In this episode of Holistic Health Radio, Sarah provides advice on how to navigate the fitness industry while recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA). She addresses a listener’s question from Abby, a Pilates instructor, and advises her on how to modify her work schedule and reduce physical demonstrations, as well as tips on fuelling her body and taking breaks to rest. Sarah emphasises the importance of thinking about long-term career goals and transitioning towards them while respecting the body’s needs. Sarah shares her own experience of transitioning towards a more sustainable career in the fitness industry. Listeners are encouraged to prioritise self-care and seek support on their recovery journey.
Episode Transcript
Sarah King (00:00:00) – Hi everyone. Welcome back to Holistic Health Radio. I’m your host, Sarah Liz King. I’m an exercise physiologist and health coach empowering you to find your healthy balance with food, fitness and your body. Through my one-to-one and group coaching programs, both myself and my team help women regain their periods, find food freedom and have a healthier relationship with exercise, all while gaining body confidence. Today I am answering a listener question from Abby, which I’m going to read out for you. So Abby writes in, how do I navigate the profession as a Pilates instructor while trying to heal from, ha’s things like early mornings, physical and physical demonstrations, et cetera, make it a challenge? Is it possible to heal and recover my period while working as a Pilates instructor? I love my profession, but feel very disconnected as I feel it is juxtaposing all my hard work in recovery.
Sarah King (00:00:58) – I love the podcast and honestly, listen every day. Thank you. Well, thank you Abby. Excited to answer this question and I think it’s a really relevant one because I myself was both an exercise physiologist and Pilates instructor while I was working on my own recovery. And also I see a lot of clients who come to me who work in the fitness industry as group fitness instructors, personal trainers, exercise physiologists, um, and Pilates instructors as well. Now we know that the life of being in the fitness industry means that you have really odd hours, usually very early mornings and also late evenings that can make your day really, really long. On top of that, you are someone that is going to be on your feet for a lot of your day, which means your energy demands are going to be so, so different from someone who’s working on recovery that might be having a desk job.
Sarah King (00:01:54) – So first and foremost is yes, it is completely possible to recover your period while working in the fitness industry, whether that be as a Pilates instructor, a personal trainer, a group fitness instructor, whatever it may be. But there are a few things that I would be keeping in mind. Number one, you may not be able to do all of the physical demonstrations yourself and you need to talk to whoever you are working for about whether it’s okay to talk people through the instructions rather than doing them all of the the kind of demonstrations yourself. So I used to teach both Reformer and Matt Pilates and when I was doing personal training, most of the time I was mostly verbally instructing my clients through it and focusing on changing their technique rather than physically demonstrating myself. When it came to the Pilates classes, again, you need to be able to verbally explain things in a really detailed way, go around and change people’s
Sarah King (00:02:59) – Technique and maybe from time to time do one or two of the reps of a demonstration without needing to do the whole thing. Now I know there are some studios that require you to do the full length of the class as part of your job as the instructor. It might be worthwhile asking yourself whether that is going to be helpful for you to continue with or whether likely you can find different classes that you can do as an alternative that require you to do less of the demonstration, more of the technique changes and walking around and just verbally instructing everyone through the class. Um, similarly, you can do the same with reformer. I would say a quality of a good fitness pilates group fitness, uh, instructor is that you should be able to verbally cue people really, really well so they can visually kind of think about what that movement looks like and also how it feels in their body.
Sarah King (00:04:01) – And it also makes you such a better instructor to be able to demonstrate I guess that you obviously can physically do the exercise, but also that you are able to explain it in a multitude of different ways. So adjusting your schedule so that you can have a little bit less physically demanding classes is probably going to be a worthwhile modification of your work and also within the classes that you’re teaching, trying to reduce down how much physical demonstration you’re actually doing. Um, obviously knowing that you still will probably have to do a little bit. The second component is you are probably going to have to eat while you work. Now a lot of people get really, really hung up about eating in front of other people, especially in like a gym environment and somehow being like a quote unquote good role model means that you shouldn’t be fueling your body or eating like between or during class.
Sarah King (00:05:02) – Hands down, nobody cares, nobody cares. The most important thing is that you are looking after yourself and your energy levels are. I used to bring in snacks, smoothies during my classes in between and I would just say to people like, Hey, get yourself set up. I’m just gonna have like a snack if you have any questions or if you’re new here, like, shout out and I’ll come help you. But the most important thing was that I was fueling my body and also just telling people like, Hey, it’s normal to eat and it’s totally fine. So own that for yourself. You’re also likely going to need to eat more frequently throughout the day because you might be doing, I don’t know, four or five classes or clients back to back. So that might be a normal time where a person working an office job would’ve had their breakfast when they got to work and broke for coffee and a snack mid-morning and had something
Sarah King (00:05:56) – Like banana bread with you know, full cream coffee and then they’ve had lunch after those five hours. But for you, you’ve probably started your day at like 5:36 AM with your first class and you’re working through without any quote unquote solid breaks, maybe until 12 or 1:00 PM which was the case for me many, many days of the week. So making sure that you get up, even if it’s really early in the morning, eating a solid, solid, solid breakfast before you get to your first class and also knowing that because you’re on your feet and doing more, you’re probably gonna need maybe like two snacks and more energy dense foods to get you through two your lunchtime. The third thing is because you’re on your feet so much, use your downtime to sit right. I didn’t do that much structured exercise during my own recovery, mostly because I was incidentally really active also because I had an injury from a car crash that I was managing and I wasn’t really doing anything other than a little bit of rehab.
Sarah King (00:06:53) – So I always say if you’re incidentally quite active, being like formally active, so keeping up with your own workouts probably is not going to help you in the recovery process. I know that’s really hard to hear, but giving yourself more rest is absolutely essential so that your body can use the energy that you’re eating and prioritize your recovery. So in those breaks that you have in the day, sit down, let yourself rest, have a nap if you need to and then continue on. The other thing to think about is if this is a career that you want to sustain term, think about what career trajectory you wanna take. Do you always wanna be teaching the number of classes that you are now? Do you wanna move into educating others on becoming Pilates instructors? Do you wanna create an online business? Do you want to move from being a Pilates instructor to going back to uni and being a physiotherapist?
Sarah King (00:07:53) – Uh, there are so many possibilities and thinking, taking the time to kind of go like, okay, being an instructor that teaches like 30 classes or does 30 hours of, you know, teaching and PT a week probably isn’t sustainable for me long term. If I wanna move my career in a different direction, how can I put that in play now so that it is more respectful of where my body is at and kind of protects my longevity in my career, but also helps kind of take a step down gradually from all the face-to-face and teaching hours towards where you wanna be, whether that’s like more of a mentoring role or moving to a different occupation completely. I think for me, I always saw like, I loved exercise physiology, I love pil. Being a Pilates instructor, I was really good at it. . I worked in a gym for like over 10 years and I kind of got to the point where I was like, oh, I don’t wanna do this forever. These are the areas of interest I had. I actually didn’t think I was ever gonna be an online business owner,
Sarah (00:08:54) – But moving towards that education piece was really key for me to see that I could have a source of income that didn’t completely exhaust or deplete my body and still kept me passionate and doing a lot of the things that I really love and you a lot about. So keep that in mind. You definitely can recover. Working in the fitness industry, it definitely takes a lot more work. It takes a lot of planning and preparation. It takes, I guess, overcoming any fears or worries you might have about eating in front of other people. It means taking a step back from doing your own kind of structured exercise for a short period of time, but it is completely possible. And if you are looking for care and support on your own recovery journey, please feel free to click the links below in our show notes book in for a discovery call. We would be happy to have a chat about whether our coaching programs will be right for you. Otherwise, if you follow me on Instagram, look out for the q and a box in my stories from time to time. We will be taking more listener questions to answer on the podcast now and into the future. So be sure to leave your question there if you wanna answer it. But until then, keep looking after yourself and I will be back next week with a fresh new episode. You can wrap your ears around.
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