What Everyone Tells You Post Baby Will Be Like

Everyone in the gym with me would be in awe. They would pat me on the back and tell me how easy labor would be, how strong I would be post baby, and how fast my body would bounce back. When you’re pregnant you forget about all of your previous body issues. Instead it is all taken up with “holy crap my belly is e.nor.mous” and the thought that once that baby pops out you will be back to normal.

You go into the delivery room thinking, “This is going to be easy” (especially the second time around). You think that the baby weight will come right off. I gained 25 pounds with each of my pregnancies. So, I thought I would leave the hospital just fifteen pounds up from my pre-pregnancy weight. I thought my stomach would bounce back and my fitness would carry me through. That’s what everyone told me at least.

But no one told me that my stomach would feel like dough. Literal dough. For weeks. Months, really, if I’m going to be honest. Talk about disheartening. All those knee raises, and for what?

The Reality of Your Body After Pregnancy

No one talks about after the baby. They don’t talk about how hard it is to take six weeks off post baby. They don’t talk about how much of a shock it is when you hit your first workout, thinking you should be able to do what you did when you were nine-months pregnant. I mean, seriously, how can the same workout be harder when that bundle of joy isn’t in you anymore?

No one mentions the bitter reality when you realize your body is not following your brain and when your muscles fatigue at the simplest movements. They don’t tell you how long of a road coming back is and how much that just flat out fucks with your head.

After my first child, it took me almost three years to feel great again, to feel like I was in it, like I was crushing the workouts and lifting heavy weights. Three years. In fact, the month I started to really feel good in the gym, I found out I was pregnant again.

My littlest is now four months old. You might imagine that I would know the ropes this time. That I would know the mind games and the truth about those last ten pounds. You would think I would be okay with seeing my one-rep-max drop – by ten percent.

You would think.

Where I Am Today, Post Pregnancy

But the truth is, when you’re pregnant, you feel great. You’ve got sleep under your belt, you’ve got the time to workout, and your body just plain loves you (well, sort of). But after that baby is pushed through you, all bets are off. Running isn’t comfortable, double unders make you pee, and your lifts leave something to be desired.

When I looked like I swallowed a beach ball everyone told me, “Don’t worry, you will come back stronger.” I’m still waiting for that “stronger” moment. My tested deadlift today was the same weight that I lifted almost five years ago.

Everyone gives me excuses. Yeah, I’ve got two kids now. I get that. I get that life has changed and it will (in theory) come back. But while you are on the path back, it sucks. It sucks to feel like the last five years of training have been for naught, and to feel alone, and tired. It sucks to wonder when you will have your energy back, or when lifting will be true personal records again.

The hardest part, though, is that no one talks about fitness post pregnancy, or the long haul back to where you were. They just say you will come back stronger. But when is that comeback? Does it ever really happen?

I could end this on a more positive note, on a more go-get-‘em attitude, like the stuff I write to encourage everyone to meet their goals. But today? Today I just don’t have that in me.

Today I am going to lament of days past with all the new mamas out there. I’m going to kiss my little ones and thank the stars for their precious little smiles I know I couldn’t live without. Today I’m going to trade in my one-rep-max for a few more snuggles and plan for tomorrow to be better.

Photos courtesy of CrossFit LA.

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When it comes to personal records and maximal effort, our minds shy away because they like the neat and the organized. What they don’t like is the dark place we have to go to in order to crank out our new personal records. Our minds like R&R, repeat and recycle. They don’t like hitting the redline and trying to surge past it into new ground.

So if we let them, they plateau.

You may have found yourself a great coach and a great place to train, your technique is improving, your times are getting faster, your weights are heavier – things are progressing logically, for the moment. And then you ask yourself to push just a little harder, and out of the blue, your progress has flat-lined.

You find yourself stagnating away, even though you are doing all the right things for mobility, nutrition, muscle care, and supplements. You find yourself failing at the same weight, day after day, week after miserable week.

You think that maybe you should go more often, maybe you need a one-on-one class, maybe you need a different coach. You don’t think that it is just your mind messing with you, holding you back.

But it is.

In 1984 the Russians realized that Olympic athletes who mentally rehearsed their sport experienced a positive impact on their performance. Since then the area has been widely studied. In the 1990s a researcher showed that just five minutes of mental visualization, versus five minutes of basic tasks yielded a significant difference in overall performance – and the dramatic increase in performance wasn’t limited just to experienced professionals, the researcher showed that it applied to novices as well.¹

Just five minutes.

Another researcher showed that mere mental rehearsal triggered responses from the autonomic nervous system, which in turn improved athletic performance. It seems that the simple act of visualizing a movement, be it an Olympic lift, a desired gymnastic skill, or an overall performance, helps in the construction of schema.²

Heck, one study even showed that people who carried out virtual weight training workouts increased their muscle strength by 13.5%. 13.5%! For simply thinking about lifting weights. That was almost half of the gains seen by the group that actually lifted weights (they saw a 30% increase in muscle strength).³

So why does visualizing success work? It works because you imagine yourself performing whatever task with perfect form.

You see yourself lifting a new PR off the ground, you see yourself above the rings after a perfectly executed muscle up, or you see yourself running Pose method. And when you see yourself doing all of these amazing things, your brain is creating a neural pattern, one that your muscles will follow tomorrow when you are in the gym.⁴

The best part is that visualizing success isn’t particularly difficult or time consuming (really, five minutes a day is like brushing your teeth one more time a day).

If you have the time, you can check out some great reading on sports psychology. I would recommend 10-Minute Toughness by Jason Selk, Finding Your Zone by Michael Lardon and David Leadbetter, An Athlete’s Guide to Sport Psychology by Tony Reilly, or Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence by Gary Mack.

But you can also just jump right on in. There is no right way to practice visualization, you can do it at the gym sitting on a stack of weights or at home under warm covers, in a loud bustling area or in a quiet out cove. You don’t even have to put in five minutes, just put in whatever time you can.

During that time you want to mentally rehearse your movements, think about the bar coming to rest on your chest, the stomp and placement of your feet in your jerk, the sound of the weight crashing to the platform after you have successfully completed the lift. Set yourself a very specific goal, imagine achieving your goal, see yourself achieving your goal, see all of the detail with all of your senses. Hear your coach screaming, feel the sweat trickling down your forehead, smell the plywood, see the plates on the bar, taste the victory.

Like Muhammad Ali did each time before entering the ring, tell yourself, again and again, “I am the greatest.” Visualize your success, succeed before even attempting the weight for real. Let your mind work for you.

References:

1. Isaac, A. R. (1992). Mental Practice- Does it Work in the Field? The Sport Psychologist, 6, 192-198.

2. Roure, R., et al. (1998). Autonomic Nervous System Responses Correlate with Mental Rehearsal in Volleyball Training. Journal of Applied Physiology, 78(2), 99-108.

3. Ranganathan V.K. (2004) From mental power to muscle power –gaining strength using the mind. Neuropsychologia, 42(7) 944-56

4. Porter, K., Foster, J. Visual Athletics. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Publishers, 1990.

Photos courtesy of Journal Menu.

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