Every Rep Counts: Fatherhood, Rehab & Strength - Episode I: The Collision
Bounce vs Build
There comes a time in everyone’s life, when you stop being able to simply ‘bounce back’. It doesn’t announce itself in neon lights, it just sneaks up on you and slowly grinds you down. It starts with just a minor thing here or there, then something else decides to hang around a bit longer than you’d hoped. Next thing you know, you’re making old man noises getting up off the couch or tying your shoelace, and you’ve come to the realisation that simply changing a light globe involves making sure that your health insurance is current, and that the ambos have a clear path to your front door.
Those first hints that recovery doesn't happen overnight
When you stop being able to ‘bounce back’, you have to ‘build back’. You can’t just rely on the almost infinite resources of your youth to recover; I’m not just referring to those Sunday sessions overlooking the beach that ended up rolling into ‘early Monday sessions’ with nothing but salt air and bad decisions to show for it. The things we physically put our bodies through back then, even if you weren’t trying to make an Olympic team, were pretty astounding – and/or stupid. Thinking back now, a cold shiver runs down my spine!
Now, when I say, ‘build back’, I mean that once you hit a certain ‘experience level’ in life, you’ve got to become very strategic and particular, and have a good idea of what “good” looks like at the end. The boundless energy and supple joints of youth are long gone, and you just can’t afford to wing it anymore. Speaking of wings …
I didn’t learn how to ‘build back’ under a bar. That stuff happens well before you’re allowed to go anywhere near a bar again. It happens every time something, however minor, bumps you off your preferred path … well, it’s less of a path and more of a tightrope to be honest … but one of those ‘low rope’ style ones, you know, the ones that don’t require a big safety net or a pair of wings, but where you could still end up meeting those ambos we mentioned earlier … anyway, I digress.
Each time we get knocked off our little tightrope, we jump back on - this time with a bit more knowledge, and possibly a little less knee cartilage. We refine, we adapt, we find another way … most of the time.
I tell you what though, the end of 2024, and most of 2025 so far, have had me off that path more than on it. That’s ok though, because my feet seem to be holding up better than a few other parts of me!
The Sling Romance
If you haven’t read the Champion at 45 series yet, I highly recommend it. It sets the stage nicely for what comes next.
World Champion ... with one busted shoulder to prove it.
So, in a nutshell:
A week before Worlds last October I blew out my left shoulder – completely tore the supraspinatus tendon, and one of the biceps tendons went walkabout. I still went to Sydney, did the job, smiled for photos, flew home with a medal and a shoulder that had a secret it wasn’t quite ready to share. The whole World Champs experience was brilliant, but in the back of my mind I knew that defending that new title was going to be next to impossible, and not just because of my shoulder 😉
An "artist's" impression of what my supraspinatus looked after surgery ... the no gore edition.
Fast forward to February this year, and it’s my turn to go under the knife. I woke up with my arm taped to my side and suddenly in an intimate relationship with a bolster sling. The damage turned out worse than the surgeon first thought, so the sling had to stay for a few weeks longer than anyone hoped. Yes, I was needy, and yes I was clingy, but the red flags were there from the start and I knew it couldn’t last. It wouldn’t leave me alone, it was with me 24/7, and even though I was grateful for its support early on, it really started to cramp my style. It dictated what I could wear and it wouldn’t even let me drive. In the end, I really was glad to see the back of it.
Cutting it in half, and bolting it down, will stop this troublesome bicep tendon from going walkabout ... hopefully.
The other side of the coin, the bit that puts everything into perspective, is that just before Worlds my partner, Anna, and I found out that we were going to become parents for the first time … and the due date was mid-April. Dun dun dun!
Due Dates & Dumbbells
It was a race, but wasn’t really, Anna and I mapped out some contingency plans that we hoped we’d never have to use. I diligently did my very, very, very basic rehab exercises, as we both got increasingly uncomfortable with our current situations. While my right arm was trying to be a whole person, there was an entirely new person growing somewhere nearby, and even though you are never really ready for this kind of thing, this was far from the most ideal preparation haha!
It's very important to keep training your thumb muscles, especially when that's just about all you can move in this sling haha!
From the outside, the timings were exquisite. It just seemed like the glove was made for the hand … like that spot you effortlessly parallel park into and then think long and hard about taking a photo of because you are, quite frankly, pretty chuffed with yourself. But on the inside, we were like one of those ducks that look nice and peaceful on the surface, but underneath their legs are paddling furiously just to keep afloat … yep, that was us.
I got cleared to drive on the Wednesday; our baby girl Lucy was born on the Saturday. A heavily pregnant woman and a bloke with one wing walk into a bar… and walk out parents! Straight into a new kind of training block where the numbers don’t fit on a spreadsheet and the RPE is whatever the baby says it is. I had all these things planned out in my head, but they didn’t mean a thing anymore. And those smart-arse Simpsons related sayings I was going to bring out at the birth? The moment I saw my baby ripping gang signs at me from the Dr’s arms, they all went out the window!
Meet Lucy. Perfect chaos, surprisingly good training partner.
The Paradox of Protection ...
I’m not going to lie, early on it was a struggle. I had two very different protection instincts running on a collision course. One, ancient, hardwired, and external. The other, recent, learned, and internal. Both valid, both urgent, both priorities; and both needed navigation in a real world, moment to moment, high stakes game. Good thing I didn’t have to rely on the crappy NBN, because this game would fall apart if things got laggy haha.
It's kinda like this thing called the ‘paradox of protection’, which I’m pretty sure lives in the boring world of economics, but I’m going to co-opt it for my own use here. Too bad. And what are they going to do anyway, slap a tariff on me?
Anyway, one part of me knew that to protect Lucy, I’d have to use the same arm I’d been protecting for months. The other part knew that if I overreached (literally!), I’d risk the ability to keep holding her tight tomorrow, and into the future. Sometimes, to protect what you love, you have to limit how you express it. And that is so hard to do.
Every instinct urged me to pull her closer, but every tendon begged me not to.
Some reps matter more than others.
... and the Wedge Between Us
Fragile balances like these don’t hold forever. Something small always shifts first.
In the next Episode, we enter the world of Marketplace for baby stuff, awkward feeding logistics, and, even more rehab.
Read more from the Every Rep Counts series: