Looking Up From The Bench

The start of a new year is often a time for reflection, goal setting, and decisions to make life changes. As humans, we seem wired to be on a quest of change and growth; hence our development as babies where on our own we decide to start crawling, walking, then running and sprinting. There is something that seems cleansing about the opportunity to start fresh or be pushed to have courage to do something different that maybe we’ve wanted to do, but have been fearful of. I had a couple things I wanted to share in relation to the new year; reflection, something I am thankful for, and some goals on my mind. These might seem a bit scattered but hopefully I can tie them together into something meaningful. REFLECTION I haven’t blogged in a few weeks. In part because I am somewhat living in the future. We talk a lot about enjoying the moment and the process because the journey is much longer than the actual destination. However, with injury the coping mechanism of looking ahead is...

I will preface this post by highlighting that in a physical sense I am doing well for being less than two weeks out of surgery! My pain is minimal and manageable. While I don’t feel normal, I really can’t imagine doing any better so soon after. I am very thankful for this and glad that my body has allowed me to resume working out and doing some of the normal activities in my daily life. I hope that it continues to heal well over the coming months. However, emotionally this week has been difficult. There are two main reasons this is the case. One, in a sense I am still grieving the loss of my athletic season for the year. I know that sounds silly. But I pour my heart and soul into training and it is my passion and a huge major purpose in my life right now. To have it be taken away again is just really tough to process. I also know this injury will impact the course of my athletic career (although hopefully in a positive way), which is extremely scary as I don’t want to give it up. ...

Is the pain of this task worth it? We all think this in various stages of our life whether it be a tough school assignment, a difficult job, or in what I want to talk about today, a hard workout. During the days leading up to surgery I had an immensely challenging time seeing the value in pushing myself or doing really uncomfortable workouts. I was very aware of the fact that any progress I made prior to surgery would in a way be lost during recovery. When healing, maintaining intensity or the same level of fitness just isn’t possible, and can’t really be the main priority. No matter your best efforts, in certain ways you watch your fitness decline. Additionally, most workouts I could do with intensity were those that I consider weaknesses, specifically rowing. I had the opportunity to maintain a great level of “cardio” while waiting for surgery thanks to brutal rowing workouts that allowed me to really push myself. The day before my rotator cuff repair I had the option to test a ...

I apologize for the lack of cool pictures in this post. I really need to make more of an effort to get over my insecurities and take more, at least for the blog! Anyway, today’s post is a lot of me trying to make sense of my feelings. While training about three weeks ago I felt a pop in my shoulder. I didn’t think much of it at the time but the days following I was in significant pain. After getting an MRI it has been confirmed I have a torn muscle in my rotator cuff, and need surgery. With this injury, there is a 6-12 month total recovery, similar to what I went through with my ACL in 2015. Not to dramatize this, but the only word that accurately describes how I feel is “devastated.” There are a few reasons why. First: This is my fifth significant injury in five years. A huge goal for my coach and I this year was to not get injured. And really, I don’t think we could have expected it. The weight I was using when I felt the pop was 160 pounds. I have lifted 50 pounds+ more th...