Rebuild Your Mind; Rebuild Your Body

From personal experience, there is little that it more crushing to motivation than having an injury. You’ve set goals, perhaps have created milestones on the way to get there, and now you’re sitting in your broken down car on the edge of the highway watching the traffic speed past.

The answer is that you never give up. Everyone suffers setbacks, even the best. Think back to the last season of your favourite sport – how many sportsmen suffered injury?

Setbacks are what defines those who will succeed and sets them apart from those who will fail. Setbacks are there to challenge us. Do not ever let them get you down.

OK, now there are some injuries which will put you back a long way. If your wheel falls off then you need to wait for the tow truck, but otherwise it’s time to start pushing. This is where a social network really helps because if you’ve got a friend to step in and help push then it gets a lot easier.

Some injuries you need to sit and wait on. I pulled a muscle on my ribs, don’t ask me how, but it made almost every exercise impossible until it had healed enough. With my current one, there are going to be exercises that I can’t do, so instead I’m going to work on gentle stretches on the damaged muscle and then exercise around it. I’ve had a few days off and next week I’m away on holiday for a week so it’ll be a complete break from the weights.

Tomorrow I’m going to see what I can do with my normal routine. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to do overhead press, so I’m going to try bench press with lighter weight. While I’m away I’m going to switch over to a bodyweight routine.

Bottom line – don’t give up.

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve not learnt by now. I know the rules and yet still I push the limits. Running the kettlebell swings on Saturday, I had a twinge in my back as I used the right arm. I ignored it at first, but it got progressively worse.

So I stopped of course and did some more stretching. Did I then leave it alone? Heck no! I mean we aren’t going to drop out of a session we’ve been looking forward to, a session marked down in our planning with targets to hit now are we?

Well of course not. Which is why I’ve now got a small tear which is going to need to heal before I can start to push again. So instead of missing just one session, now I’m weeks behind.

So, you’d think I’d learn wouldn’t you? Maybe just maybe, next time I get that sort of pain I’ll know to stop. There is a difference between the sort of pain caused by working hard and the pain from injury. It’s worth getting the difference into your head so that you can take appropriate action.