From Pro Climber to Mom with Paige Claassen

PhysiVāntage Pro Paige Claassen reflects on her experience with pregnancy, as a Pro Climber.

"Pregnancy has been about riding the ups and downs, kind of like a good tumultuous journey on a climbing project. There’s the initial excitement, followed by some hard days where everything feels a little bit impossible. Luckily those are interspersed with some amazing days – high energy, feelings of progression.

There is, of course, a lot of uncertainty. How will I feel today? Is everything ok, did I tweak something? Is this separation in my abs normal? Am I doing all the right training and staying hydrated and eating the correct things? What are we even talking about now, climbing or pregnancy? I expected pregnancy to be more linear. The bigger I got; the harder climbing would feel.

The closer I got to my due date, the more my joints would relax and feel more prone to injury. I expected things to just get harder the further I progressed.
In reality, the process has been much more varied - good days interspersed with harder days. On the good days, my body feels like my own. It doesn’t ache too much, and I can move freely.

On the hard days, I feel zapped of energy and my back pain feels pretty severe, sometimes preventing me from even a basic walk around the neighborhood with my dog. I’ve experienced quite a bit of pelvis and hip pain as my body has produced relaxing, a hormone that relaxes the ligaments in the pelvis in preparation for birth. Up until about 8 months into my pregnancy, I had some really good climbing days. I’d go into the gym and feel strong and capable, able to push my body on hard-ish routes. I’ve been careful to stick to lower angle climbing, say 15 degrees or less, to be gentle on my body and not overtax my stretching core muscles. I’ve avoided climbs with big compression moves, and favored crimp ladders, because that’s what felt good to my changing body.

Surprisingly, nothing has really gotten consistently harder or worse. Each time I think I’ve “peaked” and am on the downhill, I have a random day where things feel really good. I’m learning to take each day as a stand-alone event. My left low back may prevent me from doing anything active today, but tomorrow I could feel relatively pain free and excited to lift weights or have a nice gym climbing session. I hope these lessons can carry over to my postpartum life. I can only imagine that life with a newborn, or a child of any age, will have plenty of ups and downs.

Parenthood aside, life has lots of ups and downs. Climbing has lots of ups and downs. It’s normally not just all bad or all good. When I think back to the routes that really challenged me, I rarely made consistent progress every single day. Instead, I’d make a new highpoint one day and then struggle to link more moderate moves the next day. I’ve learned, and am still learning, to cope with the ups and downs. For me, it’s been all about taking note of the highs so that I have something positive to reflect on during a tough day or week.

Now, a few days past my due date, the send feels immanent, although no less daunting and still filled with plenty of uncertainty and excitement. Just like that final phase of a good project."

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Paige and her husband are now proud parents of a newborn baby girl, Larkin Rae DeKock! Paige is slowly adapting to these new routines with the little one around and slowly re-introducing climbing training when time allows. We look forward to following their journey.

Paige used PhysiVāntage products throughout her pregnancy to aid her climbing, health, and recovery. According to Paige, "Weapons-Grade-Whey was a big difference maker for me throughout the pregnancy. The protein helped to sustain the growing baby's health, along with my own, especially in the first trimester when I could not keep down any solid food but toast."