Brianna Battles (00:01):

I was so desperately trying to hold onto who I was that for me, I'm going to maintain my routine. I'm going to maintain the weight, the set that I was lifting before. I'm going to keep lifting that load. I'm going to keep doing box jumps, I'm going to keep doing pull-ups, I'm going to keep lifting pretty heavy. I thought maintenance was going to be the thing that would be best, and I just didn't really realize that it was not so much of a, can I still do this? But should I, is it supportive of the body I'm in right now and the body I'm going to be in for the rest of my life?

Michelle MacDonald (00:46):

I found Brianna while I was looking for some resources for one of my beautiful clients that you will have heard earlier on in an earlier episode. Sarah and Brianna specializes in coaching programs for postpartum athletes, pregnant athletes as well. In fact, you can hit on to her website. She's got a ton of great courses that you can take. She has specific launches at two times zero as well if you want to save a little bit of money, but fabulous resource, whether you're a athlete or whether you're a coach. So I highly recommend that. And her focus really is on educating professionals, how to help athletes navigate the physical and the mental considerations of pregnancy as well as athletes themselves. She's a relentless, and I love that relentless advocate and she very relatable resource for women who want training during pregnancy. Like, hello, of course, it's one of our most powerful chapters in our lives and how to return sustainably to performance, to lifestyle, function, cure, all that stuff. A very, very passionate advocate for women's health in this specific chapter of our lives. And so without further ado, welcome to the show, Brianna.

Brianna Battles (02:05):

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. What an intro.

Michelle MacDonald (02:08):

Well, it is all you, girl. So I would love to know, and the audience would love to know, how did you get started? I know there's going to be a story, right? What's your origin story? Right? How'd you get started in this

Brianna Battles (02:20):

Niche? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I went to school for exercise science and my master's is in coaching. So I've always been in the fitness and coaching realm just in different capacities from collegiate coaching to corporate wellness, personal training, a little bit in between. And then when I became a mom for the first time 10 years ago, I was still competing and training a lot. And from CrossFit to power lifting to triathlons, kind of a little bit of everything at that time, I just realized that there was not a lot of information support for people like me where I didn't feel washed up. I didn't feel like my identity an athlete or my interest as an athlete had changed. I just was now also a mom. But that identity shift and that change in my body, my routine, my lifestyle, even my belief systems and my expectations all got turned upside down.

(03:16):

And when you're an athlete, you're used to a process, if I do this and this is going to be the result I get, and motherhood doesn't work like that. And so that really opened my eyes to really trying to learn more about what female athletes and their bodies and honestly what their life experiences are like and how they change during pregnancy and postpartum. And then giving them practical support. Because back then and still honestly, there's a lot of generic or really conservative information of don't get your heart rate over this. Don't lift over 20 pounds where we're kind of talking about pregnancy like they're injured or they're so fragile. But then on the other end of the spectrum, we see CrossFitters or Olympians or just people having more of an extreme approach where they're said, well, if you're doing it before you can keep doing it.

(04:04):

My wife dead lifted 400 pounds and when she went into labor the next day. So we have all of this mixed messaging and both are harmful. And the answer and the guidance and the nuance is of course in the messy middle. And that's what I try to talk about is the changes that happen physiologically to the body, what to expect there. I think we're also told if you are really healthy and fit and if you worked out then like, oh, you're just going to bounce right back and things are going to be so easy for you. But that's not necessarily how it goes either. So many variables, and I think that's really hard for athletes to adjust to. And it certainly was hard for me. I had an emergency C-section, and I feel like that just really shifted a lot of my belief systems around like, oh, okay, I guess it doesn't matter how healthy or fit or whatever.

(04:55):

There's again, just these other variables. And then I had a pretty significant diastasis, and at that time I was like, what has happened to my abs? I'm really lean, I'm really fit. I'm really strong, but why do I look different? And so being able to manage those expectations and have access to honestly really helpful and practical information was lacking significantly. So that got me really interested as a strength and conditioning coach into connecting those dots between what happens physiologically also with our psychology and how that influences everything. And then how all of that translates over into our performance goals, whether it's to train three days a week and feel really healthy in your body or it's to make a run for the Olympics. There just was not a lot of support for people like me.

Michelle MacDonald (05:45):

So you started when you were first pregnant, what support did you have? So what year are we talking about? First of all,

Brianna Battles (05:53):

I was 2013. Okay.

Michelle MacDonald (05:56):

Yeah, the darkness.

Brianna Battles (05:59):

Yeah, right. Social media certainly was not what it is or even that today, but then again, it wasn't that long ago when I really think about we should have access to more information. It was 2013, but we didn't. So there was just, again, that really conservative messaging or the more extreme belief systems and what was being shared on social media. And I think when you're an athlete, you automatically gravitate to the, well, I'm exempt from that stuff. That doesn't apply to me. And then we kind of create our own narrative and story about what it means to be healthy and fit, and then we create justifications for it. So you'll see.

Michelle MacDonald (06:41):

Did you have any guidance at all? No.

Brianna Battles (06:43):

No. Because again, everything was just like a do you listen to your body, do what you've always done, you're a badass, you're so fit, that baby's going to fly out and you're going to bounce back so fast. And that was the belief system that I held onto. So I justified all of my training because I'm like, well, this is what's healthy and best for my baby, but what I didn't know is just like, no, your entire body's literally changing. And I'm only five three and I grow really large humans. Unfortunately, my babies were like 10 pounds. So it's just we're like,

Michelle MacDonald (07:18):

Oh, that is heavy.

Brianna Battles (07:19):

Oh yeah, they're giant, giant little humans. So there was no talk though of a diastasis and what to expect with your abs changing. I was like, well, I have this flat stomach. I'm really strong. I have all of these things. So again, we just create this exemption attitude even if we don't need to.

Michelle MacDonald (07:39):

Gotcha. Were there some things, knowing what you know now and how you coach and coach other people to coach, knowing what you know now, were there some things that you did that would've been red flags, like, oh my gosh, I shouldn't have done that. Or was it just lucky for you that you had really bad diastasis or not bad? You can't say bad, but more extreme, right?

Brianna Battles (08:00):

Yeah, there was definitely a lot of contributing factors, but I think why I talked so much about the psychology was just like I was so desperately trying to hold onto who I was. That for me, I'm going to maintain my routine. I'm going to maintain the weight, the set that I was lifting before, I'm going to keep lifting that load. I'm going to keep doing box jumps, I'm going to keep doing pull-ups, I'm going to keep lifting pretty heavy. I thought maintenance was going to be the thing that would be best. And I just didn't really realize that it was not so much of a, can I still do this, but I, is it supportive of the body I'm in right now and the body I'm going to be in for the rest of my life? And I think that's the line I try to draw when I talk to athletes is it's not questioning your ability, it's just questioning does this serve you right now? And it's hard to have that I think.

Michelle MacDonald (08:58):

Well, it is incredibly nuanced and it's probably, this is a narrative that's being built as we speak literally. So you're laying down this incredible foundation, but there's always going to be that ongoing dialogue of and reassessment recalibration of how much of this is me reacting? How much of this is me being nuanced and smart? How much of this is conditioning that I'm not even aware of? How much of this is my environment? How much of this is the physiological uniqueness of my particular pregnancy? If you're making take down babies, for example,

Brianna Battles (09:35):

Yeah, there's so many nuances and then there's things that we just can't control. So I look at it like exercise is a gift. It's something that we can use as a tool, and it's something that we actually do have control of. When you're guided, when we could be really proactive and we actually know how to listen to our body or what we are listening for, which women have not been taught, we have not been taught about our abdominal wall, about our pelvic floor, about how that system changes, not just during pregnancy, but that can happen even if you haven't had a baby. There's so many women that have stress incontinence and they pee when they jump rope or when they sneeze, whether even if they haven't had a baby or maybe they experienced that in perimenopause or menopause, this conversation is so much greater than pregnancy and postpartum.

(10:19):

It's just truly understanding how fitness influences women's health from the inside out. And then using, for me anyway, I felt like pregnancy and postpartum, these particular seasons act as this catalyst where they really open your eyes, where you're forced to examine is my approach, is my belief system, is my training. Are all of these things truly supportive of my health, of my body, of my long-term fitness goals? How do I want to show up? And they just kind of expose all of our vulnerabilities and our strengths, just both. So they're seasons for more reasons than the baby itself.

Michelle MacDonald (10:57):

I love that. I wasn't even expecting that in this conversation, but as we're talking, I'm thinking of how relatable this is to the menopause journey.

Brianna Battles (11:04):

Yeah, funny because so many times I'm like, how did I end up working with pregnant postpartum athletes? I was like a strict conditioning bro, and I'm like, this is so niche, this is so feminine. But here's the thing. I care so much about female athletes, whether they're seven years old or 77 years old. And what I realized myself was that if I care about women pursuing a lifetime of athleticism like your mom, my mom, that are really able to pursue this big picture, longevity, quality of life, strength, health, fitness, all these things, so much of that gets exposed during pregnancy and postpartum in the approach, in the changes to our body, the changes to their brain chemistry so much is exposed during pregnancy and postpartum. So I look at it as a significant opportunity to really reassess, again, the training, my belief systems as it relates to food and fuel and training and over training, or maybe not training enough, just kind of depending where people are at and then their own symptoms and body because something like pelvic organ prolapse, that could be a symptom and an injury that they live with for a very long time.

(12:19):

Stress incontinence. We don't want to create vulnerabilities to the one body that we have because of our ego. That's really kind of what it comes down to sometimes when we justify our fitness choices during certain seasons and push boundaries when it's not a season to push boundaries in.

Michelle MacDonald (12:36):

Okay, let's start. We understand how you got started and you've been doing this for a while now. You've been certifying for a while and in great work I took one of your courses and it's very, it's so deep and robust. I can't recommend your work enough. So from the bottom of my heart, as somebody who also cares passionate about women's health, thank you so much. I know it goes into making these courses, it's a lot of work. So if we look at going into pregnancy as healthy as possible, let's talk about that. So let's try to cover, I want to cover some healthy approaches and then red flags that you need to adjust. This is the nuanced bit, and then we'll talk about labor and postpartum and what that looks like. So going into pregnancy, it's your first pregnancy or maybe it's your second pregnancy and the first one didn't go the way you wanted to. What are some things that you would give to the general population? And then if there's anything niche for particular people, like people that are at a very high level of athleticism, anything particular for them as well?

Brianna Battles (13:44):

Yeah, I think going into a pregnancy first or second, it's just really having an understanding of your body. Are you tracking your cycle? Do you really know when you're fertile? And do you have a period? Do you have a consistent period? What are your symptoms like around your period if you have any pelvic health symptoms? Getting that kind of baseline is really, really helpful. And a lot of female athletes struggle with a consistent period. Maybe they're under fueling over training. We say that a lot. So again, this is an opportunity when we're talking about preconception to say, what do I really want? I really want this baby. Then that means I probably need to address some of these health behaviors that aren't really supportive of what I actually want. So there's a lot of female athletes I work with that are like, okay, I know I'm not eating a lot, or I still have some eating disorder tendencies that come up for me.

(14:35):

Or a lot of body image, just like body image struggles. I'm really anxious about this. I'm really nervous about it. And so during that preconception, I want a baby, but I'm also afraid or I don't really know what to do, or I dunno if I can conceive. I think it's an opportunity to explore that a little bit, whether is with the help of a therapist, which was really helpful for me going into my second birth, was just honestly addressing the anxieties and maybe the trauma from the first birth. Feeling confident going into a pregnancy is such a gift. So utilizing the resources that you have and then getting that baseline of tendencies, and I can get really nerdy here, but there's a lot of people who they might be more predisposed to pelvic health symptoms. And so being able to undo some of our natural tendencies.

(15:24):

For example, if you're somebody who holds a lot of tension in your glutes or you're always squeezing and everything is really, really tight, retension suck in the stomach, squeeze the glutes all the time, that's a clue to me that the pelvic floor is also likely really tight and we'd have to teach it how to also down train, which just means how for it to be able to lengthen more. And we can use exercise as a tool to reinforce that, but then that would help with going through pregnancy, managing symptoms, and then even into delivery, which I know we're going to talk about. But it's little things like that really just kind of getting an idea of your body fueling appropriately and by appropriately, it's honestly just like enough where you're feeling really well, you have balanced hormones if you're into tracking macros, making sure that you do have enough fat in your diet. And I think that depending on, a lot of people have different biases and preferences here. So I won't get too far into the nutrition scope, but I think it's just an opportunity to really look at does my health lifestyle actually support my health?

Michelle MacDonald (16:29):

Yes, it's interesting. I usually send my clients to persistent nutrition who have a really great article on how much you need to consuming extra different trimesters. And it's very surprising, I think, to a lot of people how little you actually need to eat, especially when you start thinking of how little the little bean is in the beginning. And of course, there's autoregulation really, really encouraging that piece as well. And I think that's important to talk about too, because a lot of people don't understand this, and I know definitely we'll have a lot of clients that follow Mackers listening to this, but my hope is that this conversation will spread far and wide. And people that don't know about Mackers or don't know about precision nutrition or don't know about Brianna battles will be really curious about this, whether it's them or they have a daughter or a daughter-in-law, which is quite likely in this particular audience, right? Oh gosh. Actually you can eat in a very healthy way and approach optimizing your pregnancy through nutrition, especially when we're thinking about mood changes that could potentially happen, the normal changes in brain chemistry, brain functioning, and the two guys postpartum depression and gestational

Brianna Battles (17:47):

Diabetes. I mean, I think that it's really like with any coaching and with any kind of greater health conversation it's having as well-rounded and as holistic of an approach as possible. We cannot just help someone get healthier by giving them a set macro plan. You're like, well, there's also exercise and there's also sleep, and there's also hydration, and there's also your mental health and there's also your routine and your family support, and there's also financial considerations. There's so many considerations that go into the health of somebody's journey. And I think during pregnancy, there's going to be variables that are absolutely outside of their control. During the first trimester, they might be incredibly nauseous. They might be so fatigued that they're sidelined in a lot of ways, and that can be really triggering to feel lazy, especially for all of us high achieving routine and driven, I call it my athlete brain, humans that are like, this is not who I am.

(18:48):

I don't sit on the couch at 2:00 PM and just sit here. But there's going to be days throughout a pregnancy where you have to give yourself a lot of grace. Then also have what I like to call adaptable discipline, where you might not always feel like doing something, but doing a little bit of something is better than nothing. So it's like an all or something approach. And again, that level of grace, you can't expect your routine during pregnancy and your capacity to look like it did prior to getting pregnant or even compared to a previous pregnancy. It is all a new experience, and the body's going to do what the body is going to do, so we can just kind of work with the deck we've been dealt or the cards we've been dealt. What's that expression?

Michelle MacDonald (19:34):

Something like that. I, I'm so glad you brought that up about all of these different key components of going into pregnancy. And again, I think there's a lot of people that go into pregnancy not looking at things, not mapping the experience like that. So I want to highlight that, right? They're not thinking about getting steps in and doing some exercise on why they would do that and maybe doing some breath work or meditative work and how that could be conducive to optimizing your experience of pregnancy.

Brianna Battles (20:01):

It's just improve your baseline, right? Go in with as healthy of a baseline as possible if you can. And then during pregnancy, you can explore what it looks like to create a foundation too. I hate the myth, honestly, that is if you weren't doing it before, don't start doing it in your pregnancy. It's like, well, no, you can exercise. Exercise is going to be beneficial. How it is done is a whole different story. That's what determines everything is the approach. So I think there's, again, so much nuance in a lot of these significant generalizations that are given.

Michelle MacDonald (20:38):

So when you do your courses, for example, do you have a lot of people when they graduate that they advertiser certification and people could feel confident that they're actually going to guide you in the pregnant experience from a very science-based foundation?

Brianna Battles (21:00):

Yeah, absolutely. It's been really cool to see how this has evolved over the last almost six years now. We have coached 3000 coaches or right around there, all over the world that are certified through me and are applying this online in their local community or even a hybrid of the two. And all different backgrounds, not just personal trainers and coaches, but we have physical therapists, OBGYNs, midwives, doulas, different birth workers, massage therapists, and honestly, people that do significant career pivots or they just want to learn for themselves and then help out their sister, help out their friend. So I think we've realized what a significant gap there is and supporting women who really want to keep pursuing fitness through pregnancy and postpartum, and they're saying, hello, it's 2024. We're sick of this old, outdated or not relatable information. So yeah, I do identify more as an athlete than I do somebody who's going to go to this kind of class or participate in a more mediocre kind of fitness level.

(22:05):

So again, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just if we can have more professionals who know how to help an athlete that is exceptionally transferable, not just throughout different sports and fitness levels, but if you know how to coach somebody through pregnancy and postpartum, it's going to set you up to be able to help women in general. This is saving your daughters, this is helping your friends, this is helping your mom as she experienced as menopause and aging and beyond. If you know how to work with women and what their predispositions are, what their core and pelvic health considerations are, what their hormonal expectations and changes are, you are going to be set up in so many ways to support all women. And I think that's why I say so much that pregnancy and postpartum, these are catalyst seasons, not just for the person experiencing them, but for the person supporting that person for the coach who's supporting that person.

Michelle MacDonald (23:07):

Yeah, absolutely agree. Okay, so we've got trying to get pregnant. It's funny, I had somebody reach out for coaching and she said, I want to do a diet, but I also want to get pregnant. And I wrote back and I said, well, I think trying to get pregnant is a wonderful thing. You're a very normal body weight. I would recommend focusing on doing the things necessary to have a successful pregnancy. She was a late thirties girl and I never heard back again. So maybe she found somebody who was willing to diet her down even though she wanted to have a successful pregnancy, which I'm too honest. It's like I just can't do. We have to get clear. So for gals that want to get pregnant, I think very, very generally, making sure that you are tracking your cycle, really knowing, getting intimate, and everyone should do this, whether you're trying to get pregnant or not as somebody who's in menopause and the whole perimenopause experience, making sure that you are in tune with your cycle when you're ovulating and when you can expect mens to happen.

(24:14):

And also, do you have a lot of symptoms? Are you somebody that has a lot of symptoms? Does it seem like you might be hormone sensitive or that your cycle has a lot of extremes, like a lot of flux, or if there's just really every cycle is different if food or diet or stress or training are related to that. So that's really an important piece. And of course, make sure you're as healthy as possible. For all of us. It's the same, I think. What are your five kind of things that you want to gal to optimize if she's going to be really just base healthy, foundational health.

Brianna Battles (24:51):

Foundational health would be exercising in the way that she enjoys in the environment that she enjoys at least mostly frequently or consistently. I think being in maintenance, if she's tracking calories, I think that's typically good, but if somebody maybe does need to or wants to lose fat to get to healthier baseline length, that's okay too. So it's just kind figuring out a self-assessed nutrition thing versus giving a, I don't really want to give a one size fits all approach to that sleep stress in your life and just that understanding of what to expect when you're expecting. But from a core and pelvic health standpoint, what can you expect your body to experience? What are some things that happen to your body? We have so much information on the baby is now the size of a blueberry and is now this, and it's doing that. It's growing ears, and you're like ears, that's cool.

(25:56):

But there's not a lot of information on, well, what's normal for my body and what's changing here? And maybe when should I get help? So I think at a point in your pregnancy, typically I recommend this around the third trimester. If you can consult with a pelvic floor physical therapist or physiotherapist depending on where you live, that makes a significant difference because that, again, that kind of lets you know what your predispositions are. It gives the PT or the physio an idea of what your body is pregnant, what your symptoms are. Again, predispositions, all of these things really matter and then can give you some help and cues for birth. And so again, if you know that early on and you can see a pelvic floor PT on early on, great. If not, that can be done later.

Michelle MacDonald (26:41):

How would you know that have predispositions? Can you give us any kind of an idea? Is there something that's happening that you're like, oh, that might be an

Brianna Battles (26:49):

Issue? Yeah, so if you are somebody who pees, when you jump, run, sneeze, laugh really hard. That would be you experience incontinence if sex or insertion is painful, if you always really, really grip your glutes or grip your abs, and that's going to tell me if you're really tight pelvic floor, you'd want to learn how to not carry as much tension in your core system. So that's glutes, pelvic floor and abs, just being able to let it go, which is really hard for all of us who are type A, but also maybe aesthetically driven too, right? I'm not just going to let my stomach hang out.

Michelle MacDonald (27:27):

So wait a minute, is the coughing and incontinence, is that going hand in hand with that hypertonic pelvic floor?

Brianna Battles (27:35):

A lot of times,

Michelle MacDonald (27:36):

Yes. Interesting. But it also go along with prolapse and lack of,

Brianna Battles (27:41):

That can a lot, but you can have a really strong pelvic floor. And that can actually be what contributes to symptoms that can contribute to incontinence. Because if we look at it like a pelvic floor that is really tight and holding tension is like this. It's really gripping. And so when you add force for it to absorb or force for it to produce, it can't do that because it's a muscle where it needs to lengthen and it needs to contract in order to produce that force or absorb that force. And so when you sneeze, that's forceful. When you jump or when you lift really heavy and you're pulling a deadlift in the EP a little bit, it's like, ugh. And a lot of people feel ashamed because they think that it is like I have this weak pelvic floor, and that can be the case.

(28:28):

But for the most part, especially with our really fit population, it is a hypertonic, which just means tight pelvic floor. And so getting into positions where we are down training some of our natural tension and the tension we produce in exercise can have really significant pelvic floor health carry over. So again, recognizing this is not just a conversation for pregnancy and postpartum. This is my 20-year-old female athlete who's peeing and she plays D one basketball. So it's like if we can get ahead of this now with coaching women or raising women, it goes a really long

Michelle MacDonald (29:05):

Way. And then we get into menopause when that drop in estrogen can lead to, you're a genital issue

Brianna Battles (29:12):

Because in that hormones changes to the tissue and the structural health of the pelvic floor, and then you add. And so yes, prolapse from a vaginal birth can be really common. But then like you said, when now we have hormonal considerations, which of course there isn't postpartum two, but why we see this show up in perimenopause or menopause is like our Harmon health is going to affect our tissues and some of the structures. And if the pelvic floor already kind of has an injury or isn't working optimally to begin with, those symptoms might be exasperated during perimenopause and menopause. So that's why it's like this conversation, it's like postpartum, but these are the eyeopening catalyst seasons for knowing how to support women for their lifetime of athleticism, not just these particular chapters.

Michelle MacDonald (30:06):

So it almost sounds like it would be worthwhile for all of us gals to see some kind of a specialist. I mean, unless you're saying that this is something we can self-assess, but I mean, I want to go see a specialist now.

Brianna Battles (30:19):

Yeah. I think it's so beneficial because none of us have been taught about our pelvic health and so much of the fitness protocol, so much of the fitness research has only been done on men by men. And so we're frustrated out here saying, well, I don't know enough. Maybe we just are hyper-focused on ACL injuries with women or eating disorders. But it's like we're looking over the most significant difference between men and women, which is our pelvic health, our anatomy, and then how that's affected by training. We have totally looked over that in the research, in our certifications in our school. That's not part of it. So because that hasn't been taught to us professionally or personally, and there's a lot of shame, a lot of taboo, a lot of just, well, I don't want to be different. I don't want to be looked at as being different or being needy or whatever. We just haven't been taught about our bodies, so we don't even know what to expect. So then when you get into a season like pregnancy or postpartum where you're like, things have changed or they're changing, we don't even know. People don't know anything about their vagina until they're growing a baby. A lot of the times.