The Female Athlete Course - Online Edition (V1)

Overview

Have you ever felt that you could be doing better for your female clients? As a health or fitness professional, you have a lot of the pelvic health knowledge you need to help your clients, but they just don’t seem to be responding or achieving their dream goals. Sure, their symptoms have improved a bit, but they still can’t run, jump, lift heavy weights or take part in what they want to do. They might be ante-natal, post-natal or never been pregnant - they may have incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, and/or diastasis. You might have been taught that these high impact, high load exercises and activities are “bad” things to do, and certainly, not everyone can go back to doing these things…

...but what if we were taught things that aren’t quite true, that the evidence doesn’t seem to support?

I have found that it took a major rethink of my whole approach to Physiotherapy to help my clients achieve their dream goals within minutes, not weeks. I started challenging what I believed and was taught, examined the evidence and listened to my clients. In short, I had to change the model I was working with because too many clients weren’t getting truly better.

Research actually tells us this is true - systematic reviews have shown that the things we thought were useful aren’t actually doing what we thought - they don’t work for the reasons we thought! We know that “modalities” - all of them for back pain - don‘t really work better than anything else, but all are better than doing nothing. Some might be better in combinations, but there’s not enough evidence for that yet.

Not only that, but the evidence on how much pressure is exerted on the pelvic floor (Intraabdominal Pressure or IAP) is not what we were traditionally led to believe. Things like crunches are less pressure on average on the pelvic floor than simply standing out of a chair!

Since 40% of women will have pelvic organ prolapse, around 50% of women who exercise suffer from incontinence, and 1 in 7 to 1 in 3 women will suffer from pelvic pain during their lifetime, don’t you think they deserve to have a fighting chance at doing the things they truly want to do?

     This course is approved by CrossFit for 20 CEU's (My PT Education - The Female Athlete Level 1)

Short Video Overview

Case Study: Vicki

Let me tell you about Vicki, an attendee of The Female Athlete Course, just like this one you are going to sign up for. Vicki is a fitness professional who developed pelvic organ prolapse and suffered from the symptoms quite terribly. She had been doing everything she could to try to educate herself and help herself and her clients. She was unable to even lift up 16kg (35lbs) without feeling the symptoms. She felt quite hopeless and that her exercise, an outlet for her, was unable to be done again like she used to and like she needed to.

During the consultation, Vicki disclosed many things which were quite upsetting for her. Listening to her story in full was so important for her - she needed to be heard. By demonstrating to her that she could lift 16kg (35lbs) without symptoms in less than a minute gave her hope and encouragement. By showing her throughout the course that she can do things she didn’t think was possible, she was able to finish the weekend with a deadlift of 70kg (155lbs) without any symptoms at all.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It happens all the time and I get emails and messages from previous attendees all the time, telling me how they have been using what they learned on the course and how it has been changing lives.

About The Female Athlete Online Course

You are already a good therapist or fitness professional. You already change people’s lives. I genuinely want to acknowledge that. But you want to be better. You want to help more people. You want to learn more about how to do the things I did with Vicki.

That’s what this course does.

This course has lots of theory and lectures...

...and that’s why it is perfect as an online course. The in-person courses have moved to be more active and more experiential learning. This course complements the online course so well because it provides more background and understanding of the concepts I use, more so than the in-person course does today.

What this course is not is more “tools in the toolbox”. No! This course is about radically challenging your beliefs, simplifying the model we use and then applying it to our clients. You might not actually change the things you do, but I hope you change the reasons why you do them!

I have a mission to change the world for women - to be able to truly empower them to do the most they can, to achieve their dreams, to live life the way they want to, without fear or hesitation. To do that, I need help - I need health and fitness professionals to join with me to make this a reality.

Will you join me on this mission to change the world? I would love to have you on the team!

Note: This course was recorded in mid-2018. There is a newer version available on Embodia here.

Learning Objectives 

• To provide a chance for health and fitness professionals to think about their thinking, models, biases, and beliefs and then to challenge them!
• To provide a framework from which you can approach the acquisition of knowledge, assessment, and management of Female Athletes.
• To provide a basic understanding of high-intensity training (using CrossFit as a base model but including Bootcamp, HIIT, Tabata, etc) for female athletes/participants.
• To provide participants with the tools to be able to communicate, assess and treat high-intensity training athletes more specifically.
• To deal with ante-natal and postnatal exercise considerations in high-intensity exercise.
• To provide an overview of common high intensity, exercise-related musculoskeletal injuries of the lumbopelvic-hip complex and options on how to manage them using exercise.
• To provide an understanding of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in exercise and appropriate modifications for impact and relatively heavy lifting exercises.
• To provide a way of utilizing “core stability” principles with a test-retest model using performance as a measure of effectiveness.
• To provide an overview of the common body weight and loaded movements involving the lumbopelvic-hip complex, sound technique guidelines, and appropriate modifications.
• To provide a realistic and practical balance between the biological and the psychosocial aspects in managing the high-intensity training athlete, their Coaches and their expectations.
• To provide an understanding of the concepts of #tensiontotask, #spreadtheload, #variabilityiskey, and #BulletproofPFRoutine.

Audience 

All health and fitness professions, although members of the public have taken this course and benefited from it.

What will students learn by taking this course?

Taking this course will challenge your beliefs about how and why things work in the world of health and fitness. You will learn to evaluate how cognitive biases affect what you think and believe and how that affects your decisions and management of your clients. Ultimately, you will learn a practical and simple way to implement a biopsychosocial approach to the assessment and management of your clients.

How will students apply what they’ve learned into their practice?

Starting with listening to the client with a different mindset and purpose, they will learn how to identify and challenge unhelpful beliefs through experiential learning and careful use of their words. They will also be able to apply the key concepts and principles to practical exercises, in particular high impact and loading situations. They will be able to help their clients with pain, incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, diastasis whether they are antenatal, post-natal or have never been pregnant.

Why will students want to take this course?

Those interested in this course will know that there has to be more out there - they are already helping people but there are just *those clients* who they can’t help fully...this course hopes to provide the necessary challenge to their model of healthcare and seek to provide a simpler framework that truly empowers their clients.

What Our Practitioners Are Saying

"The Female Athlete Course came at a great time for me. I was ruminating on all the ways that standard physio practice and the evidence were not lining up, and the course helped me to put together a more cohesive way to practice.  One that is supported by the evidence, encompasses principles of women's health, strength and conditioning, and pain Science, and at its core is driven by the goal of helping women to do all that they want. "
 -Ruth, Director of Exhale Physiotherapy and works out of Alana Healthcare for Women, and yoga.la in Sydney, Australia.

Why did I create this course?

This course evolved from the course I developed for the public called the “Bulletproof” Your Body - Core and Pelvic Floor course. I was getting requests from health and fitness professionals who attended the course to do one specifically for them. So here it is!

I first presented this course in Orlando, Florida to 24 eager yet fearful participants in August 2016...I can still remember their shocked faces at something I taught them. But I also remember the looks of amazement when they were able to do things they didn’t think they could - and so many, on every course, tell me “I get why my patients want to lift heavy now...it feels SOOOO GOOD!”

The in-person course is definitely an experience I want you to have and encourage you to find one to attend...but having the course online will reach more people and help me achieve the goal of changing the world - already, since 2016, the world of women’s health has shifted so much and I hope I have contributed even just a tiny amount to that change.

I really do commend the course to you and I still stay in touch with those who participated. This course was filmed in my hometown in Sydney and had a great vibe.

Thank you for considering this course and I know that signing up for it will be challenging, difficult, confusing but ultimately one of the most rewarding things you will do.

Cheers,

Antony Lo, The Physio Detective