Fitting it in – How do you make time for for fitness around your kids? Fitness postnatally has been the hardest thing for me to find space for, and also the most challenging change to accept post-children that it’s no longer is a number one priority. I think my loss of fitness has had a huge impact on my sense of identity, feeling like “me”.
Before I had children, I was a roving Pilates teacher. I crossed London east–south–west every day on my bike, sometimes covering over 20 miles in one day, and teaching up to 5 hours a day. When I wasn’t teaching I was working 2 days a week in an office on wellbeing and health books, and cycled to the office in Kings Cross and back – thereby seamlessly fitting exercise into my day so that I didn’t even have to think about it.
It’s only now that this huge chunk of easy cardio training was no longer viable to me once I had a baby that I realised quite how much of an impact it had on my fitness levels, and frankly, how much it easily burnt off everything I ate and drank so that I was slim and fit without ever “dieting” or abstaining from anything.
Cut to 6 years into motherhood and I still am not a dieter or an abstainer…but now I have the sluggish midriff to show for it. In my pre-programme questionnaire I named myself an “unhappy apple” because I feel that I’m carrying an uncomfortable amount of squish around my middle which means that clothes don’t feel right on me.
I got back into teaching Pilates shortly after both boys were born (the unfortunate side-effect of being self-employed, “mat leave” isn’t a thing), and as result I have moved and listened to my body as an intrinsic part of my job. I’ve been dealt a good hand in that my postpartum body hasn’t suffered particular ill-effects from either of my (very different) caesarean birth experiences. I haven’t experienced pelvic floor trauma, my rectus diastasis (abdominal gap) resolved easily with targeted Pilates training and my scar recovery has been challenging but with Pilates rehabilitation it’s been ultimately positive.
But I now work mainly from home, and my cardio exercise is the daily school run. So I haven’t managed to claim back that fitness which was so effortlessly built up in my cycling commute in child-free days. For me it’s just the exhaustion of motherhood which has lent itself to a flat white and chocolate digestive penchant and not having a chance to burn it off – plus turning 40 and therefore possibly it just being a bit harder to shift that extra lethargy once you’ve let it accumulate, that I need to tackle.
Carving it out is the hardest part for me. I’ve always been one who needs accountability in order to stick with anything, because things get so easily derailed as a mum. So when Hollie Grant, award-winning PT and Pilates instructor, and the health and fitness contributing editor at Psychologies magazine, relaunched her Model Method Online this summer, I wanted to give it a shot.
The Model Method Online is pricey, £287 for an 8-week programme, which works out as just over a fiver a day – that’s a magazine and an artisan coffee, or a sandwich from Pret every day, if that’s your regular motherhood nemesis money-haemorrhaging outlet. So it’s the kind of thing that if you’re going to fork out your hard-earned money for, it has to be worth it.
Compared to comparable online programmes, such as Honestly Healthy’s Green & Lean, or the Supercharged Club which is specifically targeted at mums (and which – by their own admission, breaks down to £2.86 a day), it is an elite expensive exercise and nutrition programme to sign up for. So let’s have a look at the bang you get for your buck:
Lifebox: when you sign up you receive a box of goodies which is a very luxurious gift to kick off your programme and makes you feel like you’re entering into a lovely world of wellness, specially curated for you by Hollie. You receive lots of wonderful goodies such as Pilates socks from Sweaty Betty, Energy Burst roll on from NEOM, Magnesium muscle spray, and lots of yummy snacks and healthy eating treats such as chocolate granola from Rock My Bowl. You get 3 affirmations cards which are a lovely reminder of how positive exercise can be in your life. I’m a huge fan of affirmations, I have a set of Yesmum cards which I refer to every day without fail, so this was a nice touch. You also receive Hollie’s book Nourish which was the companion to the previous incarnation of the Model Method, which contains recipes and healthy eating tips and information to carry you through, plus a 6-week food diary. My absolutely faves from this box of treats were the NEOM roll on, which I use every day and keep in my handbag, and the book Eat, Sweat, Play by the Guardian journalist Anna Kessel, which was insightful, informative and inspiring about the role sport has to play in making women feel empowered and strong in life. Every woman, and every man, should read this book. I loved it and it made me think, laugh and cry.
This programme champions the very clear (but usually ignored in fitness aesthetics and weight-loss programmes) link between physical and mental health. The refreshing part of the Model Method Online is that, despite what the name of the programme might suggest, the aim isn’t to make us all look like models, but actually to make us more energetic and happier in our daily life. Not just through exercise “sculpting” us into beautiful goddesses, but from tuning into our mental health day to day and helping to sculpt our minds, enabling us to think better, therefore feel better.
There are two ways that the method does this. The first one is the 2-month subscription to Headspace that you get when you sign up. If you haven’t heard of Headspace, it’s “meditation made simple”, and offers guided meditations for various requirements. Now, cards on the table: although I tried the Headspace app out it wasn’t really for me and I ended up somehow not using it very much, as I already have a meditation practice in place and have done for a while, which I am fond of in terms of its ritual and how it generally helps me to keep my mind on an even keel. But, I had a long discussion with a couple of friends about Headspace and one of them absolutely swears by it and says that it has revolutionised her life, whenever she feels an anxiety trigger she listens to a guided meditation and it gets her out of it.
Secondly, once you’re signed up you have access to lots of lovely blog content exclusively for members, which focus on various aspects of mental health such as anxiety, confidence, the science behind meditation, and why exercise is so beneficial to your mental health. Plus articles about nutrition, sleep, and generally Hollie’s palpable enthusiasm about exercise and why it’s so wonderful for your mental and physical health really shines through loud and clear.
The exercises
You get 6 videos, which means one “rest” day a week. I initially assumed that you would get different videos every week or 2 weeks, but that’s not the case. You complete a questionnaire part way through the programme and your programme is possibly adjusted according to your answers to that. The advantage of having the same videos over the 8 weeks is that you can become familiar with them, and benchmark against how you did at the beginning of the programme versus over the weeks. The possible downside…? Maybe for the money you’re paying it would be nice to have more variety with the exercises over the weeks…?
I was a newbie to HIIT, and I’m a definite convert. The exercise routines are fun, and doable amount of time, being 15 and 30 minutes long – no excuses! I found myself looking forward to the HIIT workouts and there was a real sense of playtime, and accomplishment once I was finished and all grinning and sweaty. My son came and joined me on a number of occasions too. it’s charged up my mojo and made me remember how much I love jumping around for the helluvit. I was shocked by quite how unfit I was when I first started, and proud by how my fitness improved over the weeks. So it has really changed my outlook in terms of what exercise I feel is accessible for me, and made me more brave about what kind of exercise I might try out in the future.
Worth the money?
Well – as I said, I always need an accountability otherwise I allow things to get pushed down the to do list. if you’re spending this kind of money, you’re going to want to make it worth it, and you will only get out of it what you put in. I would say that it’s definitely effective and magic if you DO do the work. I had a couple of weeks where my programme was stymied by my diabolical sleepless children and illness, and I started fretting a bit about not being able to do it not only because I had been on such a good roll and was feeling so much fitter and more energised, but also because of the precious money wasted. So that was slightly bad luck and bad timing. If I had dedicatedly stuck to the 6-day workouts for the whole time, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be glowing, toned, energised and slender of waist (my waist was my target area). As it is, my Pilates mojo has been stoked, I have used a lot of the HIIT ideas alongside the Pilates with my sixthformer girls class and they’ve loved it: so even if I haven’t been able to follow the programme to the letter and lost the inches around my waist, I have got a huge amount out of it and will look forward to trying out a lot of the HIIT moves from now on in my own workouts – I have preordered Hollie’s book in case I need a bit of a reminder.
So, generally a big TICK from me. Hollie is a gorgeous advocate for her method. Her enthusiasm is infectious, she looks amazing, she really wants you to be mindful of a holistic view of fitness and not just buy into the aesthetics that some fitness pros (particularly on Instagram) would want you to be inspired by. She is lovely, and knowledgeable, and her workouts are challenging and interesting, and, most importantly, fun.