Lucy

Lucy West, from Trentham, has launched a new business to help pregnant women and new mums keep active.

Offering online training sessions and healthy recipes, Lucy wants to help mums fit exercise into their routine in a way they enjoy.

We had a chat with Lucy about what inspired her to help other mums, as well as her own experiences with physical activity.

How did you first get into fitness?

“So, I’ve always been interested in sports, and in my early twenties I started to get into bodybuilding as I always liked to be healthy and fit.

I always loved learning about food, food groups, how the body worked. I was starting to train in the gym, picked up a bodybuilding magazine from a local WH Smith’s and just really found my way through that avenue.

Then me and my twin sister started a joint Instagram account; back in the days when it was very new, and I didn’t actually know what Instagram was! We were quickly approached by Myprotein to become athletes for them, and it just went from there really. Since then, I’ve gained all my qualifications as well, and worked as a personal trainer.”

Can you tell us a bit about your ‘Workout with Lucy- Pregnancy and Postnatal’ sessions?

“I’ve always been interested in fitness – super passionate about understanding how the body works – energy systems, how it responds to exercise, training, making it feel strong.

I just love everything about it. In my mid-twenties I started doing bodybuilding and from there I created a joint Instagram account with my twin sister, where we shared our love of training, and inspiring people to get fit. And it just moved forward into personal training, myself, and then to present-day where I run my online group for pregnant women and mums.

The sessions are great, there’s three sessions a week where I go live and if you can’t catch them live, they’re available for up to 30 days, so nobody misses out. They’re recorded, so they’re in real time if you jump on at a later time. You also get a recipe once a week and a stretch and relax session.

I also do goal setting, Motivation Monday, and a few other bits and pieces to keep everybody on board. The reason why I did it was because I really wanted somewhere to reach as any women as possible. Online just seemed the best way to do it!”

What inspired you to create these sessions?

“I was inspired to do it because I spent a little bit of time chatting to my friends who are mums. I realised that it was a very real struggle getting out the house, on your own, with the baby, and getting somewhere you could exercise.

You can obviously walk with your baby and go swimming, but it’s not necessarily feasible to do those things all the time. And you can rely heavily on other people having the baby for a bit of time to be able to get out of the house. So, I was totally inspired by creating something that all mums and pregnant women could access and do from home.”

What do you think are the main barriers to pregnant people and new mums being active? How can that be overcome?

“The main barriers for pregnant women when it comes to exercise is probably lack of information out there. And I guess, old rumours and myths about moving too much when you’re pregnant, and having to rest a lot; things like that. A lot of women now, in 2023, are unsure whether it’s safe to exercise during pregnancy.

As long as you haven’t got any medical conditions and your doctor said it’s okay, you absolutely can continue to exercise. Some things obviously are a no-no like boxing, or physical contact sports like rugby. But most exercising is safe to continue to do. I think another barrier is women not knowing what is safe; it’s a lack of knowledge as well. So we’ve just got a bit of catching up to do.

I think it can be overcome in two ways. I think anyone who’s pregnant needs to take responsibility themselves to do their research, and reach out to professionals and to do what they advise. And maybe it’s also down to the responsibility of systems in place. For example, doctors, hospitals, maternity units, midwives.

They should be advising women about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy and be able to point them in the right direction. It’d be great to have some free groups available, or even just leaflets. There’s quite a few things we could do there!”