Biography

Name: Jamie Victoria Guna
Occupation: Boxing and Yoga Instructor
Age: 28
Height: 1.58m
Weight: 53kg
Personal Trainer: John Cheah

After Jamie gave birth in July 2020, she knew she had to recover her pre-pregnancy fitness levels if she wanted to return to work. As a boxing and yoga instructor, Jamie was much fitter than average, teaching four boxing classes and two yoga classes a week.

However, pregnancy had weakened her core. She also experienced back pain, with a constant sciatica pinch due to an inflamed nerve in her SI / sacroiliac joint.

While her doctor had cleared her to exercise, she knew that she had a lot more to do to regain her strength, so that she could return to teaching without injuring herself.

“I wanted to recover to my pre-pregnancy fitness levels. My training is focused mainly on re-establishing my core and overall strength.”

She wanted to work with an experienced trainer who had experience training athletes and fitness professionals and started personal training sessions with John Cheah.

“Every post natal client is different, and because Jamie already had a very strong awareness, my job was to hold her accountable to not rushing the process,” said John.  At first, to mitigate her back issues, John provided Jamie with a few home exercises to start doing on her own to allow her pelvic floor to heal properly.

“Two months after birth, the uterus is still shrinking. You don’t want to do the wrong thing, in case you worsen the scar tissue.” 

When Jamie got back to the gym, John programmed a lot of tempo deadlift and squat work to help her create a strong base.

“Straight after giving birth, it was hard to even lift my bum off the floor. Deadlifts have been very effective in strengthening my posterior chain.” 

Another one of Jamie’s goals was to regain her pull-up strength as she had lost the ability to do pull-ups post pregnancy.  John worked on strengthening her lats to help Jamie get her pull ups back.

When Jamie could move with perfect control, they then started more complex movement to help her to use that base strength explosively as a boxing instructor.

These days, Jamie can comfortably deadlift 80kg, squat 60kg and execute 5 perfect pull-ups.

When we asked Jamie why she picked a male trainer instead of a female trainer to work with post-partum, she replied, “I did not think a female trainer would do a better job than John. I never doubted John’s ability to coach post-partum.”

“Training at Level is different because John has proven himself as a trainer who actually knows his stuff.”

These days, Jamie trains with her husband Marc, and together, they spur each other on, enjoying their “couple time” in the gym.

“It’s so easy to forget that you’re a couple after pregnancy. 

It’s nice to be able to step away from the baby and work on our relationship (and on our joint goals).”