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 is a solo episode, something I have been thinking about a lot this year, and it’s a theme that is coming up frequently. And I want to talk to you this week because we are opening enrollment to become a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach. When I first created the certification in 2017, the idea was I wanted just more qualified coaches, like because so much of understanding what female athletes experience during pregnancy and postpartum was never a part of our curriculum in other certifications, in our coaching degrees, exercise phys, kinesiology. It was just like not part of the conversation. The belief system was pretty much like you’re only an athlete until I don’t know 22, maybe 25, and after that, there weren’t a lot of considerations. Obviously, things have changed a lot. We we have a lot of information out there on exercise during pregnancy and postpartum, and then we know that perimenopause and menopause information is expanding in a lot of different ways. But the coaching knowledge and education, especially as it pertains to female athletes, training during pregnancy and postpartum, and now specifically through the lens of pelvic health and performance, because there are so many variables that influence what happens to a woman’s body during pregnancy and postpartum, and that influences her outcomes and experiences. It is not as simple as saying lifting weights is safe. Like we know that, we know that lifting heavy is safe for mom and baby. But what about her pelvic health? We know that they can physically perform and do all of these things. It’s just more of the consideration of that long-term athletic performance, and I refer to that as the lifetime of athleticism. That is the opportunity that we have to speak to when we are talking about coaching pregnant and postpartum athletes, and honestly, just women in general. Is there a longevity? How can we leverage exercise during these seasons to set them up well for all future seasons? And it’s not just about the flex of what can be done. So, again, when I first created this, it was and still is so important to focus on the application and on the tactics, so that we have good strategies and good insight. Because it is confusing, landscape is changing, more research is coming out, and we’re kind of as coaches the solution to deciphering what a lot of this means, but it’s become a really confusing landscape for professionals, and even furthermore for the women in our gyms and our local communities that we’re working with, that we’re sharing to online. They are confused, and that is why coaches are the solution. So I wanted to start the podcast without sentiment because the tactics are important. The why is important. I actually want to talk to you about the opportunities that have been born from becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach. I first released it in 2017, and I did that for a lot of the reasons I just stated. What I did not expect was for so many coaches to take that certification and say, “Wow, like this is what I needed, and now I want to help others. And then I saw them start personal brands. I saw them start small businesses. I saw them start coaching three hours a week. I saw I saw them start running six week postpartum programs, and ultimately, I saw them start making money in a way that really complemented their mom life, and that was exactly what I had done when I first had Cade. I had resigned from coaching Division One. I was in survival mode. I was so anxious.

Brianna Battles  04:35

I was so depressed, and I was like, “I’m going to be a stay at home mom. I can’t do this anymore. And that literally lasted two weeks. I’ve shared this story before, but I’ll share. I’ll share it again because I think a lot of people can relate. Where you’re like, this life is no longer working for me now that I am a mom. You get the reality check, and I tried to make it work. I tried so freaking hard to make it work for about a year, but it’s just if you know anything about clay. Athletics-it’s a lot of work, and not a lot poured back into you. It’s just like depletion, depletion, and that was like I was already depleted. I actually was felt like I was just in survival mode, and it’s all blur thinking back to what my first year of motherhood was like, coming off of a traumatic delivery. Cade was a-he was a challenging spirit as a baby, I was not sleeping, I was not eating, I was anxious, I was depressed, and I was working at a very high capacity in Division One and just depleted in every sense of the matter. So Jared and I got to a point where I was like, I don’t even care if we like don’t have money. I can’t do it anymore. He was working in law enforcement, and so like it’s not like we were we were balling at all. It was a really scary decision for our family for me to stop working, even though I wasn’t even getting paid a lot. Coaching it still was something, and I felt like okay, well that was my contribution. I was using my coach brain, so that’s why I kept forcing myself to stay. And it’s meaningful. Like coaching is meaningful. You get attached to people. You get attached to the purpose, you feel responsible, but it was just depleting me. It was like my soul. I just I don’t know. I feel like I it was just such a dark time, and it’s actually really hard to remember a lot of that that season of life because I was overcompensating in every manner. Like athlete brain was doing its thing, but to a really toxic degree. So I was in survival mode, and by the time I hit my wall and was like, “Can’t do this anymore. I don’t care if we don’t have money. Like I just, I freaking don’t care. Like I resigned and had no game plan. And then I was working out like at a CrossFit gym. At that point in time, I would just go there and like use that type of facility to train. I wasn’t actually doing CrossFit at that time, but it was a really large CrossFit gym, and I asked if I could just start doing like a small group classes for women. I was like, I’d like to do it like a couple days a week, two or three days a week, just coach a couple classes at 930 in the morning. Well, that time of day, if you are in the fitness industry at all, you know that 930, 10 o’clock ish, attracts a lot of mom clientele. And I was deep in the trenches of figuring out what my own body had experienced. My belief systems have been flipped upside down about training during pregnancy and what postpartum recovery actually entailed. So I was personally in my own humbling season, and I was doing a lot of rehab on my body. I was learning from other practitioners. I was in my information gathering season. So, because I started working with more moms, I started this little small group class and had a couple people show up. One was a neighbor who was a mom. One was one of my teammates from college who just felt really bad for me, and she wasn’t mom. She was like, I don’t know, but I just like want to like show up for you and you know teammates for life. And another like friend who had had a baby, and I was like, cool. So I had three people. I didn’t even charge them at first. I was like, I just need to like see if this is a thing. And the gym owner, he didn’t charge me either. He felt so bad for me.

Brianna Battles  07:59

He knew that like I was there with Cade, we were hot mess, and he was like, just like, yeah, just kind of see, like, start something and see where it goes. So he felt really bad for me and didn’t charge me rent or anything. Again, I wasn’t even charging my people that I found my three people to work out. I just wanted to see like, could this be a thing, like where I could come in, get in my workout, and then coach right after, turns out it was a thing. I started that. I resigned early September, and I started that class like end of September, early October, and by January, I had a whole class like a 10 to 12 women that were like, I want to be there, and I was like, Oh shit! I’m starting a business. I guess like I need something in place where I can coach these few hours a week, like 930 to 1030 in the morning, and they have a way to pay me. And back then, this is 2014. I was just like trying to, like they would just like write me a check and bring it to class, and I would like remind them like, hey, it’s like the first of the month or whatever. So awkward. Don’t recommend doing that. But like, really, it was just so nice that women were showing up for me. They could bring their baby, and they were stoked. They were just so stoked that this was an environment where some of them had never like lifted and used barbells before, and now they were doing it with their stroller parked right next to them or with their baby, like kind of sectioned off in the corner of the gym where they could still see them, and a theme that kept coming up with like this was so great. I don’t have to choose between childcare and getting in my workout. It’s all just kind of here and it’s cool. Like it’s already noisy, so if I need to like stop and go get my baby or stop and nurse, like it’s not a big deal. It’s 2014. I ought to be listening to this episode were probably still in college back then. Like it was just such a pure environment, and I mean, I was a little over a year postpartum, and it was so good for my nervous system to be around other moms, but not through our baby. You know what I mean? Like wasn’t a breastfeeding support class or a baby, whatever. I I’m like never fit in with that. Like it just I don’t know. I was not like the mom group kind of girly, and it just I actually felt like I sucked and couldn’t relate, couldn’t compare, and was like not maternal enough to go to those kinds of things. But if you put me in a gym, and I get to bro out a little bit, and the people I’m doing that with happen to be moms, like perfect, right? So that was what had happened as I started making friends, and I felt like I had community. And the women that I was surrounded with felt the same. They were like, “This is so great! Like this is the kind of mom group that I want. This is what I’m looking for, and then we started talking about things like diastasis and pelvic floors and helping them stop peeing when they’re sneezing, but also like stop peeing when they were like starting to get stronger and like lift heavier and not like we were resolving a lot of their issues that have been driving them crazy through pregnancy and early postpartum that were just totally overlooked. They didn’t even know that there was something they could do about it. But because I was deep in my own learning process and had done a lot for my own body and rehab by that point in time, it just made a lot of sense for B to keep learning more. And they were like my guinea pigs. They were they were there for me to push and you know, like really, kind of test some limits in the gyms with what they were lifting, what they were doing, how hard they were like conditioning, and saying like, these moms are kicking ass. Like these are my peers.

Brianna Battles  11:32

This is not a special population. This is women who, yes, become mothers, but still have this whole identity of being an athlete and of wanting more for themselves and wanting to push their bodies and frankly feel good in their bodies. They don’t need like mommy boot camps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but like they wanted to feel and train like like athletes again. And so that was the environment I created. Was like even women who would have never called themselves an athlete before, they were stepping in and they were like, “This is awesome! I’ve never even touched a barbell, or I’ve never done this. Or it would be like a college athlete who comes in, or a former college athlete. They’re like, “It feels so good to be back in this environment. Like, I haven’t lived like this since college. And you’re seeing women find an outlet that so complimented their mom life, and they were coming to the gym, they were working out, so I started charging by that point in time, and you know I was making like a decent amount of money just coaching three days a week. At that point in time, I was thinking I was charging like $150 a month per person, and again they were working out three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 930 in the morning, and I had them on retainer, so that was making like decent money for for me, like I was like, this is where I want to be anyway. Like this isn’t even hard. I like this, and I didn’t like have any expenses. I did eventually start paying rent just to like be, you know, I needed to be fair, but like it was just such a, it just felt like oh my god, this is so cool. Like I can make some money, and like I can bring my baby, I can, you know, just I don’t know. I’m making over $1,000 a month. I’m making like $1,500 a month doing just coaching three days a week. That’s great. So it felt really good to start contributing, even if it was really small skill. It was enough that I don’t know. It just, I feel like it just helped pull me out because I had something that wasn’t just mom life that I was able to pour energy into again, but not like too much energy. You know what I mean? It just felt really validating to be there and to be in this environment and and just be able to connect with other women, teach them, and then see their results, and then also like selfishly, yeah, they were pouring back into me as a mom, and so like I feel like that just helped. I don’t want to say that it cured like my depression, anxiety, because that is that is not what I’m saying, but it certainly frickin helped. So then I was like, you know what? I think there’s a huge opportunity here to start like a six week postpartum program, and I was getting more networked in my local community with pelvic floor physical therapists, with OB/GYNs, and they were all like, “What you’re doing is really good. This is really cool. And I started. I’d been sharing on social media, so people were seeing that in the mom groups back then. That was very much a thing, and so there was like conversation around like Brianna Battles and this class that she’s running at this gym, like blah blah blah, and so then I started a six week postpartum series, and that was really good too. It was like a small group coaching, so I think I started between like six and eight people. They would come in twice a week. I would do that at 1030 in the morning, so I would coach my women’s strength edition class from 9:30 to 10:30, and then two of the days a week, I would have that 10:30, that 10:30 six week postpartum program that would run a few times throughout the year, because at first I was like, I don’t know if this is going to be a thing. I don’t want it to be an ongoing commitment because like none of us, like frankly, moms are flaky. It’s hard enough, but if you do like six weeks or we.

Brianna Battles  14:59

We lock in, okay, and so that was like really helpful for starting to structure my coaching offers again in a way that kept me coaching maybe five hours of active coaching a week. Obviously, it doesn’t count for like a little bit of time before and after, but still, so much better than collegiate athletics. So much better than going into an office. And for that class, what was they charging? Like I think I was charging like $250, and then I’m doing math right here, so I don’t give you like weird numbers. Like $250 for a six week postpartum program. Again, this is 2014, you guys. I was in Southern California, so there is that. So let’s just say I had eight people in there. That was $2,000 a month plus what I was making from my my women’s strength and conditioning class. So let’s call that another like $1,500. That was $3,500. So I would say at any given month I was making anywhere between like I don’t know again like let’s just call it like $3,000 month coaching very minimally, and people were so grateful for the information I was getting them, where they were like, “Oh my God, like I feel like my my incontinence is improving. I’m feeling stronger. I’m doing this. I’m doing that. And you know, it was really gratifying for me to see because I was also able to teach. It wasn’t like just exercise. There was a lot of like education there, but like education through movement, and again, like I was bringing Cade with me, they were bringing their babies with me, and that’s when I was like, “Holy shit, I think we’re onto something here. And again, I was sharing you all about this on social media and realizing, okay, this is meaningful. Like this is really doing something cool in my local community. That six-week postpartum program ended up acting as a funnel for all my marketing nerds. It acted as a really good funnel into that women’s strength conditioning program because they got familiar familiar with seeing what the women were doing when that class was wrapping up, and then they would like filter in because they’re like, well, you know what, like I’m not going back to work yet, or I I like want to be part of this environment. I you know they trusted me, they liked the energy, they liked the vibe, and so then they would join that women’s strength conditioning class. Then that class started to scale in terms of how many women I had coming to that. But I knew I needed to keep it small scale. I wasn’t going to add additional classes. I wasn’t going to like teach at night. I was like, I can’t. Like Jared was law enforcement, crazy, crazy schedule, and I was just in the trenches of like, okay, I think we’re onto something. This is the thing. I was sharing online a lot more, and it was getting traction. And then I started working with some high-level CrossFitters, and that is when it really started to get to more popularity in terms of people recognizing what I was doing in my local community and seeing like, “Oh, that’s cool! Like, that’s this is like I wish there was something like that in my community. Oh my gosh, I heard that all the time. So I did that model for years. I did that from 2014 until COVID, and then well, that’s a different story. So I did it for a really long time. Okay, and it was very successful and it was very fulfilling, and it kept evolving. And during that time period, because there was so much interest, as it as I was sharing, like what I was physically doing out of a local CrossFit gym, all my online presence grew, my online offers grew. I was programming for professional athletes. I was consulting with them, I had created an eight-week postpartum program. I started a pregnancy athlete program because, again, I was like, so many people were asking, like, well, what can I do? And I want to learn more about my body, and not just not just like follow whatever programming where it doesn’t make sense. And women were realizing that peeing themselves was not how they wanted to like live their life as an athlete.

Brianna Battles  18:44

They wanted to be proactive about it, so it all started to really scale into like the online offers into the coach certification, which I created in 2017. When all through my pregnancy, like my pregnancy and the coach course were born at the same time, literally. Like I had worked on it, started working on it 10 years ago in Thailand, and I was teaching there for a couple weeks. I’m side questing here, so just stay with me. But I’d started working on that, and then I got pregnant shortly after. Shortly after that, and then that whole year, I had chance in August. I launched that certification very end of May, early June, and I had chance august 5. So it was like that whole course was created during my pregnancy, and because I knew that no matter how much I was sharing on social media, no matter how much I was doing in my local community, ultimately, the way to help a lot more people wasn’t just me posting on Instagram and Facebook. It was women having classes exactly like what I was teaching in their community. They had a coach teaching their CrossFit class who could actually help them stop peeing. When they’re lifting, or help them improve their diastasis, or you know, just like feel better. Like, how can I lift heavy when I have prolapse? Like, this was not a conversation that was happening as much back then. Like, I mean, I hadn’t even heard of prolapse after I’d had K. I was like, what? I didn’t know that could happen. And so, like, when you start working with women, oh, you start to learn a lot about what they’ve experienced, and you’re like, oh shit, I was not prepared. Like, I literally remember talking with a member, and she was telling me about her prolapse symptoms, and I was like, I have a lot to go home and start googling. I really didn’t even know this was a thing because it just was not commonly talked about, and like no one prepared you for that with like a what to expect when you’re expecting. So I didn’t know as a coach, and then it turns out a lot of the women I was working with, like they certainly didn’t know. Nevertheless, like what to do about it, and so that was a huge motivation behind creating education and curriculum for coaches. So that we, like, I’ve been saying this more recently, but it’s been a theme this whole time. It’s like coaches are the solution. Like we take what they get in PT, and then we put into the practical application of it in the gym, in their sport, in their fitness that they’re trying to do. We take the now, the research that is now coming out. We say, okay, yeah, but like, what does that actually mean for women who are lifting heavy? What does that actually mean for women who are doing X, Y, or Z? And we translate it. That is the role of a coach. But we had to get that curriculum out there and that knowledge because it wasn’t a thing. Think that there’s certifications now. A lot of those certifications kind of rolled out in that same era because it started trending back then, and still, it’s trending in a different way now. So back then was like this: bring everybody to the table, like we are rising, we are helping other women. There were so many people saying, “God, I wish I would have known. So many athletes, like, “What the hell? I didn’t expect this. I was told I was going to have a fit pregnancy, easy delivery, and bounce back. And then everyone was like, “Okay, I’m actually feeling like supported, understood, and we need better information. We’ve seen this pendulum swing so far, you guys, over the course of over a decade, from no information to all the information, from a lot of fear to a lot of like performative efforts, and again, we just keep seeing it swing back and forth. You can you can tell me where you’re at on that pendulum right now, but I see a lot of parallels between what is being shared on social media, in particular, with a lot of the messaging that was happening early on, and why I felt so called, like God, we need to do a better job.

Brianna Battles  22:29

Like, we really need to do a better job of educating coaches and supporting women. And the best way to do that is by having more education, having more knowledge, and then most importantly, having it be having it translate into movement and into exercise, because exercise is the goal. This is the key for mental health. This is the key for community. This is the key for their physical body improving and feeling better and stronger. Like exercise was the solution, but coaches were the ones who could deliver that. So I knew that investing in coaches was going to be the thing. Like that was one, and that was where I wanted to really pour my time and energy into, because I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t keep programming for people. I I did create a lot of different online courses at that time. I created a lot of different programs. I still have a lot of them, to be honest, because this is still still an issue. But ultimately, I wanted more coaches like me doing what I was doing in communities all over the world. So it was 2017, and there had been four iterations of the PNPA, the Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism Coaching Certification. Been four total overhauls done on that certification between 2017 and now 2026, because information changes. How I coach changes. Even like the the the learning, like what’s it called? Like it’s like how we. I want my coaches to learn. Like we need to like modernize it. Of course, I’m going to keep updating it. So it gets updated every couple of years, and I stress everybody out in my life when that happens, but it’s really important to me to have the most evidence base, the most updated coaching strategies and applications that exist. Like that is high, high importance to me, and I stand on that business over and over. So I make sure to update that certification because the landscape is changing so much, and yet it’s also just like getting louder, which is why we need coaches. And I wanted to make sure that because of that, as it gets louder, as there’s more information, the confusion is growing too. So we really needed to get make sure that there are coaches doing the kind of classes like I was doing in communities globally, so okay, four iterations of this coach certification. All of my coaches who bought with me at any point in time, they get ongoing access. So anytime it’s been updated, they get access to it. They can keep learning. That’s what I want. I want all of us to be continual learners. I am a continual learner. That’s why the freaking cert keeps getting updated. And again, I make everyone in my life crash out when that happens, including myself. But if we’re going to be continual learners, we have to be continual players, and not just be inspired, but implement. So since then, we have had over 5000 coaches around the world that take this knowledge and education, and they apply it to yes the people they’re working with. But what’s been really cool, which I did not expect at first in 2017, was the amount of coaches that have gone on to kind of create like a personal brand for themselves of all scales. Like some just like real chill, others have like really just taken on a whole expertise and built a whole business, opened businesses online, have opened gyms, have opened second locations where it’s all specializing in the exact services and coaching things that I was doing way back in 2014. They are running six-week postpartum programs. They have women’s strength conditioning classes. They’re running workshops and they’re tag tinging that with pelvic floor physical therapists in their community. They’re doing small group personal training. They are being hired by gyms to come in and be like the pre and post sale person at the gym because the other thing is that has made this very special is if you know to work with an athlete that can apply down the line to like Gen Pop.

Brianna Battles  26:20

If you only know how to work with Gen Pop, which is honestly the conversation that most of the pre and postnatal exercise info covers, it’s very hard to scale that up to athletes because like their capacity and their demands and their interests are just like so much more, and that can be really hard when you’re dealing with a lot of the variables that come up with pregnancy and postpartum. So I like to teach a top down approach, and like that was in the curriculum in 2017. Like that, that has not changed. Again, there’s like certain things that have absolutely changed, but I have a lot of themes that I will like feels all die on. Put it that way. So that was one of them, and it’s been really cool to see coaches crushing it, like not just crushing it into the expertise that they’ve acquired, the insight they’ve acquired, the ways that they’re helping their clients, and really changing lives that way. Because if you are anybody who’s ever experienced like symptoms or have struggled in any way, when you finally have somebody who like can help you or at least like hear you out and like just kind of meet you where you’re at, maybe refer you, like you finally feel seen. You finally feel supported, and like that is the role that coaches are already so naturally good at. And when you can work with this population, that is so magnified. It is so much more meaningful. It is so much more effective, and you can apply it in so many different ways. It’s not just fitness coaches that have taken the certification. A lot of practitioners, a lot of pelvic floor physical therapists who are realizing, oh, I have a lot of a, I have a lot of athletic clients. I have a lot of my athlete brain people. I need to know how to work with them because it’s one thing to know how to like treat somebody in clinic. It’s a whole other thing to know how to apply that to the gym that they’re at, to high rocks, to powerlifting, to jujitsu, whatever. Like, so it’s really like this community that has been born year over year is incredible. Like it’s that that expression, the rising tide. What’s that expression? Rising tide raises all ships. Something like that, right? Where I’m like, oh my god, this community is excellent. It is filled with OB/GYNs, midwives, public floor PTs, variety of other practitioners, coaches of all different backgrounds and interests, and just women that have come in and they’re crushing it in business, even if it’s really small scale. They’re like, they’re like me. They’re like, hey, you know, I’m still, I’m making $1,500 a month, and I’m coaching only a couple hours a week, and it’s fun, it’s fulfilling, it’s like giving me my pink back. So at all levels, and again, we have other coaches that have opened a whole gym that specializes in coaching women. We’ve seen that over and over. Is like the businesses that have been born, the small business owners that have been born from what they learned through the certification. I have a, you know, one of the pillars was important to me of that certification was that they weren’t just inspired. Then you had to implement. So everything was like okay. Here’s what you know. Here’s like what you can do with it. These are the models we’ve seen work very well, both personally. I’ve done it all, but also with our coaches. Like, what are they doing? What’s working for them? Not just back then, but what is working in 2026? And a lot of it is like the offers are still the same. And if anything, we’re finally getting more recognition on like, oh yeah, this is certainly a service that is needed at every gym, every gym. This should be in every local community. I want there to be a PNPA coach in every major city around the world because this elevates the information and the experiences of mothers. And if we can do that and know it at a high level, then we can translate it to anybody.

Brianna Battles  29:39

We can translate it to a very sedentary woman who is experiencing a lot of symptoms and just wants to like live a slightly more active lifestyle with her child, just do her activities of daily living, and feel like capable in her body. Or we’re supporting our triathlete who’s trying to make a run to compete at the highest. Level like we should be able to help both. And coaches were scrappy. We know the art and we know the science, and like we can deliver at that. In our industry, there’s so many different like silos of like there’s like research, there’s practitioners, there’s athletes, there’s medical, there’s like just all these different silos. But as coaches, we are kind of like the people that help connect dots, we can refer. We can take a little bit from everywhere, and then lay out the game plan that makes sense. And we can do that in a way that ultimately creates a business. It creates a designation. It creates a personal brand. It creates offers. It creates expertise. It creates ways where you can’t unknow this stuff, and you won’t unhear it either, because I’m telling you, there’s so many people have like in my like real life that don’t always like know what I do, like. But I will be, for example, I was walking out of Chances football game the other night, and this mom was like, almost peed my pants cheering for my son at his game. I had to like rush over. I almost didn’t make it, and I’m just thinking to myself, like, I mean, I didn’t make it weird right then and there, but I was like, I could totally, I could help with that. You know what I mean? Like, it’s something that you will not unhear. It is not something that you will unsee, whether you’re in a fitness environment or just amongst your peers as women. And if you don’t realize this now. You will eventually that a lot of what happens during pregnancy and postpartum, we can really proactively navigate and manage, and we need to do that because as our bodies change, as we get closer to perimenopause or menopause, we have to address those symptoms proactively because likely they will become more exposed as our bodies change, as our hormones change, as our tissues change. Those are more vulnerable seasons, and why we want to go into those seasons feeling as solid as we can, with as good of a foundation as we can. And good does not have to be perfect, because there again, there’s so many different variables that influence birth and pregnancy and delivery, postpartum recovery, all of that, and and just our different varying capacities throughout our life as moms. And I know I’ve kind of been all over the place with this, and this is not exactly where I thought I would take it. I was really trying to focus like more on the business side of things, but I’m trying to actually make this as holistic as possible to get a good, like, comprehensive view of yes, the need for qualified coaches, the impact of these coaches, and then also the like the business opportunity that gets born for women. Like, whether you want to take it like and really just like really ride out your full’s potential, or if you’re like, you know what, like let’s just start small, like let’s just keep this thing, like something I do on the side. I don’t need it to become a whole business, but I do like like the idea of a side gig where I can make $2,000 a month. Like that would be really cool. That could change the quality of life for my family and not have to like be as stressed financially. I think that makes a really Significant difference, and another point. Again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to say this, but it’s a skill set to always fold back on. I remember, like my mom, I was raised by a single mom. Talk about this a lot too, because I think it’s like you know, it kind of changes your brain chemistry and how you see the world.

Brianna Battles  33:16

But I just remember thinking, like, yeah, I have like my degrees and all this, but like I guess that would always require me having to go work and like I’d have to go to PT school or I’d have to do this or I’d have to do that. But like this certification allows you to have a lot of autonomy in how you work and your capability of making income, and I think it’s always important for a woman to have in her back pocket ways where she can make money, ways where she can scale that up or scale it in her own capacity, whether like you you do that or not, like you have it as an option. And I love for women to have options. It can improve your quality of life. You get to use your coach brain, and you have a skill set that you can tap into that will never go away. There are always pregnant and postpartum athletes, they are trending right now. Even if you’re not working with athletes, there’s always pregnant postpartum women who need help. Like women’s health is like not great, literally anywhere. It’s just not. So there’s a lot of opportunity to be the solution as coaches. You can come in and say, “I can help you with this, this, this, and this. And these are my services. I can do one-on-one personal training. I can do small group class. I can. I have an ongoing women’s recognition class, and they’re on retainer. Or you have the one-off series, a six-week postpartum class that you run four to five times a year. You’re like, cool. Like that is that is what I’m doing. I don’t need more than that. And then eventually, maybe have an online offer where you know people come to your six-week postpartum class. They can’t go to your ongoing class, or they can’t like go into your gym for whatever reason. But they still want to work with you. Great, you can work one-on-one with them online. You can write them an online program, and you can kind of have this hybrid type offer where, yeah, you’re coaching in person, but now you’re also kind of tapping into the online space. I think it’s really important to before you’re coaching. Like online, you really need experience, especially with this population. Coaching in person-that’s another hill that I will die on-is you gotta have eyes and hands on these bodies in real time, and and just get again. We’re good at the art and the science, but you have to see that in person, so then you can actually be competent as you know someone who’s coaching online, and in that way, it unlocks a lot of opportunities. A sentiment I come back to a lot is like, how are we pursuing our potential? That potential doesn’t have to be an like all or nothing type thing. It can be like a gradual effort towards what am I capable of? What do I actually feel maybe even responsible for? I’m inspired through my own pregnancy or my own postpartum or my own era as an athlete mom, and I want to help others too. Oh, great! Like I can use that, and I can make money, and I don’t have to like choose between going back to work and being with my baby. Like you’re, you kind of like have the dream, and I can attest to that because I’ve been living it myself for 13 years. I am able to have the mom lifestyle that I want, where I’m very involved with my boys, and I don’t expect anybody to be taking this to the crazy extent that I have. But I’m telling you, like even before this, like I can be and have been really involved as a mom, and it hasn’t had to be this like all or nothing that I think so many women think that motherhood becomes. You can tap into a little bit of everything, and it will look different at different points in time. But I brought both of my boys with me. They coached with me for years, years. They were coaching with me. They were chaotic. It was insane, but ultimately, it allowed me to have the best of both, where I could be involved.

Brianna Battles  36:47

And then, as I started like turning it more into a business, but your company, okay, well, it was a nap time hustle. It was, it was starting to get childcare. It was okay. They’re in preschool now. I have more undivided attention that I can, that I can really pour into the business. But it’s like you can make your business match whatever era you’re in. That’s the cool thing about this work: is it doesn’t have to be all of it all at the same time. It can gradually be scaled up or scaled back. And again, I’m speaking from personal experience, but I’ve also witnessed this. I’ve witnessed this over and over and over with so many different coaches from all different places, all over the world, that are doing this, and they’re doing it in a way that makes sense for their community, for their life, for their coaching, for their everything, and it’s been really positive. So, I know this was a rambly one-on-one episode, but I just wanted to share this with you because I think a lot of people are curious about what it could actually look like, and even like some tangible numbers. We have coaches that are that are crushing. They really are. And sometimes I think just like making anything fills this gap of feeding your potential. Like, okay, I can do I can do this, and this is needed. I promise you, it is needed. It is so needed. We are in such an echo chamber on social media. I promise you, that does not reflect social media. Does not reflect the reality of what your community needs. Like they need you. This is still such new information to the majority of people that you interact with in your real life. So, I promise you, this is something worth pursuing. If it’s ever been on your heart, if you ever really thought about it, it is worth pursuing. It will change the way you approach your own life and training and body through the years-not just pregnancy, postpartum, but like all of that has set me up to be honestly like a better athlete. I’m at 40, finding a whole new sport, competing. Like I mean, I train hard. I train a lot, and I’m better for knowing what I know. As a coach, I’m a better athlete because of it. So even if it’s just selfishly, you’re like, all right, I need to like really understand my body and and everything like that. Like I am a better athlete because of what I know as a coach. I’ve been able to adjust and adjust my training approach and really understand my body, but then ultimately, like just what you’re able to what you’re able to lock into, and that potential, your business at all different levels, your personal brand, just that expertise that you can bring. Because again, there’s no one knowing this. There’s no one seeing this need. It will be continual. It’s only getting more needed. Trust me, I am in a lot of different. I’m just oh yeah, I have a lot going on, and the one thing that I keep coming back to is like, damn, okay, I think like people are finally, finally catching on that this is very much indeed a thing, and coaches are needed. So, with all of that said, enrollment is open on the pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coaching certification. I would love to have you join. It is evidence based. It is self paced. You get ongoing access to it, and most importantly, I teach you how to actually apply these concepts and theories and research to the realities of a women experience. Okay, it is the there are so many. Variables. There’s a reason you get the ick when you see another random influencer selling her pregnancy or postpartum program based on what her abs look like, or just some random ab exercise, and you’re like, okay, yeah, that’s not enough to heal a diastasis. Like we logically know that. Okay, you become the person who knows what to do. You become the person that cuts through all the noise and actually help the real people in your local community and online. Like that is, it almost becomes a responsibility once you know that this is even a thing and there is a solution for cutting through a lot of that noise.

Brianna Battles  40:34

So I’d love to have you become a certified pregnancy postpartum athleticism coach. When I say I’m with you, I mean it. Like I said, there’s ongoing access. You can email me. I do study group calls all the time. Our community, being in that network, is unmatched. It’s unmatched. We have an incredible community. It’s very interactive, and there’s a lot of opportunities to keep getting the support that you need as a coach. I host a mastermind at the end of the year. I’m doing one in in November, and that’s where we really dive into the business side of things. And you know, I’ve now run coaching businesses in a variety of ways, the PMPA side of things. And I, you know, casually opened a jujitsu gym earlier this year because why not? It’s been really cool just to see the evolution of this work, the evolution of what coaches are doing, and the ways that I continually get to support them, and I would love to have you join. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, you have questions, you can of course email me. You can [email protected]. Please like check out the sales page. All that’s going to be linked, and then you can send a DM to my Instagram or to the brand Instagram. Sometimes things get buried, but I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have about the curriculum, about the certification, about connecting you with with a coach. If that’s what you’re looking for, I’m grateful for you. I’m grateful for you listening to this whole episode, and I’m here to help questions. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Practice Brave podcast. If you enjoy 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 uplevel 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.