Every Rep Counts: Fatherhood, Rehab & Strength - Episode II: The Wedge Between Us
Episode II picks up the moment where exhaustion, routine and tiny wins blur together - and where a simple wedge cushion becomes the unlikely hero of our nights.
Marketplace Gold
Early on, I could only hold Lucy on my right side, the left arm couldn’t even offer moral support. And I couldn’t feed her, because it was too risky for both of us for me to hold her on the left, and the right was already doing everything. The shoulder was in such a state that I couldn’t even hold a 30ml bottle in the left hand for Lucy to suckle on, without it firing up.
In a stroke of foresight genius, pure luck, or ‘just one of those things’, we’d picked up this wedge-shaped, cushion thing, as a throw-in from the second-hand ‘baby stuff’ market. But seriously, what an absolute gold mine that thing is! Facebook Marketplace – saving money, saving landfill, and occasionally saving shoulders!
So, this half-moon thing, thick on one side, thin on the other, became my platform. I put this cushion on my lap, Anna puts Lucy on the cushion, Lucy kicks her little legs into my guts. Fun for the whole family, haha.
Milk drunk and finally still - one small win in a night full of tiny reps.
That setup was the only way I could help with feeding Lucy in the early months of her life. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I was able to hold the bottle in my right hand, while my bad arm hung safely to the side, like a stray noodle dangling from the wok, and being pulled around by the rangehood draught. Safe, functional, but certainly not glamorous.
Did Lucy care how she was being fed? Probably not. She just wanted warm milk and a calm presence that didn’t rush her - even if she couldn’t feel my heartbeat through the cushion.
But, we had the chance to bond, father and daughter (man, even now it still seems so weird for me to say that!), and that’s more important. In a world of rush, rush, rush, we had these moments of stillness and silence, imperfectly perfect.
That was a rep.
Not the rep I imagined.
Not the one Instragram would applaud.
But the rep we had.
And that’s the first quiet lesson: make the rep you can make, and don’t waste energy apologising that it isn’t prettier.
The early feeding setup: one good arm, one Marketplace cushion, one very tired little human.
We struggled with our newborn, I struggled to feel adequate – half man, half Dad. This little wedge cushion allowed me to be involved, and connect with, the strange new thing in our lives. Back then, Lucy wasn’t the chubby-cheeked little sticky beak she’d later become. Her little tummy hurt more often than not, we didn’t know about this thing called Cow’s Milk Protein Allergy yet, and every feed felt like trying to defuse a bomb that occasionally exploded anyway!
But that cushion, with its stable angle, with its support, got me in the game. And it appeared to help Lucy with her tummy too, at least temporarily. But more on that later …
Be Still My Beating Heart
Rehab isn’t like it is in the movies, there’s no montage, no inspiring music, no triumphant slo-mos running up steps. … and in the first few weeks after the surgery it was just tiny arcs, incremental progress, working up to the pain point and then backing off. Minute reprieves, before having to get back into that piece of shit sling.
Putting on a shirt required a pre-start and an operator’s manual, whilst shoes and socks were so far off the menu, that putting them on was as rare as 3-ply TP during lockdown. And sleep, what the hell is that? You try sleeping with one arm staple gunned to your rib cage!
Even when I graduated and traded in that sling for some piss-weak physio bands, every twinge triggered over analysis and panic that I’d busted myself again. But you keep plugging away, doing these things that don’t look like much, work up to the edge, pull away, repeat. And there are parallels to parenting here, and, obviously, the over-analysing is real, but there is also that need to keep the rhythm, do the small things well, keep persisting. Not pretty, not perfect, but patient and consistent. And that’s what matters most. Little bits add onto little bits. It’s boring, but sound.
Rehab reps aren't glamorous, but every gentle movement I did mattered.
I’ll be honest, not that I haven’t been already, but I missed the gym, I missed lifting things, I missed those shared experiences with the crew that bond groups together. With the gym being right at my doorstep, however, it did make it easier to do some of my boring arse rehab work. In my head, there was a thought bubble hovering over whatever real-world thing I was doing: me back in the shed, doing the lift I wasn’t cleared for yet.
Whenever those little images popped into my head, it hit hard but made me laugh all at the same time. I wanted the barbell back, so to speak, but those thoughts were a reminder that the work I was doing right there and then was still training, and still very, very important. Position, patience, micro-corrections.
Some reps happen in the gym. Some happen on the couch, keeping a tiny human settled.
The same brain that had been making tiny adjustments on the way down in a squat shifted gear, and was now calculating things like the best bottle angle and elbow position, the easiest way to shift my hips so that the shoulder didn’t light up, and how to breathe so Lucy could feel me settle and decide to copy it.
Stillness isn’t nothing. Sometimes stillness is the strongest thing in the room.
Proof of Work
Getting to mix it with the best lifters in the world was awesome, and being named a World Champion last year was recognition for all the years I’d put in, but, it all pales into relative insignificance when the real world comes knocking. It hangs around in the shadows, in the margins, and shies away from the bright lights and the noise. It doesn’t care that you can ‘Punch the Face of Gravity’ better than most other people, and it doesn’t count the number of plates on the bar either.
It's funny how quickly your scoreboard changes. Things like that first nappy change where you reach out with your left hand to control the wriggling baby, and the familiar lightning bolt doesn’t strike; or when you hold a used bottle still with your left while you clean it with the right and realise part way through that you didn’t brace. And then there are those moments when it feels like you’re stealing time from the gods, having your baby fall asleep in your lap after what seems like days of fighting her, of feeling her settle in against your shoulder after she’s had a burp and a spew. It’s kinda funny to imagine these big, square hands, trained to be strong and unrelenting - that can’t even fit into the tin of formula to spoon it out - are able to provide such a safe, comforting, gentle space for my baby to fall asleep in.
That classic newborn combo: exhausted parent, wired but not tired baby, and not a hint of sleep in sight.
Instead of weight, you start counting minutes of sleep, you count laps of the bedroom you do with a crying baby in your ear, and you monitor how far up the wall you can walk your left hand before the shoulder catches. Neither is less serious; they’re just measuring different things of the same reality.
I didn’t know how much the careful, boring rehab mattered until the day I needed it to matter. You’ll hear about that soon — the wedge cushion save when Lucy discovered the power of her double-foot leg press and decided to test gravity. But even before that moment, I could feel the sum of the parts I’d been working on, start to come together and multiply. The body heals at the speed of honesty and only moves as fast as your willingness to face what is real. So does fatherhood. Go too fast and something tears; go too slow and you never pick the thing up. Most days it’s just small deposits into an account that you’re not sure exists anymore. Then some days you get that proof that it does.
Micro-Wins and the Reps That Count
Guilting parents must be a billion-dollar industry, and I won’t pretend that the guilt didn’t bite me. Lucy was (and still is to some degree) a Velcro baby and needed to be in contact with a caregiver pretty much at all times, even for naps. If you tried to put her in her own cot after she fell asleep on your lap, she’d scream, like someone had ripped the Velcro apart and scared her awake.
And for a long time, Lucy wouldn’t sleep on my lap (even with the cushion) for any decent stretch, and it all fell to Anna, who was already doing everything and then some. That messes with your head, and you try and bargain with yourself:
“… if I was stronger, if I healed quicker, if I was better at holding a baby…”
But those thoughts never end up anywhere good.
What did help though, was breaking things down into smaller, achievable targets – one feed done without hurting either of us, a contact nap that lasted longer than 9 minutes, a rehab set where I stopped before my ego wanted me to. These little micro-wins beat arbitrary ‘milestones’ that society has unfairly burdened parents with, every time.
I can look back on those early days, weeks and months with some calm now, as time has blunted those rough edges. It was messy, I was a shambles, and about as raw as you can get. I missed the barbell, but I loved the tiny human and sharing new experiences with her. Both were true. The thought bubble versions of me doing curls, or bench press, kept flashing into my head, and I felt a bit silly about it to be honest. Here I am, holding the most precious thing in the world, and I’m thinking about what I’m missing in the gym?
And then in one of those late-night moments of clarity (and I’m sure we all get them whilst making up formula bottles for the next day, right?), I realised that even though I wasn’t in the gym, I was still doing the work, and everything you do counts. Every rep counts. Sometimes those reps are nothing more than scooping formula powder from the tin with a comically large hand, and sometimes it’s playing ‘aeroplanes’ with your bub while dreaming of overhead press. And then there is knowing when to stop, and come back again tomorrow.
The overhead press variation no program ever warns you about!
Wedge Politics
So, here we are, this wedge between us, this ache, and a quiet hope that one day all of these little numbers and tiny movements would finally show their working. A world title on paper, a shoulder that needed careful attention, and a daughter who didn’t care about either. She just wanted warm arms and slow breathing.
We inherently know that strength shows itself in all manner of ways. This ability we have, to keep someone precious safe - through the accumulation of seemingly insignificant, almost invisible choices and imperceptible actions - while the chaotic world continues around us, rarely gets the acknowledgement it deserves. And it seems like a pretty good way for our strength to shine through, even though no one is there to see it … but that little bundle of joy, that wriggly, dribbly, smiley, giggly being, that is the centre of your universe knows, they can feel it, even if they’ve just grabbed your glasses and thrown them on the floor.
And like all good moments with a newborn, the calm didn't linger.
The next rep came fast - and with a pair of tiny feet!
Read more from the Every Rep Counts series: