 Our next caller is Catherine from Virginia. Hey, Catherine, how can we help you? Hi, Cathy. Hey, so I am pregnant. I'm due in November and I'm also a police officer. So my question is going to be, how can I come back from pregnancy? Obviously having just delivered a kid, but then also go right into a very physically demanding position where my physical fitness is going to be, you know, it could be life and death for me or for somebody else. What do you guys recommend? Yeah, no, what are we doing right now? So right now I'm still able to to lift, do plenty of conditioning. I do. I'm running maps aesthetic right now. I'm in phase two been doing that for about a year and I just keep making progress. So I've stayed on it. I'm doing sprints. Well, once or twice a week, about one to 200 meters doing some stairs, Prince doing some tire flips to try and keep that conditioning up. And then able to keep up with the priming as I need to. And then core activation work. Yeah, you're pretty sure you're going to be all right. Yeah, you're a bad ass. First of all, thank you very much for what you do. You're good people like you protecting. Especially the last couple of years. Really, especially last couple of years. So thanks for what you do and thanks for listening to the show. So most of the work that happens postpartum is actually what happens before you get pregnant and while you're pregnant because you're really setting your body up well for a nice bounce back afterwards. Now that being said, I do want to say this. There's, there's definitely a challenge that I've encountered. I've trained lots and lots of women pre, during and post pregnancy. And I've trained a lot of women who were very athletic and very fit going into it and then coming out. And here's the challenge I always run into. They almost always overestimate their ability postpartum. So here's the main thing that I want you to, to, to consider. Okay, there's your entire body is going to maintain lots of strength, fitness, and yes, you're going to have a baby and all that stuff. But one part of your body is going to radically change and radically change its recruitment pattern. And that has to do with the muscles of the core. Okay. Especially in the third trimester of pregnancy as the baby is really growing. It's stretching things out, your transverse abdominis stretches out, your abs stretch, you're going to lose connection to these muscles, or at least in comparison to the way that you were connected to them before. Then you have the baby and you go to work out. And this is what happens to a lot of people is they go work out and they're going slow and they're like, you know what, I feel good. And they can't figure out why their back is hurting or they can't figure out why their hips are bothering. Like, you know, I feel strong. It's really weird. Like I'm using a weight that's light, but my back is starting to bother me or my hips are starting to bother me. Like what's going on? It's all about that core recruitment. So the program I'm going to recommend places special emphasis on connecting to those muscles and especially connecting to those muscles through other movements. And that's going to be a map starter. Now, the reason why I set this question up or the answer up the way I'm doing it is because someone as fit as you as competitive as you is going to go into map starter and you're going to think, Oh, this is easy. It's too easy. I can go harder. Don't do that. Go map starter, trust the program. Cause what it's doing is it's trying as you follow the program, a lot of work on a physical ball, a lot of slow work. What you're going to do is you're going to reintegrate your core with the rest of your body after map starter, depending on how you feel, you could go into maps and a ball. Like you might even be able to go into maps aesthetic, but do a whole cycle of map starter as soon as you're cleared to work out. So like Sal, we've all had lots of experienced training clients like yourself in the exact situation you are. And I'll tell you that the question that you have is not going to be your problem and challenge. You are the type of person who I have to tell the calm down and like be okay with, we might have to cut back on some things. Be okay with, we might get a little softer for a little bit or a little weaker for a little bit. That's okay. You are absolutely crushing it. The fact that you are adding sprints and tire flips in maps aesthetic and you're pregnant right now, you are on pace to crush it. And you can absolutely, so long as your body is feeling and doing well, continue that on. I've had clients train pretty, pretty hard all the way up into the final month. So you, so long as you are feeling good and everything is fine, then you can continue on that pace. And like Sal said, that the real work is done right now. I mean, you're obviously going to have a little bit of downtime right after you have your baby. But if you go into that pretty strong, you're going to rebound really quick. But then the, the, the tendency that someone like you has is wanting to get right back into it as fast as you can. It's totally the mindset. Like reestablishing stability and connection to your core. Like afterwards is going to be at the utmost important. So if you can highlight that as, you know, the priority, you know, transitioning again and reestablishing that you feel, uh, like, like your body is nice and supported, then we can start, you know, getting back in, into that sort of getting after it mode. And talking to you is like talking to one of ourselves. I mean, this is, we can relate to this. This is how we all, like when I tore my Achilles, this is the issue. Like I want to get back to myself. And so as soon as I start feeling pretty good, I'm stretching, I'm stretching the boundaries. Katrina was the same way after her, after her pregnancy, she wanted to get right into it right away. I remember wrestling with her about just staying starter. I know you. I'm already feeling good. Can we get to Anna ball? Just relax. You're not, you didn't lose a bunch of muscle. You're still in great shape. It's going to come back just as fast, relax. So that, that is actually the conversation. I feel like I can tell by your voice. I can tell by what you're doing already muscle memory is real. You know, it's all going to come back. Yeah. You're going to be good, man. You were already kicking ass right now. And you, you, you're doing the hard part, which I think we get a lot of people that are already deep into pregnancy or already had a baby. And then they're like, what should I do now? And they haven't done any training for the last nine months. Plus you're, you've been maintaining that. You're going to be just fine. Follow starter after the baby, stick it all the way through, even though you're going to feel like you can get into Anna ball. That's okay. You're still going to progress in that program and then move back into like, you know, Catherine, the challenge with being for lack of a better term disconnected from certain muscles is you almost can't tell it's, it's almost like you can't tell that you're disconnected. You're like, I feel okay, but it's literally you're not connected to that muscle. I can't, I remember I had a client who she was a competitive soccer player. She played, you know, division one soccer and then she was into fitness and same thing. And then after she had the baby, she's like, I feel great. I feel like I can go run. Let's go. And I said, no, you're not connected to your core. And we had kind of had this debate and I had her get down into a vacuum position. So all fours. And I said, I want you to do a vacuum. And she sat there and she's like, I can't, I can't bring it in. I'm like, it's hard to understand what it feels like to be disconnected from a muscle. But it's hard. It's really hard to tell. So you got to kind of trust the process. But if you do, you're going to do great. You're going to do really, really good. But try not to overdo it. Okay. Awesome. We'll do. Yeah. We'll send that over to you and keep, keep getting those bad guys. Okay. Yeah. Thanks so much guys. And can I, can I please just compliment you on your professionalism? I've watched this organization grow over the past couple years and I've been so impressed by the integrity of y'all's work and, and what you're putting together. So thanks, thanks for doing the good work and putting out a great product. We really appreciate it. Oh, thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks guys. Yeah. This, this happened to Jessica. She's, she's, you know, she's obviously fit, strong, had the baby and she had a C-section so that I had another complication. I could tell as soon as she started, bro. Yeah. And she starts working out and she started getting after it. And she's like, my back, she's like, it's weird. Why is my back bothering? I'm like, honey, you're not, your core is not firing the way it used to. We have to get that back, get on the physio ball. I told her, I literally took a 10 and 15 pound dumbbell. I said, this is, you can't get any heavier than this. And she started doing it. And lo and behold, everything started feeling. Well, the thing that I had to explain to Katrina was, and it was hard for her this, because we had a very similar challenge. Same thing. She trained most all the way through the entire pregnancy, had to take a few weeks off right after the baby and then was right back in it. And she wanted to go ride an anabolic. And I'm like, no, we're going in starter. And then after the first week, she was already like, okay, I'm feeling good. I'm ready for anabolic. I'm like, no. And the thing that I try to explain to her too is that if you're getting results from starter, right, that it's minimal volume in comparison to anabolic, why would we go to anabolic? There's no reason to. I mean, when we, and I said, you know this, you hear me say it on the show a fucking thousand times. Our goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So if you're telling me you're progressing, you're getting stronger, you're feeling better, week over week. Why would we jump out of this program and move into more just because you can do more? Don't why? So, and someone like this is more like us. More like. I can only imagine if it was me, I would be a hard head. It would be hard to get me to do the same thing. I know, I have to. I mean, and that's only fair that we admit that as we talked about this, like it, I feel so passionate about it and close to it because I know I have this, I'm guilty of the same bullshit. I mean, I'm dealing with it right now. I'm was, we had some momentum going. I felt so good at hitting it so hard and heavy. And now my elbow hurts, my shoulder hurts, my hip hurts. Why? Because I was pushing it and overreaching. Yeah, yeah. This is, this is the value of having a coach sometimes to tell you to pull back. Oh, totally. Walk you down.