My sails are up, a new course is charted, and Bigness had to walk the plank.

Today I made a pretty tough decision. It involved “canceling” one of my biggest current goals. And it sucked.

I had to shelf The Bigness Project.

It had nothing to do with time. It didn’t have to do with the injury I sustained in a snowboarding accident. Shoot, it didn’t even have to do with the viral bug I’ve been dealing with this week.

But, it has everything to do with my pelvic floor and the fact that my foundation has been compromised.

At first, I thought it was a procedure and biopsy I had to have performed in the beginning of February. Then, I thought that maybe I was doing to much with my core, so I swapped out the core stuff from Bigness and added in the rehabbing work from my early postnatal days.

The problem only continued to get worse.

Throughout my pregnancy, I kept a check on how everything was working and functioning. While I wanted to stay healthy and fit throughout, keeping my foundation as solid as could be and working at its optimal capability, was key. In the very last days of my pregnancy, my foundation, in a sense, gave out. Cracked.

I remember the Friday that labor actually started, calling my doctor early that morning, thinking my water had broke and IT was happening. After a check-up and the all clear, I was embarrassed, that I, the “specialist” with women’s fitness, including the pelvic floor, was having this “moment”. I felt like a failure.

Then, I didn’t. I realized that, in the end, we do what we can do, prepare the body as much as we can. Give our bodies the working tools it needs to perform in the way it needs. Move ourselves in a way that our bodies react and perform best. But sometimes, it still veers off track. And that’s what happened to my body in the hours before labor began.

Postpartum, I was fortunate enough that everything I had done during my postnatal months, along with genetics, had set my body up for minimal impact. I had a one-finger separation just above my naval, and experienced no leakage through my floor.

I still rehabbed myself. I still went through each step I would take a mom coming to see me with diastasis or symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction. Be smart, my brain told me. And I was. As painstaking as it was, as much as I wanted to get back into it… slow and steady.

I didn’t begin to train my foundation in other ways until I was nearly a year postpartum and even then, I was very cautious. Maybe it was some of the more severe cases that had come my way as a trainer/coach, maybe I was being paranoid. I still can’t really tell, but it’s always better to be cautious.

This past fall, in attempt to get my headstand and handstands nailed, I needed to focus more on that foundation. My core and floor were feeling great, solid, and it was time to dig in.

When I started the Bigness project, I didn’t realize what was happening to my focus during each workout.

Finally, in a group of pre/postnatal coaches like myself, I asked about my symptoms and if it really could have been that procedure I had.

A friend in that group suggested that it could be the stress causing it. I needed to check-in with myself, evaluate. Perhaps my elevator was too high and I needed to lower it, she suggested.

After two days of evaluating myself, I realized, Bigness was going to have to go.

I wasn’t concentrating on my elevator at all. It wasn’t on floor 99, it was way down in the parking garage. Sub-level 99. I wasn’t concentrating on proper breathing. I was focusing more on the “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi…” of the training than anything.

As the result, I was opening and staying open. My piston was broken. And because of that, my floor wasn’t performing as it should.

Once again, I have found myself embarrassed.

Added to it, I finally got around to seeing my chiropractor this week. Nearly three years it had been since I had been to him. During pregnancy, my back had felt shockingly good. It also wasn’t bad that first year after either. The past few months, it had grown worse and since I can’t do yoga 24/7, which has been the most beneficial… I scheduled my appointment.

What I learned there, only adds to my mess of embarrassment.

The left side of my pelvis/sacrum has tipped. Most likely a result of my pregnancy.

The result is, my left leg is actually shorter than my right. Something I had wondered about during a shopping venture, carrying my son in the Ergo, noticing it felt like I was striking much harder with my right foot than my left. Life consumed me in chaos/busyness after that day, and it was forgotten about. Until that appointment.

My chiropractor is confident it can be fixed, and after one visit, the difference is much more noticeable. My stride is different. My center moves differently as I walk. However, in the days immediately after, my symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction have gotten worse.

A culmination of factors. My body is being righted to where it belongs, so things that I have worked with in their current state, have shifted around.

I need rehab.

I was so totally, and completely proactive in my early postpartum days, just to get caught up and off focus during a certain type of training and have set myself farther back than I was just after having my son.

As much as it sucks to scrap the Bigness for now, it has to be done. Without a functional foundation, I’m only going to make my current issue worse. So, stepping back it is.

I’ve revisited Julie Weibe’s pelvic floor piston and exercises for maintenance, I’ve scheduled my next 16 (twice a week) appointments with my chiropractor, and I’ve sat down and replanned my goal in terms of fitness for the remainder of this year. Training where I can still focus on strength, but also stay focused on my core and floor. Because sometimes, that’s just what we have to do.

I can admit I’m not perfect. My focus can be steered in a different direction, and despite thinking after awhile you’re just automatically programmed to do something – that’s not always the case. No trainer or coach is perfect. Despite all that we know, we get caught up sometimes too. Life gets busy, we are so focused on trying to help others, that sometimes we get forgotten.

It’s time to catch the wind in my sails again. Onward ho…