Welcome to Words with Wynn! If this is your first time perusing my content and you’d like more of my weekly musings, subscribe below:
Injury, the bane of every athlete’s existence. Minor, major, temporary, niggling- the flavors of frustration abound.
I’ve been plagued by my own spectre recently.
A month ago, I experienced the first lower back injury of my lifting career. You learn a bit in success; you learn a lot in failure. This holds true across sport, business, and life. And, brother, the last few weeks have got me introspecting.
Injuries pain more than just the body, they become a virus of the mind. They infect your day to day, rearing their ugly head each time you feel a tinge. Every untoward motion reminds you that the machine is broken. You are broken.
Cue existential panic.
Then the months and years afterward these accumulated chinks in the armor sit like little ghouls at the back of your mind: “my trick knee, my bad shoulder, my damn back.” They’re the darker hanger-ons that accompany the pursuit of athletic achievement.
In the moment, as I am now, you’re viscerally reminded of that old truism: “A well man wants a thousand things, a sick man wants only one.” The yin to this yang is a forced reminder to be grateful. Perhaps it’s human nature to never know what you got ‘till it’s gone, but breaks like these force a little space in the routine to appreciate where you were and where you’ve been. Hell, I was once tossing around 400lb, an incredible feat for the stick boy freshman that started this journey.
Which helps you to step back- how long have you been devoted to this pursuit, and just how much of your identity is intertwined in its continuation?
In my darker moments, there’s certainly been a bit of spiral… how much of my identity, but also my lifestyle, my joy, and my personal ambition, have been intertwined in this hobby of mine? One of the many joys in life is seeing just how far you can go, whatever skill tree you pursue. Hop the plane, climb the mountain, run the marathon. In these moments of setback, you’re forced to contemplate if the ceiling of those experiences has somehow been handicapped?
These ideas extend beyond fitness, of course.
How many people define themselves by their job title? And how many are so completely rudderless if that’s torn from them?
Setbacks shake the snowglobe.
I first heard this metaphor used for neuroplasticity. A young brain is like a freshly powdered mountain, with many routes to reach an end behavior. But after a few passes down the slopes, ruts begin to form which become the default for our reactions. There was some thought that psychedelic-assisted therapies helped to shake the snowglobe and re-powder the pathways.
I’ve had a similar silver lining. My weightlifting career spans over a decade. I’ve bulked and cut and researched just about everything under the sun, but the most recent injury forced a pause for reassessment. Going to PT for the first time was the shake I needed.
The expertise of a trained professional has been a healthy reminder that you can’t do it all. The specialization of others is how we scale ourselves. As with companies, the team of you is no different. Hearing her fresh perspective, and the insights I could glean, provided new frameworks for assessing my training and my movements. We’re often so myopic in our problem-solving that we fail to examine the broader system. Problems of work and play are both relevant in that regard.
Which also made me think about pivots.
Yes, I know. Techbro at his finest. Don’t worry, I’ll close the piece with the 5 things back pain taught me about B2B sales.
Jokes aside, this unfortunate shock could be a forcing function to evolve. Just how can I train around this injury, or where else can I pour my energy? How am I fulfilling my drive for self improvement in more sustainable ways?
You probably aren’t throwing around 400lb at 40, and you probably aren’t 9-9-6’ing with a family. Your training and your career both evolve as you age; sometimes you level up, sometimes you shift tacts, and sometimes you overhaul the system altogether.
Setbacks shake the snowglobe and remind you what you’re made of. Grit was never grown on easy street.
- 🍋