Embodied Soul

18/10/2026

Your back hurts after deadlifts.

Does that mean deadlifts are bad for your back?

Not necessarily.

One thing I think we need to understand better when it comes to injuries and niggles is cumulative load.

We often blame the exercise we were doing when something started hurting. We were deadlifting, so the deadlift must be the problem. We were running, so running must be bad for us.

But what if we zoomed out and looked at the bigger picture?

Your body doesn’t just experience each workout in isolation. It has to manage the cumulative demands of everything you’re doing over days, weeks and months.

And I’m not just talking about physical demands.

Maybe you’ve gradually increased your lifting volume. You’re also running a couple of times a week. Work is stressful, you’re not sleeping well, you’re going through a relationship breakdown, or you’re carrying a lot of emotional stuff.

Maybe you’re worried about a family member. You’re dealing with financial pressure. You’re trying to hold everything together for everyone else, and there’s very little time left for you to recover.

All of these things can affect how your body responds to training.

Emotional stress can affect your sleep, increase muscle tension, influence pain sensitivity and make recovery more difficult. When we’re under prolonged stress, our bodies are having to adapt to more than just the physical demands of exercise.

And we don’t always recognise how much we’re carrying until our bodies start giving us signals.

You might have been tolerating your deadlifts perfectly well for months. But as the total demands on your body increase, the amount of training you can comfortably manage and recover from might change.

Then one day, your back starts hurting during a set of deadlifts.

It’s easy to conclude that the deadlift caused the problem and needs to be eliminated.

But the deadlift might only be one part of the picture. Your training, recovery, emotional stress, sleep and other life demands may all be relevant.

Of course, deadlifts can contribute to pain or injury, too. We shouldn’t automatically blame stress or assume that an exercise is never the problem.

The point is that the exercise you were doing when the pain started doesn’t automatically tell you the whole story of why it happened.

I’ve experienced this myself. I was managing my usual volume of heavy lifting. Then I added running a few times a week, right before I started moving house, and my hips started niggling during deadlifts.

My overall demands had changed, even though my usual lifting routine hadn’t.

This is why I think we need to look beyond individual exercises and consider the bigger picture.

What has your training looked like over the past few weeks or months? Have you increased the volume or intensity? How have you been sleeping? What’s happening in your life emotionally? Are you dealing with things that are taking up a lot of mental and emotional energy?

And if you’ve got a lot going on, you’re allowed to adjust your training.

You can lift less. Reduce your sets. Take a lighter week. Modify an exercise that aggravates your symptoms.

You don’t have to keep pushing at the same intensity regardless of what else is happening in your life.

Although I prescribe gradual increases in weight for your deadlift each week, you can always override my suggestions.

And I encourage you to do that.

You live in your body. I don’t. And I can’t know everything you have going on.

If you’re having a particularly stressful week, sleeping badly or feeling more fatigued than usual, you don’t have to increase the weight just because it’s what the programme says.

Tell me how you’re feeling, and we can adjust things.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do for your training is to recognise that your body is managing a lot outside of your lifting, too.

We’re not just training muscles. We’re training human beings who have entire lives happening around them.

And good training takes that into account. 💪

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17/10/2026

I heard something on a podcast last night that really made me stop and listen:

“If you’re exhausted or depleted, it means you’re doing too many things that are not meant for you to do.”

And as a solo mum and business owner who has carried so much of the load on my own for a long time, I understood what this meant straight away.

I don’t feel depleted by my work. I feel energised after every session, whether it’s healing work or personal training.

And I’ve never felt depleted by parenting my daughter on my own.

It’s the extra obligations that drain me.

Being constantly asked by my daughter’s school to volunteer, provide transport or contribute baking. Being asked to give my time and energy to her Scout group or her Gangshow production.

I’m learning to say no to these things. To recognise that they don’t fill me with enthusiasm, and they aren’t necessarily mine to do.

In the past, I’ve said yes out of guilt and obligation. Because I thought that was part of being a good mum.

Even though these things didn’t bring me joy or excitement.

And the funny thing is, my daughter didn’t even want me to do them. She wanted some time to spend independently of me.

Recently, I was talking to another dad at Scouts who told me about working night shifts and how that had allowed him to show up for school events. He was often one of the only dads there, and being able to show up in that way brought him a lot of joy.

And I get that. I can understand how meaningful it would be to have the time and opportunity to be that present, and how much he enjoyed it.

But our circumstances are different.

He isn’t parenting on his own. He has a partner, and that relationship gives him space and support to do things like that.

When you’re a solo parent, there isn’t someone else sharing the load or picking up the pieces while you give your time and energy elsewhere.

And I think that’s an important distinction.

It’s not that volunteering is wrong, or that showing up for school events isn’t valuable. It’s that we each have different capacities, different circumstances and different things that genuinely bring us joy.

What energises one person can deplete another.

And we don’t all have the same amount of time, energy or support available to us.

I also feel depleted when I’m the only one doing the household chores, when I’m the only one cooking.

But when I ask my daughter or my stepdad, who has moved in with us, to take responsibility for cooking, they actually enjoy it. It energises them in a way that it depletes me.

So why was I automatically taking responsibility for it?

Sometimes we fill our lives with so many things that don’t really matter to us. Maybe because we think that if we don’t do them, who will?

But what if we’re doing things that aren’t ours to do?

What if, by always stepping up, we’re preventing someone else who would genuinely enjoy those things from stepping into the role?

Maybe me volunteering for Scouts is preventing someone else from taking that role.

Maybe the role needs to remain unfilled for a while, so the right person has the opportunity to find their way to it.

Maybe things don’t always need us to step in and fix them.

I think we can become so accustomed to being the capable one, the dependable one, the person who makes things happen, that we forget we actually have a choice.

Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we have to.

And just because someone asks doesn’t mean we’re obligated to say yes.

I’m learning to pay attention to the difference between the tiredness that comes from doing something meaningful and the depletion that comes from continually giving myself to things that don’t feel right for me.

Because my time and energy are finite.

And I want to spend them on the things that matter to me.

Not just on the things I feel an obligation to do.

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16/10/2026

Yes, lifting heavy is important. AND I never throw anyone into lifting heavy right away.

Starting light is important for learning technique. By the time you get to loads that are truly challenging for you, you've done a gradual build up over a few months, to prepare your body to lift heavy.

14/10/2026

There is NO magic bullet for aging.⁠
⁠
BUT:⁠
⁠
💪🏻 lifting weights⁠
🥩 eating protein⁠
🥦 getting fiber⁠
🚶🏼‍♀️ walking often⁠
😴 getting enough sleep⁠
⁠..are about as close as you can get.⁠
⁠
Gimme a 🙌🏻 if you agree!

13/10/2026

Haha, creatine is another thing that only works if you're consistent with it.

12/10/2026

Yes. Heavy if relative.

Also, as women, our cycle affects our lifting quite a bit.

I find that right before my period, even the warm up weights feel heavy.

This is completely normal. We are not robots.

⚖️ HEAVY IS RELATIVE

A weight does not exist in a vacuum.

What feels heavy for one person may be a warm-up for someone else.

And what feels easy for you today may have been extremely challenging a year ago.

That is why comparing plates without context tells you very little. 💭

Training experience matters.

Body size matters.

Technique matters.

The exercise matters.

Rep range matters.

Fatigue matters.

Even how you feel on that particular day can affect performance.

A 60 kg squat can be brutally difficult for one lifter and relatively easy for another.

Neither person needs to be embarrassed.

They are simply training from different starting points.

The useful question is not:

“Is this weight heavy compared with everyone else?”

It is:

“Is this an appropriate challenge for me?” 🎯

Can you control it?

Can you maintain solid technique?

Is the set difficult enough to support your goal?

Can you recover from it?

Are you gradually improving over time?

Those questions matter much more than the number someone else has on their bar.

The gym becomes a lot more productive when you stop using other people's loads as your standard.

Use your own logbook.

Compare today's performance with your past performance.

If 40 kg became 50 kg with better form, that matters.

If the same weight now gives you three more quality repetitions, that matters too. 📈

You do not need to lift what looks impressive.

You need to lift what helps YOU progress.

Heavy is relative.

Your progress is personal. 💪

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10/10/2026

Lol! Yep, more afraid of losing muscle mass than being single.

Some women are afraid of being alone.

Others are just afraid of losing their muscle mass. 😂

Because once you’ve worked hard to build strength, muscle, and confidence, you’re not about to give it up without a fight.

Strong muscles. Strong bones. Strong women.

Who’s more afraid of losing muscle than being single? 😂💪

09/10/2026

I put one of my workouts (which is very similar to what we do in class) into AI to ask for feedback.

This is what it said:

“This is an exceptionally comprehensive, well-structured, and efficient workout. You have built a textbook, high-quality training session.

From a sports science perspective, you aren't wasting time on endless, junk-volume sets. Instead, you have chosen high-yield exercises and framed them with proper injury prevention and recovery habits.”

Good to know!

Send a message to learn more

09/10/2026

NEW WEDNESDAY 11:30AM — MINDFUL MOBILITY & STILLNESS

I’m changing my Wednesday 11:30am class from Accessible Strength to something a little different.

Mindful Mobility & Stillness.

This is for those weeks when you don’t feel up to lifting, but you still want to move, stay consistent and take care of your body.

Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you’ve had a stressful week. Maybe your body just isn’t feeling ready for heavy lifting.

You don’t have to skip training altogether.

A deload week can be really beneficial when you train consistently, and this class gives you somewhere to go when you want to keep moving without adding more load.

It’s also great as active recovery between your lifting days — giving you some movement, mobility and body awareness without another heavy strength session.

And if you’re not quite ready for strength training yet, it’s a great place to start. You can learn to move well, build confidence in your body and start listening to what you actually need.

✨ Gentle, intentional movement
✨ Mobility and deeper body awareness
✨ Moving without needing to push yourself
✨ Learning to work with your body rather than against it

We’ll finish with a long relaxation, incorporating some techniques from Embodied Processing to help you slow down, connect with your body and create some space to release stress and whatever else you might be carrying.

It’s about recognising that sometimes your body needs something different.

Heavy lifting is really beneficial, but recovery and rest are
important too.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is slow down, listen and move differently.

Wednesday 11:30am

Starts this Wednesday.

Mindful Mobility & Stillness. ❤️

Send a message to learn more