2015 Women’s Health And Fitness Summit

Training The Invisible Woman

by Michelle Wright

Looking at images from the fitness industry, one is inundated with beautiful images of young women. Scattered here and there one can find an image or two of a much older woman enjoying the benefits of exercise with friends.

However, women of the age of mid-40s to late 50s are decidedly missing. I call her “the invisible woman”.

Yet, the last time I looked around my yoga school and my local gym and passed by the boot camp guy in the park, they are there in real life. In reality, these women are not invisible. These women are often the backbone of any training facility.

The invisible woman has three powerful qualities as a client for a personal trainer or gym/studio owner.

  1. The invisible woman is at the stage of her life where she has a disposable income that she can spend largely on herself.
  2. The invisible woman values her health and physical well-being. Where she may have been flippant about these things in her early 20’s and 30’s – in her 40’s she understands that health is the greatest wealth.
  3. The invisible woman is a loyal client. She knows what she likes, and when she finds it, sees little reason to chop and change. She simply builds it into her routine.

However, the invisible woman also has specific training needs.

In the pre-menopause years, this is the last time she can store bone strength. Post menopause the bone density decline will be from that start point. Building bone strength through weight-bearing exercise is an essential part of the invisible woman’s program.

We know that 50 percent of post-natal women will experience prolapse (when her internal organs fall out of place and in worse-case scenarios, her knickers catch them). For many women, this will happen when oestrogen drops during the peri-menopause time, as this hormone is responsible for the elasticity of tissue and muscles. It is essential for the invisible woman, who is now in this high-risk category that exercise prescription minimises all risks to her pelvic floor.

Queensland University published a comprehensive study in 2013 outlining the biggest health risk to women aged over 35 years. Contrary to public belief it is not smoking, cancer, or obesity, it is inactivity. This means the invisible woman may need to be nurtured in her transition from sedentary to active. So no amount of selfies from fit young things baring their midriff, or any pushing oneself to the limits fitspiration meme will inspire the invisible woman. She will declare that it is too hard and remain inactive.

Imagine the difference to your business bottom line if you offered a service that was invaluable to women in this stage of their life.

Getting it right can be tricky as there are very few training programs to help you gain specific information and hone the skills for this market.

womens health and fitness summit 2015

A wrap up of this year's Health and Fitness Summit

The Women’s Health and Fitness Summit was held on 12 and 13 September 2015 at the Crown Promenade in Melbourne. For the couple of hundred attendees, their lives have forever changed.

Here are some of the key pieces of knowledge, that our own WNiF editor, Analee Matthews, learned from the sessions that she attended:

Jane Scott, Marketing Manager for Analytica for PeriCoach made it very clear at the opening ceremony, that incontinence is common, but it’s not normal. And people who experience the condition should seek help because they do not have to live with the inconvenience that incontinence causes. This key message was reinforced in virtually all sessions throughout the entire weekend.

Comedian and Women’s Health physio, Elaine Miller from Gussett Grippers in Edinburgh, Scotland reiterated Jane’s sentiments in her comedic routine when she said:

  • 1 in 3 women wet themselves (urinary incontinence)
  • 1 in 10 people poo themselves (faecal incontinence)
  • more people have incontinence than the common cold
  • there is an 80 percent cure rate when sufferers work with women’s health physiotherapists.

Robin Kerr said that health comes from movement. And in her sessions, she challenged the current definitions of the core, explaining how they often vary among different health professionals. Robin suggested that the core is not specifically the abs or the TA, but that it’s actually invisible and what we see is more the impact of how strong/weak/healthy the core is. Robin also explained how the pelvic floor is not a flat sheet, but a 3D structure, and she introduced a lot of new terminologies, such as “tensegrity” and “mechanotransduction” as new and upcoming physiological explanations for movement (remember that you heard them at the WHFS first!).

Robin also explained how breathing can be a big disconnector with the core, including how feet and breathing can actually cause pelvic floor issues. She recommended that fit pros who have clients with asthma or shallow breathing issues should establish working relationships with a local physio.

Jenny Burrell from the UK advised that health and fitness professionals should provide bespoke programming for women. fitness professionals should be asking clients how their energy levels are at the start of every session, and even ask them what they’d like to do during that session. She recommended fit pros start delivering what their clients want as a way to get the best results – rather than deliver cookie-cutter programming. Jenny explained how female clients are busy and strung out and they essentially want permission to rest and reenergise.

Jenny also believes that the biggest gift fitness professionals can give to their clients is to extensively educate them so they can feel empowered to take and retain control over their own health. She stated that an ounce of prevention is better than a tonne of correction.

It is crystal clear from this event, that when you’re programming for women’s health and women’s fitness there are a lot of issues to consider. And although this event has historically predominantly attracted females, hopefully, next year the gents will realise the importance of this information, and attend as well – especially considering so many male PTs have female clientele.

Scroll to Top