TRAINING THE FIT
BUSY MUM
WHAT YOU
NEED TO
KNOW
When it comes to training female clients you should take
a couple of unique factors into consideration.
WORDS: ROSEMARY MARCHESE
ow many times have you asked a female client ‘How are
you?’ and been met with the response ‘Really busy’? Yet
here they are, making the time to train with you in order to
achieve or maintain a fit and healthy body.
The concept of ‘having it all’ – a family, career and lifestyle
– has become a valued social norm in Western society. However,
simultaneously engaging in multiple roles means that many of your
female clients may be turning up to training feeling a little dishevelled
– if they turn up at all that is. Both media and academic worlds agree
that the ‘multiple role’ woman is a high achiever who is often trying to
tick all the criteria of ‘Superwoman’, a term we’ll explore in a moment.
Two significant factors that affect ‘fit busy mum’ training clients are
stress and the menstrual cycle.
H
The impact of stress on mums
Stress is often considered an inevitable outcome of multi-tasking. It
has been described as a heightened state of emotional or physical
arousal occurring when demands from the environment place
pressure on the individual’s ability to adapt. Fit mums engaging in
multiple roles fit this description. The mother, career woman, soccer
mum, wife/partner, homemaker and sister. Sound familiar? Small
bouts of stress can be protective to health, but chronic or prolonged
stress can create a physiological nightmare and increase the client’s
risk of coronary heart disease.
Stress has a negative impact on physical activity: it predicts less
physical activity and/or exercise or more sedentary behaviour. This
is true for both one-off situations, e.g. exams, and for the chronically
stressed populations, e.g. mother looking after child with a cancer
diagnosis. As women get older they are more likely to use exercise to
help them cope with stress. This is great news for the fit, busy, older
mum (or even grandmother), but the younger ‘fit busy mum’ is at risk of
struggling to keep up their exercise regime.
12 | NETWORK SPRING 2015