The Missing Link in Midlife Fitness: Pelvic Floor Health with the Buff Muff's Kim Vopni

Kim Vopni (0:00)

As we approach and move beyond menopause, the change in estrogen levels is also another, that's often the straw that breaks the camel's back. The tissues lose, they become thinner, they're not as robust, not as resilient, they're drier, more irritated, and that can sometimes be what makes people more symptomatic.

It could be what contributes to the challenges appearing maybe for the first time, or making existing symptoms worse.

Hailey (0:28)

Hi everyone, my name is Hailey.

Laura (0:30)

And this is Laura.

Hailey (0:31)

And welcome to The Body Pod.

Here we go. Now we're recording. Welcome to The Body Pod, Kim. We are so excited to have you. I have to say, I was just in San Francisco last week at a longevity conference with Stacey. And she shouted you out like multiple times. This is what I love about Stacey. I think that she's just so good at like bringing everyone up with her.

And then I heard her just yesterday on her Instagram talking about pelvic floor. So I'm super stoked to be here because I would say this is the number one question that comes up with strength training. And just coming into this perimenopause, post-menopause world, where as we're all figuring out, it like everything changes. And we kind of have to get used to this, this new normal. So first of all, I'm dying to know how you got the name The Vagina Coach. How did you come to own that title and what reaction do you normally get? I'm going to say this really quick. I was in the car with my husband talking to someone on my team. And he's just driving me around. And I was like, no, we have the buff muff tomorrow, like the vagina girl. And he was like, what the hell are you talking about? Who are you having in your podcast? And I'm like, you don't understand, but we're all so excited. So how did that name come about?

Kim Vopni (2:11)

Well, yeah, it was a joke, honestly. Not a joke. It was an icebreaker for a talk that I was doing. And I have been in the pelvic floor space for just over 20 years. And I initially started with pregnant women and new moms because that's really the catalyst to what got me into this. I was afraid of tearing in childbirth. I actually grew up thinking I'm never having kids because I witnessed what my mom was going through. But then when I met my husband and decided we want to start a family, I was determined to have a different story than my mom.

I watched my sister-in-law give birth.

She had birth completely different to what you see in the media. They use midwives. So then the next year I was pregnant using midwives and I said, I really need to prevent tearing. I watched what happened to my mom and she recommended this product to me called the Epino, which is a biofeedback device from Germany. It helps women connect with their pelvic floor and understand how to contract the muscles, how to relax the muscles, which is of course very important when you're birthing a baby. You can also use it restoratively afterwards to help retrain the pelvic floor. Made sense to me. Being a personal trainer, the idea of stretching, strengthening, biofeedback all made sense to me. The principle of specificity, like I look at birth and say, okay, this is like a physical event we should be training for. Part of training is also the recovery you do after your event. This is the mindset I was in. I had a program called Prepare to Push, was really about helping empower women before they give birth, and we know pregnancy and childbirth are major contributors to pelvic floor dysfunction. So at the time, being a personal trainer, I also trained as a doula. I was known as the fitness doula, and I was working primarily in this prenatal postpartum space. I had another business called Belly Zinc, which still exists. I sold that company, but it was taking inspiration from other cultures around the world that really honor this process of postpartum recovery that we simply don't do very well in North America.

We looked at many cultures, but particularly Asia. I lived in Asia as a kid, as a teen, and they use wrapping, pelvic wrapping or belly binding, as they call it, as part of their recovery.

We took that inspiration, we made it a little bit more mainstream, coupled it with exercise, and that was our postpartum recovery piece. I was in that space for a while, and then I started to go through my perimenopause, shitstorm, excuse my language.