Blog archives

  • Sweat, Stigma, and Strength

    An Untold Story of Women's Athletic Revolution

    01 July 2024

    Recently, I spent some time digging into the beginnings of women’s participation in sport and physical activity. Turns out it’s not a very long history indeed. The first sports event that recorded female participation was the Paris Summer Olympics in…

  • More Lean Muscle Means Happy Hormones

    08 June 2024

    Did you know that muscle mass helps balance out our hormones? The more lean muscle we have in our 40s, the easier it is for the body to manage stress, regulate blood sugar levels and handle the changing hormones? As we approach menopause, the drop in…

  • Every Exercise Can Be A Core Strengthening Exercise

    ...if we add these secret ingredients

    03 May 2024

    Every exercise becomes a core and pelvic floor exercise if we add these secret ingredients: ✔️ Strong feet - think of making deeper footprints on the floor with every exhalation 🦶⬇️ ✔️ Lengthening through the back of the neck - the head sliding back…

  • Window Shopping Physiology

    15 April 2024

    I caught myself staring at the shop window on Oxford Street the other day, but not at the clothes. There was a striking difference in posture between the female and male mannequins. Now, I don’t obsess with a “perfect” or “correct” posture, but as a…

  • Sore Back When Bending Forward?

    Try this trick

    09 April 2024

    Sore back when bending forward? This trick has been a game changer for many of my clients. Having the pelvis and the ribcage stacked on top of each other, we make sure The diaphragm is right on top of the pelvic floor and they can work in tune to…

  • Our Daily Movement: From Duty to Delight

    05 March 2024

    Do you really exercise every day? - a friend asked me the other day. Yes, I dedicate around half an hour each day to looking after my body and that includes moving in the way that my body needs that day. I aim for at least 3 strength training…

  • Hip Pain Is Never Just About The Hip

    27 February 2024

    I often get asked what a biomechanist is and how is what I do different from physiotherapy. Biomechanics is a discipline on the overlap of sports science, medicine and engineering, that looks into how and why bodies move and what happens when they…

  • One Part You Need To Strengthen To Make The Greatest Difference

    20 February 2024

    A good part of my job is about helping people discover the spots in their bodies that we need to strengthen in order to make the greatest difference in their symptoms or performance. I like to think of these as “mystery blocks” in Super Mario - the…

  • Returning to Exercise After A Viral Infection

    Step by Step Plan + Research Overview

    12 February 2024

    This winter, my family has been struggling with an ongoing flu or Covid (or both?). It took us weeks to fully get over it. So, I lost some muscle and my husband fell behind with his running practice. It is so humbling to realise that you need to…

  • Knee Pain in Squats?

    04 February 2024

    Do squats feel hard on you knees? Let’s see how we can tweak this movement to unload those knees while helping you strengthen your backside. The further your knees are forward in relation to the ankles, the more you use the front of the thigh…

  • Why I Don't Teach Breathing Correctly

    31 January 2024

    The other day, a young woman explained in her initial consultation that she would want to learn how to breathe correctly. And this made me think. It’s been a while since I stopped trying to teach people the right way to breathe. This might sound…

  • Lower Back Pain After Exercise?

    Let’s talk about pelvic stability

    22 January 2024

    After I had my two children, around 1.5 years apart, my lower back and the left hip would hurt after most exercises. I couldn’t do lunges, or yoga warriors or sun salutations. Hardly anything in a pilates class either. For years after my babies were…

  • Should I Run On Asphalt Or Grass?

    15 January 2024

    If you are a runner, you might have heard that running on soft surfaces, like grass, or sand, helps prevent injuries. But interestingly, a different surface softness/hardness just means different tissues will bear the brunt of running. As you…

  • Taking Up Running with A Weakened Core

    10 January 2024

    I had a conversation with a really sweet client of mine yesterday on the topic of taking up running while working on rebuilding her core with diastasis recti and a hernia. Now, depending on where in your core rebuilding journey you are, your body…

  • How Our Brains Anticipate Movement

    Or the story of my my most ridiculous injury ever

    02 January 2024

    Do you know that feeling of missing a step at the bottom of a staircase? Your brain expected the step to be there, but instead, your foot just fell through. Or think of attempting to sit on a soft-looking armchair in a waiting room, just to hit your…

  • Self-Care For The Holiday Season

    25 December 2023

    Merry Christmas! With the celebrations in full gear, the schools closed and so many things to prepare and finish in time, self-care is probably the last thing you could think of right now. Especially if you are a mum, you might be used to looking…

  • Progressing Your Training From Rehab To Athleticism

    Core rePower - Phases 3-5

    12 December 2023

    I spent so many years stuck in gentle, restorative exercise. After the births of my two babies straight after each other and a couple of persistent postpartum injuries, my body seemed to be in the recovery phase – forever. I was teaching yoga at the…

  • Core rePower Explained

    The first two phases in rebuilding your core

    08 December 2023

    Working with many people with weakened core over the years, I’ve learnt that sometimes we need to start with undoing rather than doing. This is why the first stage of rebuilding core strength after injuries/pregnancy or in chronic back pain, is…

  • The Core rePower Story

    04 December 2023

    After 12 years of working with movement and rehabilitation, I finally got to the point where I felt ready to create my signature method. Well, I always wanted to create my own system but I didn’t dare. Over the years, as I educated myself…

  • Can We Cough Better?

    24 November 2023

    It’s this time of the year again. The runny noses and coughs - coming and going. And sometimes staying for a while. Do you ever leak when you cough or sneeze? Many people do, especially women after childbirth or menopause. I remember a lady who would…

  • Something I Couldn't Write About For Years

    19 November 2023

    It took me years to get comfortable writing about abdominal separation. I had started writing so many blog posts about it over the years, but would usually end up abandoning the whole thing halfway through. One of the funniest of the titles of the…

  • Being A Mum

    16 November 2023

    Around this day 10 years ago, I would try sleeping on my side while breastfeeding through the night. I hardly got any sleep, waking up every two hours. I was still recovering from an emergency C-section that left me weak, angry and defeated. I felt…

  • Crunches Won't Tone Your Lower Belly

    10 November 2023

    Interestingly, the deep core muscles are not just deep in the torso. Your lower belly is the area where the deep abdominal muscles are not covered by the 6-pack muscles (take a look at the first picture on the left). So, having weaker deep abdominal…

  • Protruding Lower Belly?

    You Might Be Bearing Down at Effort

    02 November 2023

    Does your lower belly stick out and feel weaker than the rest of your abdominals? It might be a habit of bearing down at effort. You can see below the belly pushing out and down as I press into the wall. This often comes together with straining and…

  • Adding Impact to Your Training

    29 October 2023

    For most of my exercise life, impact and intensity weren’t really my kind of thing. I was into gentle, low-impact exercise, things like yoga and Pilates. I guess it was a combination of a personal preference for slow and mellow activities and feeling…

  • Five Signs That Your Deep Core Might Need Some Love

    23 October 2023

    Greetings from Loire-Atlantique! We are just swapping homes here in a small village somewhere in the Loire River Valley. If you are a parent, you know that children holidays, as fun as they are, are also hard work. I started writing this post twice…

  • Lower Back Pain and Your Pelvic Floor

    16 October 2023

    I’ve been reading and writing a lot lately about pelvic health, and I find it fascinating how health of many, seemingly unrelated, parts of the body seems to be linked to the pelvic floor. Yes, we all have pelvic floors! This is a sling of muscles…

  • How to Protect Your Organs When Lifting Heavy Things

    08 October 2023

    Did you know that the same weight could feel heavier or lighter for your body depending on how you lift it? If you are struggling with abdominal weakness, back pain or prolapse, you might have heard million times that you “shouldn’t lift heavy”. Yes…

  • Use The Arms to Tone The Abs

    01 October 2023

    After having 2 babies straight after each other and a 6-finger-width abdominal separation, I thought I would never wear crop tops again. My belly was weak, stretched and I had a fist-width hole in my connective tissue a couple of fingers up from the…

  • My 5 Tricks for Relieving Abdominal Bloating

    17 September 2023

    If you read the last two posts, you probably remember my trouble with bloating and the quest to investigate different reasons why our bellies might feel tight and uncomfortably inflated at times. Generally, bellies could be bloated due to: Gas — In…

  • Hormones and The Gut

    About Oestrogen, Gut Microbiome and Menopause

    10 September 2023

    It turns out, my friend and I aren’t bloating alone. In a recent survey on perimenopause by the British startup Forth, focusing on 6,806 UK women, most of them between the ages of 30 and 49, 78% of the participants reported bloating and digestive…

  • Foods That Make Our Bellies Rounder

    Welcome to the Bloating Series

    08 September 2023

    Do you ever experience this uncomfortable feeling of belly tightness, pressure and increased abdominal size? I definitely do, especially towards the end of my cycle and when I end up eating later in the evenings. Sometimes my children make fun of me…

  • Can We Choose to Move in a “Youthful” instead of an “Ageing” Pattern?

    30 July 2023

    During my MSc in Biomechanics, I got fascinated by ageing and ended up writing my dissertation in this field, looking at the way people walk and run as they are getting older. It is interesting how much of what we see as ageing is a consequence of…

  • Is This Thing On?

    How Do I know If My Core Is Working?

    16 July 2023

    Over the years, I’ve worked with many people with weakened core and recurring back pain. And what I keep seeing over and over is the belly pushing out at effort (left), instead of drawing into the body to protect the spine (right). I call this muscle…

  • Leaking While Working Out

    28 June 2023

    Last week was World Continence Week so I thought I’d dedicate a post to leaking during workouts. Bladder leaking is much more common than you’d expect. According to the House of Commons research briefing from a couple of days ago, 14 million people…

  • Biomechanics of Fashion

    A Liberated Woman‘s Checklist for Clothes Fitting

    25 May 2023

    Which of the two photos do you prefer?  In the early 1940-es when this ad campaign was created, it was probably a no-brainer to choose the picture on the right - a smiling women, made to please, moulded into a shape the current fashion required…

  • A flat stomach does not equal a strong stomach

    This is how to build a working core instead

    18 May 2023

    Illustration by Cécile Dormeau It takes much more time and effort to unlearn than to learn something from the beginning. Back in the day, my 4-year-old tried to ride a pedal bike for the first time and it worked. We took off the support wheels so…

  • Training After the Baby

    How to Build Up Your Training Intensity With Diastasis Recti

    27 April 2023

    Trying to solve a puzzle of my postnatal re-injuries, I ended up at a master’s degree programme in sports biomechanics. Even after years of working with pregnant and postnatal women, completing numerous courses and learning on my own body, I always…

  • Running safely after becoming a mum

    A little checklist to make sure running really serves your post-baby body

    14 July 2019

    I am fortunate to live next to the Lea river, in one of the greenest pockets of East London, perfect for running. Many of the people who come and see me run regularly and a good part of them are mums. Running is great. It’s empowering, endorphin…

  • Why not to ‘tuck the tailbone’ in a yoga class

    A couple of ideas on having a more pelvic-floor-friendly yoga practice

    16 December 2015

    It is quite common to hear yoga teachers saying ‘Tuck the tailbone under’ when they want to initiate action from the core (mulabandha). This might be useful sometimes, especially working with people who don’t have much awareness of their pelvic floor…

  • The forgotten art of untucking the tail

    A tiny detail we’ve lost since the hunter-gatherer times and how to fix it

    09 November 2015

    Illustration by Jillian Nicol at www.livealigned.ca I’ve been spending most of my time lately learning about biomechanics, healthy alignment and how movement affects our bodies on cellular level. The research from the last few years shows that the…

  • Going to India to Study Yoga

    Maybe we need a cultural shock to experience what it really means to live yoga

    05 March 2015

    An old friend got in touch the other day asking for my opinion about two different yoga teacher courses in India. Both were obviously targeted at the Western audience, being quite daringly priced for Indian standards. Do you think they are genuine…