So why Birth&Beyond Fitness? Behold: the big gaping hole in strength training.
TW: pregnancy loss
Why did I focus my credentialing and launch my business to center and empower those preparing for pregnancy, experiencing it, or navigating postpartum life? What made me want to give women in general a safe space to thrive as they build strength?
With regard to training through and beyond pregnancy, I think what solidified things was the generally confused, even horrified look I got from most people when I asked them about working out while pregnant or mentioned I was still lifting and going to crossfit. Coaches, doctors, nurses, and midwives all gave conflicting information and sent my brain into a tizzy over what was appropriate. Meanwhile the pearl-clutching of people beyond medical or fitness expertise, well-meaning family members, friends, and even orchestra colleagues had me wanting to bang my head against the wall. I knew there was a lack of good information available, a proliferation of bad information guiding both experts and novices, and I knew I wanted to sort through the weeds and find a way to give others a better experience than I had across my four pregnancies. In terms of helping women build strength, well, have you ever looked at the weightroom in a gym? Notice who is there? Without being too crude, the standard image calls to mind a Flight of the Concords song “Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor.” So many women, myself included, stayed safely on the ellipticals and treadmills, most of of us too intimidated to break into the “bro-sesh” corner. As strength sports and strength focused training programs become more mainstream thanks to Crossfit and Bootcamp style gyms, yes, even you, Orange Theory, women are experiencing an amazing normalization of strength training, but we have such a long way to go.
The last five years in general have taught me so much through my own experiences with pregnancy, loss, and birth. I think a major source of frustration for me was the conflicting information I got from medical professionals and coaches. The going language from doctors is to stay active but keep from lifting anything over thirty pounds and for heaven’s sake don’t get your heartrate up. My friends, a standard empty barbell weighs more than thirty pounds! When my doctor recited this number and I mentioned this simple fact, her eyes got wide. When I told her some of my lift numbers, she simply stared at me and told me to do “whatever felt right.” Great advice, babe. Thanks.
Feedback from coaches was more encouraging but inconsistent. The coaches only learned of my first two pregnancies after I had lost them in part due to rolling lockdowns in 2020. For the third go round, I was extremely fortunate that one of the coaches at my gym (and a former owner) was not only pregnant at the same time as I was with our Daughter in 2021, but we also shared a due date. This coach had done some homework on how to manage her fitness for her own experience, and I made it a point to prioritize classes she was leading for the best modifications our gym could offer. (Yes I lifted more than thirty pounds the whole time!) Other coaches did their best, but there were a lot of stabs in the dark and confused “hmmmmm” reactions when I asked for modifications.
My first experience with training the Birthfit Basics actually wasn’t: I am of the belief that in times of great personal difficulty, you need and get “that one person” to talk to, and after my first loss, it came tumbling out in a moment of sadness to a dear friend. We had told no one, taking a “good news only” approach with our family, and with the isolation that came with our lockdown that year, it was easy to keep things secret. At the time, I had no idea my friend was expecting, and she was afraid to tell me at first thinking it would make me more sad. When she told me and also shared that she was having trouble finding success in her workouts, I directed her to the Birthfit program that I recalled from my days in Austin. When we learned we were again pregnant later that fall, I nervously shared the news with my friend who immediately sent me a shareable training program she had somehow earned. I never got to start it as we lost that baby rather quickly, and by the time we learned of our third pregnancy I was too superstitious to start the programming. It was too close to the pain of my second loss, and I let the invitation gather dust. As things progressed and my Husband and I allowed ourselves to hope, I remembered a good deal of broad strokes I had witnessed at LIFT back in Austin with Coach Jen leading women through strength training in the early days of Birthfit, but I wasn’t sure how to incorporate the things I remembered and mostly left the movements rumbling around in my head, focusing instead on the advice given to me in person at my home gym.
Following the birth of our Daughter in spring of 2022, I took seriously the reading I had done regarding early postpartum movement as well as the counsel of our Doula who urged me to take things slowly. The standard advice on returning to physical activity is to wait until being cleared by a physician at the six week check up. I did return to the gym after six weeks but took things very slowly, starting with only two workouts each week and modifying/avoiding many movements as I allowed my body to continue healing, but I was still flying blind in terms of knowing exactly what or how to modify things and mostly working out using . By Christmastime I was starting to feel strong enough to push for a little more intensity though I still had not reincorporated any high skill gymnastics movements or large volume jumping and running into my workouts, and then in early March, right as our growing baby girl hit eleven months, wham! We learned her Brother was on the way before my body had time to fully heal.
The findings of a decades-long study involving 300,000 women revealed that the female body takes far longer than a mere six weeks to stabilize, something many women will attest to anecdotally. You can read a summary of the study here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-do-pregnancy-and-birth-affect-the-body/
The lead up to our Son was different from his Sister in a couple of significant ways, mainly that I was still recovering from her birth, but also we allowed ourselves more optimism this time around. I also continued training after learning we were pregnant through first trimester nausea. With his Sister, I was so ill I stayed out of the gym until my second trimester. Things were also different at my gym which had undergone a change of ownership. There were new coaches to run modifications by, again with mixed results. I leaned into my previous experience and in many cases either made up or talked through my own modifications. After his birth in 2023, I again waited until after my six week appointment but this time, I had the advantage of a real live Birthfit Coach in my backyard! A former weightlifting coach from a neighboring gym had gotten her certification and I signed up for her first postpartum series. It was game-changing for both my experience and my mindset, AND it put me in community with other people working through the same stage of life with all its many ups and downs.
Working through the Birthfit movements in a small group setting was huge for me and convinced me I needed to focus my work on this niche demographic. It sounds ridiculous, birth is central to our continued existence as human beings and yet the process of it confounds when it comes to exercise. Here’s what I’ve learned across all of this:
Training while trying to conceive, pregnant, and postpartum is an essential piece of the puzzle when preparing for the “most athletic event of your life.” But these are unique periods that require special consideration, some movements will need to take a break during pregnancy and be introduced gradually postpartum, but we are not fragile flowers that need to sit the whole thing out.
Honoring the fourth trimester time is of enormous importance in postpartum recovery. Focusing on bonding with baby, eating nourishing meals, hydrating, breathwork, and getting some outside time/gentle movement are more important than forcing yourself back into the gym in this moment.
Strength training through pregnancy can help lower the risk of gestational diabetes, manage blood pressure, and lead to a safer labor and delivery for both Mama and baby among other benefits. (Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38912201/ )
Loading (the weights we lift) is relative to where someone is beginning, but strength training is beneficial for everyone at any stage of life, and it’s never too late to start.
There are SO MANY misconceptions around core and pelvic floor strength/health. (No, doing your kegels isn’t cutting it and may worsen existing problems by only focusing on one small portion of your pelvic floor)
Continuing to build strength in order to maintain muscle mass and bone density as we age allows us to keep chasing after and caring for growing children, pets, aging parents, etc. By lifting today we are investing in a safer, healthier, happier future for ourselves. Whether you’ve had children, never had children, or never intend to, this part rings true for all of us.
In future blogs, I will address more specifically how I altered my training and nutrition in my season of preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum, but my broad takeaway from my experiences showed me the cracks in the system so to speak. Our medical professionals seem afraid to consider that our bodies are capable of more, that a strong body headed into the process of conceiving, bringing to term, birthing, and then recovering from the birth of a child benefits the entire process. Therefore they retreat to the extremes, telling patients to keep under thirty pounds (try sticking to only carrying under thirty pounds while pregnant with a toddler and all the gear, I really don’t think it’s possible!) and stick to gentle walks a few times per week. Then, in postpartum, the six week “check up” feels more like a “check off” box. All of the build up and careful monitoring, the action of labor and delivery, and boom, you are told you are good to go to resume all prior activities when your body is screaming “hey! I’m still healing! Guidance, please!” Meanwhile, my coaches were excited for me but in many cases unsure how best to direct me to practical and useful modifications as my body changed which resulted in me often making my own decisions about movements.
Strength training for conception, through pregnancy and then postpartum is a relatively new concept, but then again, functional strength for women as a mainstream focus is also new within the last couple decades. I really have to credit Crossfit with introducing women to strength sports and making it more culturally acceptable for female bodies to train in this way. Now, as the first generation of elite female crossfit athletes begin to have children, we are starting to see a normalization of strength training through pregnancy, something that was quite shocking even five or ten years ago. While the Birthfit movements are not a part of Crossfit (the organizations are not professionally related to one another in spite of similar sounding names), they owe a lot to that methodology while also incorporating breath and mobility. In my own experience, I have come to believe that the intersection of these two programs offer a beautiful roadmap for any person, from total beginner to seasoned athlete, to prepare for pregnancy, work through it, recover from giving birth, and thrive in life BEYOND.
I’m here to bring change to the way in which we prepare for this season and to disrupt the way in which we understand how pregnant and postpartum bodies “should” train. A glance at coaches in the Birthfit Directory reveals how small this movement still is. In North County San Diego, I am one of I think TWO Birthfit coaches at present, (there are a few people listed as leaders, a different classification). This is an area with a population of 1.2 million people, and there are exactly two of us who have undertaken specific training to coach people wishing to become pregnant or who are experiencing any stage related to that journey. Now consider the dozens of crossfit boxes, bootcamps, and globo-gyms in the same area all staffed with coaches leading classes, personal training, and working with athletes. What are these spaces doing to maximize training for their pregnant and postpartum poulations? How are the adapting workouts for these people? In most cases, I suspect the intentions of the coaches are solid but they are also at a loss to offer knowledgable guidance here. It’s a glaring disconnect, but I’m working hard to help people have access to the training that will help them navigate their training in a way that will set them up for success during a time of huge transformation in their bodies. It’s daunting. It’s a huge task, but hey, challenge accepted. This work is what I’ve been training for, and I’m so grateful to be doing it.
