Getting Stronger Faster in Pregnancy with Erica Ziel

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 222. Today I'm sitting down with coach Erica Zeal and we're talking about how to get stronger, faster in pregnancy. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and I'm really excited to share with you today a very special episode I did with one of my friends and fellow masterminder. I have known her for years and it's both a pleasure and a privilege to really get to speak to people who clearly are passionate and care about movement. And Erica is going to share with us on this episode her journey and how she came to be where she is now, how she has helped instructors, physical therapists, personal trainers, high level professionals really dive into a way to train fascia, how to help their clients build strong cores, and how to really set up women for success when it comes to pregnancy, even if they might not yet be ready or talking about the experience of having a baby. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up? Erica, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm so good. Beverly, it's so, so great to see you. As you've already seen, we are already chatting and we're like, we better get going, right? Just never get this recorded.

It's really a pleasure and a privilege to have you on the show today. I have known Erica for years now and we've been trying to get this on the, on the calendar and are just, it's, it's been divine timing that we're finally aligned up and that we can actually get this going. I'm so, so excited to have you. So for those of you who are tuning in and you have not heard or seen the pleasure of your work, Erica, can you share with us who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Yeah, for sure. So, okay, I'll give like kind of the long story short as to how I ended up here. So it actually goes way back to when I was five My story is, like, my entire life, basically. I love it. Let's go. I started with having crazy knee pain when I was five and over, you know, just kind of continued. Yeah. Over the years. And then my mom, you know, finally to be. The doctors are like, oh, well, it's growing pains. She'll grow out of it. Okay, fast forward to I was 17. I stopped growing at 14, and they're still saying it's growing pains. Well, my parents are finally like, okay, that's just not growing anymore. Right. So they took me to the Mayo Clinic, and we saw a specialist up there, and they basically told me, like, look, like you need to strengthen your legs. And I was like, whoa, wait. I have suffered with pain my whole life. Taken way too much Motrin, been injured every season because I love to do sports, and I was a naturally good athlete, but I was always injured halfway through because of overuse. Right. And so they were like, you need to strengthen your legs. And so that was the piece that catapulted me into strength training and really, at a pretty young age, starting to see the. The power that movement has to heal the body, which I know everyone listening knows that, but I feel like I got really prepar. Fell into it at a pretty young age. So I actually was very blessed and got to start learning how to do Olympic lifting. In high school. We had a great strength and conditioning coach that was really big on form, you know, and how to do it right. And it wasn't about lifting heavy. And so I just look back, and I'm so grateful for that experience, because right out the gate, it wasn't just about, go hard and go home. It was, no, really do this correctly. And so that's what then propelled me to go study exercise science and Iowa State science. So I graduated with a degree in human and health performance, and which is basically kinesiology. They changed the name of it, like, I don't know, multiple times while I was there. They couldn't decide what they were doing with their program, and then went on to study Pilates when I moved out to California, which really just opened my eyes to a whole another world of movement and healing the body and fascia and pelvic floor and all of that. And, you know, by the time I was 21, I no longer had knee pain. And so which is a personal experience that really pushed me to be like, look, I don't have knee pain. Right? And, you know, over the years of, you know, I'm a mom of three going through three pregnancies, having Three babies, lots of changes in the body. You know, anytime things starts to happen, it's like, you know what to do. And it's something I've always, always loved teaching my clients. And, you know, so I'm always that person who, like, I can't just do my training and be like, you know, close it down at night. I am like a serial entrepreneur, and so I've always been doing something else. And looking outside the BO is kind of how I. I talk about it. And I started stumbling upon fascia and what fascia was somewhere in my earlier, you know, after this kind of initial early years of training and teaching or getting my full Pilates certification and all that, and then the pelvic floor. And so those are, like, the two big things. And I started doing my own exploration of, like, following these experts outside of fitness. And it really helped expand my perspective and my abilities to work with my clients. And so I started weaving in fascial training, more fascial training, and, like, specifically addressing fascia and pelvic floor function and all of those things when it really wasn't a thing. And it just started, you know, one client after the other was, we were just getting rid of aches and pains left and right. And then when I moved back to the Midwest, obviously had a new influx of clients, mostly women, a lot of them moms. And so many of them. I mean, I'm talking, like, pretty young moms, like, late 20s, in their 30s, and they're having so many pain, so much pelvic floor dysfunction. And they've come to me in, like, tears because they're like, erica, I've gone to my doctor. They either tell me I have to have surgery or I have to suffer with this for the rest of my life. And I look at them, and I'm like, that is the, like, absolute most insane thing I've ever heard. Because I had come from working with these clients that I had in California. We didn't have any of these problems. And I worked with a ton of moms and all ages, and I worked with men, and I worked with athletes. Like, I just worked with such a wide range of clientele and really, at the end of the day, really worked on the same fundamentals that works for everybody. And in one session of working with these moms, like, obviously, you can only do so much in one session, but it was at least enough to get them to realize, wow, I feel a little bit better after this one session. I feel like, oh, gosh, I didn't even know about my Pelvic floor. I didn't know there was hope for my pelvic floor that I could stop peeing my pants. I didn't know that this back pain. Pain was. It's not really from my back. It's because my core dysfunction is really out of whack. My hips are out of whack. And you know what I mean? It's this whole. We know this as movement, you know, specialists, and yet why is it in fitness? It's not looked at. And this is just my, you know, my professional perspective on this. And so I don't know. Again, it was a handful of years ago. I switched my certifications, and I. I won't name them here, but we probably know who it is. It's one of the top certifying bod in the United States. And so when I was. I was like, do I really need to study for this thing? And the guy was like, well, you should probably just look over hours. Our techniques are verbiage. So you know that for the test, I'm like, okay, great. So I'm going through and I'm reading their core training section. And I was like, light bulb moment. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. This is exactly why I'm seeing so much dysfunction in fitness, because I'm teaching the 180 of what we're teaching in fitness. And I'm like, this is why especially. This is why I see it across the board, but this is why, especially with moms, especially with women, because we. Our bodies aren't designed to be bracing and gripping and all of that. It causes so much dysfunction. I mean, client after client, student after student. I'm like, your pelvic floor is too tight. You have too much restriction through your pelvis. Your glutes need to stop gripping. And anyway, Beverly's like, shaking her head, or she's like, no. I'm like, I just roll with this whole conversation. Sorry. Come back in, Beverly.

Oh, my gosh. It's fine. It's just, I. It's just so powerful because I'm going through my experience when I became a mom in 2015, which really not that long ago. And I remember the trainer I was before versus a trainer I am now. That's why I'm laughing so hard, because it's like, this is such a different experience.

It is.

Anyway, keep going. So now you're like, okay, so now I get it. So then this led you to really create. To create your own instructor training. So can you tell us a little bit about how. What is that what would you say is your. Is your defining program? Like, how does it. How does it separate itself from what we are traditionally used to seeing?

So my signature program that I have is actually called Core Rehab, and it's really for the consumer, but I have a lot of instructors that take it. And I always tell instructors like, hey, number one, even if you don't have any dysfunction, you think you don't, I can guarantee you have a lot to learn. Especially if some of the things I said like, you know, tight hips, tight glutes, and a lot of fitness professionals were. We're told to squeeze and brace and be tighter. Right. And stronger. And like, I'm all for being strong. Absolutely right. But there's a balance and the right kind of strength and the balance of strength. So I always encourage instructors to do that. But my instructor training course I have is my pre postnatal exercise specialist course. And so I actually did. Actually created that before I moved back to the Midwest, because I love working with prenatal and with pregnant moms. And I just really, really saw a need for instructors to really understand pregnancy. And it's amazing the amount of. The amount of trainers who are moms that have taken the course and they're like, eric, I didn't know this stuff about the body and about labor, and I've given birth. Like, that always shocked me that. So I always want to encourage you. I think sometimes moms who are trainers think, oh, well, I don't need to learn this about birth. I've given birth. I understand it. And it's like, well, unless you've really go on down the deep rabbit hole and understand fascia and pregnancy, because, oh my gosh, if we can understand the role that fascia plays during pregnancy, the sky is the limit to what we can do with our moms and women, but also moms, because during pregnancy, a lot of people don't know this, but your collagen production increases, which makes sense when you think about it, because while we're growing another human being. And so we have this like, extra superpower inside of us when we're pregnant that our collagen this is actually increases, which means we can become stronger, faster during pregnancy by doing a lot less. And I saw that time and time again with my pregnant clients, like, how many times we may not as fitness professionals, but how many times do we see in the just population in society, we look at pregnant women like, oh, you're so fragile, you're going to break. Don't lift that. Don't do this. You're going to hurt yourself, you know, And I'm like, well, let's be smart and have common sense. You know, pregnant women should probably be that are three months prior, you know, in their third trimester, should be moving furniture around their house and things like that. But the thing is that time and time again, I worked with just an array of pregnant women from, you know, once who were essentially athletes, almost like professional athletes before getting pregnant to those that were really pretty sedentary, they didn't even really walk. And it's amazing to see that the ones who really weren't doing much, right, the older methadone or the old kind of myth is like, well, if you haven't been doing anything, now is not the time to start. And unless you're a high risk, there's a high risk pregnancy or something with a client. That's BS in my professional opinion. Of course. I always say get their doctor's approval, make sure everything's been checked out. But providing there's nothing going on, out of the norm and she's healthy, baby's healthy, everything. Like time and time again, I see pregnant women have the ability to get stronger during pregnancy and we do not have to be doing a lot of crazy heavy lifting. And I don't actually recommend a lot of heavy lifting. Lifting weights, absolutely. Like, I think that's great, but doesn't have to be really intense to be really effective. And I really believe a lot of it comes down to our collagen synthesis. During pregnancy, we can become stronger, faster. And then when she understands her, her core, how to effectively and safely strengthen her core, and I'm not just talking about her abs, it's really pelvic floor. You know, everything from her pelvic floor, basically through her torso, right? Improving her breathing, improving her pelvic floor function, getting her to understand how to actually properly engage her, her core. Instead of like the old, you know, thinking of crunches and planking and all that kind of stuff, right? When we can actually engage our core correctly. She's using her core with everything, every movement she's ever doing. She's got another child. She should know how to do that. She should know how to do, you know, movements of daily life. And there's just so much that we can teach them that really can, can not only help her to feel better during pregnancy, can help to get rid of aches and pains. Like, again, back pain in pregnancy, right? That's just like, oh, that's just normal, you know, it's normal. Like, okay, again, I Call BS on that, because I can't tell you how many women, like, they come into my programs or they work with a trainer that we've certified. It's like we can get rid of the back pain now. Not maybe 100% of the time, but we can at least really mitigate a lot of it, decrease a lot of it, and for a lot of women, completely prevent it. But then what also is amazing about really understanding what to do with your prenatal clients is that you're helping her to prepare her body for birth. And I talk about that. I teach my students that teach my clients or my instructors how to teach their clients that. Because when. When she better understands the role her core plays, the role her breath can play, and finding space in her pelvis. Right. Remember I said it's a big problem for women to be too tight and too restricted. Yeah. That really, really can play a positive or a negative role in the actual labor pushing phase of birth. And then that has a positive or negative effect on her postpartum recovery. So for me, I look at how all these things play a role together, and if we can help a mom better prepare her body for an easier postpartum recovery, we potentially have saved a woman from crazy postpartum depression, needing pharmaceuticals or, you know, whatever it is, we have really massively enhanced her quality of life. I think so many times we think of fitness and movement as like just the fitness piece. And I want to always have everybody taking it a whole, I don't know, thousand subs deeper. Right. It's. It's not just how. What's her fitness? It's like, no, what's her quality of life? Like? How does. How is this movement actually helping her in her life? What is the purpose behind. And I always teach all my instructors, if you can't answer why she's doing that movement, then she probably shouldn't be doing it.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, mic drop.

Beverly, I know you have so.

You said so many amazing things. And so I have a lot of things to. To ask and for you to unpack because number one is something that you said that I'm noticing a lot. And I just think that it's part of the human condition is that. Is that we tend to be very reactive instead of proactive. So a lot of people tend to struggle in the marketing and the selling components of preventative work. And the truth of the matter is that we are leading the number one in preventative care. So I feel like this shows up in the pre. Postnatal Work, because a lot of people will. There's a lot of information about postpartum, and it becomes a lot of, like, oh, my gosh. And to me, that can be reactive. And I know that that was true for me. I mean, for me as a trainer, as a fitness. As a fitness manager, running multiple gyms. At the time of my pregnancy, I like, pretended I wasn't pregnant, and I literally just, like, stuck my head in the sand. I got this advice of, like, you know, hey, just don't Google anything. And I took that to the extreme, and I literally. Yeah, like, I literally was like, okay, I won't Google anything to the point of, like, my sister called me and said, hey, you're still gonna look pregnant, by the way, when the baby comes. And I was like, what? No, I'm not. And she's like, and intercourse might hurt even if you have a cesarean. And I was like, I don't know. You're talking crazy, right? So that. That is. You know, and so I feel like there's a lot that we can do prenatal that a lot of people aren't paying attention to. And so one of the things I'd love to. I'd love for you to unpack is how prenatal is pre. Like, are we talking, you know, preparation? Like, they're preparing. We're trying to have a baby. That's question one. Number two, you said you don't even have to lift heavy, so I'd love for you to define that. What does heavy actually mean to you and to the community? And then number three, you know, I want. Could you talk a little bit more about the role of collagen? Because I feel like this is kind of a buzzword that we're hearing a lot, and I know that it applies not just to the pre postnatal world, but also to women in general. So can we talk about that? And I wanted to. There was one more thing in terms of. Oh, the instructors that you're working with and in the training specifically to. To get certified. Is this to help facilitate a core rehab program that they could put in their world, in their. For their clients?

Great questions. Okay, so we have to go back to number one, which was. Remind me that one.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. The first one I asked you was the. You know, how pre is pre.

Oh, yeah. How pre is pre. Okay, let's go there first. So. Okay. So. Well, I always say the sooner the better before she's even pregnant. This is why, actually, when I market and talk about my pre Postnatal exercise specialist course. I say every single fitness professional needs to take this course if you work with women, because the likelihood that at some point in this woman's life she will get pregnant is pretty high. Right? So that means you can start doing some of these techniques with them as soon as possible. And that's so powerful because we have this potential to start to shift the way she's thinking about movement, she's thinking about her body, she's being educated, especially the pelvic floor stuff. And again, there's still so much pelvic floor stuff out there. Is taught so wrong. We could have a whole two hour conversation about that. But yeah, I mean, the sooner she can start, the better. But I will also say too, you know, if you have the background, the pre. You know, you get your pre. Postnatal certification and you have a client that comes to you and she's literally like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know anything about this. And I'm literally do like tomorrow or next week. Can you help me? I always say yes to those women because it's amazing how just a little bit of practice, even if it was like one session of working with a pregnant mom, you could have taught her a couple of things that could, could positively help her with her birth and her postpartum recovery. And with that, just one other thing I want to add to this, and we're thinking of this kind of like this journey for these women is I always prompt my pregnant moms about her postpartum before she has her baby so she knows where she's going. Do not wait till she's postpartum for her to reach out to you and be like, now what you want to seed, what she needs to do before she has her baby, be. So there's that piece.

Okay, okay. That's amazing. And I also think that's really powerful. I think that, that we don't talk about that very often in our world. The pre. Pre. How pre.

Is pre. Teenage girls need to learn some of the stuff, not necessarily like pregnancy specific information. And that's the interesting thing. And when I was creating my course, I actually kind of end up laughing when I got done because I was like, you know, you kind of look back at it and so much prenatal stuff out there. It's like this trimester, that trimester, and I'm like, do you know the smallest section in my entire course worse is the trimester modifications. It's so short because it doesn't like, I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but it's really not as important as we've put so much weight on it. It's understanding the individual human being. That's what matters more. You can take 10 moms that are 30 weeks pregnant and they're all going to be at a little bit different place just because they're all in their third trimester. Some of them are going to be a lot more modified than others because of their abilities, because of how they feel, because of. There's so many factors. And that's my biggest thing I teach is understanding the variables to training pregnant women especially.

So powerful and so good. And I think we could talk about. We as a community could stand to talk about this a little bit more. So the other thing I wanted to ask you is how heavy is heavy?

Okay, so when I say heavy, like so many times, I think of like, hiit training and like, you know, with the weight training, with the rack and, you know, the big weights, things like that. Right. The heavy free weights, essentially. Does that make. Does that help clarify that? And yeah, you know, if someone's really conditioned to doing that, could we do a little bit? Possibly, but she needs to drop the weight because she doesn't need it. And my biggest thing, because I've seen these posts, and especially my early days of really kind of starting in this journey, is you'd see a post of a woman, you know, big belly with the bar over her back, squatting this massive weight, and she's peter pants. And I'm like, that is unnecessary. We should not allow that in fitness. Okay. Do you know what I've been told? So a friend of mine, she used to do hair and makeup for a really big fitness company that did a lot of videoing. And she was like, erica, do you know why those ladies wear black pants up on stage? So that way when they pee their pants, you can't see that they've peed their pants pants because the janitor afterwards would be wiping a pee up on the stage because so many women wet their pants. It is a massive problem in the fitness industry. Do you know how many, like, I've heard these stories personally from women and they're like, they go to a fitness class and like, they're going to do jump rope or box jumps or something that's a little bit more intense. And they'll say to a friend, like, gosh, I really don't. I don't think I can do this without wetting my pants. And another woman will say, well, honey, that's just normal because you had some babies. And I'm like, we have to stop accepting that. And also, as fitness professionals, we have to start having these conversations. I don't care if you're a male trainer working with females. You need to at least have the knowledge to know and understand that if a female client of yours is having any accidents, that is a problem. That is a problem. So that is my biggest reason for not having women to lift heavy because I see especially in the short term for pregnancy when it doesn't really need it, because we can become stronger faster by using less weights, because her collagen synthesis is fast, is sped up during pregnancy. But then we're also with the heavy weightlifting, we are just possibly causing more harm. And that's my biggest thing. I'm really always trying to teach pregnant women and teaching instructors about pregnancy is look like we so many times in fitness. I've got my background in exercise science. We're taught periodization and all this stuff. And I'm like, like with, I mean, with what I teach, I don't teach that because that's not my specialty. Because I'm over here helping to prevent injury and helping women to get rid of injury and dysfunction. And I'll tell you, a lot of female trainers find what I do because they're like, oh, wait, I've been in fitness for however many years and I'm having these problems. And I didn't know that it wasn't like there was something I could do that me peeing my pants was a red flag, that I've got pelvic floor dysfunction and I can fix it. Incontinence, I swear to you. Like, I'm like, if you do do the techniques right, it's 100% reversible for women when you do it the right way.

So good. Okay, so I also want to talk about the collagen synthesis. What is the role in collagen and how is it, you know, for pregnant women, for women in general? I feel like we're hearing a lot of buzz around collagen symptoms, synthesis. Can you unpack that a little bit?

I'll just give a quick. My quick summary that I give a fascia because you have to understand fascia a little bit to really understand then the role of collagen. So fascia is really what connects our entire body together. Like, if you were to take off really the outer layer or one of the outer layers of fascia off of a body, it would be the entire body, fingers to toes to head. Right. So it Connects everything. It wraps around all of our muscles, every muscle spindle. It wraps around all the nerves. It wraps around our organs. It is, you know, it is, is. Well, this is the connective tissue or the collagen is really the, the biggest thing that makes up fascia. It's also what makes up, you know, tendons and ligaments and all of that, as well as bone. Bone is also very, very high in collagen, which I always feel like we don't talk about that enough with bone. We always talk about calcium. And I'm like, yeah, calcium is kind of important, but collagen is even more important for bone health. So that's kind of a question. Quick summary. I guess, like, fascia connects everything. Fascia is made up of a collagen matrix, right? So that's where as we age, our cellular rejuvenation tends to slow down. And we're always creating new fascia, which means our call. We're always, we always are. Having collagen synthesis is always happening in our body. We need to make sure we have enough vitamin C in our body, that we're eating enough, taking extra supplementation. So that helps to facilitate collagen synthesis in our body. And again, of course, like fascia. One way to explain it too is like, fascia forms the way our body moves. So like, as we think of, like, posture, right? So as people get older, they get more kyphotic, things like that. That's, you know. Well, that is because the fascia is becoming tighter and more restricted because that's how that person is holding their body. But we can change the way the body moves by really thinking about fascia and how to train our body more fascial, more fascially. So when we, you know, as we get, as we get older because our cellular rejuvenation decreases, that's where we can start talking about, like, adding collagen to the diet. And I know kind of there's a spectrum of like, should you take it? Should you not take it? What should you take all that? So I actually have my own collagen that I offer because I was like, I gotta offer a good source, right? A good, high quality source that is super clean and pure. I love it. Like, people love it. So. But during pregnancy, because she's pregnant and she is growing a human being in her body, her collagen synthesis naturally ticks up on its own. And so that is where that, I mean, again, that's my correlation. And we put two and two together, right? She's got extra collagen synthesis because, well, if you think about a baby, all the fibrous connective tissue that's in a baby, the bones are mostly collagen. Then we start thinking, oh, well, she's got more collagen anyway. So I always say pregnancy is the best time for a woman to learn how to properly strengthen her core because of that increase in collagen, collagen synthesis, and because she can become stronger faster by doing essentially less. And she has a baby inside of her belly to give her feedback. And that is such a massive advantage that she's never going to have. And I see it all the time when I work with a pregnant mom and then I see her postpartum or she does one of my programs or something like, it's amazing the difference and how much faster she recovers postpartum when she got that education and that tactile feedback during pregnancy versus a woman who didn't do that. And that's why I always will say too, and for any of you that, you know, work with pregnant women and even if they don't, they don't do a lot, they don't see you a lot, but they do nothing more than just learn, improve breathing and core function. That right there can massively improve the quality of our life. So does that help kind of explain.

Yeah, that's so good. So I. I'd love for you. Can you share with us a little bit about some of the differences between, you know, fascia training versus, versus, some of the traditional periodized, you know, strength training and hit training that we tend to see in our everyday gyms? Like, what are some of the differences?

Yeah, so I basically, if you're doing fascial training, we're strengthening our muscles. And if we're strengthening our muscles, we are working our fascia. So we can't fully separate them completely, but you can do things that are much more like, fascially targeted. So if I think of like heavy lifting, weightlifting. Right. That is definitely going to be more focused on the muscles themselves, themselves. Right. We're trying to build up the muscles. They're tearing, they've got to repair. If we are thinking about more fascial training, like Pilates, yoga is just an easy visual for people to kind of see. As I started really going down the research rabbit hole of fascia, I was like, oh, I had actually been teaching a good amount of fascial training through Pilates without really knowing and understanding. So some of the things, you know, is that if we think about it, because fascia wraps around our muscles. So if we're strengthening our fascia, we're also strengthening our muscles. I'll also give the example of, like dancers, for example, they tend to be really, really strong, but really lean, right? Or like a Cirque du Soleil. People who can do all these crazy things, right? Or gymnasts, they're really compact. Gymnasts may not be the best example because they do put a little bit more muscle on. But with fascial training, you tend to be a little bit more compact, but you're really, really stinking strong. And I'm trying to remember this analogy. Let me think of it for a second. It's. Oh, the analogy is basically that fascia is to the body what seal is to a building. So it really can be our really strong support system. So when we're doing fascial training, we want to focus a lot on lengthening. We're always trying to create space, and this is where we're able to prevent a lot of pain or get people out of pain, because most pain becomes. Because people get compressed, they don't have enough space. They get nerve pinching, impingement, stuff like that. That's one way of doing it. Pulsing is another really good way to get to activate the fascial system. So those are two really, really good ways. And lighter, lighter weights, doing band work, doing spring work, things like that, you tend to get. You tend to kind of activate the fascia system. And I really like to teach that, really, no matter what we're doing. So, like, for example, let's take a. A squat, for example. Okay? We all know how to squat, and many times when we're doing a squat, we're just focused on our legs. Well, I take it a much deeper layer, and I get everyone to focus on, what's your pelvic floor doing? Are you feeling lengthen space through your entire body so that we're really working most of our body, except maybe our arms, unless we're holding onto weights or something. And then maybe we even add a pulse, like squat. Pulses are one of my favorite moves to have clients do, and I love them myself, because part of what it does is where then we are more connected fascially. And we're trying to get more space while creating more fascial strength. And that fascia then in time creates more space, say, around our hip capsules, along our vertebrae, so that we're preventing aches and pains. We're also getting stronger at the same time. And I'm a fan of doing a little bit of heavy lifting, doing Variety is key. But I think at the end of the day, when you really can understand how to train the body in a much more fascially elongated, fascially connected position and, and cue, it really comes out of the queuing, how you're cueing your clients. It makes everything you do so much more effective than just focus on the weight training.

So one of the things I'm curious, it does make sense. And I am curious because you talked about, you know, we tear down the muscle. So when we are really working on grow on the growth of the muscle and we tear it down, what's happening to the fascia?

The then is that also. I mean, you're going to obviously be addressing your fat fascia in some way because you can't, it's kind of one of those, like you can't a hundred percent separate just. And you did fascia. Yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's a little more focused on one or, or the other. So the biggest thing is, okay, let's talk about a squat for it. I'm just like trying to find the video and movement. I'm like, sometimes we're like. It feels limited. Right. So if you're doing a squat and let's say you're doing it with a tucked pelvic position and your glutes are really tight. Remember I talked about this kind of in the beginning, that restriction in the glutes and having that tucked pelvis. How many of us have been taught in a squat, you come up, you thrust your pelvis forward, you guys. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. Some of you probably still do it. A lot of you were probably taught that, and you're still teaching it, and that's okay. I just have a very different perspective because I work with dysfunction all the time. So the reason I don't like that is it causes the pelvis to be so forcefully tucked. It causes us to lose space in our hips, causes us to use our back too much, and it causes massive imbalance in the pelvic floor. And so then if we have a tucked pelvis and we're going up and down in a squat in more of a tucked pelvis way, and we've got it loaded with a heavy weight. And we're really not focused on lengthening through our body. We're not focused on finding the movement through our pelvis and our sits bones that we need. Then we're just getting tighter and tighter and more and more and more restricted. Now we're Getting probably stronger muscularly. And sometimes that can override pain and dysfunction until one day something says, I've had enough. And I do see that with the heavy lifting. So when I'm. And so part of it is also like form and postural stuff, right? So if I'm thinking of like, let's do a squat in a more fascially fluid way, what I'm going to always drop the weight down for someone because I need to know that they can move through a range of motion, that their pelvis doesn't just clinch and lock and tighten, tuck. And they're also not arching too much and like dropping into their low back. So we don't want to overcorrect either. So, I mean, a lot of women, especially a lot of moms, they tuck their pelvis because it was a way to help compensate during pregnancy. I am, oh, I am untucking pelvises like all the time over here. And. But again, we have to be careful not to overcompensate. So what say again, back to the squat example. If we're training it in more of a fascially fluid way, so initially we drop the weight, you have to take the weight away. So we want to find that length and space and she or he has to have energy and connection up through the entire body, feeling a light pelvic floor, lower belly, all the way through the top of the head, like it's that full lift. Then when you're doing a squat, you want to be able to get and work through a range where you can feel space and opening of the sits bones. Because then you know that we're lightly activating the pelvic floor in a lengthened position and we're going to get more movement and mobility around the hip capsules. So that's like a first step. And then as you can get that range of motion and we can keep that good form and we can keep those connections because what we're doing is we're finding space between our bones and we're becoming more fascially strong around our joints and through our body, while also becoming more muscularly strong. But you see how we have to like, break it down and focus on the fascia and then we can build it back up. And then once someone really starts to get that, then we can start to add the weights, right? Like, I can go to the gym now. I can do bar, do the racks, whatever, and I can do my squats with weights now. You know, there, there'll be a weight at which a point you'll notice, like, I can't do and keep my good form right now with this weight. So you got to drop it back down. And it's kind of one of those, it's a finesse. But so many people, and I know when you're used to lifting heavy, are working out really hard, and I run into this all the time, is that, you know, my students, clients, everyone, they feel like, gosh, I'm not getting a good workout. And the reality is that you're getting a better workout than you realize when you pull things back because it's more effective. I teach 10, 15 minute workouts all the time and I can tell you they make you stronger because you're doing them with such more focus, more breath, focus more space through your body. So you're becoming stronger fascially. And then as you get stronger, your muscles will get. And you're again, you're getting, you can't divide them fully. So you are still getting stronger muscularly. But it's fascia first. If that makes. Yeah, no, I summarize all of that.

It does. It makes perfect sense. And I always have to remind people too, is we're just in this, you know, world of like faster or better. And it's not that that's necessarily bad or wrong. It's just that, you know, you wouldn't expect a toddler who just learned how to walk to run a marathon. And yet we're, we're asking our body to do this, this all of the time, you know, or we're at, you know, or we're asking our business to do this all of the time.

Right.

We just want to, you know, delegate. We'll find that's not my zone of genius. I'm just going to delegate that and. Okay. But you know, as a toddler, you can't delegate walking. You've got to learn, you know, some of these skills are the things that we need, you know.

Yeah. You have to know how to do it yourself first. And this is true with your business or with the movement stuff. Yes.

Yeah. Or at least put it on your own body. You don't have to be that the avatar, but we need to be able.

To.

Speak from the knowing.

Yeah, sorry.

Which comes from doing it right. So one of the things I'm, I'm curious too, for you, you know, is, is the measurement of progress. So how do you know? Especially when you're working in a world of CrossFit. No shade. I'm not being like, hey, CrossFit, it's bad or wrong it's just they're the first ones that come to mind when it comes to speed workout of the day. No periodization, a lot of intensity and it's not. And a lot of people have a lot of joy in that. So great. But, or rather, and you know, how do you know when you come from that world and that's your context and now we have to shift the content. So like you're saying 10 to 15 minutes, right? How are you measuring performance? How are you changing the experience so that mom. So that your clients and, and, and you know, and important. How are you communicating as an instructor to really shift expectations and help clients see that they're having progress. So what, what are the ways that you're measuring progress?

I love this conversation. I can't tell you how often I have this conversation because I do. We get a lot of runners and a lot of women who've done CrossFit or CrossFit style workouts, right? And honestly a lot of, a lot of people, when they come into my world, they usually have some sort of dysfunction. Now I, I wish they would find me before the dysfunction started because we could prevent it, right? And for some that is the case, but that's definitely not the majority. So, you know, I initially have to get people to understand. Look like this is actually what I've been saying to clients lately is when you come into my world and you're going to learn from me, I don't want you to compare it to anything else you've ever learned because your brain is to have a heyday with this. It is going to be a constant tug of war because I'm going to teach you the 180 to everything you. Not everything, but to a lot of things you learned. And you're going to be like, you're going to feel like your basket of awesome fitness knowledge just got freaking blew up and you're like, well now I don't even know what to do. You know what I mean? So.

Because I just had that experience so many times in fitness in my business, it's just like, oh my God.

So I always, I'm trying. Over the last couple years, I've really tried to do a really good job at like time. But look like, come into my world, I want you to be open minded. I want you to know that you are, you're here to learn a whole lots of new things about your body and about movement because it's going to challenge everything you've learned, right? Some of those top ones is no sucking the belly to spine. Stop tucking your pelvis, right? Stop rolling those shoulders all the time, man. Those are, like, three common things that we see a lot of and are taught a lot of in fitness, still taught in fitness. And my first thing is, and I educate them on why I don't. I want them to start to be aware that we need to start breaking those habits. And when I explain to them why, it usually starts to click for them. Now, I usually get feedback, or not always, but I usually kind of get some pushback in the beginning from women because they're, like, used to going hard, you know, go hard or go home kind of mentality. And they're like, I don't feel anything. I don't feel what you're telling me to feel. And this is where, again, we have to shift our mindset and recognize, okay, well, if the way we've been moving our body has caused dysfunction and pain, or we're so tight in our pelvis, like, we don't even know how to properly activate our pelvis. And I'll tell you, women don't, unless I really worked with a specialist on it, that we have to change the way we're doing things or nothing changes. Like, that's how the saying go, right? If we just continue doing what we've been doing, you're not going to get better, things aren't going to improve, so you have to get out of your own way, or you have to set your ego aside and say, look, you know what? I'm here to learn about my body and those of us in movement. Hopefully, as a fitness professional, you know, you love learning about your body, and you can pass that knowledge and that passion on to your clients, at least to some extent. But. And I do find that when we can teach our clients the why to it, instead of just say, oh, just do this. But when we really get them to understand the why, that's when it starts to click for them. I say, hey, you know, when you're in your kitchen, just start paying attention. Like, do you notice you stand there and you clench your glutes like crazy? And so many times they'll be like, oh, my gosh. I said, okay, well, the first step is just, just, just start letting go. Just be like, oh, just let go. Don't be hard on yourself when you notice you're doing something wrong. Like, we have to get out of that cycle of beating ourselves up. See, there's a whole bunch of deep rabbit hole. Beverly, we could go with all of this conversation, but really, the summary of it is like, I just try to get my clients to be aware, and we have to take baby steps, and we know that those small steps is what leads to big results. And so, again, and when with habit training, I teach a lot of, like, what's going on with the brain, right? So if that pelvis has been tucked and those glutes are super tight and restricted, and, yeah, they're probably really strong, but that. That pathway of the brain is super strong. So how do we start to break that? We can't just overnight expect it to go away. We have to bring awareness into our body and be like, oh, I'm clenching my glutes right now. I'm even sitting down and I'm clutching my glutes. Let me just let go of them. That's the first step to making progress, right? So it's really getting into them and speaking them into the right cues and not being hard on them if they are doing it wrong. It's just like, oh, just be more aware. We just have to keep reminding, reminding, reminding. And it does shift, and I love it time and time again when, you know, I don't know, sometimes it's a couple weeks in for clients, Sometimes it takes longer. It kind of depends on how consistent they are with their program, right? And they'll be like, I'll get a message like, erica, oh, my gosh, I felt something new today. I finally am starting to get it. Do you know what I mean? And that always is to me. And I share those stories with new people, newbies. I share those testimonials with newbies all the time. And I. And I feel like that helps so much. And especially in marketing, you know, it's like they. They like, oh, they may read these other things that when you see, you know, the end of the outcome. But it's that initial shift. We have to get our clients to start to see, and we have to get creative with that sometimes. And sometimes we have to say, hey, you need to trust your body. You need to trust in the program or trust in whatever it is you're having them do. And obviously listen to their body. I always say, you know, I don't want you moving through pain. So if you've got pain, we need to decrease our range of motion, move a little smaller. Sometimes clients are, in the beginning, they're moving so small, and they're like, oh, my God, I feel like I'm not doing anything. I'm like, yes, but that's where we need to go in order to get where we Want to go like, you know, we got to pull it way back so we then can get back to the heavy weightlifting and whatever it might be. Full ranges of motion without pain.

So true, so good and so powerful. So you have been pouring into us and I want to make sure that I'm mindful of your time. So for those of you who want to learn more about working with you, going deeper with you, what are some of the best places that I can.

Send them so you can find all of my stuff and reach out to me on my website. It's Erica Zeal dot com. My last name is Z I E. You can also find me on Instagram. It's just Erica Zeal. So, yeah, I always invite you. Please, please reach out to me if you have any questions. If you want to learn more about my, you know, pre postnatal exercise specialist course. Like I said, I really, really, the whole reason I created it, I was like, we need to. This needs to be infiltrated in, into fitness. You don't have to specialize. That's one other thing I really wanted to make sure to mention because I, I feel like so many times you're like, well, I don't want to specialize in it. I'm like, you don't, you don't need to specialize. And I actually, from a business perspective, I don't recommend you specialize unless that's really where your heart is. But it can be such a massive piece of, of what you do and just adds that whole layer of education and knowledge.

So, yeah, so good, so powerful. So thank you so much. I'll make sure that we link all of that up and I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, Erica.

Thank you so much. Beverly. So good to see you again.

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