The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Another BIG Q&A; Failure Vs. Fatigue In Postpartum Training (no you don't need more burpees!)
After the technical difficulties last week, for which I humbly apologise, we're back on track with another Q&A!
I discuss;
The difference between Failure and Fatigue, and why it REALY matters for postpartum training.
I also talk about why I'm "soo unprofessional" with regards to HPNB :)
And, finally, the importance of "getting the basics right" and what that really means. For this is a lot more complicated than you might think,.
As always; HPNB only has 5 billing cycles.
So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)
Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.
Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic
Playing us out; "First Love" by Schimmer
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert Peter Lap. That as always would be me. First of all, an apology for last week's podcast. Something went horribly, horribly wrong, and therefore nothing went out. I'm not sure what the deal was. But you know, it won't happen again, I hope. Anyways, this is the second of Feb, and this is very, very late, but it is the big New Year's QA. And by big, I mean it's the New Year's QA. And we're doing three questions. Failure is not the same as fatigue, but does that matter? This is a great question. I love the love this question. The second one ties in. Why am I so remarkably unprofessional? I'm very unprofessional when it comes to the podcast, uh, with regards to monetization and all that type of stuff. It all ties in. Um, and what do you mean get the basics right? Why is the setting of a goal, realizing what your goal is, getting the basics right, the most important thing about programming? So that's what we're covering today, and without further ado, here we go. For like I said, the 1st of February 2026. You know, time flies, and and apologies for again apologies for last week. It it all went horribly wrong, and I've not been paying attention because I've got extra dogs living at my house, and I was staying somewhere else for a while with more dogs. I had eight dogs at one stage, and and you know, that means I can don't keep my eye on the ball as much as I uh as I maybe should. Um I hope you're well. I hope you're you're keeping nicely. Um this won't be a terribly long episode, and then uh just so you know what's coming up this year, or at least the first few months, this will be a relatively short episode, 20-30 minutes, usually half an hour, right? Um, then next week from the vault, then we have interviews coming out. The wazoo. Every other week will be interviews again, um, which is which is very nice. Um, so that also gives you plenty of time to uh get more questions in. I have Rebecca Morrison uh coming on the podcast soon. Uh Phyllis King is still coming on, and who else did I record? Oh uh Yolanda Bendy. Um yeah, Yolanda is coming on, and that's a that's a yoga-related um yoga-related one. But basically, we're covering so much ground in the next few months, and I've got more interviews lined up and all that sort of thing. Uh, so it's gonna be a busy year. Um, thank you very much for your support. If you if you manage to rate the podcast at all, even especially on Apple, because I'm getting killed on Apple people. I mean, we're doing okay in the in the rankings, but it I I need the little four or five-star reviews. If you don't mind too much, that would be much appreciated because that is how we get more listeners, right? Um, that's enough begging for me. What do I what do I do? Peter at healthyplusnatalbody.com. That is where you start. That's where you send all your uh all your questions and your comments and all that sort of stuff. Now, starting with this, I will send a clip um from a wonderful coach, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful coach called Darien Bates, and she is amazing. I love that woman. I follow her on Instagram and I suggest you do as well. Um, where she discussed the failure is not the same as fatigue, um, with regards to you know, muscular failure, um being the the muscle can't lift the weight anymore, and fatigue being you will be too tired to lift the weight, and it's not quite the same, uh, and it's actually it's not the same at all. And and the question was does that matter, especially when it comes to postpartum exercise and postpartum recovery? Right, so it's a wonderful question, it really is. Because all we care about with rehab exercise is essentially failure, failure of the muscle to do what it needs to do, and that's the point where you stop. So I don't if you think of fatigue. I can if you if I want to get you muscular fatigue, I can have you do a hundred star jumps of our or a hundred squats or something like that, right? And then your heart rates up, you're completely pooped, and you can't do a star jump anymore, and therefore you also can't do a bicep call. But that doesn't mean that your bicep is is anywhere near failure, and that's it. But the muscle is still fresh, and so you might well be fatigued, but your muscle hasn't failed. And I know this can be for a lot of people quite a quite a tricky concept to wrap their head around, but what we're looking for, especially early on, with regards to rehab exercise, where we're working specific muscles, and the goal isn't to get tired from all the exercises. So when we're doing, I don't know, the first few weeks of the program, right? We're doing uh say we're aiming for 10 good squats, 10 good lunges, and glute bridges, and all that type of stuff. But we're aiming for good ones, as in we're aiming for hitting the right muscle at the right time, and especially in the beginning when you're getting back into exercise or you haven't exercised for a while, um, or you're doing rehab like postpartum, um but what what like what postpartum recovery exercise really is. What were the goal is to say do 10 squats, but the goal is to do 10 good ones, the goal isn't to do 10 movements of you basically sitting down standing up, no matter what which muscles you use. The goal is to use the right muscles at the right time. So I always tell people that the 10 that is in the program is the goal amount to do. We want 10 times one good rep. Right? So if you find at rep five, especially you'll find this with a lot of glute movement, so glute bridges and all that type of stuff. After rep five or six early on, you'll find other muscles are kicking in. Right? Because the muscle you're trying to work, or the muscle you have worked for the first five reps, is getting tired and it's saying, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going to start recruiting other muscles to complete the movement. But like I said, the movement isn't what the goal is. The movement isn't that important. It's not about getting up off the ground into the glute bridge position, it's about working that for want of a better phrase, squeezing that glute on the way up. And if you find that your glute isn't doing it anymore, but your hamstrings are, or your lower back is really doing a lot of the heavy lifting, so to speak, then that is where you stop. Right? Quite often, um, and I'll say this in the best way possible, women especially, but a lot of people, older generation men as well, to be honest, we confuse failure with fatigue. And or fatigue with failure. So we say, Oh my, I'm I'm I'm shattered, I I can't do another rep. Right? And and that just means you're tired, you're fatigued. It means you have, I don't know, you have a Dr. Pepper, uh, and then you find that all of a sudden there's another four or five sets of work in a particular muscle. The issue with that that thinking is that it feels like, and I come this across this a tremendous amount in in with regards to postpartum recovery uh exercise and rehab exercise, is that I don't feel tired so I can do more, or I don't feel tired so I haven't worked hard. Yeah, the muscle you have worked has worked hard. That is what the goal is. The goal isn't to get you tired, right? If if you are completely fit and you just want to get tired, yeah, do a hundred burpees, you get tired. Yeah, right? You you get out of breath and you get winded and tired, or you push yourself as hard as possible and you get winded and tired. But that is usually, for a lot of people, completely separate from their specific goal. So you see this a lot in sport, as in circuit training and all that type of stuff. But if your goal is, and and and I've worked with some tennis players, football players, and all that type of stuff, um, if your goal is to just run around as much as you can for a little while, then you should definitely go to like a high rock style sort of circuit class. Um, where you work everything a little bit and you just the main thing is you're shattered at the end of it. Uh uh thinking is the same. Um, what is it? CrossFit, CrossFit workout of the day, where you just get as many reps in as possible within a minute, and the goal is to get tired, right? To do as much as you can until you can't do anymore and you're puking and all that type of stuff. But that has nothing to do with getting with muscular failure. Your muscles might hurt the following day. I'm not saying they don't, I'm not saying these classes are easy or that these workouts are easy. But it is a completely different goal when you say I want it is not the way to get your muscles to fail. But pull-ups, it is for instance. Pull-ups, you can you can get a muscular failure on on pull-ups. And so so say you do chin-ups, because it's it's an easier job. So uh say chin-ups, you do 10 chin-ups with with good form, and you're like, okay, I'm shed that I can't do anymore. But if if your goal is to work the biceps as hard as you can, then you can start with chin-ups, but then you can probably squeeze out several more bicep curls uh with dumbbells and all that sort of stuff. So that means that your muscle hasn't actually reached failure yet. Right? So when we're looking at rehab exercise, when we're looking to get the right muscles to do the right things at the right time, it is important that we keep focusing on the muscles. Now you know that I'm not big on isolating muscles and all that type of stuff with regards to like what you see in in several programs where they say, oh, just focus on your TVA, your transverse abdominis, and and um uh postpartum, or or we isolate the glutes all the time. In the beginning, kind of, yes, I can see it. Uh right, that's why we do glute bridges and all that type of stuff, but it's all part of more overall movement, right? As in compound movements, movements that use more than just one joint or one muscle group. Um, but the goal isn't to get you as tired as possible. So does it matter? Yes, it does, depending on your goal. Like I said, if your goal is to just get a really good workout in, get a good sweat on, so to speak, then you're looking for fatigue much more than you're looking for muscular failure. Muscular failure, you can get that with I don't know, bicep curls or squats or leg presses, and you just you can hit that at 10. You just increase the weight until you can't do more than 10 exercises. But that is not the same as fatigue. Um I hope that clears that up a little bit. It brings me on to the next one because you know, a lot of these um I was asked a question by by a by a professional fitness professional and influencer and very successful influencer as in makes a lot of money, has a lot of followers, um, makes a lot of money off social media, uh, rather than say selling programs and all that sort of stuff. They they have sponsorship deals and advertising, but they don't sell programs, they're just one of those people that is is successful online, a few million followers, and and and does really well and and is someone whom whom I like and and and and respect a lot. Um, we're not in each other's tax bracket, so to speak, right? And we don't have the same goals. And and and they asked me why I was because I don't want to give give away who it was. Um they asked me why I was always so remarkably unprofessional with regards to um monetization of the podcast. As in this, if you've noticed there's no ads in it, and the numbers that the podcast apparently is doing is definitely good enough to put some ads in there. Um, why I'm so informal, why I don't fix every single mistake, why I don't have a whole team of people that goes through everything that cuts out every mmm and ah and all that type of stuff. Um I mean, I have someone who plays with the sound a little bit, although, you know, you can't always tell. Um, but that's but that's more to do with my setup. Like I did an interview with Yolanta, who I mentioned earlier, who has like the most beautiful setup in the world for for podcasts, and she has a she has a smaller podcast than I do. Um, and I've done interviews with other people that have have a much I mean they have an amazing studio setup. It looks the part and there's set up for video recording and all that sort of stuff. And the question was why don't I? Because you can make more money that way. And again, it comes down to the what is your goal? My goal isn't to make as much money as possible. Um, don't get me wrong, it's nice that I can pay the bills, right? Right. But I have a two-bed terraced house and I can afford to keep a couple of dogs, although, you know, if they need to go to the vet more, then it is going to become impossible, right? They're expensive to keep these ones. Um but the main thing is, yeah, it's it's I I I don't care that much about that side of things. And if I were to hand it out, to hand it over to someone, then they would start monetizing everything. And I don't know about you, but I don't like to listen to ads in the middle of podcasts.
unknown:Right?
Peter:When I listen to like a Conan O'Brien or Jamarcosy, uh Morezzi, whatever his name is, or or right, I I don't do the ads. And it annoys me that they're in the middle. So I'm not I'm not going to do that. I also have a feeling, and and and I've I've I've probably mentioned this before. I think people who start doing too much affiliate stuff. Um, I mean, there's an there's an Amazon link on the on the website and um Amazon affiliate stuff for for for like resistance bands if you buy the program and all that sort of stuff, but I'm I don't really care if you buy them off Amazon. If anything, if you have a local supplier, buy them off those, because you know, screw Jeff Bezos, right? But it's I think the goal of of most of this sort of stuff should be much more about the the societal aspect of it is in helping someone out. Um, and that is not to pat myself on the back, right? It just it is just one of those that I I can't be bothered. I I am if you follow me on on Freds, and it is just healthy postnatal body on threads, by the way, and and you'll see I'm very outspoken on there, and mainly about political stuff, because health is politics, right? And it is not professional with regards to if you only focus on health and postpartum exercise and post nice clips and post-nice memes and post-nice videos, then you'll get more. You get some, but it's it shouldn't be about getting more, it should be about having some semblance of of a value-led living, I believe. Uh, one of my previous guests, I can't remember what her name was, but she she was a philanthropic um expert. She was doing wealth management for really, really rich people, but only from a philanthropy uh perspective. So she basically gave rich people's money away uh in the most effective way possible. And she was talking a lot about this value-led living. A lot of us don't um don't necessarily do or don't have the opportunity to do, right? Because it's it's there's a tremendous amount of privilege with it. I am very lucky that I can work with several charities, charities, um, and have this little program podcast go out and have it be free of advertising and and kind of pick my guests up to a point. Um, don't get me wrong, really big people have no interest in coming onto my little show, but a lot of people apply to to come onto the show, and I can kind of say, yeah, this person, yes, that person not so much. And I have the privilege of only charging like 40 pounds or 50 bucks max for for the program after three months, right? Um I'm very lucky that way, and that was a business decision, as in that was why I started the business, but um the HP and B. But I think I think that bit is important, right? I'm the Ben and Jerry's of uh the you know the ice cream guys, right? The the the the ones that have or had loads of morals and and had uh had a decent ice cream brand and then they made the mistake of selling it to Nestle. I don't want to make that mistake of selling it to Nestle and and maybe make more money, but then you have no say anymore, and and how it all becomes about the money, and people start screwing you over, and and and you start watering down your values and your principles and all that sort of stuff because you get forced into that. Um sorry, a bit of a waffle there. Um, I hope that explains it because I get like I said, I get a lot of emails, and hopefully those emails will now start stop coming from people that say they can make me a lot more money if only I do X, Y, Z. And this kind of ties us into what you mean get the basics right. So the email from someone a while ago, and I I can't find the email. This is all of um of a little word document that I typed up a while ago, and I was going to look up the emails, but I couldn't find it, and it's a whole thing. Uh right again, I'm professional, right? Um right, Conan O'Brien gets his prepared by a researcher. What do you mean get the basics right? Right. When I talk about getting the basics right, I talk about I don't just mean work with the best person and all that type of stuff. I mean get the basics right basically means understanding what your starting position is, and understanding and really realizing what your goal is. And when you have done those two things, because that that is not necessarily what most people do, especially post-partum, right? So a lot of people say a year post-partum will come and say, Hey, I never managed to get the baby weight off. And my belly still looks round and and and all that type of stuff. Well, you know that type of stuff, type of stuff you guys probably live with as well. Some of you might live with as well. Um the the starting point, understanding what the starting point really is, is that it's sure it could be a bit of baby weight, or it could be a round belly, but those two things are not necessarily the same. So understanding that the round belly isn't necessarily caused by the baby weight. I hate that term baby weight, by the way. Um, but understanding that the one doesn't cause the other, and that that will allow you to say, okay, this is what my actual starting point is, say the round belly, the the main issue, diastysis in in in in in in this particular case, instead of uh too much weight, and that will allow you to be clear about what your goal is. Now it's possible to have more than one goal, sure. Um, of course it is, right? Lose a bit of weight and get a flat belly are are are completely valid things, or lose a bit of weight and have no more back pain, or have no more back pain and improve posture, right? And nothing to do with weight. All those things are fine, but you really want to understand what your starting position is, where are so you want to do a proper assessment so you always want to um if you look at the diastasis and and and back pain you want to get that checked out you want to get it assessed so that you know what your starting point is and then you need to know what your what your goal is um so heal your diastasis or diastasis whatever you want to however you want to pronounce that right it can be the goal and that will then allow you to get the basics of the programming right whether you work with someone or not the the the program is usually pretty much the same way right muscle activation and muscle strengthening boom boom and then do whatever you want strength and conditioning and all that type of stuff right that is fundamentally where you are then you can plot the right exercises in and make sure you get the basic exercises right get the basic form right of the exercise work the right muscle like I said earlier on right work muscles to failure and not confuse it with fatigue don't confuse fatigue with failure don't if your goal is to function better and that is the goal for most people if your goal is to function better plan don't plan in movements that don't allow you to do that don't um don't plan in exercises that are too far ahead of where your actual where where you yourself are might walk before you can run but even better walk with good form instead of walking with bad form and then get ready to run that is kind of what I'm what I'm talking about with getting the basics right be careful with how you do it be aware of of what you're doing and by the by careful I don't necessarily mean safe right I or or be afraid I I just mean think about what you're doing think about why you're doing it and then do it that way rather than jumping into it. We are very tempted and Instagram is huge on huge on this um by we see something nice you see something shiny as in we see the flat belly result or we see the flat loss result or we see the back pain is gone result or or or the posture result or whatever. And we jump into whatever that particular shiny thing tells us what we should jump into. And that is very much where things go wrong. Because before you know it the idea jumped into something that you should that has nothing to do with your goals has nothing to do with your with your real goals I mean uh that isn't actually put together well or you're just spending a lot of m time and money. Right? And the worst thing you can spend instead of money is a lot of time doing something that isn't really right for you. Because time is is the one thing you don't really get back on. We see this a lot especially with exercise doing the wrong thing as in the thing that doesn't work for you or you know the thing that that doesn't align with your goals is the biggest obstacle for people actually trying something again. Very few people will start training for three months and stop and then go back to training immediately if they did the wrong thing first. A lot of people I talk to are five ten years postpartum and they worked with say the wrong personal trainer and they therefore didn't try again for a long time. And then almost out of desperation the and they're just so fed up yeah but give this guy a shot right but then you've wasted so much time and I'm not the right guy for for for everybody to train with right right and HBMB program isn't the right thing for everybody. I mean let's be honest the the stuff all works but if you want shinier stuff then you can get a really cool and I know you can use this as an app and all that sort of thing and the instructions are in the in the video but if you want big shiny things that uh yeah like an interactive screen and all that yeah we don't do that. Right that is not so if you find it doesn't work for you um because you want other things think about that first think about that about that before you start the start the the to pay for the for the subscription I mean the trial is free right so who gives a shit pardon my French but it's it's if you find some one thing doesn't work for you then ask yourself why that is and then try something else but it's part of the basics that is part of getting the basics right getting your starting point right anywho that's me really waffling now. So that's it done for another week I'm here's again be a new bit of music next week we're from the vault with something or other and then we've got a whole host of interviews coming up you have a tremendous week you take care of yourself. Bye now,