AUTO-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Brianna Battles  00:01

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.

Brianna Battles  00:53

It’s just a solo episode of me talking to you about what the last few months behind the scenes here of the pregnancy and postpartum athleticism business has been like, as you probably know, if you follow along on social media, I’ve spent the last few months updating the certification program that I have for coaches and practitioners pregnancy and postpartum athleticism. Now since 2017

Brianna Battles  01:15

we’ve had over 5000

Brianna Battles  01:17

coaches around the world go through this certification. When I first created it, it was one of the only certifications available, especially that was catered towards a conversation of female athletes navigating pregnancy and postpartum. It is one thing to educate the athlete in front of you, but it’s a whole other level of impact when the coaching professionals that they interact with on a day to day,

Brianna Battles  01:45

week to week basis, have the knowledge and insight to support their clients through pregnancy and postpartum. Now, everyone kind of thought I was crazy at first for saying pregnant and postpartum athlete, they’re like, that’s like, not really a thing, or that’s like, too specific or too niche, but I knew when I became a pregnant athlete in 2013 that like I wasn’t special. There were so many women like me that were training through pregnancy. We knew it was safe, we knew that it was part of what we did. We knew it was beneficial. I didn’t need convincing that it was beneficial for myself and my baby, but the missing piece of that was something I learned eventually, which is, there’s more to it than exercise modifications. There’s more to it than do this or don’t do that. Female athletes especially need support navigating pregnancy and postpartum, because we have to be able to go beyond what is safe or what is unsafe, we have to go beyond these movement modifications and start to expand the conversation. And something the pregnancy and postpartum athleticism brand has been focused on since 2017 is acknowledging the psychological core and pelvic health physiological changes and the long term athletic performance of female athletes during pregnancy and postpartum. And postpartum, but on behalf of a lifetime of athleticism as a career strength and conditioning coach, my scope comes from a performance based lens. It’s not so much of you know maternal or fetal safety or athletic ability to perform during pregnancy or postpartum. Because if you understand working with athletes, you know that they can perform on any given day, under any given circumstance, how they feel and how they perform, that’s a different conversation. But it’s not a measure of like, can I or can’t i, because you can. The conversation has to extend beyond. What does this athlete need right now? On behalf of what she wants to do long term, how can we honor and acknowledge the transformative time this is in her life, the psychological changes and considerations she has and give advice that’s really practical, something that they’ll be able to create more buy in around that acknowledges that long term athletic performance piece. It’s not so much of what she’s able to do during pregnancy or how early she get back to it postpartum. It is what she’s doing at a year postpartum, five years postpartum, or 10 years postpartum. Now I personally am on the other side of those seasons. My boys are a little bit older now, and I’m on the side where

Brianna Battles  04:25

I’m living my best athlete mom life. I’m getting to raise this next generation of little athletes. It’s a very fun era, and you gain perspective over time. So not just professionally, but also personally, I’ve gained a lot of perspective through the years of coaching female athletes, of being a female athlete, of being a mother and of being, you know, a coach who’s also coached coaches as they’ve developed businesses and their skill set and have figured out, what do we need to be communicating? What is the angle of the work that we’re doing? How can we blend? Evan. Experience with the experiences of women, because there’s more and more research coming out, there is more interest, there is more examples, and with that, there’s more confusion and more comparisons than what I’ve seen in a very long time, because it felt overwhelming over a decade ago for me, when I was first navigating those seasons as an athlete and coach, because you were trying to find out more info, and now that there is more information, that’s great, but there’s not an emphasis on implementation and what that actually looks like in gyms around the world, in the experiences of what our female athletes are navigating. Because we have to understand, even though most of us listening know that there are a lot of benefits to exercise during pregnancy and that it’s a big part of the motherhood and postpartum experience and health and longevity, there’s still, again, just a lot of confusion. There can still be a lot of fear. But on the other end of that pendulum swing. We see the glorification culture. And so how do we walk this messy middle? And something I’ve been trying to navigate for again since about 2017 when I first released the first edition of the pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coaching certification, is, how do we navigate this messy middle? It’s not do this. Don’t do that. It’s not safe or unsafe. It’s just it’s applying basic strength and conditioning principles that oftentimes get overlooked. When giving guidance for pregnancy and postpartum, we have to acknowledge needs analysis, we have to acknowledge periodization, and if we want them to peak, say, around a year postpartum, how do we reverse engineer that process, and that’s something that I focus on teaching in the certification. So what is pregnancy and postpartum athleticism? Well, it’s an online certification for coaches and practitioners who want to know how to better coach and support DNL athletes through pregnancy and postpartum. And again, it’s not just about pregnancy and postpartum. It’s having a conversation that is on behalf of their lifetime of athleticism, not just the short term seasons. So that’s the angle I take with this, which is different than maybe a lot of the information that you’ve heard, or the scope that is a bit more traditionally taught we have to be able to acknowledge the psychology, physiology and performance, long term performance, of our female athletes, because how women train in 2026

Brianna Battles  07:30

it’s more athletic than it’s ever been. They are lifting, they are competing. They are running further and faster. They are going to the Olympics after becoming a mother, they are participating in pickleball and jiu jitsu and high rocks and CrossFit and all these other things. Alongside motherhood, we know that being an athlete and being a mother coexist that has been practiced over and over for years now, and now we’re just having a lot more attention being brought to this conversation. It is an excellent time to take interest in learning more about how to coach pregnant postpartum athletes, because this is not a special population. This is a common population that continues to grow. So who takes this certification? Well, like I said, we’ve had about 5000 coaches from all over the world go through this. We have healthcare workers, we have OBGYNs and midwives. We have nurses. We have coaches, personal trainers, group fitness instructors. We have those working in the tactical realm of military, fire, police, we have practitioners, from chiropractors to physical therapists to occupational therapists to athletic trainers, honestly, so many people, and a really common avatar is the athlete who says, Why didn’t anyone tell me, or why didn’t I know this? And so they want more information for themselves to then help others, and then they become coaches, or we have the coach who’s like, I mean, I kind of knew this was a thing, and I started to hear a little bit more about it, and there was more interest. But now I’m pregnant, and it seems like so many of my clients are pregnant. So it doesn’t matter what your title is, it matters where your heart and your interest is, which is acknowledging that women deserve support, especially during the transformative season that is motherhood, because motherhood is the great equalizer for for so many of us, it exposes a lot of A lot of growth. It exposes a lot of challenge, and it exposes a lot of need for more support and understanding, and that’s not always easy to come by. On social media, we are absolutely in an echo chamber, and it can be incredibly overwhelming, even for us as coaches, to navigate Nevertheless, our clients so. Who do they turn to? I mean, a lot of times they don’t have anyone to turn to. They don’t know to go to a pelvic floor. PT, they don’t know how to navigate some of the symptoms they’re experiencing during pregnancy. They absolutely don’t know how to address some of the symptoms they’re experiencing postpartum. And if they have athlete brain, which the majority of people who come into my sphere, they do. They’re just going to keep running anyway. They’re going to keep lifting. They’re going to just deal with some of the symptoms that they’re having because they’re resilient, but they don’t know that there’s help. They think that it’s that if they want to address some of these symptoms and they have to stop doing a lot of their movement or exercise. And that’s just not true. So they need coaches who can help bridge that gap between what they’re seeing online and the reality of what they need, between what the research is saying and then the realities of what they’re experiencing, and we as coaches are the ones who can help implement a lot of those strategic adjustments to their training.

Brianna Battles  10:59

So what is actually in the certification? Okay, so there’s seven pillars of comprehensive evidence based curriculum. I go over anatomy and physiology. I go over core and pelvic health symptoms. Go over program design and coaching, all of the through everything you need to understand about training throughout pregnancy and maybe different trimester adjustments based on what that individual means. Same with postpartum that from you know you having the baby to return to performance, early rehab and progression over time, and then looking at just specific case studies and examples covering anything from miscarriage to our returning to our tactical athletes, returning to duty, to nutrition and mental health and then moving into business. How are coaches applying a lot of what they’ve learned in that certification to a business model that creates the most effective change and support and offers for their clients. So really, it takes you from everything you need to know from an anatomy and physiology standpoint, understanding the fitness culture and where we’re at, what we’ve seen it do over the last 10 to 15 years, into current state where we’re at with things, acknowledging the psychological aspect of working with athletes also working with Gen pop, and how, if you know how to support athletes, you can absolutely translate that to how you are supporting your gen pop clients. But the reverse is rarely true. It’s very hard to know, if you’re used to just working with Gen pop, how to scale up a lot of your recommendations, whether it’s how you speak to them or it’s how you’re guiding them and progressing them in different timelines and things like that. So we really lead from that performance lens, that athlete lens, knowing that so much of that is transferable down the line, but it’s much harder to apply a lot of the information that is geared more towards Gen pop to your athlete brain clients, or to your athletes in general that you’re working with, and we know that female athletes, especially when they’re navigating pregnancy and postpartum, these are high drive women. They like control, they like process, they like predictability. They like timelines and ideas. They want to have as much control over that process as possible. But like I said, motherhood is the great equalizer, and it is hard to navigate on our own. It is not always intuitive. You can’t just listen to your body. It’s not enough, because most athletes have been trained to ignore their body, and it’s really, it’s a it’s just a shift in how we’re approaching things, because the identity evolves, and if coaches can’t address that piece of it, because there are so many variables that extend far beyond exercise that influence how an athlete feels and performs during these seasons. And again, these are catalyst seasons on behalf of her lifetime of athleticism, not just these short term days and weeks and moments in time.

Brianna Battles  14:00

So we have those seven pillars of comprehensive evidence based curriculum. We look at the research, we connect it to the realities of what we’re seeing in working with our different clients. And then I brought in 14 plus expert interviews, because, I say, within my scope as a strength and conditioning coach, and with the areas that I am an expert in, I’m focused on on coaching pregnant, postpartum athletes. But then athletes. But then there are, there’s complementary material that we need to understand as coaches that just wasn’t my place to teach. So brought in a mental health therapist. I brought in a variety of pelvic floor physical therapists to talk about different aspects of of coaching this population, from symptoms to the anatomy and physiology and just kind of subject matter experts that have been with me for a very long time and are so incredibly supportive of the pnpa brand, and have their finger on the pulse of where this is going. So brought into OB GYN as well to acknowledge what she sees and the disconnect. There and honestly created a certification again back in 2017 till now, where it’s a multi disciplinary team who can contribute to what coaches need to know, there are 70 plus real time movement demonstration videos so you can get an idea of like, here’s some coaching cues. Here’s what I’m looking for, here’s how I’m going to adjust this. If this person has prolapse, or this person has a diastasis, or this person is 30 weeks pregnant and she has pelvic pain, what am I looking to do? We have all of that. And then also a listen on the go option, which is really helpful for those of you who like me, maybe like to do a walk and talk or walk and listen, because you’re not always in front of your computer. So you can listen to this certification and learn as we go, and then reference some of the videos or graphics in the course, when you’re able to come back to your computer, there are 25 plus additional resources, including programming frameworks, different cheat sheets, ebooks, anatomy guides and custom graphics that you will be able to use, say, if you give a presentation again, you need a graphic of a pelvic floor or a GIF of how the core system works. You can use that when you are a certified pnpa coach, and we also have a 60 day completion guide this certification, like I said earlier, it is self paced, but I understand that a lot of us need a little bit more accountability and support. And so we have a 60 day completion guide. And with that, you can participate in the study groups that we have, where I jump in, I answer any questions that you have, and kind of focus on different modules at a time throughout that 60 day study guided timeline. So yes, self paced, you can come back to it as often as you want. You have access to continued updates. But if you are somebody who needs a little bit more of like support, working through it and accountability, we can help you finish it in 60 days or less. You can go faster than that as well. We have a ton of CEUs for coaches, as well as a partnership that we formed with pelvic guru. So if you are a physical therapist, occupational therapist or athletic trainer listening to this, if you buy through pelvic guru, you get PTS, or you get CEUs in all 50 US states. So if you are US based, you do get CEUs if you, if you buy through pelvic guru. And it’s been really cool to see how many different organizations have given CEUs, and the amount of CEUs that they that they provide. And you know, we’ve evolved this curriculum since 2017, four times now. So we’ve been we’ve seen a lot of growth, and we’ve been able to add more organizations that escape validating the product that we’re offering, because so many of you know their coaches are experiencing success with it. And then we have you have access to our private community, where you’ll be able to ask me questions, coaches questions. And one thing I’ve really loved is the culture that pnpa has created through the years. It’s extremely collaborative and comprehensive. We have so many coaches that are able to share what’s working for them or ask questions, and they have a place where they can do that, and it’s been really amazing to see the friendships and the support, like the mini masterminds that have all been formed by joining this really collaborative and supportive community of coaches all over the world.

Brianna Battles  18:28

It’s, it’s like, they’re not in competition with each other. It’s very, very supportive, and it’s been affirming to see that. Because I know when I first started coaching, I was like, I wish I could, just like, ask somebody like, where did you What did you do for this? Or what did you do for that? Or what do you think about this? And just like, talk things out. And we have an incredible community that’s proven itself since 2017 of just how supportive and effective it is. And then you can get listed in our professional directory of 5000 certified coaches around the world. So we have people daily who email in and ask like, Do you know where there is a coach in wherever, and they list a certain state, or, you know, certain country, and we’re able to see what coach we have there who would be able to help them. So it’s also created a nice matchmaking service for people who want to coach, who can understand what they need from that athletic perspective and know how to practically support them, take them beyond just clinical or just breathe like this, or do these five exercises and really help create a comprehensive game plan to help them feel better in their bodies, move better, be empowered in their process, and not feel like, Why didn’t anyone tell me or who? Like no one gets me. And then there it’s no woman should feel unsupported during this season of life, and coaches can act as this great first line of defense for helping them navigate. You know, okay, who do I go to for the. Yes or for that, and you can refer, you refer to a pelvic floor. PT, you refer to the doula, you refer to the lactation consultant, you refer to the massage therapist, or the Registered Dietitian, or whatever it might be. You are that first line of defense who can help them in their body, but also know who the other teammates that you have locally are to support them. So what are some coaches doing with it? I mentioned that we have coaches from a variety of backgrounds, and what’s been really incredible to see. And I didn’t see this coming when I first created this, when I first created this, I was like, we just need more coaches who can help because I can’t help every person. It wasn’t like, mainstream, like it’s becoming now, and even with that, like, there’s still, there’s still disconnect, even if it’s even if it’s more mainstream. So I knew that we know we really needed to lean into educating more coaches, because this is not taught in our undergrad This is not taught in our graduate work. This is not taught in most of our certifications. It’s, I mean, if anything, pregnancy and postpartum was like a very was like a couple paragraphs on pelvic health, no, like that wasn’t a part of the conversation. And we understand that the narrative is changing. More information is coming out there, and we need coaches who can practically apply that, whether they have a ton of coaching experience or they’re new to it. This is something that is specialized work for not a special population. So we have brand new coaches coming into it who are just really inspired, and they might start coaching a couple days a week. They could host a six week postpartum program where they’re coaching on Monday, Wednesday mornings, at 930 and they have a small group of women that come in, they bring their baby, and they help take them through six weeks of progressed exercise, returning to exercise and feeling really good in their bodies. And they’re doing that extremely part time, but they’re making a decent amount of money. Most of our coaches, at minimum, no matter where they’re based out of are charging $300 for that sick per person for that six week series. So it’s a very common way that coaches are implementing this kind of work initially, to have an offer in place that then leads to further offers. And they can filter into their normal gym classes where that Coach Works at, or they can do one on one personal training, or maybe they bridge that into an online program that a coach has written. There’s a lot of different options

Brianna Battles  22:27

from here. And they’re

Brianna Battles  22:29

starting whole gyms. They’re starting like, opening their own business, or it’s focused on coaching mothers. We’ve had quite a few coaches do that, and that’s been, again, I never saw any of that coming. I just thought like we were, you know, just better educating coaches. And that felt good, but now seeing how the lives of coaches are being changed, because they’re really able to lean into this population. I mean, everyone is winning. Their clients are winning. These coaches are winning. The culture of this industry is winning. It’s been extremely gratifying to see that we have physical therapists that are using it, and now they’re saying, Okay, I know how to really help my CrossFit client who pees when she deadlifts, and now I know how to help somebody stop peeing when they do double unders, and we’re able to integrate a lot of their pelvic PT practice into more performance forward, like athletes, right? Like, if you’re able to apply that, because it’s, again, just not taught. And I tried to tell everyone, like, saving a post on Instagram is not enough, and I teach on Instagram, I try to share a lot on online and in emails, but that’s just not enough to know how to really implement a lot of the different frameworks that I teach in this certification. Because coaching is not linear. It is art and it is science, if it is evidence and it is lived experience, and we have to keep implementing and being innovative in what we’re doing, especially because with pregnancy, postpartum in particular, there’s just so many variables that influences an individual’s experience. So there is no one size fits all framework. There is no ideal return to fitness, return to sport, process or timeline, it varies, which is why we need coaches that are looking beyond the headlines, that know how to practically support an athlete’s athletic readiness, support their symptom thresholds, to help them rehab like we know how to help any other athlete rehab from a knee injury. Why would we not know how to help a woman rehab from pregnancy and birth. These are significant physiological events where there are structural change, hormonal change, mental health changes, recovery changes, tissue changes, like so much, and yet they’re told, listen to your body or just like I just, I don’t know, kind of do, do your own thing. I’m here for you. Know and coaches don’t know how to answer a lot of questions, that’s still a prevalent experience. Even in a world where we’re seeing more information, more examples, more access to support, we know that in the reality of coaching this population, that there’s still a lack of qualified coaches who can support what women actually experience during pregnancy and postpartum. So, you know why? Why does this matter?

Brianna Battles  25:30

I’ve been, oh man,

Brianna Battles  25:33

I gotta be honest with you, it is this curriculum development has been it has tested me in a different way this time, because every iteration I know I have to bring my best self, and I’m so passionate about supporting women across their lifetime of athleticism, and I think motherhood is the most transformative experience that most of us will experience if we, if we become mothers like that, is a catalyst season. And so if we acknowledge the power that comes from these seasons, and we are able to zoom out and help our athletes zoom out, help our clients zoom out. I mean, it’s just, it’s incredibly transformative. How could I not care? Pouring into this, pouring into a lot of the research that’s come up, and then acknowledging like and here’s what we’re actually seeing. This is what we we know our athletes are navigating with their pelvic health, with their changes to their body, with their performance expectations, either self or influence on the outside, we understand that there’s no straightforward process. And so if we’re going to uplevel the experiences of athletes and the overall integrity of the fitness industry, we have to lead with like boots on the ground, with coaches who care, and more important than care, they know what to do, like, they’re not again. They’re not just saving and repeating and kind of like checking a box. They know how to really help women stay in the game. Like, stay in the game. And it doesn’t have to be this high level. It’s staying in the game of like a higher quality of life. We have women that are going to be entering perimenopause and menopause and still wanting to be active as they get older. We have to help them navigate these seasons so they can continue feeling good in their body, feeling empowered in their body, feeling supported in probably one of the first significant physiological processes their body has experienced that has been that revolutionary, that life changing, that physically, mentally, emotionally, lifestyle altering. Again, we have a lot of support for back injury and knee surgery, a lot of rehabilitative processes and guidelines on ACLs and and all of that stuff. If you go to any professional conference, how many times is the same topic talked about with like throwing mechanics or ACL this or Achilles that we have so much information around common injuries, but we don’t and like practical protocols, but what we don’t have is a lot of that for pregnancy and postpartum. We have to go beyond maternal and fetal safety and connect it to the real life experiences of athletes. We have to understand that, yes, exercise is beneficial for mom and baby. Yes, athletes can keep performing and doing a lot during pregnancy and postpartum. They are not fragile. They are also not invincible. How do we help them be adaptable through these seasons, mentally, physically, emotionally with their training? What strategies can we put in place to address the fact that 57% of barbell athletes are peeing themselves postpartum. How do we address the fact that so many runners are injured within their first year postpartum? We know this, and that’s because so many strength and conditioning principles and so many injury management and rehabilitative processes are absolutely looked over when it comes to guiding our pregnant and postpartum athletes and our pregnant and postpartum clients in general, they want to be active. They should feel powerful in their bodies, support in their bodies, especially during such a transformative season. And I feel it’s a significant responsibility if you coach women, to know how to coach them when they become mothers. And so honor, it is an absolute honor to be a witness to this transformation in their lives. So I love it. I love it all these years later, I still love it. I still care because I have seen, personally and professionally, how powerful it is to help women come into this next iteration of themselves as. An athlete. So I want to close this out and share, like an athlete mom manifesto that I wrote, because I feel like it helps really summarize the culture of pregnancy and postpartum athleticism, what we’re

Brianna Battles  30:12

doing and most importantly,

Brianna Battles  30:14

like what coaches are helping to instill so we can tell our athlete moms,

Brianna Battles  30:21

that it’s not over, even when it’s different, you are still an athlete. Your body will change, your priorities will change, your mentality will change. This is all leverage. Keep training, keep competing, keep evolving, keep seeing what your body is capable of at any age, at any ability. Mom, strength is real. You realize it was never just about what you could still do, but it’s about what you are passing on to the next generation of athletes through your example. Honor your story and create a new one, fuel your

Brianna Battles  30:56

body and protect your mind, open your heart to the next iteration of what it means to be an athlete, because

Brianna Battles  31:04

the athlete mom era is the best era. Athleticism does not end when motherhood begins. So if you feel called to the mission that pregnancy and postpartum athleticism has stood on since 2013 and since the certification was released for the first time in 2017 it has been updated four times to just better reflect where we are at, what is needed and the best ways to help. I would love to have you join us. I’d love to have you join the mission of really understanding the nuances of supporting women through pregnancy and postpartum, acknowledging that women want to be an athlete and a mother, that these are not mutually exclusive. There’s so much we can do to support women through pregnancy and postpartum on behalf of their lifetime of athleticism. So I would love to have you join. And if you have any questions and this resonated with you, I am so happy to answer them, please send me a DM. Please email the brand. We’re happy to share that all contact information and links are going to be in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your interest in this, and maybe, if this isn’t for you, please pass it on to the person you know it is for who will find benefit from this, because we need as many people who can support and care and, you know, act as that first line of defense as possible. Thanks for listening.

Brianna Battles  32:44

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 for 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.