AUTO-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Brianna Battles  00:01

Brian, welcome to the Practice Brave podcast. I am the host, Brianna Battles, founder of Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism, and CEO of Everyday Battles. I’m a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, mom of two wild little boys, and a lifelong athlete. I believe that athleticism does not end when motherhood begins, and this podcast is dedicated to coaching you by providing meaningful conversations, insights, and interview topics related to fitness, mindset, parenting, and of course all the nuances of pregnancy and postpartum, from expert interviews to engaging conversations and reflections. This podcast is your trustworthy, relatable resource for learning how to practice brave through every season in your life. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Practice Brave podcast. Today, I’m here with Delaney Nelson, and you might know her from Instagram as the Hybrid Twin Mama. Did I get that right?

Delaney Nelson  01:01

You did.

Brianna Battles  01:01

Awesome, it’s today. We’re gonna be talking a little bit about High Rocks, about twin boy life, and the evolution of being an athlete, being a mom, becoming a coach, and how all of these things have transitioned and complemented one another at different points in life. So, Delaney, thanks so much for being here.

Delaney Nelson  01:20

Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Brianna Battles  01:22

So, give us a little bit of your background and just where you’re at in life.

Delaney Nelson  01:27

Yeah, absolutely. Oh gosh, I’m a mom to twin boys. They are five, and obviously they’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to us, but they were the biggest shock of our life, and I think most people with twins probably would, or multiples, probably agree to that they were natural. We had no, like, they do not run on our family, so it was.. I always joke if they were COVID babies. So I always joke, I’m so glad my husband was at the appointment, because he would not have believed that, like, I was pregnant with twins until I looked like I was pregnant with twins. And yeah, so I was became a twin mom, and honestly, I think anytime, whether you have one, whether you have three, it’s a whole identity crisis, and that’s probably not the right word, but it’s trying to determine what this next phase of life looks like, and as of the corporate world, I thought I was just going to continue to kind of move up the ladder in that realm, and when you have, you know, two sets of eyes staring up at you, and everything you thought that you knew you don’t, and yeah, so we were living in the Midwest, we decided to move back to San Diego and be closer to family, and I think I like to say we kind of blacked out for two years because we moved across the country, we had twin babies, like we were trying to just kind of figure out what this new normal looked like for us, and in the midst of all that I kind of lost myself a little bit, and I’d always been an athlete, I swam in college, that’s how I met my husband, and I just kind of looked in the mirror at one point, and the boys were about two, about to turn three, and I was like, Who is this person? What is what is this like? What am I trying to do? When at the end of the day, the only thing that matters are these kiddos, obviously, and me being healthy for myself to be a good mom to these kiddos, and that kind of sparked this snowball effect of where I’m at now, and getting back into fitness and hybrid fitness, and led me to high rocks, and just kind of my journey of, I hate calling it starting over, but truly that’s kind of what it was in the moment.

Brianna Battles  03:35

Yeah. No, I think it’s like, honestly, really refreshing to hear about people who can admit and acknowledge that their story did involve like losing yourself for a little bit, because way more common than we are maybe shown on social media, because it’s like, well, train through your pregnancy, do this part, um, get back, and now you’re super mom and super athlete, and doing all of this, but for so many women, that athlete side of them, even for a very high level and experienced athlete can get paused or just look super different when you are in survival mode, whatever your circumstances of survival mode may mean.

Delaney Nelson  04:11

Yeah, exactly. And I think that was the piece that, again, you know, you go into a pregnancy, especially having an athletic background, and being like, I’m going to train and I’m gonna feel good, and truly, after I graduated college, it was not – I was not training, I was tired of staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool, I didn’t want to get into a pool again, so I was trying to do anything, like I was trying to do anything and everything besides that, so I do the spin class here, I do the yoga class here, but when I, when I became pregnant, I was like, oh, I’m just gonna still move my body, and then the reality of that was I didn’t, and it became extremely difficult to do that with twins, obviously, later on in my pregnancy, and I think that just, again, you know, habits start and they form, and then they kind of continue, and it becomes easier to just kind of fall into. A pregnancy, and like, what you, you know, eating, eating like five bagels a day, you know, and rather than moving our body, and you know, if I did it all again, obviously now with the knowledge that I have as a coach and as an athlete, I would do things differently, but I didn’t, and I can’t look back on it and say, you know, oh gosh, I wish I would have, but I’m proud of myself for at least being able to acknowledge after you know those couple years, like this is not how I want my life to be. This is not how I want my kids to see me, and I need to make a change.

Brianna Battles  05:31

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s like you’re a really great example that even if that wasn’t the story of having fitness be this continual journey, that it’s something you can always come back to and keep building upon, even after you become a mom. Don’t you feel like I was also swam, played water polo, and call? Yeah, I feel like now at my age, and at this point, motherhood, like I can out athlete any previous version of

Delaney Nelson  05:57

yes,

Brianna Battles  05:57

including like the d1 version, five. Yes, isn’t that insane, though? It is

Delaney Nelson  06:02

insane, because, and I’ve said this so many times to my husband, I wish, and again, like, we all the psychology behind being young and an athlete, and like doing it your entire life, and being d1 and all those things, but like, if I had the knowledge that I do now, and the drive as the mom, and everything, like, how good of an athlete I could have been back then. It’s just like funny. I laugh about that often, because I’m like, God, I thought I was so smart and so cool, and knew all the things. And now, just again, having the education on my body, my training, rest days, learning how to rest, you know, all the things that we don’t learn at a young age as an athlete, probably, especially as a swimmer, like it’s been very cool, and it is very selfishly, it is very rewarding to be like, yeah, I could out athlete any version of my previous self,

Brianna Battles  06:53

yeah, and it’s just funny because I think there’s always been this narrative of like it’s over when you become a mom, or like you stop being an athlete at 22 ish. Yeah, but I think this generation of women has really helped to rewrite that narrative and the belief systems, and certainly I started this business 12 years ago, and we’ve seen explosion of more examples, more information, and just more validation of the idea of like, yeah, it’s not over,

Delaney Nelson  07:21

yeah, and again, like that’s I started my like social media and content journey in conjunction with kind of becoming an athlete again, because that was my mentality, was like gosh, if I can just like connect with same as you, right, like if I can connect with one person and help empower them a little bit, or make them understand that motherhood is never the end of something. It’s truly just a new chapter, a new beginning, as cliche as that sounds. Then awesome, I’ve done something good, you know. And so I think being able to see, I mean, just pull up Google and look at any of the races, like we have women winning these ultra marathons yesterday, you know, it’s like, or two days ago, however many days that was, but it’s just insane to be able to see, and not 18 year old women, you know, it’s 3540 45 year old women that it just truthfully, I’m I’m about to turn 33 and it gives me hope that this is just the beginning of my athletic career as a mother, and I think that that’s really cool and really empowering for a lot of us,

Brianna Battles  08:23

yeah. I think we need more people saying that out loud and giving those examples, even and like, especially when actually we can acknowledge like it doesn’t mean that it had been this linear process the whole way through, like you can become an athlete at any point in time, or you can pick up wherever you’re at and start rebuilding that, you can just dose it at different frequencies and intensities and volume over time as well. It should not actually try to be the same year after year, no, month after month. That doesn’t make sense when you are a mother. You can’t just always be in that grind and push and more exactly mode, which for a lot of us that was what was programmed into our brains, from being, you know,

Delaney Nelson  09:03

I was just gonna say that, yeah,

Brianna Battles  09:04

playing, it’s like, well, we just, we have to keep doing training two to three hours a day, and yeah, intensity, and also really limiting calories, but like that’s not going to serve us, but that’s also the approach that is just kind of lives in the millennial-ish mom,

Delaney Nelson  09:18

completely, yeah, completely, and I think that was the biggest shift, you know? I mean, I had twins, I gained 100 pounds in my pregnancy with the boys, and I had postpartum preeclampsia, I had, you know, like all the things, and I like coming off of that and coming into my journey postpartum and trying to lose weight to be able to get to where I wanted to be, but then being where I wanted to be, and still exactly like you said, flipping that switch from like I need to cut to, or I want to cut, need is not the correct word, I want to cut to now I have to fuel my body to train at the level that I want to train at is a very. Very hard shift, and a shift I have, I mean, daily conversations with all of my mom athletes, because we.. I have never.. I just had this conversation yesterday. I’ve never told any of my female athletes, you need to eat less, ever, ever, like it is constantly, you need to eat more. What are we like? How are we thinking about this? I’m not a nutritionist by any means, but generally, that is how it has been programmed into our brain for so many years. Coming out of that cycle, personally, it was extremely tough, and I know that that’s something that is going on in a lot of women’s brains daily.

Brianna Battles  10:35

You know, we’ve seen it through, like, pregnancy and postpartum, like, where it’s not necessarily an eating disorder, but like, just where it just energy deficient in a lot of ways, because they are under eating, and then it’s creating more orthopedic symptoms, more mental struggles, like all these other things, and it’s so much of it comes down to we think we’re being healthy, but we’re a lot, and we’re not fueling our body, because that is just we have been truly programmed that way since we were like 10 years old and then when you get further out you start seeing women who experience and go into perimenopause they’re struggling too and now there’s hormonal change and they’re still not eating and it’s like

Delaney Nelson  11:14

yes

Brianna Battles  11:15

it’s it just creates a really messy landscape for trying to live at your fullest potential as a female athlete when we’re not addressing the fundamentals that will make you actually have more sustained fitness.

Delaney Nelson  11:25

Yeah, and I think that goes back to what we were talking about before, too, as a collegiate athlete, and you know, beyond it’s in our, in our youth, we just think, oh, we can do it all, we can, you know, go out and party, and then come back and hit a practice at 5am and then hit another practice, you know, later, and lift in between, and now looking at to be able to have all the data in the science, just truly around longevity, I guess, and how we, as females, and males too, but particularly when it comes to the female side of things, just the, like you said, the orthopedic side of things, like how, if we want to be able to walk when we’re 65 like we need to eat if we’re training at this level, and that sounds so silly to be able to put it into that context, and 18 year old me would have laughed about that too, but it’s so enlightening to be able to have that data and that science to back these these pieces that we’re clearly seeing need to be supported further as we become older adult women athletes.

Brianna Battles  12:26

Absolutely, I was just talking with an athlete that I’m working with, and she was just sharing a few things with me, and I was like, “Okay, this is a thing, and I sort of like poking a little bit more, and I’m finding out like she’s eating like maybe 12 to 1300 calories a day, and also trying to like train at a really high level, and then you know, having struggles like hormonally. I’m like, sure. How do we see this

Delaney Nelson  12:47

one plus one

Brianna Battles  12:49

might be part of the problem, but it’s almost like we live in a bubble where we’re like, well, I’ve completely eat more, but I think there’s this huge majority, including female athletes, that just either like some consciously, but a lot of like a lot of others like subconsciously are under eating, and it’s really affecting how they experience pregnancy, how they experience postpartum, and then how that affects their long-term athletic performance.

Delaney Nelson  13:15

Yeah, completely. And I think that’s another great piece of it is hire the coach, whether it’s a life coach, whether it’s an athletic coach, whether it’s a nutritionist, whatever that looks like, I think exactly what you said. We live in our own heads, we live in our own bubbles, and we think no one is going to intentionally sabotage themselves, right? Like, so to have someone in your corner that’s able to be like, ‘Hey, this isn’t normal, is sometimes 95% of the battle, anyway, so I think that’s just so important for women to know, is that like have someone in your corner helping you and telling you what’s normal, what’s not, and putting a plan together, ultimately that is for you, versus trying to do a one size fits all kind of a thing, because that’s never going to work long term, yeah,

Brianna Battles  14:00

or like trying to do what worked for you a year ago, five years

Delaney Nelson  14:03

exactly, years

Brianna Battles  14:04

ago, and that’s also something I think we see quite a bit with our athletic population, especially.

Delaney Nelson  14:09

Exactly.

Brianna Battles  14:10

Okay, so you had your twins and you said, I don’t want, I don’t want to feel like I currently do anymore. So, how did you start rebuilding yourself as an athlete, what did that process look like?

Delaney Nelson  14:22

Yeah, I love talking about this, because I think, again, social media is the is fabulous, and I love the women empowerment side of things, but it’s often the transformation video of, like, here’s what I looked like before, here’s what I look like now, and we never see the in between, and the in between was years of hard work, of tears, sweat, all of blood, like all of those things, and yeah, I just looked in the mirror, as cliche as it sounds, it was a New Year’s resolution, and I went into the new year, and I just walked with the stroller, like that was it, I was like, we’re just gonna walk around the block, it’s a two mile loop, and I’m huffing and puffing, you know, like the. Is just how we’re going to start, and then it was okay. Let’s just do like the 20 minute Peloton bike rides and just get some movement. And then it was the okay, I’m going to try the mom workout, garage workout down the street. And I puked the first time I went to that class, it was so it was rough, and but I kept going. And then from there it was kind of like, okay, I have a base now, and it was the confidence piece of, like, I was kind of in my safety net, and I knew I needed to get out of it a little bit, so I started doing F 45 which was fabulous to have, like, a group fitness piece, and truthfully, to go into a class to turn my brain off, where it’s like, it’s there on the screen, I don’t have to think about it, it’s programmed, I can just do this, and truthfully, it was like 5am before the kids are up. Go hit this, and then be able to be like present and on with them all day. In conjunction with all of that, I started working with a nutritionist, because I knew that I was not going to do what I needed to do the right way. I didn’t have the knowledge base, I wasn’t good, like Google was not gonna chat, GPT wasn’t really a thing back then, but like that was not gonna help me, so I hired, I hired someone, and I still don’t think it’s gonna help people, just FYI, but I worked with a fabulous nutritionist who was also a mother who had also gone through, you know, like a very similar background, and we just got to have weekly calls where it was like, here’s how I feel, here’s my symptoms, here’s, you know, I don’t have energy. How can we do a cut while I’m still like trying to work, work out and have strength and energy, and so that quickly, you know, that was a big piece of it, but then it quickly became back to our discussion of like, how am I fueling my life and not just my workout, but being able to be with the boys and be present and have the brain power to deal with two twin boys, let alone everything that comes with that, and then from there it was just kind of like again snowball effect, like okay, we’re like, here’s this baby step, here’s this baby step, and I realized I needed, I’m such a goal-oriented person, type A personality, that I was finally like, okay, I feel like I need to set a goal of not a weight loss goal, not a number on a scale, not a percentage, but like what can I do from an athletic side of things that is going to empower me, and that was really the bottom line of of everything, and I decided I was going to sign up for half marathon and just kind of start like I still wanted to do the kind of like strength side of F 45 and just kind of I truthfully did like a couch to the half marathon like plan and I did that and I was so like proud of myself I never I wasn’t a runner as a swimmer and you know if you’re a swimmer you’re not a runner like in your brain and I was like okay I never thought I could do something like this, and then High Rock started to kind of get trendy.

Delaney Nelson  17:46

One of my best friend’s sisters had done it, and I was like, coming off the high of the half marathon, I’m like, I’m just gonna sign up for High Rocks. It was in Anaheim, so it was local, and it was close, and I signed up for it, and started, you know, training – I say training for it in the capacity that I thought at the time was the best, and I was like, I think I could be okay at this, I think I could do something with this, and so even though I signed up for Anaheim, I, with a partner, I decided to sign up for Dallas, which was before that, individually, and just do the race individually, because I needed to know in my brain how it was gonna go, and so I ran the race. I fell in love with the sport, the like atmosphere, the people that it’s just unmatched. I mean, it’s so, again, so cliche, but their tagline is High Rocks is for every body, and truly it is like you see the 80 year old granny that’s taking four hours to do it, and you see the 21 year old taking under an hour to do it, and everyone in between, and so it was just that moment of like this is really cool, like these people are cool, and it kind of combined like my background with swimming and the endurance piece of it, but also like my love, my newfound love for the running piece of it, and the strength elements that I really wanted to continue to incorporate, and so I did Dallas, I was like, I love the sport, I did doubles, and then I had made a girlfriend connection at one of the gyms that I was working out with, and she was like, let’s do doubles, let’s do doubles, let’s do doubles, I was like, oh, you’re so fast, I don’t know if I can keep up with you on this. So we did doubles, and in Vegas, so that was my third race, I think. Yeah, third race, and we qualified for world championships at that race, and it was just like that moment of like, what in the actual heck is happening, and like, all right, we’re on this train, and we’re gonna just ride this damn thing like until the cows come home, so qualified, and then podiumed individually there. So I ended up racing twice there, and it was just that moment of like, okay, like let’s let’s see where this goes, let’s see where this takes us, and the journey kind of like continued from there.

Brianna Battles  19:59

It’s pretty amazing. That you were in the big picture able to go from like couch to podium, and like a very story stretched out over years, but I think that’s also an important element of like honestly just the basics of progressive overload, you just explained

Delaney Nelson  20:16

completely,

Brianna Battles  20:16

so perfectly of just like adding a little bit more challenge and intensity over a very long period of time, not a six week clock, not even,

Delaney Nelson  20:26

and I still do that, I still do that. Yeah,

Brianna Battles  20:28

that’s awesome. So, do you have our, are you doing a competition anytime soon?

Delaney Nelson  20:33

Um, I am not. High rock season is kind of done for me right now, so I am doing a, I’m getting, I got back in the pool, which was a big, like, feat for me this year. I, again, you totally know this feeling, but I didn’t want to. I can completely convince myself, like, I am not ever going to feel the way I felt at that championship meet. I am going to sing like a rock. Can I even get in the pool and do a streamline again, which is so silly, like, because, like, we just talked about, I’m the fittest I’ve ever been in my entire life, like, why would I not think that that would carry over to the water? Yeah, so I got back in the pool, and my coach, who is the most phenomenal, smartest, amazing human being in the entire world, Ryan Geiger, he was like, hey, we’re gonna get you back in the pool this year, and there’s a competition in San Diego. I just want you to look at this. Is how Ryan is, he’s like, just want you to look at it, and I’m like, okay. So, I, yeah, I’m like, yeah. So, I looked at it, and I was like, it’s this perfect blend of like swimming, running, hybrid fitness elements, and a lot of breath control work, and so it’s Ho Fitness is the brand they run like a games out of San Diego, so that’s coming up on may 23 and I’m doing that with another member on our team, so we’re doing a mixed doubles race, which will be really fun. I thought that was a good way for me to get into it without having to like fully commit to my own self doing it, but just to no pun intended, dip my toe in the water, yeah, and see how it goes. So that’s my one coming up, and then we’ll start the new high rock season come the fall. And I always kind of sprinkle in a couple little things here and there, because you know, like, once you’re once you’ve got that competitive bung gate again, you have to foster it, you have to nourish it, like, or it’s just going to be out the window again, because it is easy to get stuck in that routine and that bubble, and it’s important for me personally to do that for myself. And now the kids are old enough to understand, like, oh, cool, mom does hard stuff, I want to do hard stuff too. And so I want to continue to foster that as well. Yeah,

Brianna Battles  22:35

it’s really awesome when you can take, like, who you are as, like, a high drive person, and then start to leverage it into what is still possible as an athlete, and now have a more mature approach to it, and then honestly, like, lead the way for your kids to see them, or to have them see you model that over time, and I’m a little bit ahead of you in motherhood, and it’s been the best part of, I think, all of this has been like the last few years of the boys getting older, participating in their own sports, having it just be like this is just what we do, this is just what our family does, this is how we live, and like competition is a good thing, effort is a thing, like we take this seriously, not that I’ve ever convinced them they’re very, they’re very competitive, and

Delaney Nelson  23:19

yeah,

Brianna Battles  23:21

there’s kind of wired that way, but it’s fine to just, yeah, to have us model that as a norm, and I think that’s also the cool thing about this generation of like athlete moms is showing what is still possible. Similarly, I want to talk to you about, like, you mentioned getting into coaching more now that you,

Delaney Nelson  23:42

yeah,

Brianna Battles  23:42

survival mode of early motherhood, you found fitness again, and how has that unlocked now that your boys are a little bit older?

Delaney Nelson  23:50

Yeah, I cannot. Again, this is so cliche, I’ve said that word like five times, but it, I cannot believe that this is what I get to do on a regular basis. It’s that it’s so selfishly rewarding. It is so fun. It is so amazing to be able to work with women to reach their goals in every phase of life, whether it’s a new mom, whether it’s someone coming out of college that was an athlete before, that’s jumping into the hybrid fitness space. It was on my vision board for down the road, and it was something I’ve always coached again, swimming, like I had coached all through college, and I had this – was actually after I left the corporate world, I and the boys were little, I was like, I need something to get out of the house, so I don’t completely lose my mind, so I would coach swim lessons for age group swimmers in the evening, so my husband would be done with work, I’d go coach other people’s kids, and that was my break, and it was, I got to get outside, it was awesome, and so I’ve always been a coach in some type of capacity, and I just kind of had on my vision board, and I was walking to get the kids from school, and my coach. Which Ryan texted me, he’s like, ‘Hey, can you talk? And I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not fast enough. He’s breaking up with me, like, ‘Oh gosh, what did I do? And I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, I called him right away. I was like, ‘Is everything okay? You know what’s going on? And he’s like, ‘Oh, everything’s fine. Do you want to start coaching? And that was just how, like, again, that was how informal and honestly perfect that whole moment was, and I was like, yes, I didn’t even think twice about it, and again, I wouldn’t have ever coached for anyone except for Ryan and the Geiger coaching team, like the most phenomenal people you could ever meet, so smart personally, professionally, all in all the ways, and to be able to work with someone, because truly, like, I had the base, but to be able to go in and, like, get all my certifications, and be able to have someone as a resource who has the knowledge base of, like, why are we talking about our heart pumping blood better, and how do we think about that when we’re coaching our women, and you know, so all of those pieces, and again, conversations we have daily as a coaching team, but to be able to take that, like my background knowledge, my knowledge as a mom, my knowledge as a woman, and just to be able to start working with women to help them reach circles, and it’s everything from like, hey, I’m running my first 10k to hey I’m like I want to become an elite high rocks athlete, and everything in between. So, I’ve learned just as much from the, and I’m sure you can attest this, I’ve learned just as much from the elite women as I have learned from the beginner women, and again, everyone in between. And it’s just been the most.. it’s the beginning, but it’s been the most rewarding piece. And I think it’s that shift, too, for moms, where my kids are in school full time now, and so I’m able to say, “Hey, what does this look like for me? And now I’m able to kind of jump start this career into something that truly was on the vision board that I really didn’t think was something that was going to happen at any point, but I wanted to dream about it, and to be like in the dream is very, very surreal on a lot of levels, and again, I’m, I know I’m preaching to the choir.

Brianna Battles  27:08

Yeah, I think you know, motherhood can be the thing that just like catapults you into a direction that maybe we never even saw as a possibility at 23 years

Delaney Nelson  27:18

exactly. I

Brianna Battles  27:19

have, like, it was not on the vision board or radar, but ultimately, like, it redirects you into what you’re actually called to do. I think so many fiercely hold on to, well, I went to school for this, or I worked in corporate, or I was doing this, and this is what I thought I was going to do, instead of, like, allowing yourself to have that freedom to, like, what am I actually being called to do? Like, what is possible? What can we grow into, evolve into what can we gradually scale with our own life, like what I’m doing in my early seasons of motherhood for work is so different from what I’m doing now, but that’s because I have a little bit more capacity, I’m not limited to like nap time hustle, you know, it’s like

Delaney Nelson  27:57

I know

Brianna Battles  27:57

more freedom to see what’s still possible for you, I think, as an athlete and professionally, and that’s the cool part that only has always talked about for with Whitman,

Delaney Nelson  28:07

yeah, and I think it’s too like, again, I don’t want to just jump through all of that, because exactly what you said was it was I have maybe an hour at nap time to just like do the dishes, get on the bike, like try to get some laundry done, prep dinner, you know, all the things, and so that was a super grindy phase of life to try to do that, and I have an amazing life partner, like my husband is you, I have two babies at the same time, like you have to have someone in your corner, so I could not ever do any of this without him, and I know that, and I acknowledge that, but I also want women to know, like, if they’re in that phase of life right now, just grind, it’s gonna get better, you’re gonna have that autonomy in a little bit, and it’s gonna be okay. And I think that, that when you’re in the thick of it, that can be a really hard piece of it. It’s rewarding in so many different ways. And now I look back on all these pictures of my little guys, and I’m like, oh God, what I would give to go back to that, but then also remember all of the other pieces that come with it, and so, yeah, as everyone knows, every phase of their lives, every day is is a different, different dynamic, a different challenge to navigate with kiddos. Yeah,

Brianna Battles  29:15

I love that you said that, because I think again, as a naturally like wired, like high achieving woman, it’s really tempting, and almost like, feel like you have to be trying to do it all, like kick ass as yay, and kick ass in your career, or starting a career, and be a great mom, and it’s like we have so much self-imposed pressure on top of culturally imposed pressure, where then we’re now completely some other mom who seems to be killing it, and has this great online presence, or starting this business, or they’re going back to work, and they’re also running these races and crushing, and they’re, they don’t look like they had a baby, and it’s like there’s much comparison in everybody’s face, but I think there’s so much to be said, for like, it is okay for there to be a season for every. Thing in our life, like some seasons might be more focused on motherhood, and then as your motherhood dynamic shifts, well, then maybe your athleticism can take a different route, and then your career can take a different route, and all of these things ebb and flow together, but the focus tends to be different one season at a time.

Delaney Nelson  30:20

Yeah, and I think a big piece of that too is, and I’m still coming to terms with this, is ask, like, just ask, and because nine times out of 10, again, I just had this conversation with Ryan the other day, and I said, you know, summer’s coming up, I’m stressed out about summer, the kids are going to be in the house, like, obviously I have help, but, like, trying to navigate that dynamic with them being back in the house versus at school every day, and juggling, you know, these new responsibilities and opportunities that I have, and being able to, like, state that, and then ask for additional help in those months, because that is going to be legitimately a season where I’m going to need a little extra support, that is a new concept for me. The asking for help piece was something I never – I still struggle with, but it’s a huge piece I’m trying to implement in my life, because every time I ask for help, every time I ask a question or push a little bit more on something, I typically get an answer that is helpful, right? Or I get the support that I need, whereas if I’m just in my corner, living in my own brain, stressing out, putting these, like you said, self-imposed standards on myself, I’m just creating this crazy spiral that doesn’t need to happen. So that’s been a huge piece that I’ve been trying to implement, kind of over really the last couple months, and going into the summer months too, and again trying to take those pressures off of myself a little bit more, which is hard.

Brianna Battles  31:48

Yeah, it absolutely is. And then all of a sudden, summer’s over, and you’re like, okay, now we’re like,

Delaney Nelson  31:52

I know, then you’re back in the flow. Yeah,

Brianna Battles  31:54

and I find that you can the same way we periodize training, like you can also start to periodize, like your coaching or what your family dynamic,

Delaney Nelson  32:02

yeah, like

Brianna Battles  32:03

at different points in time, and there’s just so many parallels between what we know with coaching and training to like how we navigate career and motherhood, all of these things, and there’s just like a lot of crossover there, and it’s certainly not easy, but we often make it harder than it needs to be, because that mentality of, like, no, like, athlete brain, like, we, that gets applied.

Delaney Nelson  32:24

Yes,

Brianna Battles  32:25

every element of everything that can be, it can serve you very well, or it can be sabotaging.

Delaney Nelson  32:32

Yeah, that’s so true. That’s such a good way to put it.

Brianna Battles  32:35

Yeah, well, it’s, I mean, I think that’s just a lot of, you know, maturity that gets acquired through motherhood, through training, it through coaching, and then you know the more adaptable you can be versus rigid, the better it’s going to be, even though that does not come naturally for most of

Delaney Nelson  32:48

1. Yeah, no,

Brianna Battles  32:50

no, but motherhood is such a great equalizer with that of showing us, you know, what needs to change within ourselves.

Delaney Nelson  32:56

Yeah, and what’s important too, I think that that was the biggest piece of like when I left the corporate world, and, like, you said, you have this identity as a woman, and my, like, I’m gonna be in the corporate world, I’m gonna be this boss babe, and, like, I’m gonna do all these things, and then all of a sudden you’re just like, I’m never gonna lay on my deathbed thinking about this proposal that I won, but I am like missing out on my kids’ first steps, and that’s, I mean, that’s the simplest way for me to put that decision. And when we decided, of course, I think my husband and I talk about this all the time, you have to have a dreamer and you have to have a realist in relationships, and I am the dreamer, and my husband is the realist, and when everything, all these big life moments that were on paper, of us moving across the country, me leaving the corporate world, like it didn’t work on paper, right? Like it was not something that was going to be feasible, where like we’ll be living on ramen for the next two years, like we’re going to be riding our bikes to places, and somehow, like my favorite saying is, like you plan and God laughs, and I think that is just like the epitome of my life, from the twins to like now me being in hybrid fitness, and it’s just cool, and it’s just a good reminder that when you’re in the thick of it and you think that like every single door is slamming in your face, there’s so many better doors that are going to be opening down the road,

Brianna Battles  34:19

that’s beautiful, and that’s such a great way to, like, I think just summarize the heart of this conversation, and the example that that this is to so many moms who are listening, high-achieving moms, we know moms who feel like they’re in the thick of pregnancies and postpartums, and feeling like themselves yet, or feeling like what, like they’re at this fork in the road of career, or am I going to be a mom? Like, am I going to do both? What does that look like? All these, like, life transitions, and more importantly, like identity transitions, like parts of you have to die so that new parts you can be born and raised, and it’s.. it’s a gift. It’s also just kind of hard to navigate, so I think this. Perspective is really refreshing for women to hear.

Delaney Nelson  35:03

Thank you. Yeah, again, it’s been.. it’s been a journey. I never ever want to be the person that’s like shows the snap of the finger, and it’s there, and it’s still a journey. Like, if we were having this conversation five years from now, who knows what that would look like too? And I think that that’s again the beauty of life, and having kids, because just when you think you have it figured out, it changes.

Brianna Battles  35:23

Yes, that is this is the truth, my friends. Well, Delaney, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Delaney Nelson  35:29

Thank you. We’ll follow you and just see what kind of coaching you offer and your journey. Yeah, absolutely. If you want to check out Coaching Got Your coaching.com I also have very active on social media, I am the Hybrid Twin Mama on Instagram, that is my most active platform, and you can always shoot me a message on there. I’ll always respond to awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you,

Brianna Battles  35:55

thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Practice Brave Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review and help us spread the work we are doing to improve the overall information and messaging in the fitness industry and beyond. Now, if you are pregnant and you are looking for a trustworthy exercise program to follow, I have you covered. The Pregnant Athlete Training Program is a well-rounded program for pregnancy with workouts for each week that are appropriate for your changing body, that’s 36 weeks of workouts, three to four workouts each week, and tons of guidance on exercise strategy. We also have an at-home version of that program. If you are postpartum and you’re looking for an exercise program to follow, the eight week postpartum athlete training program would be a really great way to help bridge the gap between rehab and the fitness you actually want to do. From there, we have the Practice Brave Fitness program, which is an ongoing strength conditioning program where you get new workouts each week and have a lot of guidance from myself and my co-coach, Heather Osby. This is the only way that I’m really offering ongoing coaching at this point in time. If you have ever considered becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach, I would love to have you join us. Pregnancy and postpartum athleticism is a self-paced online certification course that will up level your coaching skills and help connect the dots between pelvic health and long-term athletic performance, especially during pregnancy and postpartum, become who you needed and become who your online and local community needs by becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach. Thank you again for listening to the Practice Brave podcast. I appreciate you, and please help me continue spreading this messaging, this information, and this work.