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23rd - 29th May is Exercise Right Week here in Australia , a great initiative of ESSA, the professional association for Exercise Physiologists.

In my clinic I work with some fabulous exercise physiologists who are passionate about assisting our patients with their rehabiliatation progams to get them back to a healthy and active lifestyle.
I am also very lucky that several of them have an interest in women's health and work closely with me, keen to be working in a pelvic floor safe way with our mutual patients as well as taking my rehab programs to the next level which is their area of expertise.

Feedback From Michelle Lyons Courses in Australia

Here is some of the feedback we received from the courses Michelle ran in Australia in 2015:

• Thanks so much Fiona. The course was so great. I must admit that when I had a look at the course notes, I was worried that I wouldn't learn much new, but I learned so much. Michelle is amazing.
• It was a great course!
• Thank you very much for arranging the wonderful Michelle Lyons course at Dubbo!

What is your current position?

I am a Physiotherapist at Move Physiotherapy and Pilates in Adelaide. I am in charge of all of the Women’s Health workload at the clinic, and also run Pilates classes (studio and mat) and do some general musculo-skeletal work as well.

This article first appeared on Go Mum! Fitness as a guest blog I was asked to do.

As women’s health physios, we are often asked “when can I return to high impact exercise? “ Expectations of the media, celebrities and social media would suggest that new mums can do no right – everyone is telling you how you should do every thing from birthing your baby  to  what you should look like afterwards!  
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Many women feel they have to do high impact workouts in order to build up a sweat, get fit, burn fat and lose baby weight. However, high impact exercise is a common cause of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI), or wetting yourself when you exercise/cough/sneeze, particularly in post natal women.

Interestingly, one of the main independent risk factors for SUI after having a baby is BMI, or body mass index – the amount of fat your body carries. Postnatal depression is also common, and SUI can be one of the triggers. So it totally makes sense that we exercise after having a baby; but does that leave us between a rock and a hard place?

The author is a Women's Health Physiotherapist, a colleague and friend of mine .Whilst she prefers to remain anonymous, she has bravely decided to share her story with you all in the hope that it may spread awareness of the importance of vigilant self examination and, more importantly, to act upon anything suspicious that you find and not put it off. If it helps to save even one person from going through what she has then sharing has been worth it.
It is a very timely post with today being WORLD CANCER DAY.

Aquaflex Pelvic Floor Exercise System are our bestselling vaginal weights or cones. They were voted the most effective pelvic floor exerciser on an episode of Embarrassing Bodies in 2010.

WHAT ARE THEY ?

The Aquaflex Pelvic Floor Exercise System consists of two vaginal cones much like a plastic tampon- one larger than the other- and 4 weights.

What is your current position?

Physiotherapist (Musculoskeletal & Women’s Health) , Women’s Health Coach (Nutrition, NLP) , Pilates Instructor and founder of The Pelvic Expert

Well the WHFS summit is over and done in a flash.

What did I do?

As bronze sponsors for the event I spent a few minutes telling everyone about our company and what we do...

Who did I meet?

I had the pleasure of meeting in person, my colleague, the beautiful Heba Shaheed of The Pelvic Expert who did her first ever presentation at a conference as part of The Platform which Mish created specially to allow first time presenters an opportunityto share their knowledge. Heba is a women's health physio in Sydney and spoke about The Tight Hypertonic Pelvic Floor.

• this means that you do not have a complete circuit. If you are testing by holding between your fingers or in the palm of your hand then you will probably only be able to hold until it reaches 5mA as this will feel quite intense. When the electrode is inserted in the vagina or anus, a much higher mA is tolerated due to better conduction.
• to test if your machine and electrode are working , attach electrode as normal to machine , place electrode in a glass of water and turn machine on - if it is working correctly you will see the mA go up as you turn it up as the water will conduct the current