“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
At the time writing I have been diagnosed with a anteroinferior labral tear in the right shoulder and am awaiting a surgeons opinion as to the options going forward. I think surgery is inevitable. What ever the outcome, I plan on leading through the problem.
Injuries will happen
If men start an exercise regime that is goal orientated and difficult, it is inevitable that we will get injuries along the way to improving ourselves. Changes in routine, fading gains and frustration at our own vulnerabilities are all obstacles we as men need to overcome. Funnily enough we are in fact mortal and made of soft tissue.
As my wife has reminded me constantly for 20 years, I’m not indestructible. When we get injured, we face only two options. Do we embrace it and work around it or do we settle for the soft, comfortable and sedentary option as we justify our lack of effort to those around us? They really are the only two options. Find a way forward or settle for mediocrity whilst making weak excuses. That’s it.
Keep your injury in perspective
In 2015 I herniated a disc in my lower back which had impinged the nerve root running into my left leg. The injury was accumulative over time and came on quickly. The pain was horrendous. The left butt cheek felt like a red-hot knife was being stabbed into it. My left femur felt hot, but the skin on the thigh felt numb and cold. My left calf muscle was in a constant cramp. The left ankle felt like it was being crushed in a vice and the two outside toes on my left foot made me think that I had an unpaid gambling debt out there and someone had smashed them both with a hammer. It was that good.
The emotional toll was the worst. I would start the day after broken sleep having woken up to take more pain relief in the middle of the night so the number of medications wouldn’t drop too low by morning. With genuine fear of moving, I would get out of bed and stand in the shower sobbing in agony as the nerves started firing up sending mixed messages back to my brain. The concoction of drugs could only do so much. At my lowest point I calculated that if the doctors couldn’t do anything for me, I would probably make it a year before begging them to cut the leg off or suicide.
It was the darkest time of my life and I just couldn’t understand why it was happening to me.
Don’t let the darkness in
Two months after the start of the worst period of my life, I was laying on the couch in the middle of the night with my head in my wife’s lap crying. I had surgery in 7 hours and was fasting and had stopped all pain relief medication in preparation for the surgery. The nerve pain was now in full effect as the nerve blocking drugs in my system were fading. My wife asked me ‘why it had gotten so bad all of a sudden?’. “Because it knows I’m going to kill it in 7 hours” was my response.
Fast forward 12 hours and the Neurosurgeon had carefully cut away the section of the disc that was causing me so much pain. I owe my life to him. Coming out of the fog of the aesthetic I could tell there was a major difference. The Sciatica was mostly gone. The site where the surgery had happened was incredibly painful, but my left leg no longer begged for amputation. My sense of relief was amazing. I saw a future again and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be medically discharged from the Army. I knew the first day after the operation that rehabilitation was now my main effort. Failure to rehabilitate meant failure. It meant a loss of purpose, self esteem and security. So as much as it hurt, and as the little weak bitch voice in my brain complained, I got out of the bed and started walking the ward.
Make the choice to rehabilitate
Before I got injured, I had been doing a decent amount of road cycling for cardio-vascular work and some weight training. Two weeks after surgery I tentatively got back to exercising. I had very little fitness or endurance after being sedentary for so long. The pain wasn’t completely gone and I was scared of doing too much. Walking with some of the older guys early in the morning at work was all I could manage to start with. It was at this point I started to think that this was as good as it was going to be for me now.
I recall the moment I made the decision though. I was waiting at a set of traffic lights and had a moment of clarity. I could fall into the category of people that have nothing but weak excuses and stories about how fit they used to be or I could bite down and power out of this boggy hole of self-pity. I chose the latter option.
Set realistic and achievable goals
The absolute worst thing you can do is set unrealistic goals. Set achievable ones and celebrate them when you concur another one. Scrub it off the list and keep moving. For me, the bicycle became the tool I would use to get better. I captured the data of every ride and compared results. I tracked my improvements and scrutinized the dips. Getting up early and putting the work in became the difference between living a good life with meaning and purpose or staying in the fog of excuses and mediocrity.
4 months later I participated in a 100 km road race in the local area which included a mountain climb. I was never a contender for a place on a podium, but the real podium was in my head. I suffered horribly that day and finished in front of my wife and children who waved and cheered as I rode past to the finish line. There was no crowd waiting for me. No one other than my immediate family knew what I had over come and no one cared other than them. For me though, I felt like I had my manhood back. I’d physically gone out there and accomplished something hard and my body was resilient again. It was hard, tough and it could suffer for a cause.
So, this current shoulder problem? It’s nothing. It’s merely a distraction. I have overcome so much more than this. I will come back stronger and better than before.
Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and go!