Beat your post-baby body blues
Buggyfit
Blitz
What is it: Buggyfit involves pushing your little’un around under the eye of a trainer. Session run on a drop-in basis, but ‘blitz’ events involve 4-5 sessions a week. “Buggyfit is suitable after the six-week postnatal check-up, but Buggyfit Blitz is recommended 16 weeks post-birth,” says Sally Owen, who runs blitzes in Richmond, Surrey.
Our new mama says: “With 10lb to shift but no willpower, Buggyfit Blitz was the kick I needed. My group had a fantastic camaraderie, and it was incredible to see my fitness improving. My baby seemed to enjoy it too. I came away from the week 3lb lighter and motivated.”
Best Thing: It’s affordable, sociable and fits in with your new life
See www.buggyfit.co.uk for trainers nationwide, sessions from £5. Sally Owen’s one-week blitz costs £25.
The Sunday Mirror Magazine (Celebs) – 8th November
Zest – May 2009
Zest’s
Features Editor, takes up Buggyfit.
“With my “mum tum” to get rid of and no time for the gym, Buggyfit at my local park is perfect for me. The instructor gets us power walking and jogging with our prams, then we do mini circuits of squats, lunges and moves with weighted balls. And it doesn’t matter if our babies cry, we can just feed them and rejoin the class. I always feel exhilarated afterwards”
For more information, visit www.buggyfit.co.uk
Zest – May 2009
Shape up… baby in tow!
There’s
nothing like warmer days – and lighter clothes – to get a girl thinking about
her post-pregnancy weight. Here’s how to tone up with no spare time.
Your body is an amazing thing – you’ve made, carried and nourished a beautiful baby for 40 weeks. But now he’s been safely delivered and is thriving in the outside world, it’s time to think about yourself again.
The approaching summer is a perfect incentive to tone up and start losing those extra baby pounds by following a sensible exercise regime.
Having a baby needn’t hold you back: an increasing number of gyms offer crèche facilities (usually for children over two) while specialist classes such as Buggyfit, where you do exercises with your pram, are springing up around the country.
Mother and Baby – May 2009
Bounce Total was nothing to sniff at
Mums
behaved more like their children to raise money for Comic relief yesterday.
Members of an exercise class for young mums in Cheltenham bounced their way to £400 as they covered five kilometres in a space hopper rally in Pittville Park.
The seven women hopped 100 metres each on the makeshift course in front of the Pump Rooms, taking it in turns until they had reached the full distance. Buggyfit instructor Karen Crockett said, “It was 50 metres downhill and 50 back up, and it was hard work on the uphill. I think some people didn’t realise how hard it would be, there’ll be some aching legs tomorrow.”
But with plenty of money raised Karen says it was all worth it.
She added: “It was really funny to see, and a few people in the park came to watch and some made a donation. We’re really pleased to have raised so much money and it was a great morning.”
Normally the mums would take part in Karen’s fitness classes which include walking and running and stretches with their babies in buggies.
For more information visit www.sharpfitness.co.uk or call Karen on 07887500642 .
Gloucestershire Echo – Saturday March 21st 2009
Telegraph Weekend – Saturday February 16 2008
Fitness
is a stroller in the park
Want to get back in shape after giving birth? For many mums, the solution is right in front of them.
After giving birth to a beautiful daughter, Dena Cates took a look at her body and was aghast at what she saw. “I felt wobbly, nasty, horrible and generally frumpy” the 34-year old Londoner says. But what to do about it?
She hated gyms and didn’t fancy yoga, pilates or any of the other indoor answers to postnatal fitness. So, in the end, she dived into a pool of naked irony by reaching for the symbol of her physical “ruin” – the baby buggy – and making it the tool of her salvation.
She joined thousands of other new mothers who were clawing their way back into shape at buggy fitness classes, wheeling a fully loaded push-chair through a series of fierce walks as the basis for a strenuous, muscle-toning work out.
Classes go on all year round, even in foul weather: modern buggies provide great protection for young children and many mothers are happy to throw on a coat and plough on.
Standing exercises are slotted in between up-tempo walks, often uphill, in moves designed to burn calories and strengthen muscles weakened by pregnancy and childbirth.
Emma Redding, who runs Buggyfit, one of the longest-established companies, is stunned at how quickly her enterprise has blossomed. She started her first class near Thame, Oxfordshire, in 2003 with no ambition beyond a small-town success. Then a women’s magazine mentioned her group as an example of new work-out regimes, adding that she operated “throughout the UK”.
“I didn’t,” says Emma. “I had three classes in sunny Oxfordshire, that’s all. But it booted me up the bottom because I started getting 150 e-mail inquiries a day.” Inspired and intrigued, she took professional business advice and has since set up 72 licensed classes throughout Britain, with more poised to open.
The truth is that good science lies behind these gently testing regimes. A survey for Mother and Baby magazine found that more than half of women felt “lonely and isolated” after giving birth. A study at Queensland University of Technology in Australia showed that women who took pram-pushing classes twice a week for three months shrugged off many of the symptoms of postnatal depression.
The regime tones the mother, introduces the newborn to the idea of exercise, gives a taste of the outdoors and throws in a bit of chat and childminding to boot. And it makes a great joke, turning the symbol of motherhood into freedom’s key.
“People look at us in the park all the time,” says Dena, “but they don’t laugh. They look at us as if to say: ‘Good on you.’”
Buggy fit charges £3-8 per session depending on region (01844 202081; www.buggyfit.co.uk).
Telegraph Weekend – Saturday February 16 2008