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“This is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself,” says Roxana Nelson, mother of three, between sets of reverse lunges and inverted ring rows.
Although I’ve identified myself as a token non-mom journalist, I feel confident she doesn’t say this for my benefit. I overhear her from across the room, where I’m struggling through one-legged hip thrusts. She is chatting with another mom in the weight rack beside her, both of them smiling as they sweat.
Nelson drove all the way from Tigard to come here, which, with traffic, took an hour and 15 minutes. She arrived late, cutting her workout in half. Still, as we linger, sipping our water after class, she tells me, “This was the best part of my week.”
The “this” Nelson means is Mother Made Strength Training, the brainchild of Rachel Wilkinson, a certified physical therapist and longtime strength coach. (Along with group classes, Wilkinson also offers individualized PT and personal training sessions for individuals and couples.)
Mother Made is an hourlong class held four times a week (two mornings and two afternoons) at two Northeast Portland locations: Village Fit (4016 NE Fremont St., 503-386-9788, villagefitpdx.com) and Vive Fitness (1969 NE 42nd Ave., 503-894-8981, vivefitnesspdx.com). Moms and moms-to-be alike are welcome, and generally, once someone shows up, they keep coming. Among the half-dozen women I worked out with, the newest lifter had already been in class for four months.
Wilkinson got the idea for a mom-specific group strength class while she was pregnant with her firstborn, who’s now 4 years old. (With her husband traveling for the week, Wilkinson’s 18-month-old clung to her neck in class as she readied equipment and demonstrated moves.)
Pregnancy taught Wilkinson just how overwhelming and contradictory the messaging can be for new moms. “I need to do pelvic floor rehab; I can only do Pilates; I can never run again,” Wilkinson says to me in a phone interview, explaining her clients’ worries.“Women who are coming out of having a baby, they want to start to feel strong again, and they don’t know where to start.”
Wilkinson knew she had the experience to get moms feeling like their old selves again—but even stronger. So she set out to create a “well-rounded strength program, something you can do a couple of times a week. Nothing like that really existed,” she says.
Wilkinson crafts each workout to be both accessible and efficient, with modifications available depending on where each mom is in her journey. “Every workout addresses all the major muscle groups,” she says, “because I know how busy moms are and they need to be efficient in their training.”
Like any great personal trainer will push their clients to do, Wilkinson met her goal and then surpassed it. Today Mother Made is more than a workout (though it’s certainly that, too). Despite two decades of gym experience, my muscles were shaking after an hour of perfect-form focus on classic compound exercises like pause push-ups and plank plate walkovers.
But don’t get it twisted. Many moms show up without a lick of lifting experience. “We start from scratch,” Wilkinson says. “New lifters get better really quickly, which is really gratifying.”
Still, the real key is the community. Along with weekly sweat sessions, Mother Made moms get together for occasional happy hours and games of pickleball. This week they’ll send off a mom moving back to the East Coast over burgers and beers.
In other words, the class is about more than creating strong bodies; it’s a way to “create a village,” as Wilkinson puts it. Since it’s a strength circuit rather than cardio, moms can talk as they train, trading tips, encouragement and, of course, the occasional commiseration. (“So. Much. Sanitizing,” one mom says, discussing a recent poop-in-the-bathtub incident.)
Wilkinson hopes to expand her offerings soon, and has recently created another class, Strength Through Menopause, which she teaches right after the Mother Made session on Sundays at 9 am at Vive.
“At that 10 am transition, I have a majority of the women I’m coaching in one place,” Wilkinson says. A friend and client asked Wilkinson to pause in the between-class hustle.
“She was like, ‘Rachel, stop and look at how many women you have here right now and think about what you’ve done to create this community. That’s really cool.’”
Wilkinson agrees. “I have a newfound sense of autonomy and purpose within this group,” she says. “Everything my moms would say I’ve done for them, they’ve done for me tenfold.”