Growth, Pain and Potential Injury.

I wake up to one of the several alarms set by my soon to be wife. This is probably the third one in about five minutes. It is a great way to stop me from being lazy and get my ass out of bed. I walk to the kitchen, just like every other morning and start the hot water heater for my French pressed coffee. I use the bathroom and as I am washing my hands I look at myself in the mirror. I look at my disheveled hair and mustache and smile, signs of deep sleep. I look up and catch my eyes in the mirror. There it is again, a popped blood vessel, this time in my left eye. It looks like I am either super high or I just picked a fight with someone and lost. I smile even more because this, as I see it, is a red badge of courage. Proof that I am lifting heavy enough and consistent enough that my body is having a reaction before it shuts me down. 

I had gone to the gym the night before. I had a pretty heavy day that day and was not planning on lifting. I had to tackle a few frustrating conversations that I knew would fog up my noggin pretty good. After I was done with them I shut my computer, picked up my gym stuff and left. I needed to lift. I had deadlifts on the schedule so I mentally prepared myself to move some iron. After getting to the gym I stretched out for about 10 min, picked out a good playlist of angry music and got some light warmups in. Now, to fully explain the popped blood vessel, I recently purchased a deadlift suit. To those who don't know what this is it's basically a super tight leotard. The extreme compression from the suit helps you handle more weight during the movement. Only until about two weeks before was I able to get in the suit by myself. Usually I needed one or two people to help get it on completely. So all in all the lift was a win from the start, getting that suit on by myself and confident I was going to make it out of it, was great. I pulled several heavy sets, and got to have a great conversation with a young lifter about his plans for the future. I left feeling better and physically beaten up. I knew, based on the last pull, that there was a good chance I would have a red eye or eyes in the morning.  

I finished up my second cup of coffee and morning reading routine with my fiancee. We talked about our day's plans and I left about an hour later to work with one of my mobility clients. This client and I have been working together for almost a year now and she is like a second mom. She took one look at me when I walked in and she said “Chris, why do you do this to yourself, aren't you worried you will lose an eye or become blind?” I just laughed and said “Trust me, I wont go blind”. The session started and we recapped her last week, her kiddos new girlfriend and some plans she had for the upcoming holiday season. About ten minutes before the session was over she asked me an interesting question. I get this question every now and then but it's always interesting to me to hear who it comes from and what happens when we unpack it a little.

“Why do you push so hard? Why can't you just lift and be healthy so you don't risk getting injured?”

I want to take a quick second and recap the two injuries that took me out of the gym, so we are on the same page. The worst was when we purchased a professional arm wrestling table for the gym I owned. This was a huge mistake, one I look back on almost weekly and thank God I didn't commit more training time to it. I ended up with two arms that wouldn’t fully extend without extreme pain. I was unable to push my daughters stroller or pick them up. Just holding their hands made it feel like my biceps were going to explode. This took about four weeks to heal enough for me to press any real weight without wanting to vomit. The second injury was after my covid shot, most of it was due to the frozen shoulder the shot gave me. I was pretty pissed that I was unable to raise my shoulder more than six inches off my torso so I decided I was going to fix it myself. I did a lot of resistance band work and shoulder mobility work until it popped. When it popped I was unable to lift for about six weeks. Total, I was out for about ten weeks. All that being said I don't really think I am “inclined” to be injured and have not seen much in the way of injuries during my career. I consider myself pretty lucky so far. Explaining my past injuries to my client only made it worse. She didn't see it as a positive to only have this many injuries during my career she saw it as a reason to drop the entire endeavor completely. 

We talked a little more about the people I workout with and their injuries over time. How most individuals competing at any decent level are prone to injury. I also explained how injury is inevitable. You will get hurt at some point so how do you prepare your body in a way to avoid small, silly injuries and come back quickly from large ones. This concept, coincidentally, is how I got into mobility training in the first place. It is also the exact model I was working through with her. She was not able to conceptualize a way to make training at almost any level, worth it due to the possibility of injury. So taking it a step further I asked her, “What activity, hobby or process is worth going through even though injury was inevitable?” This stumped her for pretty much the rest of the time we had together. She laughed and called me silly and too young to be smart. “Once you get older this won’t matter as much, you will focus on just being healthy” she said as she was leaving. I really enjoy conversations with her and I was really intrigued by this one. 

I was raised on 80’s action flicks. Men larger than life, shooting massive guns that belong on tanks at the bad guys. Explosions and buildings falling around them as they slow motion run and jump towards a helicopter, barely making it as the flames consume the ground around them. Just writing that sentence makes me smile. I knew that, even as a kid, this was not something that was real nor was I ever going to be a part of it. However, I did know that whatever I found that ignited that kind of passion in me I was going to do forever. I knew it was weightlifting, I knew it the minute I stepped into the dirty, old, brown colored gym for the first time in Shreveport, Louisiana. The passion was worth the possibility of injury. I am ok with the injury as long as it is a bi product of pushing myself towards my goal. Breaking my toe on the coffee table is a different story, I will sulk like a two year old if that happens. If I break my finger on a dumbbell, well that's just part of the battle, I won't sulk at all. So what makes that acceptable? What makes someone push so hard and others see nothing much potential discomfort and pain? The real deep question is, at least for me, what makes pain not only acceptable but revered? 

Why do you push so hard? Because it makes you feel alive. You learn what is possible with some effort and grit. Pain is a portal to self realization. I don't know many individuals who push themselves to failure regularly that dont have some deep, introspective realization about themselves. It takes something deep inside to hit those last few partial reps when your body is screaming at you, or to run that last mile when your legs are numb and your heart feels like it's coming out of your chest. The gym is the yardstick of comparison to all people on this planet. 225 is always 225, no matter how much money you have, how much fame or notoriety. The weight will show everyone, the minute you touch it, who has been intentional. I understand this is not for everyone. I do know though that if you have never experienced it you don't know the magic and beauty of finding your edge. Injury is a part of finding that edge. Either your body takes control and your CNS won't let you go any further or a joint or muscle fails and you tear something. Brutal as it sounds it is just a more condensed version of the normal interactions in life. Work will push you until you can't take it, making you break down from the long hours forcing you to sleep all weekend. Significant others will press your buttons until you snap or lose your temper. Weight training is more than just building your body's ability to press more weight or to land on a specific composition change. You are building your mind's ability to handle extreme stress. If you push yourself to failure in the gym it is far less likely things outside the gym are going to be able to affect you as much, they just can’t produce the same amount of stimulus. You will be able to handle far more stress outside of the walls of the gym than you had before. You learn your boundaries, your capabilities and your optimal stress levels. You are more in control of your emotions and actions. The stress builds a better mind, body and soul. 

So to answer the question, I am not able to train without pushing myself as hard as I can because I know I am capable of so much more than I am currently. It would be a disservice to myself, those I love and the goals I have for the future if I didn't. I need to see what I am capable of, so do you and every human on this planet. If we avoid pain and potential injury we are also avoiding growth. We are avoiding valuable lessons that teach us about our boundaries and how to push past them. We also lose a chance to see what we are capable of.

“It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable”  - Socrates