she said you won't make it to the hospital next time I said don't I love. This is, we're done. The baby was born at 5 to 2 and I was home in bed by half four in my own home because as I was in a natural position

I suppose the baby just come out and there was no pushing there was no drama but I wasn't on my back because it's gained to gravity. That's it and it's just about having the knowledge about those positions but also all that birth prep stuff

that we get taught so all the candles and the birth plan and meditation and dim lighting and things is all very well, but unless a woman actually understands the physics of what needs to happen, which is a nice, long, relaxed velvet floor and gravity-assisting,

then any birth plan can just go out the window. I think it's more than candlelight and your favourite playlist. It's about having that information at your fingertips to really understand how the physics of birth is going to work and whether or not you have the pelvic floor and the team around you to support you to have that delivery when you think about it it's a big trauma isn't it on the body a pregnancy and a delivery there's no

easy option to do it like people have said to me or a C-section was the easy way out and I'm like it hurt for months if I just coughed and you told me the scar massage I did massaging on my own scar and it's tiny it's the tiniest faintest little line but I know some women who they've been literally caught from hip to hair. hip because it's it's been done either a certain way or a bot way and it's you have it for life you know it's it can be quite a scary thing I think so frightening especially someone that's not ever had a surgery before it's major major abdominal surgery and on top of that you have this life-changing experience of having a baby to look after all the baby blues and the hormones that are

swirling exactly it's such a lot a C-section is not the easy way out it can be a very turbulent route into motherhood I think what I didn't like about my recovery was I'd hear me a crying next to me and I'd have to roll on my side push myself up walk like a T-Rex while she's crying when my instinct was to jump out of bed and get her because she was in discomfort and I couldn't do that because of my scar and it was like at first I looked at myself and thought oh my gosh this is it now I'm gonna be like this but honestly with the right to anyone listening who's had one or you're going to have one with the right

advice after and aftercare and post-partum it can be the most wonderful experience as well is it seven layers they cut through yeah seven layers of tissue they also have to properly splint you open to get the babies clamp you open to get the baby's head out which can on one side will always mean that one side of your C-section scar is more tricky than the other side and that's the right a lot of Women don't really understand how much has happened down there. And I didn't realise this well, they pin your arm down. You're to put the IV in and stuff. So you're kind of literally pinned down while you know you're being cut open.

And then it dawned on me. I'll laugh about it now. It dawned on me and I actually said to Gorka, I'm naked from the waist down here. Like, you have a sheet up. Yeah. And I was thinking there was just heads, the other side of the sheet. And I said to him, I'm naked.

from the waist out all these people in the room and just spread out you can't feel yourself so they've got put your legs in whatever position they want and I kept thinking oh have I shaved have I am I neat that is not the least thing they're thinking about that I know but it's funny what goes through your mind

with all these things there's three things that you could change around either a myth of pregnancy or something that would take place in the aftercare what three things would you say needs to change like immediately I think I'm probably biased because my whole world is in fitness. Certainly, in pregnancy, I would change the fear around

exercise. That would be my life's mission, to be honest. For example, you should not run into your second or third trimester, or you shouldn't lift heavy in your third trimester, or no core exercises after you see a bump developing, for example. These are dangerous myths that stop women from exercising and mean that women will end up being quite deconditioned during their pregnancies and it's not necessary to be spelling these myths. I think certainly educating women more about their own bodies so that there will be many women out there that can run and lift for the majority of their pregnancies and so they should continue to enjoy doing that. If we can move on to birth then postnatal, what

is the first steps a woman should take to get back into fitness after having a baby? Firstly, go get that assessment that we've been discussing and then make sure that she, if she wants to get back into half decent fitness, that she's following a progressive program, that she's not just easing herself back into her old fitness routines without any concerted rehab. Because like we've discussed, any delivery of a baby, be it uncomplicated vaginal delivery, instrumental delivery, C-section, elective C-section. It's a trauma on the body that needs to be rehabbed from, even if it was uncomplicated. Another thing that women, I think, should be aware of is to not be too afraid of abdominal

separation as being a barrier to exercise. You can still exercise. You can still do sit-ups. You can still do core exercises with a strong abdominal separation. Oh, okay. You can still do pretty much any exercise that you want to. So I've still got a lasting three centimetre diastasis myself. That's my tissue type and the fact that I was very big bump out front. But from a personal perspective, as an athlete, I lift over 100 kilos. I do toes to bar sit-ups.

I do all the fitness that I could possibly want to. And it doesn't stop me from doing anything at all. That's because I've rehabbed it properly. So is it going to stay like that forever, though? It will stay like that forever. yeah I've probably done as much closure if that makes sense as I possibly can which is that lovely tension of the stretchy tissue in the middle and now that's probably how it's going to be but it's just nice and strong and it doesn't stop me from doing

anything I think it is down to skin my sisters had three kids she didn't get any stretch marks on a belly or legs or anything I've had stretch marks my whole life before I had kids just here at like the top of me boom I got little white marks and that was before kids and then during pregnancy I didn't get any on my belly but the ones on my legs just spread you know like went a bit yeah a bit bigger I've got them on my hips from you know that teenage spirit that you have when you suddenly but I didn't get any on my belly and I thought I was going to because I had them on my hips I thought it was a foregone conclusion all the wonderful things

your body goes through in creating another life you know that's how we ultimately have to look at it there's there's so much fear around bodies post pregnancy and I don't think a lot of women give themselves enough credit and what it is their body's been through for almost a year, you know, even longer if people have been struggling to conceive, you know, they could have been doing IVF, they could have been taking medications, the stress it puts on them to, you know, to desperately try and get pregnant. It's a lot, mentally, physically, emotionally, you know, and the one thing we focus on throughout all of that is I'm still not backing my jeans. It's really upsetting when you think about it.

You cannot expect to be back to the same fitness levels as you were pre-pregnancy within three months or you know it's it's it's you need to give yourself time to to recover for as long as you were pregnant a hundred percent and again everyone's journeys will be different so I think expecting a certain timeline for it to be maybe nine months 12 months 18 months even for those women that have had more complicated deliveries or birth injuries they're going to need to have their expectations managed in terms of how long this journey may take for them And then on the other hand, you might have a woman who's had a very uncomplicated delivery is what we call in the industry a pregnancy unicorn and she comes to see us at four weeks

postpartum and she's already starting to get back in it in the gym. No symptoms, no problems, no abdominal separation and away she goes and at six months she's competing again. So we do have this huge spectrum of recovery and ability and again I think one size fits all. is a dangerous place to be in terms of how long is it going to take me to get back to how I was before well firstly it's always a forwards journey

we're never going to get back to how we were before we're probably going to get better if you try a certain routine and you're doing really well with your rehab there's no reason why you can't be better and stronger and more able than you were before you were obviously you're an incredible shape you're an athlete you've been a coach

your personal journey back to fitness because you didn't have an easy childbirth because obviously your job is to motivate and encourage other women. How did you navigate that journey for yourself? Well, my first birth was a stalled labour and it was meant to be a home birth and I had very strong feelings about wanting it to be a home birth

and on day three or four I think we ended up in hospital and it was an emergency C-section. It definitely was something that I was not expecting that I hadn't prepared for, despite the industry that I work in, it's funny, isn't it, when it's yourself and you actually have to face something yourself. I found it very confronting. I was not expecting to have a recovery from a C-section. I hadn't really thought about what that would entail and how long it would take, but also because of how disappointed I was with my delivery, I developed very severe PND, so it was.

postnatal depression which stalled everything. It stalled my rehab, it stalled my ability to bond with my barb, my boy at the time. It's a good example to give really because it's never just the physical delivery. There's always a complicated story behind it. There's always a mum behind the story. I was battling demons at the same time as wanting to, as a very competitive person that had always been very, I guess you could say, successful in my physical endeavours and very alpha and very driven and perfectionist. There was this part of me that felt like I was failing, that felt like I'd failed with my birth, I was failing with my recovery, and I would say I beat myself up way too much. Having said that, I was lucky enough to have

the support networks around me in the women's health world to know exactly what physical rehab to be doing. So once I had the right support networks around me and I was getting to the gym more frequently, I did do the right stuff and I was back into more competition side of things by about 12 months. Yeah. But I'm not going to say it was easy. It was the ultimate challenge. It is and it shows the resilience I think that people have. We spoke to Dr. Poonam, who's a brilliant GP she told us you know she she now focuses a lot more on women's postnatal from her experience she went into pregnancy so excited so happy and her birth she ended up she had sepsis didn't she nearly died they had to resuscitate her three times and she said it was the most horrendous

experience of her life and it took her a year to physically like to mentally feel connected and to be like okay I'm a mom this is what I do and it's just from that one day that one afternoon that went wrong shaped the rest of that year for her and we hear it with so many women and I always think thank goodness now for people like yourself Dr Poonam we've had the experience firsthand so I have a kind of understanding and empathy with other women who come to you feeling like you once felt and you're also kind of hope for them in that they'll look at you and think well you had this you went through this and look at you now you know you're

a great person to look up to in terms of postnatal and I know I know for for one with mine, I would have been completely different without your guidance and advice. Do you find Kat through Instagram? How did that relationship come about? I was recommended you, wasn't I? I think you were recommended through Elliot Simmons. Elliot Simmons, yeah.

So Elliot Simmons is married to Jamie Simmons and she's an incredible CrossFit athlete because Elliot was my trainer at the time and I said to him in all due respect, if you've not trained pregnant ladies before and he was like, I've not, but I know someone who does. And Elliot recommended Kat and I did the program it's incredible and it's called hatch because it is like a little hatched egg just remind

people actually where they can find you because they'll be pregnant women listening now like desperate for your health so we do both athletes and coaches now which is where we probably should connect with earlier again yeah that him and his wife can do that course our community is hatch athletic so they can do their pregnancy training through us and then they would then join us for their postpartum training programs as well and then after that we've now created programs follow-on programs again developed closely with myself as a sort of physio focus so that women afterwards can continue women's performance training and functional fitness training but with that kind of pelvic health sprinkle i call it yeah you just sprinkle

it's really fun programming but with a bit of a pelvic health sprinkle to it so you're online and instagram we can find you yeah hatchathletic.com online and on instagram we're hatch underscore athletic and that's all for athletes programming and now we do the coaches certification as well because we really wanted the coaches to know exactly how to coach those pre and postnatal women as well and have that confident thank you so much for uh for coming in it's been lovely having you on yeah it's been such a pleasure to be here so thanks for you go yes we've got our quick fire questions so jemma and i are stacking up our dinner invites and we've invited ourselves to your place what are you cooking us three courses oh lovely yeah we like a three course yeah okay let's start with

asparagus wrapped in parmaham with a poached egg on top oh that's like a full breakfast is it I like that then we'll go with spinach and cod with a little bit of cream and parmesan followed by chocolate brownies with raspberries lovely it's like a perfect meal throw a bit of winter ice cream in there and then you've just describe my perfect my perfect dessert what's the last thing that made you belly laugh probably hearing about what you were asking gawker to do yeah I've asked you that is the image that I have now in my mind and you've just demonstrated it again brilliant I did I did go for coffee with a friend this morning who told me that her

friend who's an actress picked up her award barefoot last night at the ITB awards that made me belly laugh yeah you can't see the feet you don't mind is it you go in to a desert island for 12 months we can take one thing what is it my theragon yeah good answer but you need to plug it in as well oh yes and a charger a solar charger you have to get the ball

oh yes just the ball don't you need to charge that too you can choose one type of exercise to do forever more what is it squats front squats for days I hate a front squat I love a front squat it depends how long your femurs are depending on whether you love a front squat or a back squat

No, don't agree with you. Coffee or wine? Coffee. Yes. And what one thing could people listening today do to make themselves feel that little bit better? Get outside and do something active. And it doesn't need to be a gym. It doesn't need to be anything from a digital program or anything very complicated.

Just get outside, get active. A few people have said to get outdoors, aren't they? Just, even for just 10 minutes, put your shoes on and just walk. outside yeah but take a raincoat in the current weather yeah there's one minute of sunny next minute it's biblical rain yeah thank you so much it's been a real pleasure and thank you for all you do and yeah good luck to anyone listening who's pregnant yeah it's been great thank you for having me thank you