Meet Tess
Hi! I'm Tess Ajax, the founder of Intuitive Training and creator of The Core Recovery Course. I'm a certified Prenatal and Postpartum Personal Trainer, mom of two, and absolute movement nerd (especially when it comes to pelvic floors and natural movement).
My coaching approach blends evidence-based movement and pelvic floor health with a practical, compassionate, and playful mindset. I believe that community is a vital part of supporting a movement-rich motherhood, that all movement is good movement (and all bodies are good bodies!), and that your pelvic floor and core deserve so much more than a checked box saying you're "all clear" at a 6 week postpartum visit.
Whether you’re pregnant, newly postpartum, years into motherhood, or simply ready to reclaim your strength, I’m excited to meet you where you and build your strongest self yet.
Becoming a mother is easily the best thing I've ever done, and by far the hardest. It felt like a hazing.
As soon as I found out I was pregnant I started pursuing pregnancy and postpartum-specific training certifications. I planned on having an active and athletic pregnancy, a physiological unmedicated birth, and a dreamy oxytocin-laden postpartum experience. But that's not how this story goes.
After receiving a rare vasa previa diagnosis at the end of my first trimester, I felt extremely out of place and anxious in my body. Fast-forward a few months: I had a c-section, a healthy baby, a severely overactive pelvic floor, and debilitating postpartum depression. Even though I was a personal trainer pre-motherhood, the "just do it" approach to fitness I always used before wasn't working - sleep deprivation, post-surgery weakness, recently moving to Tucson without a support system, and the tectonic identity shift of becoming a mother rocked my world.
I found myself at a crossroads: I could let the barriers to exercise and the completely unrealistic “bounce back” expectations stand in my way, or I could explore movement within the real, messy, perfectly imperfect framework of motherhood...
What happened next changed my life, and may even change yours too.
once I realized that I didn't need a "perfect" schedule or "healed" body to start moving, I finally started to heal. I just needed to give myself permission to start where I was.
Throughout my life, I’ve been an amateur bodybuilder, a self-taught CrossFit athlete, a competitive cheerleader, a hiker, trail runner, fire staff dancer, kayaker, and a natural movement enthusiast. Flowing through these different modalities solidified my belief that movement should evolve with us, adapting to the shifting seasons of life.
And yet, it still took me nearly a year to let go of the unrealistic vision I had for what this stage of motherhood would look like. It wasn’t until I stopped trying to recreate the workout routines of my past that I could finally embrace a new, rewarding, and often challenging mode of exercise: moving with and alongside my children.
Cue the first session of The Core Recovery Course! What began as a small, five-person postpartum training group has since grown into a diverse, welcoming community of mothers showing up for themselves and each other, redefining what intentional movement during pregnancy and postpartum can truly look like.
Through Intuitive Training, I support women in building sustainable strength and creating a foundation that helps them move with confidence - whether that means getting up and down off the floor, running after toddlers, addressing low back pain or diastasis recti, or returning to the sports and activities that make you feel like you.
Because here’s what I know: there’s no single “right way” to exercise in motherhood. There’s no perfect program, no guaranteed nap schedule, and no magic fix to keep your baby or toddler content for the duration of your workout. There aren’t simply “safe” or “unsafe” movements if you’re navigating prolapse or pelvic floor symptoms. There's a lot that out of our control.
But what you can do is practice finding flexibility. You can learn to tune into your body with more awareness and patience, to notice and respond to your postpartum body with compassion, and take intentional steps to heal your pelvic floor and core in a community that gets it. You can discover what strength looks like for you right now and learn to trust that it's enough.
