It’s all about the mindset: 3 Ways to Embrace Pregnant & Postpartum Training

In a great conversation with Lexi Miller from Lifelong Endurance and the Defining Endurance Podcast, we talked about all things training for pregnancy and training as an endurance athlete. Listen to the podcast to hear more personal stories and even get to hear little baby Lyle make an appearance at the beginning.

Listen to the podcast and/or read the article below! In the article, we’ll highlight three key insights around embracing training during pregnancy and postpartum – it’s all about the mindset.

1. Training will change in motherhood – and that can be a great thing.

Once entering into the world of mom, for many women, how they approach training needs to look a little different. Your time is now arranged around sleeping and feeding schedules. From now on, you’re balancing time and commitments not just for you, but for a child, and whatever else that entails – childcare, sharing responsibilities with a partner, eventually big kid activities. 

You can approach this in two ways: I don’t have time OR I now get to have a very targeted training plan. When we choose the latter, this forces us to focus on structure, efficiency, and consistency. 

• Structure – the structure of a training plan prioritizes where you are at that point in time – base building, mileage, race specific goals and life. It is built to be attainable and make you successful in this phase so that you CAN progress to the next phase. 

• Efficiency – each workout should have a specific goal – maybe it’s volume, maybe it’s speed, strength, etc. With the specificity of each session comes efficiency – you don’t need to spend 5, 10, 15 minutes before your workout deciding what to do, building your motivation, or extending a workout that could be shorter. 

• Consistency – done is better than perfect. Perfection can be the anti-progress goal. As you enter pregnancy – throw that perfection out the window NOW and embrace consistency. A skipped day, a bad workout, a quality session turned into an easy session here and there DOES NOT MATTER. If you are showing up, consistently, that is what makes us stronger, more consistent and builds the progress. 

With these changes, not only are you able to more effectively execute against your training plan, you also are building a stronger foundation with better habits, which can lead to amazing results. It also helps you feel like the athlete you truly are! 

2. Skip the comparison game – with yourself and with others.

As you can imagine, two mother athletes who are also coaches, we have a lot of other women to compare ourselves to, as well as comparing ourselves to our own expectations. Luckily, in that comparison, we get to see how different every pregnancy is – whether it’s between your own pregnancies or between other women. So what are some ways to get over the comparison game?

• Focus on what you can do and you want to do. Just because someone else is running more, hiking harder, biking more, that doesn’t mean you have to. 

• Listen to you body and do what you can and what feels mostly good. Let’s be honest, pregnancy and postpartum might not always feel good, but it should feel mostly good. 

• Prioritize the habits and activities that make you feel best and know that your priorities and habits are going to be different than someone else’s. 

3. It’s a process: It’s not linear, it may feel slow, but it is actually pretty short in the grand scheme of things.

Everything about pregnancy and postpartum is a journey where every day feels different. One day you’re a badass crushing your workout, feeling great. The next you feel like you were run over by a truck, and both are okay. To embrace the journey, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Embrace the opportunity to build strong habits and foundations. At no other point are you going to have the option to rebuild your core strength, your technique, your base with such intention. 

• Be disciplined. Follow your plan and stick to it. Don’t skip it and then try to jump in full speed 6 weeks later, don’t progress if you haven’t covered your current phase. There is a phased return to allow you to rebuild, retrain and make progress. 

• Listen to your body. Every day may feel different, and that’s okay. Push when you can, hold back when it doesn’t feel right. Don’t put a timeline on the process, instead, focus on milestones for load, progress and symptom-free returns.

Embracing the opportunity, being disciplined, and listening to your body are your keys to an active pregnancy and strong return to activity. You will have set backs, you will have leaps ahead and embracing the process will make your overall return much quicker than trying to cheat it!

Take a Listen!

Again – listen to the podcast if you want to hear more of the conversation. To all the fellow mothers and moms to be – you’ve got this. Embrace the journey. Stay active. Embrace the badass mother athlete that you are!