The FEMFIT Method

The FemFit Method equips you with a personal training, nutrition and mindset plan designed specifically for your body and your goals. It’s the result of over a decade of contemporary research and personal training expertise, distilled in an environment of support, motivation and accountability.

It begins with a Personal Fitness Assessment to understand where you are today and where you’d like to be tomorrow.

Personal fitness assessment

1. General questions, Medical History, Exercise History, Lifestyle, etc.

What kind of shape are you in at the moment? Any pre-existing medical conditions we should know about? Is your lifestyle typically sedentary or physically active? Have you had any injuries before? This helps us modify your training plan and tailor it to meet the needs of your body as well as the demands of your lifestyle today.

2. Postural Alignment

How have you grown accustomed to sit, stand and support yourself through life? When your body is properly aligned (ears, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are in the same line), it reduces stress on your soft tissues because your bony structures are keeping you upright. However, if your body is out of this neutral alignment, it increases stress on the soft tissues as now they must help support your body. So, more of your muscles’ capacity must be diverted to simply managing the increased stress placed on them. This assessment helps us identify your muscle imbalances so we can better evaluate specific areas of concern.

3. Movement Assessment

How have you grown accustomed to move through life? What muscles do you use frequently? What muscles do you rarely engage? Have you had any injuries or other issues? This assessment helps us design a training plan that takes  your overactive and underactive muscles into account.

4. Goals

What are your specific goals and expectations? To lose weight? Feel stronger? Move faster? What’s prevented you from achieving them in the past? What’s your schedule like? How many times a week are you available to train? This helps us identify your opportunities so we can optimise your sessions and plan your homework  accordingly.

5. Nutrition

What meals do you have? When do you have them? Do you follow any particular diet? Keeping a food log helps us understand your eating habits and identify specific areas of concern so we can optimise your nutrition plan to meet your goals.

Personalized training protocol

Every workout in your personalised plan is designed to bring strength, stamina, form and technique to how you move through life. Ultimately, our goal is to help women just like you discover the freedom of staying mentally strong, physically healthy and emotionally connected through every stage of life.

Once we study your condition and understand your priorities we can design a training plan that works specifically for you and your body. This tailor-made plan includes training schedules outside of our sessions, accountability check-ins and progress evaluations that help you believe in your success to fulfill your true potential.

It follows a 4-part training protocol according to the stage of your life – personal, prenatal, and postpartum. 

Both overactive and underactive muscles compel your body to compromise its natural movement. This causes physical discomfort, which you typically avoid by becoming more and more sedentary. Over time, this negatively impacts your quality of life. Your personalised training plan follows a protocol to restore your body’s natural movement—and with it—your quality of life.

1. Inhibit. Corrective exercise techniques release tension or decrease activity of overactive muscles in your body using equipment such as foam rollers, foot balls and Theraguns.

2. Lengthen. Corrective exercise techniques increase the extensibility, length and range of motion of underactive muscles in your body. These typically take the form of dynamic, static and manual stretches.

3. Activation. The purpose here is to re-educate or increase the activation of underactive muscles through selective exercises.

4. Integration. Functional exercise techniques retrain the collective function of all muscles through progressive movements.

Learn more about Personal Training with FemFit.

Your body, mind and emotions are going through a series of rapid and fascinating changes unique to this amazing stage of your life. We begin with a 4-part assessment to understand where you are today in your trimester, along with what your pregnancy, childbirth and recovery goalposts are for tomorrow.

1. Core and Pelvic Floor Activation.

Learn how to find and use your core and pelvic floor muscles. A well-functioning core and pelvic floor bring several benefits. They reduce pregnancy pains and injuries (especially diastasis recti and pelvic floor dysfunction). They help with easier labor & postpartum recovery. They also enable easier movement during pregnancy and through motherhood, helping prevent lower back pain.

2. Future Mom Activities.

These can be physically demanding. Consider all the lifting, squatting, pushing, pulling, bending over, getting up, getting down and carrying a new mom does—all with an adorable little weight that continues to get heavier!

  • Carries. More specifically, asymmetrical carries. Moms are ALWAYS carrying things on one-side (and often quite heavy things)—baby, diaper bag, car seat—and sometimes more than one thing at a time.
  • Lifting. You will be doing a lot of lifting from the ground, from the crib, from the stroller, up in the air. And of course, the heavier your babies get, the more they seem to enjoy being lifted high into the air!
  • Squatting. A skill every mother must learn.
  • Hinging. Whether that’s over a bath, a crib, or even picking something up from the floor, you will be doing A LOT of hinging (and unfortunately most moms do this with little or no proper technique).
  • Level changes. Getting on and off the floor—another essential skill that will factor into your training.

Learn how to perform each of these activities with the proper form and technique to speed up your recovery, minimize pain and your risk of injury.

3. Labor and Birthing Positions.

Your movement is critical during Stage 1 labor. Understand how to manage the pain as your contractions grow in intensity and how to help your baby get into an optimal position.

4. Labor Intensity Training.

Labor-Intensive Interval Training (LIIT) is a performance-based way of preparing for the physical and mental demands of Stage 1 labor. It is similar to HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) in that you will perform a series of work intervals with rest periods in between, but with two key differences:

  • Work-to-Rest ratios. Your Work-to-Rest ratios are designed to mimic the pattern of contractions. In most interval training formats, the higher the intensity of the work period, the shorter that work period is. But in labor, your contractions get longer and more intense as they progress, so that’s how we structure your intervals.
  • Rest intervals. Your rest intervals will focus on labor practices, where you’ll learn different labor positions and core exercises to manage pain. 

Learn more about Prenatal Training with FemFit

Your initial postpartum period can be an incredibly challenging time. Your body, mind and emotions are going through a series of rapid and (often) unpredictable changes. We begin with a 4-part assessment to understand where you are today, along with what your recovery and motherhood goalposts are for tomorrow.

1. Vaginal Birth or C-Section Recovery.

Vaginal birth recovery is typically faster, though in some cases childbirth can bruise the coccyx and require stitches, which lengthens the process. C-section recovery is slower and more delicate, requiring at least 8 weeks. In both cases, our focus will be repairing your compromised core and pelvic floor structures to ‘get your body back’ after childbirth.

2. Core and Pelvic Floor Activation.

Learn how to find and use your core and pelvic floor muscles. A well-functioning core and pelvic floor bring several benefits. They help reduce pregnancy pains and injuries (especially diastasis recti and pelvic floor dysfunction). They help with easier labor & postpartum recovery. They also enable easier movement during pregnancy and through motherhood, helping prevent lower back pain.

3. New Mom Activities.

These can be physically demanding. If you  worked with us during your pregnancy, you’ll now find preparing for them much easier. Consider all the lifting, squatting, pushing, pulling, bending over, getting up, getting  down and carrying a new mom does—all with an adorable little weight that continues to get heavier!

  • Carries. More specifically, asymmetrical carries. Moms are ALWAYS carrying things on one-side (and often quite heavy things)—baby, diaper bag, car seat—and sometimes more than one thing at a time.
  • Lifting. You will be doing a lot of lifting from the ground, from the crib, from the stroller, up in the air. And of course, the heavier your babies get, the more they seem to enjoy being lifted high into the air!
  • Squatting. A skill every mother must learn.
  • Hinging. Whether that’s over a bath, a crib, or even picking something up from the ground, you will be doing A LOT of hinging (and unfortunately most moms  do this with little or no proper technique ).
  • Level changes. Getting on and off the floor—another essential skill that will factor into your training.

Learn how to perform each of these activities with the proper form and technique to speed up your recovery, minimize pain and your risk of injury.

4. Return to Pre-Pregnancy Activities.

This part of your training plan is entirely dependent on your goals. It’s shaped and structured to help you successfully resume the particular activity (or activities) you have in mind. For example, some moms like to resume the running they did pre-pregnancy, but experience ‘leaking’. Training that continues to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles will then become our focus.

Learn more about Postpartum Training with FemFit.

Ready to get started?

Schedule your 30 minute consultation.