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CrossFitting as a mum!

Hearing “You just have to accept that part of your life was before and now you are just a mum” was a hard pill to swallow.

I had a baby two years ago trained my whole way throughout my pregnancy doing things from handstand pushups to Olympic lifting and slowing down where I felt I needed to. I did avoid running, skipping and box jumping and don’t regret it (my pelvic floor thanks me for it now). I followed a post partum training program for 10 weeks with great difficulty as I was learning for the first time how to juggle a business a baby and my sleep. Training was starting back and I was loving it but fast forward 4 months post partum to find out I was pregnant again. I was never going to be fit again I thought.

Pregnancy number two was tough, and the anxiety wasn’t much easier. You never really know what someone is going through until you kind of live a life in their shoes. Being a mum is tough work, its days its nights and its selfless but the hardest of them all is it can be really isolating and lonely and given the pandemic we are living through it really doesn’t make it easy to juggle all those emotions. Thankfully, I have a loving and supporting husband.

So why couldn’t I still do CrossFit and do the things that gave me sanity and made me feel good? Why were people telling me to accept the fact that I was just a mum now? I am not going to lie it took me a while to get my groove back because I wasn’t like the insta mums who were back in the gym training everyday 2 weeks later or waiting for my kids to sleep to do the lounge room workout full of glute bridge ups and reverse lunges, and for a while that made me feel so guilty and like I had to choose one or the other. This once fitness fanatic, who trained every day (not missing a day) couldn’t find her mojo to train and felt like it was one or the other, and to top it off I hated my body.

So I decided to put my training on the back pedal as I had realised that trying to uphold that “fit title” I was just putting extra pressure on myself and missing out on enjoying and I mean REALLY enjoying just being a mum at home with my two babies. Now my eldest is two years old and my youngest 10 months old, and I find myself enjoying my kids, I have embraced the fact they will appreciate me playing with them over washing my floors till they glow but I have also found myself back in the gym training 3-6x a week depending on the week and almost as strong as pre kids (still working on the fitness).

I think my secret is, I learnt how not to care as much, to be kind on myself and my children, to take a break when I need it and in return it gave me no anxiety, memories, happiness, weight loss, and my fitness is coming back. I think I am gaining my fitness back by embracing being a mum and knowing perfection is a hard thing to grab hold of so why not make the most of today and do the things that make you happy. Don’t live your life following someone else’ instagram or story. This is my story. Thank You.