237-SYNCPodcast_ReplaySarahandJulia

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today we’re doing something different, something we haven’t done before on the show. We’re actually going to be doing a series of throwback episodes. We are well over 200 episodes into this podcast and every day I get a message from someone asking a question about progesterone or asking a question about proper testing or asking a question about what it means to embrace a functional wellness journey and I always find myself referring them back to one of the old but good podcast episodes here on the show.

[00:01:25] Jenny Swisher: So we’re going to take some of our favorite for the next few weeks and we’re going to throw them back. We’re going to do an episode replay so that you can hear these amazing interviews with experts in their field. I’m so excited to introduce you to each one of them here in the next three weeks, but without further ado, let’s dive in.

[00:01:40] Jenny Swisher: Welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have Julia Baker and Sarah King with me today We’re gonna be talking about Talking the ins and outs of corrective exercise, occupational therapy, and of course, cycle syncing. Um, I’m Jenny Swisher. I’ll be your host for today as usual.

[00:01:55] Jenny Swisher: I’m excited to talk to these ladies. I’ve been working with these ladies, uh, for well over a year now in my sync course, I know that they have some. Really awesome, unique experiences and some really, uh, incredible credentials behind their names. Um, I’m going to give you just a little bit of an overview before we dive into sort of a Q and A.

[00:02:15] Jenny Swisher: Sarah is a registered occupational therapist. She is a postpartum and pregnancy corrective exercise specialist. Uh, she has her bachelor of science in psychology from the university of Indianapolis. And her master’s in occupational therapy from the university of Indianapolis. She’s also recently SYNC certified in my program.

[00:02:32] Jenny Swisher: So she’s very well aware of women’s hormone health and how to, uh, sync with your cycle. She’s also a mother of three girls. So I just realized the three of us all are girl moms. So we have that in common as well. Awesome. Julia is a registered occupational therapist as well. She is a postpartum and pregnancy corrective exercise specialist.

[00:02:52] Jenny Swisher: She has her bachelor’s in health science and a sociology minor in psychology from Bradley university and her master’s in occupational therapy from the university of Indianapolis. I’m assuming maybe you guys met at the university of Indianapolis. Is that correct? Actually, no, we didn’t know. Okay, but you had that in common.

[00:03:09] Jenny Swisher: So have you known each other longer?

[00:03:12] Sarah King: We have not. We actually, um, met about six years ago, um, through our church, through our church moms group. And we, we do both have degrees from, from the University of Indianapolis, but we were there at different times. So our paths did not cross.

[00:03:26] Jenny Swisher: Wow. That’s incredible.

[00:03:28] Julia Baker: Okay. It’s something that we had in common though, that helped us like to become friends. Like, you know, it’s just something easy to talk about

[00:03:35] Jenny Swisher: together. Well I love following these ladies on social media. You can, we’ll talk more about how you can follow them toward the end of the episode, but they’ve created a cool little partnership here and I’m excited to kind of dive into what they have to offer.

[00:03:47] Jenny Swisher: I know that they have an upcoming course launching, uh, so that’s going to be exciting by the time this podcast launches, the course will be live. So, um, We’ll definitely be sure to direct everybody there, but I’m just going to kind of open it up to you guys and let you guys tell us more about sort of your journey.

[00:04:01] Jenny Swisher: Like what led you to where you are now, tell us a little bit about your life in general, you know, as being moms and whatnot, but also about sort of your background in occupational therapy.

[00:04:13] Sarah King: Do you want to start?

[00:04:14] Julia Baker: Sure. I, um, graduated from occupational therapy school in 2010, and then my husband and I actually moved to Savannah, Georgia shortly after I graduated.

[00:04:25] Julia Baker: And we found out during the move that I was pregnant. And so I was pregnant for the first time in a brand new city and state and starting in my first full time job. I worked on a rehab unit where, um, I worked primarily with patients with stroke, back surgery, um, or cardiac problems. And I really, really enjoyed my work with the geriatric population.

[00:04:51] Julia Baker: I really enjoyed that. But I had my daughter in 2011 and then I had another daughter in 2013 and then I had another daughter in early 2016. And so, um, I ended up deciding that I wanted to stay home and, uh, it is kind of funny because I make jokes sometimes that occupational therapy, you know, we work with the things that occupy people’s daily lives.

[00:05:15] Julia Baker: So I always say what occupies your time and that’s different for everybody. And then we look at what occupies your time. And we help you to do those things. If you have some kind of injury or dysfunction, and then what we’re trying to do at informed fitness is to try and help you do those things better in your daily life before you have some kind of injury or dysfunction.

[00:05:38] Julia Baker: But. I do sometimes joke that occupational therapy, because we, a lot of the things are basic living skills, things like being able to bathe yourself, dress yourself, get an on and off a toilet by yourself, being able to cook meals, do your daily tasks. And sometimes I joke that occupational therapy and being a mom are not that different because you’re at home and you’re teaching your children to bathe themselves and dress themselves and to do potty training and things like that.

[00:06:05] Julia Baker: I actually was not a very active person. And then after I had had my third baby, I decided that something had to change. So, um, I decided to start my fitness journey and I really wish that I would have gotten some more help then. So I started just, I think we’ll talk about this a little more lately, but that’s really what directed me towards learning so much more about postpartum and pregnancy corrective exercise.

[00:06:32] Julia Baker: Yeah.

[00:06:32] Sarah King: And in some ways, my story is a little bit similar to Julia’s. I graduated from the university of Indianapolis in 2005, moved to North Carolina three years later and was there for five years. Had my first child away from home at the same time was dealing with chronic pain in my hip. I was an athlete all through high school and through college, through the shot put.

[00:06:56] Sarah King: Javelin discus. And that was a lot of wear and tear on my left hip. So, um, trying to kind of shift from being an athlete to working out for life at the same time, being the breadwinner for my family and traveling. And I was in management for, for occupational therapy at that time and just really was lost in, in how to figure out where fitness fit in my life at that point.

[00:07:26] Jenny Swisher: Gotcha. So you, so let’s, let’s talk cause you’ve had, I think I know you well enough to know, like you you’ve had the hip surgery and you’ve kind of been through all of that. And as someone who’s suffered with chronic pain myself, I know how miserable that can be. And so what would you say? Like, was that really, did you know, when you were going through that process, did you feel like, you know, someday I’m going to come back even stronger and I’m going to keep fitness part of my life or kind of how did that get reintroduced for you?

[00:07:52] Jenny Swisher: Cause obviously you were an athlete. How did that injury sort of play a role?

[00:07:56] Sarah King: Yeah, it’s, um, it took a lot of time and, um, an effort on my part. And it was really, um, it was difficult because here I was, uh, as an occupational therapist and I was working with people and encouraging them to exercise, but yet I was struggling in my own life to find exercise that worked for me.

[00:08:16] Sarah King: Um, and there was a lot of trial and error. Um, I saw some, uh, physical therapists for myself. I. I tried the pain injection route and did everything that I could because at the time I was in my early thirties and no, no doctor would do a hip replacement until I was well into my thirties or, or even later.

[00:08:37] Sarah King: And so it was, it was, it was a lot of trial, a lot of air, a lot of frustration that I eventually landed with a cycle bike and, um, at home fitness programs. And then after that, we moved to, to Fort Wayne and. I started to get more active in, in our local Y and that’s when Julia and I met. And we had this, not only do we have this occupational therapy as common, but we had this fitness struggle, even though they were different, they were both struggles and it was something that we could share and commiserate with, with each other.

[00:09:14] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So tell me more about. When it comes to especially women and corrective exercise, what are, what are some common things that you guys see, uh, when working with women, what are some, some common issues that need correcting?

[00:09:28] Julia Baker: I think what happens that people don’t really realize is that there are certain patterns that our bodies fall into that.

[00:09:36] Julia Baker: Especially if you have been pregnant, um, but you can do it. You can fall into these patterns just by living a Western lifestyle. We have a tendency to adjust as our bodies grow a baby. And we tend to have where our like ribs will flare and we’ll go ahead and tilt our pelvis forward to make room. Well, then we have this baby.

[00:09:58] Julia Baker: And our body has been doing that for so long that we don’t correct back into a good body alignment. And when we don’t correct back into a body alignment, that’s what leads to a lot of things like back pain. It, it, it can increase. urine leakage. If you have problems, it can get shoulder pain, those kinds of things.

[00:10:22] Julia Baker: It’s really important to look at how the body is moving as a whole and what needs to be strengthened, but also what might need to be shifted so that we can use our exercising to actually get into a good pattern that will decrease pain.

[00:10:41] Sarah King: And not only decrease pain, but then carry over into our daily lives, because as you know, Jenny, that our fitness is just a sliver of the time that we spend moving our bodies on a daily basis.

[00:10:54] Sarah King: So you can do all the corrective exercise in the gym, but if that’s not carrying over for you and your functional life, while you’re lifting up a baby or running a vacuum or emptying the dishwasher, Then those, those poor patterns are going to continue to stay as are the pain and discomfort associated with them.

[00:11:13] Julia Baker: It’s about using good body mechanics, not just when you deadlift, but also when you garden and also when you are walking around your house or doing your daily tasks, because in the long run, we spend maybe an hour in the gym and then we spend 12 hours at home doing other things. So you get more impact when you have good body mechanics throughout your entire day.

[00:11:35] Jenny Swisher: It’s interesting because, uh, when I dealt with, I went through a total of four neck surgeries, um, in my twenties, which we thought were at the time we thought were contributing, my neck was contributing to my headaches at the time. Now we know it was hormonal, but at the time I went through a lot of, um, uh, surgery.

[00:11:52] Jenny Swisher: These surgeries. And of course was referred to a physical therapist. And for me, it was also around that time that I was introduced to home fitness programs and sort of fitness and nutrition in general. And I learned so much during that short time, just on. What I, what I would consider to be somewhat corrective exercise.

[00:12:11] Jenny Swisher: Like he, I remember working with him on, uh, a lot of resting positions for me. Like I was a lot of my resting positions, for example, like sitting at the computer at my corporate job, I wasn’t sitting ergonomically correct. Um, I was kind of lounging my legs forward and slouching my back. And it was of course impacting my neck and everything as well.

[00:12:29] Jenny Swisher: So just little things like that, that I think a lot of people aren’t aware of now that I’m a mom. With my first child, who’s now five, I never had any back issues. And of course, both of my girls are adopted. So I didn’t have, um, birth. I didn’t have that sort of experience, but we were at the beach when she was about nine months old.

[00:12:47] Jenny Swisher: And I, I made the mistake of sort of, I guess you could call it a deadlift. I dipped her toes into the ocean. I even have it on video. Cause it was her first, her first time, uh, being dipped in the ocean and my legs were And I’m guessing she was around 20 pounds or so. And I just, my back gave out. And, uh, that was the beginning of sort of this roller coaster, lower back experience that I’ve had ever since.

[00:13:11] Jenny Swisher: And now that I have a nine month old again, I’m seeing, uh, you know, wow. I carry her on my right hip all the time. So no wonder I’m a little. A little off, you know, and I see my husband, he’s, he’s been doing the same thing. He’ll say, I think I carry her on my left. So I’m a little bit out of whack. So it’s funny.

[00:13:28] Jenny Swisher: Cause I think, you know, when I think about personal training, I think about when I was in the gym, especially, you know, I could look at somebody and say, okay, we’re going to do a squat. Right. And they would watch me do it with really great form. Like I would show them the perfect form and technique for a squat.

[00:13:43] Jenny Swisher: And I would say, okay, feet, hip distance apart, and without even looking down at their feet. They would flare their feet out or flare their feet in. They thought that their feet were underneath their hips, but they were, we call this proprioception. Right. And so instead you get this thing that’s really not at all like a squat, but they think that they’re doing what you’re doing.

[00:14:01] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so I think in general, people in general just have sort of a lack of awareness of different things that their body’s doing, because it is natural to them, whether it’s those resting positions or, or not. So I love what you guys are doing. I think this is, Awesome. I remember when I went through my personal training, uh, certifications and such, there was, there was a focus happened to be that the guy that facilitated it was a, he specialized in corrective exercise.

[00:14:25] Jenny Swisher: So I got a little bit of a taste for that when I went through that and I love, I love learning more. So let me ask you a little bit more specifically, like, what do you think? is most overlooked as it pertains to women’s fitness. I’d love to hear your take on, on that.

[00:14:40] Julia Baker: When Sarah and I were both going through our postpartum and pregnancy corrective exercise course, the impact that breathing has and how we breathe.

[00:14:50] Julia Baker: The impact on everything that we do was mind blowing. Yes. If I think that so many things could be corrected if we just learned to breathe properly in our course, we actually do an entire module on breathing and we do, we talk about how breathing should happen and different exercises to get breathing better, because the thing that is overlooked with breathing is first of all, So many of us have our ribs completely locked down.

[00:15:18] Julia Baker: There are bad cues out there and they’re well intentioned cues, but there are so many places where, you know, you go and you go through some kind of relaxation or whatever, and people take, take a nice deep breath into your belly. And I, I can understand the sentiment. I really can, but. Honestly, you’re not doing anything for the quality of breathing, just breathing into the belly.

[00:15:39] Julia Baker: And honestly, if you have like a weaker core, if you have a diastasis or something like that, you could be making that problem worse. So I think that it’s really, really underrated to not just go to the basics of breathing because breathing will help you have better mobility. It can expand places where you have shortened muscles or where you are tight.

[00:16:03] Julia Baker: It can help you with your leaking because there’s an upper system of breathing. So you’ve got from, you know, you’ve got your lungs and your diaphragm and everybody talks about how, when your diaphragm goes down, your lungs expand and your diaphragm comes up and your lungs go to what people aren’t realizing is there’s a lower half to that system.

[00:16:20] Julia Baker: And in the lower half of that system is where. When your diaphragm, diaphragm, excuse me, descends, your pelvic floor should also be descending. And then when it comes up, your pelvic floor should also be coming up and you have to make room for your body pressure, um, or for your abdominal pressure, excuse me.

[00:16:42] Julia Baker: That is when we lead to so many problems is when we can’t manage the pressure. So I think that really breathing gets highly,

[00:16:50] Sarah King: highly overlooked. Absolutely. And, and speaking on that pressure management piece, I think that’s a word that I’m hearing more often is you’ve got to learn to manage your pressure.

[00:17:01] Sarah King: Well, yes, you do, but you have to understand the mechanics in order to manage that pressure. It’s not enough to breathe properly during a squat or during a deadlift, but also to manage that pressure, um, in your daily life so that when you do bend over to put your child in the ocean, you’re, you’re using your breath to help support you because what will happen is, is that pressure is going to find the path of least resistance.

[00:17:28] Sarah King: And so like Julia said, if that happens to be in your core, it’s going to come out through the diastasis. If that happens to, to be in the pelvic floor, it’s going to come out as urine leakage. And there’s this phenomenon right now in sport that That women leak when they’re lifting and just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s normal.

[00:17:51] Sarah King: Um, and so that’s one of those myths that we want to bust is that you can lift correctly and heavily without leaking. Leaking is, is a source or an indication of a deeper problem.

[00:18:07] Jenny Swisher: Well, I want to ask a couple of questions about this. I hope it’s okay to kind of go off the cuff here with, with some of this stuff, but I’m, I’m fascinated by.

[00:18:13] Jenny Swisher: This diastasis, diastasis recti and the pelvic floor dysfunction. I know for me personally, having been in the personal training world, it was pretty common for me to meet with women who said, Oh, I can’t do core exercises because I have diastasis. I’d love to hear, what do you guys say to that? When someone says I recently delivered a baby, I’m dealing with diastasis.

[00:18:35] Jenny Swisher: I can’t do crunches, right? Like, what do you guys say to that? What, how do you address that?

[00:18:39] Sarah King: So I think the, the, the short answer is that, is that we’re all different and we all, um, our bodies are going to respond differently. So a blanket statement of don’t do this because you have this is never the answer.

[00:18:54] Sarah King: I still have separation in my abs. But I know how to manage my pressure so I can do some of those exercises that I couldn’t do earlier when I wasn’t able to, to manage my pressure well. Um, so it, it, it’s really looking at the individual person and how they’re able to work through a move or understand what their body is doing in a particular move as to whether that is a good move for their body or not.

[00:19:22] Um, I

[00:19:23] Julia Baker: think a lot of it comes down to how much time you’re willing to spend on education. And then of course, how much the person retains, which you can only control so much of that, but it’s a lot simpler. It may be simpler, but I don’t think it’s the right way to just give somebody a blanket rule of like, don’t do crunches, but it takes more time to educate somebody on, okay, we need to be looking at.

[00:19:44] Julia Baker: Are you doming, you know, do you have, like, is your, is your split widening? Like what kinds of things you need to be doing and actually problem solve. And, and educate. Now, I do think that there are good substitutions out there, but here’s the thing about substitutions. Somebody who’s told that they can’t do crunches can just as easily go out and do a dead bug terribly.

[00:20:07] Julia Baker: Okay. And be having the same exact problem. And so just giving hard and fast rules of, well, just don’t do crunches. And, and we all know the old information dies hard. Right? So I think that it just takes a long time for, and it’s happening. I see it happening, but for more of that education to get out there, because I, you know, I see a lot of, I use home fitness programs also, and I feel like they could do better work in teaching modifications, but I think that there is just this gap.

[00:20:40] Julia Baker: Between therapy and training. And there’s this little space in between where people need to know how to work back up to that high intensity exercise. And that gap is not being met. And that’s, you know, that’s a goal of ours is to, to try and fill some of that gap.

[00:20:58] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I love it. You said that. I remember, you know, all three of us are home fitness people.

[00:21:02] Jenny Swisher: And I remember there was a program years ago where the trainer that. Led the program actually, uh, she did the modifications. So she was the one teaching the program, teaching the modifications from the front of the quote unquote stage, right. Or right in front of the camera. And then she had a, I forget what, I think what they called it.

[00:21:20] Jenny Swisher: It was like an amplifier or something. Instead of having a modifier, it was like, we’re going to have somebody who’s going to do the more extreme version next to her. And I was like, that’s. That’s so needed because I know for me, even when I just hurt my back a couple of times in the last few years, like I mentioned, there’ve been times where when I come back into exercise after, you know, being in that place of rest and, and recovery, I followed the modifier and I’m always blown away at how good of a workout I’m getting.

[00:21:46] Jenny Swisher: And in a lot, a lot of cases, How I’m like, Oh, I don’t even think I was doing that right at the amplified level. Like I’m, I’m, you know, I’m deeper in my lunge this way, or I, I feel it more where I’m supposed to feel it this way. So I think there’s something to that for sure. For sure.

[00:22:02] Julia Baker: That makes me think of two things.

[00:22:03] Julia Baker: One, I think. that it’s great when they show modifications, but that, um, there needs to be more education of why you might need a modification signs. You might need a modification because somebody can go out there and do something and be like, well, it doesn’t hurt and I’m not leaking, so it must be okay.

[00:22:18] Julia Baker: But that is not necessarily the truth. And then to this whole idea that modifications are less than this is an. I mean, talk about driving me crazy. Like modifications are honoring your body. Like that’s absolutely, you know, what your body needs and you’re going to get great, greater gains. If you meet your body where it’s at, then if you push it and then have an injury that you can’t come back from.

[00:22:43] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. When I used to stand in front of a, I used to do a small group personal training and I would stand in front of a group of women. And I always had two types of women. I had the type that was like, I’m just going to say balls to the wall. Like they’re going to do the jump lunge squats, you know?

[00:22:58] Jenny Swisher: And a lot of times they’re not even, they’re just wanting to blow through it. So they’re, they’re not even going deep into their lunges. They’re just blowing through the exercise for 30 seconds. And then you’ve got the person on the other end of the extreme, who’s doing a strength exercise, uh, who’s, who’s lifting two pound weights and doesn’t want to go any, any greater because she’s afraid she’s going to bulk up.

[00:23:16] Jenny Swisher: Right. Right. So there’s like these two extremes of like. The person afraid of, of strength training and the person who’s just balls to the wall, but they’re not really getting much out of it because they’re not doing it with correct form. So

[00:23:27] Sarah King: I think, I think that speaks to mindset and that, that is something else that we cover in our course.

[00:23:32] Sarah King: And it’s something that I had to really work on shifting from that athlete mentality to, like I said earlier, the everyday health, um, mentality. I gotta be honest with you. When I first started doing corrective exercise for myself, I thought, golly, what a waste of time. I didn’t even sweat. Like I always associated how much I was sweating to the effort that I was putting into the exercise.

[00:23:58] Sarah King: And I have since learned it’s not about the sweat. It’s about getting my body in that good alignment and contracting the muscles, how they’re designed to work. So that then I can carry that over outside of the gym and not just be depleted. I remember, you know, doing exercise and then just not being able to function the rest of the day, because I was so depleted from that particular workout.

[00:24:23] Sarah King: Chase chasing the calorie burn. Yes, absolutely. Right. I monitor my heart rate now, not my calorie burn.

[00:24:30] Jenny Swisher: Yes,

[00:24:31] Sarah King: as you should, as

[00:24:32] Jenny Swisher: you should. Okay. Well, let’s talk more about sort of your health and fitness journeys. So You know what, if anything, what would you tell yourself, you know, what would you tell the 20 something Sarah or the 20 something Julia, if you could look back on that?

[00:24:46] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:47] Sarah King: Um, I think that I would absolutely offer myself more grace. I don’t think that I really understood the. Level and intensity of pain that I was experiencing on a daily basis. I just knew that I was frustrated because I couldn’t, I mean, there were times when I couldn’t carry groceries up the stairs because my hip was hurting so bad.

[00:25:14] Sarah King: Um, but yet I had this voice in my head that says, you have to work out, you have to work out, you have to work out. And so. I would go back and counsel that Sarah and say, this is what you need. You need that corrective exercise. You need to get that hip in good alignment before you’re, you ask the muscles to do any, any more work.

[00:25:36] Sarah King: Because I am, uh, six, almost, it’ll be six years in October post a total hip replacement. And I am still working on muscle imbalances from that journey. So grace, and then. You know, allowing myself to pick programs that fit where I’m at in my life and being okay with, with not doing what the calendar says today is supposed to be, um, are the, are the two of my biggest takeaways.

[00:26:09] Sarah King: Yeah.

[00:26:09] Jenny Swisher: What about you, Julia?

[00:26:10] Julia Baker: Well, so it’s, I’m sometimes now I get almost embarrassed to say, like, I didn’t actually start being active until I was 30. So I was the band geek in high school. Actually, I was in the color guard even better. And so I was plenty active and, you know, my metabolism was crazy because I was a teenager and everything was, you know, if it was all just about the body image, but like, I never really learned.

[00:26:34] Julia Baker: Like how to put a program together, or I knew how to rehab patients, right. But I didn’t know how to do a basic fitness program. And so it finally just had to reach this point. I had had three babies in five years and I, it really, for me at that time was a weight loss thing. And I just decided that I was going to start running.

[00:26:56] Julia Baker: You know, I just, I wish that I could go back and I could tell. My 30 year old self to get to go ahead and invest in some more coaching and some more help on what I actually needed, which at the time was probably either some pelvic floor PT or something like postpartum corrective exercise. And I needed to know that I needed strength training.

[00:27:21] Julia Baker: I needed to know, but like, I would never have considered strength training. Because I didn’t know how to strength train. And, um, that’s really, you know, a lot of times when Sarah and I have been working on our foundations course, um, that’s launching soon, we have written it for the 30 year old Julius that are out there because.

[00:27:42] Julia Baker: By the time you are 30, you have thought to yourself, Oh, I really need to get more fit or I really need to exercise more, but you either have, you look around and you see these women that have been exercising forever and already know. And so you’re scared. Although, honestly, I have found those women to actually be quite helpful.

[00:28:04] Julia Baker: Once I finally said that I needed some help from the outside, looking in, it’s very scary, right? And. So, or, you know, or sedentary, like their, their life is on a spectrum and you saw the two extremes and, and it was hard to find my way in. So for me, it was cheaper and easier and like anybody can run. So, you know, so I bought a 99 cent app and I did a couch to 5k and I don’t regret any of that, by the way, cause I actually do enjoy running, but, um.

[00:28:36] Julia Baker: I immediately had knee pain and I don’t know if I was leaking then or not. I probably didn’t pay a lot of attention to it, but, and I was a young mom with three young children and I was nursing and I was doing all these things. I was being really hard on my body and I wish that I had somebody out there to be like, okay, Like let’s, let’s look at our mindset and let’s first work on our breathing.

[00:29:01] Julia Baker: And, you know, strength training is really important here. I’ll show you how to do it. And so as we have gone through this journey of doing in four, you know, so like I took the five years and think to myself, like, what are all the things that happened to me in those five years that I could save somebody some time.

[00:29:18] Julia Baker: And hopefully, because a lot of people. I, I tend to have kind of a stubborn personality. So I kept going, but I could see where a lot of people could have experienced some of the difficulties that I experienced and quit, you know, and I don’t want people to quit. I want people to have a warm community where they can ask the questions that you feel too stupid, that you feel are stupid questions.

[00:29:39] Julia Baker: And to get feedback from somebody who says, yes, you are doing it right. Cause sometimes we all need a little handholding and, and that’s why inform fitness, I’m, I’m pretty passionate about inform fitness and our foundations course. And I’m really hoping that there are some women who have wanted to try something, but have, have Maybe not felt empowered and I, and we want to empower those

[00:30:00] Jenny Swisher: women.

[00:30:01] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I love what you guys are doing. I think that the online courses are so powerful because there’s an element to them. That’s, you know, uh, a mom at home with three littles who might not want to make time to go to an occupational therapy appointment necessarily can access your material online and learn so much and start the process of progress.

[00:30:21] Jenny Swisher: Right. So, um, I love what you guys are doing and I want you guys to share that information here shortly. So before we wrap up, uh, what I wanted to ask specifically is, You know, I I’m hearing what you’re saying. And it’s funny, cause I I’m instantly thinking of two different friends that I have, both our mothers, um, who have given birth, the first one is a friend of mine who was a marathon runner.

[00:30:47] Jenny Swisher: Uh, she liked doing home fitness and working out at the gym, sort of just an all around, um, person. Fitness lover. She, she delivered her second child and started having some pelvic floor diastasis issues. And I, while I wasn’t super involved in that process with her, I do know just from being a friend that she was blown away when she started working with someone who was a pelvic floor specialist, how much progress she could make doing the corrective exercises, as opposed to really just.

[00:31:17] Jenny Swisher: Getting back to fitness, right. And skipping the crunches. And then my other friend that I’m specifically thinking about is someone who had their baby and, uh, came back fully expecting themselves to be able to dive into sort of the intense exercise that they were doing before. And was even, you know, at times like, One friend, my friend that had done the pelvic floor had even mentioned to her, you know, have you thought about doing a corrective exercise for pelvic floor?

[00:31:42] Jenny Swisher: And she said, no, no, no. I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve always done. I’m just going to keep doing, um, the exercise. And to this day, I see, I see the difference in the two women. I see the difference in their cores, but of course I also see the difference in, um, their movements and, and, and what they value and sort of, you know, so I I’m saying that really with no, no question behind it, but I just wanted to share like.

[00:32:04] Jenny Swisher: I have seen the two, the two routes be taken. And I think that there is so much power in what you guys are doing. There’s so much power in taking control of your health. And sometimes it is doing the things that might feel slower, or that might feel like it’s not progress, but it’s worth it to not injure yourself.

[00:32:19] Jenny Swisher: And if, if, if the ultimate goal, you know, I I’m really passionate about. Making sure that women are aligning themselves, uh, with their physiology and for us to be pushing ourselves through carrying groceries up the stairs and hip pain, because we have too much pride or whatnot to see an occupational therapist is just not ding, ding, ding, exactly.

[00:32:37] Jenny Swisher: So, okay. So both of you guys, like I mentioned at the beginning, both of you guys have taken my sync digital course where you guys have learned all about syncing your cycles with your fitness, nutrition, with your cycles. What would you guys say has been your experience in the course? Like what are some standout things that you guys have learned?

[00:32:52] Jenny Swisher: How are you applying some of that to, to what you’re teaching? Uh, yeah, I’ll just, I’ll leave it up to you to answer that.

[00:32:58] Sarah King: Absolutely. So, um, the sync course. Was for me, the course that, that I was looking for, um, Julia and I had started having these conversations about our exercises and I distinctly remember for myself, there were a couple of days where I would do my lifting at home and then I would go and do a 60 minute cycle class at the Y within 20 minutes of each other.

[00:33:22] Sarah King: And I felt amazing. And the next week I tried to do it and I was like, what is wrong with me? And, but I didn’t know why. And Julia was experiencing some of those same things. And Jenny, you had shared about the book roar. And so we dove into that book. I started reading it and I’m sure Julia can tell you that I came, I ran over here and I was like, Julia, they have a book about what we’re talking about.

[00:33:48] Sarah King: And then eventually, you know, you were in the process of creating the sync course. So I was like, sign me up. First one to, to register for it kind of thing. And what I learned was the same thing that we’re trying to empower women through movement is to, to honor our bodies and where they’re at and how they’re so very different from men and the, the men based programs that are for general audiences.

[00:34:17] Sarah King: And again, that, that complete mindset shift of. It’s okay not to do what the calendar tells you to do to listen to your own body, to honor your body, and then to be open to different areas. Like I am currently working with an integrative medicine practitioner and not having taken your course, I would have never reached out to that field.

[00:34:41] Sarah King: But I’m learning so much about, you know, how my gut is being affected by the foods that I’m eating. And it’s very different from what a lot of general nutrition programs are suggesting. So just that, that wealth of knowledge and then being able to apply it to, to our And to our, um, just daily life, what we’re consuming, what, what our fitness program looks like and, and how our really how everything is, is surrounded by that cycle.

[00:35:14] Sarah King: So, When

[00:35:15] Julia Baker: I started exercising, I had a two month old and my cycle had not returned. And, um, I have breastfed all of my children and I am one of these ladies that is gifted with, uh, you know, 14, 15 months typically, although the story is funny that way, of not having my cycle come back. Well, my cycle came back early.

[00:35:36] Julia Baker: We didn’t, we didn’t kind of figure that out. So then Briella hit the scene. So essentially when I started exercising, when I was 30, I actually didn’t ovulate or have a period until I was first, whatever, for three and a half years. For three and a half years, I didn’t because I, I, you know, um, there wasn’t anything wrong, it was just from, um, breastfeeding amenorrhea, but so, uh, when my period came back and because of the way that I had had my children, I had had like three periods in like, Eight or nine years.

[00:36:09] Julia Baker: And so I felt like a teenager again. I was like, I don’t even remember how this works. You know, I, I, I, and, but I definitely noticed, um, I had worked my way up. There was one summer where I was just feeling kind of crazy and I decided I wanted to do sprint triathlons. So I was sprint triathlon training. And in one week I would feel amazing, you know, like I would feel really great.

[00:36:32] Julia Baker: And then two weeks later, I would run the same course or swim the same number of yards or bike the same exact course. And I would feel like I was going to fall off the bike. Like I just really, really felt terrible. And it would be two weeks later. So I would be like, why is this happening? Why am I getting worse?

[00:36:51] Julia Baker: Training is supposed to make me get better. Like what is happening here? And, and it was interesting because since I had been tracking my cycles for 10 years, I did say to Sarah, I was like, I think there might be something about my cycle that is affecting me. And it was pretty funny. I remember she showed up at my door and she was like, this is exactly what you were talking about last week, you know, kind of thing.

[00:37:13] Julia Baker: So we ate up that book. And then it took me a little while to, um, have space. Just in my life to come and take the SYNC course. But I think what the SYNC course helped me with was two things. It helped me with my mindset, because like I said, if that had kept happening, right, like if every fourth week, my workouts were awful, like maybe I just would’ve, you know, been like, it’s not helping I give up,

[00:37:38] Jenny Swisher: you

[00:37:38] Julia Baker: know, and.

[00:37:40] Julia Baker: To now I have forgotten to to practical application, you know, like actually being able to work in Where I should do, um, you know I’ve i’ve shifted my focus more to strength training because I think that’s really important for my body as I Go on but at that time, you know, I did start to adjust my training schedule to Yeah.

[00:38:06] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m so glad you guys shared that cause it’s been an honor to get, have you guys in the course itself. And I know it’s funny cause I was just talking to somebody who also recently got sync certified as a sync certified coach. And she is actually going to be speaking to her husband as a high school basketball coach, girls basketball coach, I should mention.

[00:38:25] Jenny Swisher: And she is going to be speaking to the girls basketball team about what she’s learned about basketball. About women’s hormones. And it was interesting because we were sort of having a phone call about this. And she mentioned, you know, my, that her goal for this conversation is to, to make the girls aware of the fact that their body will feel different week to week, that they could have a good game or a bad game.

[00:38:46] Jenny Swisher: And it’s not necessarily because of their skill ability or effort. It could be a hormonal related reason that they, you know, that they’re feeling the way that they do. And I thought that was so powerful because. As we know, and as we talk about in the course, especially in your teenage years, you know, it’s a little bit different because your body’s trying to figure itself out.

[00:39:03] Jenny Swisher: Um, and I can remember being a high school basketball athlete and I, it was the exact same thing. Like I would have, of course I was always a migraine sufferer. So I would have games where I was in migraine, you know, H E double hockey sticks. And I would have games where I felt like I was just On top of the world and totally focused and in the game and high energy.

[00:39:22] Jenny Swisher: And so looking back, I’m like, I’m pretty sure there were probably some hormones playing a role there. So how powerful is it that we can, we can spread the message to everyone about the power of cycle syncing. So I’m so grateful for you guys doing this with me today. Um, I’d love for you guys to direct people to where they could find you, where can they find you on social media?

[00:39:41] Jenny Swisher: And if you could share that with us.

[00:39:44] Sarah King: Sure. We hang out on Instagram and Facebook. Both are, um, at informed fitness LLC. And then our website is informed fitness, LLC. com. And that website has information about our course. Um, our first cohort will be launching mid September and we are, we are truly excited about sharing the knowledge that we’ve learned.

[00:40:09] Sarah King: And empowering women to, you know, take control of their own movement and health journeys.

[00:40:17] Jenny Swisher: Awesome. Thank you so much, guys. Well, I’ll make sure that all of that information as far as social and website and whatnot is all included in the show notes. So if you’re listening to this, uh, feel free to check out the show notes for those direct links.

[00:40:27] Jenny Swisher: Thank you guys so much for being here today. I’m so grateful and I’m so glad to be friends with both of you. We’ll talk soon.

[00:40:33] Sarah King: Thanks Jenny. Thank you. All right.

[00:40:34] Jenny Swisher: Thanks. Bye. Bye.

[00:40:44] Jenny Swisher: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. I hope you found value from today’s episode. If you did, please share it out to your friends or leave a review. Remember your cycles are your superpower and by aligning with them, you can live your life with all the energy you need to be a mom, wife, daughter, and friend to those you love.

[00:41:02] Jenny Swisher: Until next time.