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Perinatal Health, Fitness, and Movement with Erica Ziel

Robert Sikes

• October 4th, 2021

Do you think pelvic floor dysfunction and urinary incontinence is a normal and acceptable part of pregnancy or being a woman in general? Erica Ziel is a Pilates master and her focus is on movement during the perinatal time.

Erica Ziel is a mom of three, an FDN Practitioner, certified personal trainer and Pilates instructor, health and nutrition coach, core exercise and pre/postnatal exercise specialist whose mission is to help women live a healthier life and heal their bodies through movement, wellness, intuition, and breathwork. She has morphed her education with her constant finding of research, and hands-on approach to teaching female clients. Erica is passionate about education surrounding wellness and taking a holistic approach to healing our bodies. She wants to inspire women to regain not only hope but also experience true, life-lasting results.

Erica is the founder and creator of Core Athletica®, The Core Rehab Program, Knocked-Up Fitness® prenatal membership, instruction trainer courses, and host of The Core Connections Podcast.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

Erica’s background in pilates and perinatal health and wellness and what drove her interest in these fields (1:34)
How Olympic lifting and learning the proper form helped to relieve chronic knee pain she had been experiencing since early childhood (2:57)
Pilates, what it means, and how it can be helpful to prevent and treat a number of ailments (6:42)
How Pilates differs from weight training in that it focuses on the connective tissues and the entire body (9:44)
The different types of Pilates machines and how they function (11:52)
How the body needs to adjust to doing Pilates at first and the fact that it’s a bit of a learning curve from traditional strength training (15:27)
The types of clients Erica works with, from 30-year-old mothers to women in their 50’s well out of their childbearing years, to women who have never had children (19:41)
What Erica believes are the main reasons for the ailments women are suffering from in their postpartum lives (25:45)
Diastasis recti, what it is, and how to prevent or treat it in postpartum women (29:45)
The importance of avoiding high impact exercise for the first six months postpartum because of the strain it puts on the pelvic floor (34:36)
The average length of time it takes to rehabilitate the pelvic floor and abdominal separation (37:51)
Breathwork and the benefits (42:04)
Things Erica recommends and implements on a daily basis to help improve posture (43:!6)
Inversion tables and their benefits (47:10)
Nutrition, digestion and core function (50:16)
Her battle with mold and the health issues she faced as a result (54:36)