The Connection Between Fitness and Pelvic Floor Health with Jordan Searles, GGS & ProNatal Certified Pre/Postnatal Personal Trainer

Recently, as part of our Expert Spotlight Series, our founder Lauren chatted with Jordan Searles, a high school Health and Physical Education teacher and the founder of Muscle Mama Fitness, an online personal training business. Certified through NASM, ProNatal, and Girls Gone Strong, Jordan specializes in prenatal and postpartum fitness. Inspired by her own pregnancy challenges, she combines expertise and experience to offer customized programs, education, and support for women navigating fitness during motherhood. Her mission is to empower mothers to feel strong, confident, and supported at every stage.

In their conversation, Lauren and Jordan talk about Jordan's journey into prenatal and postpartum fitness. Drawing from her own experiences as a mother, Jordan shares how her challenges with pregnancy and postpartum recovery inspired her to specialize in fitness for women navigating motherhood. With her certifications, Jordan empowers women to embrace strength, confidence, and proper self-care through customized fitness programs. They dive into crucial topics like pelvic floor health, the myths around postpartum recovery, and how fitness can enhance both maternal and infant well-being. Jordan's approach focuses on flexibility, understanding the body, and offering support for every stage of motherhood.

Check out 5 of our highlights below, or catch the full chat on YouTube!

1. The Power of Understanding How Pelvic Muscles Connect To Everything Else

Lauren:

I know you've worked with pelvic floor physical therapists. Can you explain to us the relationship as you see it between fitness and pelvic floor health?

Jordan:

I really encourage a lot of first time moms to (based off of my own experience) actually start to learn to connect to the pelvic floor muscles and understand that you can work them. They're exactly like a bicep. They're exactly like glutes. They can be worked.

And also learning to fully contract, but also fully relaxing. A lot of women have  trouble fully relaxing those muscles, which can also really help for birth and understanding how to go through that flow and incorporating your breath into that. So after working with some pelvic floor PTs, going to pelvic floor physical therapy myself, and through my personal training certifications, I've learned to emphasize connection to the pelvic floor.

And for postpartum, it definitely comes a lot more into play with incontinence and pain during intercourse. There's so many things that become related to the pelvic floor. Whether you have a vaginal delivery or a C-section delivery--it can happen to anyone.

So I think that also being aware of your general lifestyle in pregnancy and postpartum and trying to not get stuck in position. That means not sitting for very long periods of time, or if you notice that you cross your legs one way all the time, and especially postpartum when you're breastfeeding, it's all types of bad posture. It all relates and is all connected to one another. That's one of the key points that I really try to tell my clients and anyone who's interested: definitely start to learn to connect to those muscles and really understand how they're connecting to everything else.

Lauren:

That's such an important one. There's definitely a big learning curve for folks on "What is a pelvic floor? Everyone has one. How does it work? What is it connected to? How does my breath impact it?" And the more you start to understand that, the more you just really understand how everything is so connected and impacts everything.

And I know for me, going through pelvic floor PT and really learning to engage my pelvic floor muscles was such a steep learning curve. But as I got better at that, I started to see how it impacted my workouts. They were more effective when I was doing things properly, or my symptoms from prolapse were less if I was breathing properly and lugging my kids around and doing the big exhale. And yeah, it's been interesting just kind of seeing how all of that's so interrelated. My lack of understanding from where I started to where I am now has been a tremendous journey to say the least.

Jordan:

Exactly. And it's just so crazy that no one really talks about that really at all. You don't even really need to be pregnant or have kids to still deal with pelvic floor issues. There are athletes that pee themselves while they're working out and they don't have kids. So it's not talked about enough that yes, you can learn to connect to those muscles. You just need a little guidance on how to.

2. The Importance of Specialized Exercise Guidance Beyond OB-GYN Care

Lauren:

What are some of the common misconceptions or myths that you've come across that you feel like we really need to work to educate people on?

Jordan:

I think one of the big ones that I also encountered, which was incredibly frustrating, was that you can't lift more than 20 pounds either in pregnancy or postpartum. That was incredibly frustrating for me. And I think it's just doctors making a blanket statement. They have to apply that to everyone just so they don't get in trouble for anything. But also the fact that they don't have the education for it. Think about it: OB GYNs, doctors, they need to really study and learn lifesaving skills. They need to know how to address the really major health problems. A lot of their education doesn't incorporate how to teach people how to exercise while they're pregnant or postpartum. It's not their job. 

And that's a big reason why I became a specialist, because I believe that someone needs to focus on this to help people. So yes, you can lift more than 20 pounds, especially when we have kids that are 35 pounds. What are you going to do, not lift your kid?

And that was actually something that my OB GYN told me. So I went and got a different OB GYN after this conversation, but I was about a year postpartum, and I expressed my concerns of still feeling that heaviness. And she actually looked at me and said, "When you stop picking up your son, you'll feel better." I'm thinking, in four years I'll feel better? Because when am I going to stop picking up my son? I'm confused. And I laughed in the office and I was like, "Oh, you're serious."

So needless to say, that's a big one. Again, pelvic floor physical therapy is huge, and learning how to connect to those muscles while you're exercising helps with that. But yes, you can lift over 20 pounds if you're doing it correctly with good form, with good breath work, and managing the pressure.

Lauren:

That's a huge one for sure. And it's so hard too to hear stuff like that from providers because it's not helpful advice when reality is you are going to be doing that and you want to be doing that. And so those situations are very frustrating.

3. The Reality of Postpartum Recovery: Why Six Weeks Isn't Enough

Jordan:

I think another big misconception that I've been pushing back against is the six week and eight week checkup and how that's the big milestone of "Oh, I'm cleared for exercise," or even, "I'm cleared for intercourse now." It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

If you roll an ankle or get some kind of musculoskeletal injury, the typical healing timeline for that is 12 weeks. Let alone childbirth. Healing is broken down into different stages.

You have your Inflammatory stage, which is redness, swelling, pain, that can be four to six days or so. And then you have basically the Repair and Healing phase, and that could last anywhere between 10 weeks to almost a year. And then on top of that, things get rebuilt, things are recovering, and they're still weak. So now you need to strengthen those things: your ligaments, tendons, muscles, everything needs to get strengthened again to just be competent in daily life and moving. That could take another six months to a year, again, depending on your recovery. 

So basically, you're looking at a huge timeline and it's all different for every single one. And it could be anywhere between roughly 14 weeks to up to two years. So I think that's the biggest thing--I don't understand why doctors are saying, "Yeah, you're good to go exercise at six weeks." A lot of women are like, "Oh, exercise. I'll just do what I did." Oh, no, no, no.

I think that's the biggest push right now, especially for postpartum: helping guide women on how to get back to those exercises that they want to do in a safe, progressive manner. And just being aware of symptoms and watching for things and helping educate women on that.

Lauren:

That is truly such a big one that I do think is very prevalent. And also directly tied to that is folks thinking if an OB GYN is who provided their care for pregnancy and delivery, that they're the one sign off that they need, too. But an OB GYN doesn't necessarily look at all of the pelvic floor things that you may be experiencing. And so sure, from the perspective of your uterus or sutures or things like that, you're progressing, I guess. But there's so much more to it than that. And for folks who aren't aware of all of those things, they hear that, "Okay, I've made my six week checkup," and it's like, there's so much going on at that point. It’s really hard to break down that messaging that's been told over and over again, and especially in this bounce-back culture and advertising and all those kinds of things. It's a lot to overcome.

4. “I Didn’t Know How to Ask”: The Power of Having Language to Describe Your Symptoms

Jordan:

Exactly. And we're already in a vulnerable state of, "I just want to get back to moving," especially if you're used to working out so much. You just want to feel good. You want to feel yourself again. You want to just have time to yourself. And I did it myself too. I was just like, "Oh, six weeks, here we go. I can do something." And I was not ready. 

I think it was a month later when I was able to get into pelvic floor physical therapy, and they're like, "Oh yeah, you have a grade one, maybe two-ish prolapse." And I'm like, "Well, that didn't come up in my six weeks." And they're like, "Yeah, I don't even know if they checked." I'm like, "I wouldn't know either. I didn't know how to ask."

Lauren:

Yeah. You don't know how to ask, and I feel like something I experienced personally was I didn't have the words to describe the things I was feeling, like to say, "I'm feeling heaviness." That was not a descriptor that I knew at that time. I knew that something was wrong. I showed them a picture and they're like, "No, I think you're fine. I think you're just progressing." 

Thankfully I had a pelvic floor PT lined up and when I was able to talk with her, one, she gave me the language and then two, she confirmed, "Yeah, you do have a prolapse. These are the things and we will go this direction," but it's hard. There's so much going on.

Jordan:

You hit the nail on the head. I just felt like the best that I could come up with is, "I feel swollen," but that also makes sense because I knew my tissues were still healing. I understood that, so I just didn't know how else to say it.

Lauren:

Yeah, I feel like that language alone is really empowering for people when they can start to put words to what they're feeling. You've never used those words before, and so it's really hard to navigate that part of everything.

5. The Powerful Benefits of Pre- and Postnatal Exercise for Both Mom and Baby

Lauren:

Do you have anything else that you'd like to share with us as far as your work or the importance of pre- and postnatal fitness just in general?

Jordan:

Exercise really helps you have a strong and confident pregnancy. It helps with pelvic girdle pain, it helps with back pain, it reduces the risk of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, and if you were working out pretty much from beginning of pregnancy to end, you actually develop a better functioning placenta. They've done comparisons of placenta of a mother that's worked out and eaten well and properly, and then versus a mother that's not, and there's significant differences just by looking at them. It also actually decreases the risks of birth interventions, specifically use of forceps and C-sections, by 75%, which is crazy. It really helps moms actually prepare for labor.

And on the flip side of that too, there are so many benefits for the baby when you exercise. A lot of women go into it being scared that exercise is going to hurt the baby.

In my personal opinion, for a lot of the "risks" that are out there, it's almost worse to not exercise and just go on bed rest for nine months than to exercise. The big ones to say no to are anything that could cause any kind of abdominal trauma, so horseback riding, playing physical sports, skiing, anything that's physical that you could actually get injured, and then the sauna, hot yoga, those need to go out. Those are definitely like no-go, and then everything after that is really all dependent on the mom and the symptoms and just monitoring it. If you have a really athletic, strong mom, she's going to be still deadlifting, squatting because her body is able to already handle that. She might have to modify with some weights, but you see some powerlifters and Olympic lifters lifting well into their pregnancy.

But if you're the mom that also hasn't really exercised and wants to start, you a hundred percent can as well. There's no reason really not to, unless you have some underlying health conditions where your doctor says you need to monitor those first. Of course, those always come first.

But for the baby, really it actually can help prepare the baby for labor, which is great. The babies can actually handle the stress of labor with increased heart rate, down and up and down. You're almost kind of training with your baby, which is really cool. Everything is connected. It also helps with baby's heart health, as well. And then eventually down the line, it helps with preventing childhood obesity. It kind of sets them up to live a healthier lifestyle themselves, which is really cool.

Lauren:

Yeah, it's definitely that "Movement is medicine" message. I feel like it is such an important message at all stages of our lives.

Are you a pelvic floor healthcare professional? We’d love for you to be a part of the Hem Support Wear community! Learn more about our resources, including our clinic sample kits, healthcare-focused monthly newsletter, and more. If you’d like to be featured in our Expert Spotlight series, let us know!

**Medical Disclaimer: This post is intended to provide information and resources only. This post or any of the information contained within should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis, treatment, or advice. Always seek the guidance of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your healthcare, conditions, and recommended treatment.