Six Weeks To Fitness

Kelly Bryant is the creator and founder of Kelly Bryant Wellness. She is a Yoga instructor, Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT), and a Pilate's instructor. Kelly is passionate about helping women through every stage of life, from prenatal to postmenopausal. Before quitting her job to travel the world in 2016, she worked at health & fitness startup, Noom, where she led content and community marketing efforts and soaked up everything she could learn about psychology and behavior change.

Journey into Health

Kelly grew up in Stuart, Florida. She was not an active child. She considered herself more of a book nerd than athletic. Rather than go outside and play, Kelly would go to the library and read books. She credits her being a nerd as the reason why she has been able to help people understand anatomy and the science of why they feel the way they feel.

Kelly attended college in New York City, and after college, she landed a job in Marketing at Noom, a health and fitness startup company. Working at Noom is fine when you are in your 20s, recalled Kelly, "but it is a recipe for burn-out." The stress from working at Noom and the pain she felt in her back, neck, and shoulder from a previous injury she sustained when she broke her collar bone at 16, led her to try yoga. Yoga not only relieved the pain but gave her balance and calmed the nervous system, and helped her to relax.

Expert in Prenatal and Postpartum Fitness

As with most women who become experts in prenatal and postpartum fitness, Kelly had to figure it out herself. She went online to Google and researched "what are safe prenatal exercises", and to her surprise, the information she received on Google was not acceptable. Kelly then went back to studying and listening to doula podcasts, childbirth educators, and to people who are teaching the physiological aspect of childbirth. She studied information on the nervous system, anatomy, and breath, merging this information for herself first and then for her clients.

Kelly's personal experience with pregnancy changed the way she approaches prenatal and postpartum fitness for her clients. "One of the mistakes pregnant people make is to assume that if they train hard when they're pregnant, that type of training will help them recover faster after pregnancy," stated Kelly. Kelly believes that is the opposite of what happens.

Kelly approaches prenatal fitness with "building a foundation from the ground up so you can look at what you need to do to support the easiest birth possible because the easiest birth possible is what is going to help you recover the fastest."

Kelly Bryant Wellness Classes

Kelly trains some of her clients on a one on one basis, but most of her training is self-guided and guided digital programming for prenatal and postpartum. Kelly's postpartum training is usually done in small groups, which Kelly believes is vital, especially now during the pandemic, to provide support.

COVID-19 and Kelly Bryant Wellness

As of December 2019, most of Kelly's business was online, so when the pandemic hit, it did not affect her business. It has been a problem for people looking to purchase online equipment such as webcams and digital microphones. These items are either sold out or purchased at a much higher price due to price gouging.

Kelly doesn't consider herself to be a "life-long trainer." Some of her prenatal clients will work with her for about 9 months during the pregnancy and then 3 to 9 months postpartum before going back to their usual training routine. She also has clients that will stay longer 3 to 9 months, participating in the online yoga and Pilate's program.

Kelly believes that postpartum fitness is similar to aging, where you reach a certain age and potentially lost a lot of muscle, have aches and pains, and bad postural habits that create a lot of pain.

Kelly's Unique Guarantee

On Kelly Bryant's website (www.kellybryantwellness.com), she has the following guarantee: "You will feel better, stronger, and more pain-free after 2 months with me or your money back". Kelly stands by that guarantee and as of this writing, not one client has asked for their money back. Kelly must be doing something right!

Direct download: Episode_152_Interview_with_Kelly_Bryant.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:54pm EDT

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