photo by Tasha Lawton

Recently, I got in touch with an Australian pilates instructor who specializes in pre and post-natal pilates and has her own site at Pregalates.com.  Tasha Lawton has dedicated her life to pilates fitness and helping other mom’s maintain their fitness and core body strength throughout their pregnancy and beyond.  Tasha has developed a series of pilates videos that focuses on each trimester of pregnancy and post-natal exercise, they are a great way for expectant mothers to maintain their fitness.  Interestingly enough, Tasha filmed these videos while she was pregnant with her own child, so she knew exactly what pregnant women are capable of!  I want to take this opportunity to let Tasha Lawton introduce herself to all of you “active mommies.”

Introducing Pilates Instructor Tasha Lawton:

Ok, who am I? Well, I’m a 33 year old everyday mum of two kids (5 and 3) with a passion for well-being and exercise just trying to create a balanced life. Along my road to discovery, I fell upon pilates roughly 9 years ago.

I will never forget the day I realized just how beneficial pilates is for pregnant women. I had been training a woman for her nine month term and at the end of a drug-free, 6 hour labour, she successfully managed to give birth naturally to a baby girl born posterior. Midwives believed pilates had made it possible to avoid intervention. That baby girl was my daughter.

I qualified as an instructor in both mat and studio exercises after fifteen hard months training with PICP (Pilates International) in Melbourne. My specialism was in ante and post-natal pilates and that led me to present on Australian national television for Pilates TV as their pregnancy expert. Since then, I’ve also appeared and demonstrated at national expos and on the radio.

Over the years of working with pregnant women, I realised that there weren’t any pilates for pregnancy DVDs on the market that featured a pregnant instructor. So when I fell pregnant with my second child, I decided to make the most of my situation and filmed four separate trimester specific pilates workouts. These dvds are now available for sale on my website: www.pregalates.com

My broader pilates experience includes training professional athletes including an AFL footballer suffering from a condition that he was told would only be cured by surgery. Six weeks later, he was injury free with no operation necessary.

It is my dream to make pilates a regular part of every pregnant woman’s preparation for birth and their ongoing recovery. I want to promote its benefits to as wide an audience as possible.”

Thank you to Tasha for sharing her story with all of us and being dedicated to helping pregnant women achieve maintain their fitness and core body strength.

photo by flickr family

So I haven’t blogged in a couple of days.  On Thursday night the flu hit our family.  My son has been miserable and I was home from work with him on Friday and up with him the last two days of the weekend.  As a Mom, it is extremely hard to watch your child be sick.   I just wanted to be able to make him feel so much better and there was nothing I could do.  We watched countless hours of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (ok that made him feel a little better) this weekend and he now loves red gatorade, which he calls “Gator Juice.”  Unfortunately, we were up quite a few times during the night and we are a very tired group in our household, but I am proud to say I still got a workout in!  My mother showed up on Friday afternoon to help out with my son and I was able to get a good run in and enjoy the great Phoenix weather.  On Saturday, I made it to pilates class for an hour and actually was able to go for a bike ride with the whole family (my son needed to get out of the house).  During nap time today, I did a Stott Pilates BOSU workout video that was amazing and very challenging.

It is extremely hard to keep up with your workout routine when your family is sick.  As mothers, we seem to take care of everyone else and not ourselves.  I find when I get stuck at home with a sick child that workout dvd’s come in very handy.  Getting in a workout in your own living room, usually during nap-time, is convenient and quick.   I am very excited to review some pre and post-natal pilates DVD’s that a British pilates instructor is sending me, I will have more information soon.  I also enjoy all of the Stott Pilates videos, you can get anywhere from an easy to extremely advanced workout from 25 minutes to an hour.  I usually stick to ab and core work for at home workout videos, I prefer to go to the gym or get outside for my cardio and strength activities.  I highly suggest finding some great videos to use when you get stuck at home and need that extra core and ab workout.

My son is slowly recovering from his flu bug.  I think my husband is now taking his turn at being sick.  Hopefully I will miss the sickness and be able to just take care of my boys.  I cleaned the entire house this weekend in order to get rid of all the germs.  Luckily, we had great weather in Phoenix this weekend and were able to air the house out and be outside with the family.   Goal: get rid of the sickness and be healthy and stay in great Mommy shape!

by Surtrayvey

So yes, Dara Torres is a hero of mine.  To watch a 40 year old woman, who has had a child, achieve Olympic dreams this summer was amazing.  Dara defied time this summer when she competed in the 2008 Olympics.  Not only was she the oldest swimming Olympian ever, but she was a Mom and wife who competed with swimmers less than half her age and she did it with superior and efficient training!  Don ‘t get me wrong, I am extremely jealous of her talent and physique and I would love to workout as my job.  Her amazing talent has allowed her to build a career in modeling, speaking, and swimming.  Most of us moms do not have that luxury, instead we are looking for that 1/2 hour a couple of days a week to fit in a workout.

This past weekend I attended a 16 hour workshop on Meridan Stretching led by Dara Torres’ “secret weapon” her stretching coaches, Steve Sierra and Anne Tierney.  I originally attended one of their clinics just prior to the USA Olympic swimming trials in June/July in order to learn their methods for my current swimmers and assist them in better stretching.  I learned more than I ever thought about the importance of stretching and their innovative system, they use resistance while stretching the muscles in order to increase both strength and flexibility.  I actually found that learning to stretch more efficiently was one of the best things that I could do for myself.  While I use stretching for my swimmers, I also learned how to stretch myself and help with many of the aches and pains of getting older! 

So why is this important to active mommies?  Well many times in our hectic lives we forget to take care of ourselves.  At the clinic this weekend, I realized that taking 20 minutes to stretch out properly 3-4 times a week can make me a healthier, happier, and less stressed Mommy, wife, and employee.  While I am not looking to be an Olympic athlete like Dara, I can still follow some of her great techniques to have a healthier lifestyle.  I highly encourage you to find time to stretch each week after exercising or simply when you are ready to wake up or go to bed.  If you want to learn more about Dara Torres’ stretching routine, you can check out the DVD that her and her stretching coaches created after the Olympics.  But, no matter what you do, just make sure that in your hectic daily life you still take time to stretch and take care of your body.