This I’ve Learned

  Now that I have finally entered the recovery phase of my SLAP tear injury, I have had some time to reflect on some things. The past few months have not been easy. My normal fitness consistency was interrupted and I feel like I’ve been out of the game for a long time.  But my views have definitely changed throughout this process.  

Prior to my injury, my philosophy was always to be better than I was the day before.  I pushed myself to burn more calories, finish a round faster, do more reps in less time and most importantly lift more weight than I did the day before.  That philosophy continued right after injury. Keep doing as much as you can. Push until the pain is too much. 

Then came the diagnosis and the doctor basically cutting me off from everything except walking. How can I get better than I was the day before by just walking?  Every morning I cried as I did a walking workout and saw my resting heart rate rising day by day. I lost weight but I knew it was all that muscle I had worked so hard to build. I flirted with fitness depression as each week that went by, I found myself doing less and less. 

The week before surgery I decided to stop my depressing workouts completely and try to concentrate on sleep which I wasn’t getting much of and knew I’d be struggling with after surgery.  The pain had gotten much worse and even swinging my arm while walking was a struggle. It was hard and one day I even caught myself doing squats randomly.  My body was screaming at me to stop but mentally I couldn’t turn it off. 

Post surgery, as 4 nurses were struggling to put my shirt on I realized that something needed to change.  As I slowly walked around my house to move my legs, I realized that I don’t need to be better than I was the day before, I just need to move. When I woke up in pain in the middle of the night, I decided that I don’t need to curl 20 lbs or squat 80 lbs or say, fly 17.5 lbs which is what got me into this mess in the first place, I just need to give my muscles some resistance. 

So, as I sit here in my sling, I’m focusing on intermittent fasting, eating whole foods, drinking water and moving my body every so often.  It’s not about being better than I was yesterday.  It’s about being the best version of myself I can be each day, no matter what that looks like.