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The 2026 Pelvic Floor Research Update is happening inside the Women’s Coach Collective next Friday.We’re covering the la...
25/09/2026

The 2026 Pelvic Floor Research Update is happening inside the Women’s Coach Collective next Friday.

We’re covering the latest studies on the pelvic floor in👇🏼

🏃🏼‍♀️ Runners
🏋🏼‍♀️ Powerlifters
🤸🏼‍♀️ CrossFit and Functional Fitness

Comment “collective” to join 🔗

Research matters. It’s just not the whole story.If you call yourself an evidence-based coach, these are worth sitting wi...
16/07/2026

Research matters. It’s just not the whole story.

If you call yourself an evidence-based coach, these are worth sitting with.

Research is one of the best tools we have - but it’s a guide, not a rulebook.

Studies give us averages, controlled conditions, and probabilities.

Your client is one person, with their own history, context, and response.

That’s not a reason to ignore the research. It’s a reason to think beyond it.

The coaches who get the best outcomes aren’t the ones who know the most studies - they’re the ones who know how to translate evidence into real decisions, for real humans, in real time.

That’s what clinical reasoning actually looks like.

💬 Comment “community” below to join our free coaches community where we have more conversations like this.

Comment “collective” to join a growing community of women’s health and fitness coaches who are building confidence and h...
12/07/2026

Comment “collective” to join a growing community of women’s health and fitness coaches who are building confidence and helping women better 🌸

Frozen shoulder in women peaks at around the same time as perimenopause. Save this one if you coach women over 40 and sw...
08/07/2026

Frozen shoulder in women peaks at around the same time as perimenopause. Save this one if you coach women over 40 and swipe for multi-captions 👉🏼

Or comment “collective” for more women’s health education 🌸

Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) is 2-4x more common in women, with most cases landing between 40 and 60 years old. Right in the perimenopause window 👉🏼

Oestrogen doesn’t just regulate periods. It shapes how connective tissue is maintained, how inflammation is managed, and how sensitive the nervous system is to pain. When it starts to fluctuate, the shoulder capsule can become one of the first places that pays the price 👉🏼

The shoulder capsule is a flexible sleeve of tissue surrounding the joint. In frozen shoulder, that sleeve becomes inflamed, thickened, and progressively less mobile. Pain comes first. Stiffness follows. And the pattern often gets worse when coaches try to force through it 👉🏼

Stretching into pain in a sensitised nervous system is not therapeutic load. It is just more input to an already overloaded system. The shoulder is not “stuck” in a way that force will fix. It needs a completely different approach 👉🏼

The goal is not to aggressively restore range. The goal is to keep the nervous system engaged, reduce overall threat, and maintain whatever movement is comfortable. A shoulder that keeps moving within tolerance heals better than one that is forced and then rested 👉🏼

Modify and what is tolerable. Keep the shoulder gently moving through the day. And keep the rest of the body strong. Your client’s relationship with movement matters as much as any protocol you give her 👉🏼

Pain thresholds are not fixed. Sleep, energy intake, blood glucose, daily movement and stress all shift how the nervous system interprets input. Addressing these is core to recovery in a perimenopausal woman managing a pain condition 👉🏼

When your client comes to you with a frozen shoulder, she is likely also navigating disrupted sleep, fluctuating mood, joint aches, and a body that feels different to train. The shoulder is one symptom in a much bigger picture. Coach accordingly 👉🏼

Significant loss of movement, night pain, progressive stiffness

Leaking during lifting is common. But common does not mean normal, and it definitely does not mean the fix is always mor...
05/07/2026

Leaking during lifting is common. But common does not mean normal, and it definitely does not mean the fix is always more Kegels 👉🏼

Coaches hear these three complaints constantly. The problem is that “weak pelvic floor” has become the default answer for all of them, and that assumption leads to a lot of missed opportunities in programming 👉🏼

Continence is a coordination job. The pelvic floor is one player in a system that includes the diaphragm, deep abs, rib cage, hips, and nervous system. When the system works together, pressure is distributed efficiently 👉🏼

A pelvic floor can be overactive, fatigued, poorly timed, or just not coordinating well with the rest of the system. Weakness is one possibility. It is rarely the only one 👉🏼

Intra-abdominal pressure increases with every lift. That is not a problem to eliminate. The goal is a pelvic floor that can manage the pressure being created, at the load and volume being used 👉🏼

Before assuming a tissue problem, look at the strategy. Breath holding, excessive bearing down, loads beyond current capacity, or volume that has progressed too quickly can all contribute to leakage without anything being structurally wrong 👉🏼

Capacity is trainable. Just like any other tissue, the pelvic floor can be progressively loaded over time. The issue is often not the movement itself but the gap between where capacity currently is and what is being asked of it 👉🏼

Most of what coaches can do here lives in the programming. Load, volume, movement quality, breathing strategy, and impact level are all levers. Small adjustments in these areas can create significant change without needing a clinical diagnosis 👉🏼

You do not need to diagnose the cause. You do need to recognise that leaking is not something clients should simply accept. If symptoms persist or affect quality of life, a pelvic health physiotherapist is the right referral 👉🏼

The question “is her pelvic floor weak?” closes down the clinical picture before you have even started. Asking whether this is a strength, coordination, pressure, or load issue opens it up and leads to far better outcomes 👉🏼

Pelvic floor, pain, menopause, hypermobility, persistent

Most coaches know PMDD is more than bad PMS. But fewer understand what’s actually happening inside the brain and body th...
29/06/2026

Most coaches know PMDD is more than bad PMS. But fewer understand what’s actually happening inside the brain and body that drives it. Here’s the physiology behind it 👉🏼

The most common assumption about PMDD is that something must be hormonally “off.” But research tells a different story. Hormone levels in women with PMDD are often relatively normal. The brain’s sensitivity to those hormones is where the difference lies 👉🏼

No two women have the same cycle. But imagine for a second two women in the same cycle phase, going through similar hormonal shifts but experiencing very different responses. How is this possible? 👉🏼

Pain science gives us a useful lens here. The brain is always running a threat assessment. Hormonal shifts add load to that system. When the system is already stretched, smaller inputs can produce much bigger outputs 👉🏼

When we understand PMDD through a nervous system lens, our coaching questions change. We stop looking only for something to fix and start asking how we can build more capacity? 👉🏼

Blood glucose instability is one of the most underappreciated drivers of symptom severity in PMDD. Regular meals with adequate protein and carbohydrates won’t resolve PMDD. But they can reduce one significant source of physiological stress on an already sensitised system 👉🏼

Sleep is foundational to nervous system regulation. When sleep quality drops, pain sensitivity rises, emotional reactivity increases, and stress tolerance decreases. Small consistent improvements here can meaningfully shift how a client experiences her cycle 👉🏼

Coaches often feel pressure to keep training intensity high regardless of where a client is in her cycle. But matching training load to nervous system capacity is smart programming. Volume, RPE, and movement selection can all be adjusted without losing consistency 👉🏼

Nervous system regulation does not require a formal practice or a dedicated session. Slow breathing, walking, time outdoors, and reducing unnecessary demands all lower the threat load the brain is managing 👉🏼

A coach’s role in supporting a client with PMDD is in creating conditions where the nervous system has more capacity to cope. It sits

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than men...
18/06/2026

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠

Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than men, independent of every other variable. That means the female nervous system is genuinely, biologically wired to amplify pain more readily.

Here’s what’s actually driving it:
➡️ Oestrogen sensitises NMDA receptors, making pain pathways more plastic and excitable
➡️ Female microglia produce more cytokines, creating a neuroinflammatory environment
➡️ Mast cells degranulate more easily under stress, triggering cascading inflammation

And when it comes to training this changes everything. From how we load, how we recover, how we hydrate, and how we respond to a hard week.

Swipe through to understand the biology and what it means practically for how you train and program for women.

💾 Save this if you work with female clients
🔗 Link in bio to join our free community and get access to more evidence-based women’s health education

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than men...
18/06/2026

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠

Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than men, independent of every other variable. That means the female nervous system is genuinely, biologically wired to amplify pain more readily.

Here’s what’s actually driving it:
➡️ Oestrogen sensitises NMDA receptors, making pain pathways more plastic and excitable
➡️ Female microglia produce more cytokines, creating a neuroinflammatory environment
➡️ Mast cells degranulate more easily under stress, triggering cascading inflammation

And when it comes to training, this changes everything. From how we load, how we recover, how we hydrate, and how we respond to a hard week.

Swipe through to understand the biology and what it means practically for how you train and program for women.

💾 Save this if you work with female clients
🔗 Link in bio to join our free community and get access to more evidence-based women’s health education

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠 Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than me...
18/06/2026

Your pain is not in your head. It’s in your neurobiology 🧠

Women have a 37% higher risk of central sensitisation than men, independent of every other variable. That means the female nervous system is genuinely, biologically wired to amplify pain more readily.

Here’s what’s actually driving it:
➡️ Oestrogen sensitises NMDA receptors, making pain pathways more plastic and excitable
➡️ Female microglia produce more cytokines, creating a neuroinflammatory environment
➡️ Mast cells degranulate more easily under stress, triggering cascading inflammation

And when it comes to training, this changes everything. From how we load, how we recover, how we hydrate, and how we respond to a hard week.

Swipe through to understand the biology and what it means practically for how you train and program for women.

💾 Save this if you work with female clients
🔗 Link in bio to join our free community and get access to more evidence-based women’s health education

CONGRATULATIONS! 🥳cc You’ve won our OG signature AWPT 8 week certification course 🙌🏼Thank you to everyone who entered an...
18/09/2025

CONGRATULATIONS! 🥳
cc

You’ve won our OG signature AWPT 8 week certification course 🙌🏼

Thank you to everyone who entered and wished a happy birthday!

Please check your DM’s for a special gift from us to you to celebrate 😘

Comment “gift” if you’d also like to receive the gift 🎁

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