The area you've been managing around

Hi Reader

There is a part of the body that most active women have learned to manage around rather than through. The pelvic floor. Not ignored exactly — but not listened to either. Adjusted for, accommodated, quietly negotiated with every time they head to the gym or the track or the studio.

​I spoke recently with Vicki Causer, a women's health coach who specialises in pelvic health and movement. What struck me most in our conversation was not the clinical detail — though there was plenty of it — but how consistent the pattern is. Women who are highly capable, highly active, deeply invested in their health, and yet carrying an issue in this one region that is quietly costing them. Confidence. Certain exercises. Sometimes training altogether.

The Guardian recently published a piece pointing out that elite female athletes are actually more likely to experience urinary incontinence than sedentary women — and that the vast majority never seek help. They laugh it off. They work around it. They absorb it as the cost of training hard.

Vicki made a point that I think about a lot in my own work. The pelvic floor is not separate from the rest of what is going on. It does not exist in isolation from stress, from sleep, from the breath, from the emotional weight that high-functioning women carry and rarely put down. The women who come to her are not failing at fitness. They are succeeding at everything except listening to this one specific region that holds a great deal more than most people realise.

The first thing Vicki does with every client is get them to breathe. Not into the chest — into the body. Down into the place that has been held tight, managed around, disconnected from. That is where the work begins.

If there is something in this region that you have been quietly negotiating with — and that you have been telling yourself is just how it is now — it is worth a conversation. Not because something is wrong with you. Because it does not have to stay this way.

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​If you would like to work with Vicki Causer, you can find her on Instagram at @realstrongwomen.

If you are training consistently but finding that your energy, strength or focus feel unpredictable — working with a coach who understands the full picture can change that. My 1:1 spaces in my South East London studio are open. You can find out more here.

Seema x

PS

If you would like to read my weekly reflections on movement, ADHD and strategies, you can follow my substack. Here is the link for you.​