Every Rep Counts: Fatherhood, Rehab & Strength - Episode III: The Catch

 

Episode III is the rep you never plan for — the one that decides whether the quiet work mattered.

 

Marketplace Gold Revisited

Ahhh, stillness, silence, peace and quiet. I’m not good at any of those things. But when you have a newborn, you somehow manage to find the ability to keep things down to dull roar, deep within the dark web of your being. Because, if you don’t, the death stare you get from the other half, who has just got the bub to sleep, is enough to knock you off your feet. Speaking of feet and things …

That wedge cushion was certainly earning its keep by this stage and had literally become part of the furniture. It sat on my lap like a permanent fixture: Lucy on the cushion, bottle in the right hand, and the left arm trying and failing at being decorative. It wasn’t glamorous, but it worked. We both got what we needed — she got her milk, and I got to feel useful, and vaguely competent again.

This time was no different, the faint sweet-milk smell, the little noises that I’m sure were her telling me to hurry up … as close to stillness, silence, and peace and quiet as I was going to get. It was almost enough to forget about the state that I was in, and how I’d been in survival mode. Things had settled into a kind of half-functional calm, the sort that always feels temporary, even if you don’t know why.

Until the day she discovered her legs.

The Space Time Continuum

The calm before the storm is always the most suspicious. Not that we’re at this stage yet, but, from what I gather it was kind of like that awkward realisation parents get when the house goes quiet, even though there is a toddler roaming around … It’s that “Oh shit!” moment, followed by a frantic search, only to find said toddler asleep on their play mat surrounded by a minefield of Lego.

Or in my case, my parents noticed that our side gate had been left open, after searching the house for me.

I spent the early years of my life growing up in the southern Perth suburb of Willetton, and our house was right next to one of those footpaths that ran between a few houses out to a bigger road. And in this case, that bigger road was Pinetree Gully Road. Much to my parents’ horror, I’d toddled down this footpath, negotiated the busy Pinetree Gully Rd, and made my way across to the playground on the opposite side of the footy oval!

A modern view of an old memory.

 

My parents found me happily going up and down the slide dressed only in my nappy, having the time of my life, completely oblivious to the drama I had caused. Funnily enough, we lived on a street called Ragamuffin Tce then, how fitting!

Blissfully unaware.

 

I’d set myself up for disaster here, hadn’t I? She is definitely her father’s daughter. She couldn’t even lift her head yet, let alone toddle off down the side of the house, but she’d already given me a heart attack.

These cute little ‘milk comas’ babies fall into are deceptive, trust me on that one. Calmly suckling away on the bottle, eyes half-closed and milk drunk, nothing could be more …

The calm.

 

I felt her push her little feet into my guts, like she’d done a few times before.

 

But this time was different.

There was coordination, there was intent, there was some real strength as she tested out the family genetics.

Time briefly stood still, gravity took its lunch break, and my senses expanded, sharpened, focused, all at the same time, as the little push turned into a full-on leg press. The wedge cushion started to shift, I lost grip on the little bottle, Lucy’s eyes shot open as she drove herself to the edge of my lap and disaster.

“… there is no way this can be happening …”

The launch.

 

I heard the bottle bounce off the couch and hit the floor, and then the laws of physics reintroduced themselves with shit timing. My left arm – the one that hadn’t been trusted with anything heavier than a cup full of air – decided that it was done hanging around like a spare dick, and fired like it had never been gone. Shoulder, elbow, hand. No conscious thought, just a flash of nerve and pure instinct.

I caught her across the right shoulder with my left hand, while my right simultaneously grabbed her left ankle, her head less than an inch from the floor. Frozen for an instant, suspended between disaster and disbelief, afraid to even breath, lest I unleash the wrath of Isaac Newton.

The catch.

 

She let out the softest sound, part gasp, part enquiry.

 

Then the world rushed back in.

Two Heartbeats and an Ache

Lucy whimpered. I swore.

I pulled her back up from near catastrophe and held her tight until the shaking stopped. First hers, and then mine.

“Don’t move, don’t even breathe, just hold.”

The smell of formula filled my nostrils, and the metallic tang of adrenaline coated my tongue. My fingertips were fizzing; the hair was standing up on the back of my neck.

“What the fuck have I done? I’ve just broken my baby!”

I don't know what signaled it, but I felt her settle into me.

And that was enough. I breathed out.

"She's fine"

Through the ridiculously thick adrenaline haze came a gentle pulsing from my left shoulder. I braced for the sharp, electric pain that I knew must be coming … but that pulsing didn’t turn into a throb, just a deepening ache, spreading warm and heavy through the joint. Like what you get after a good bench session, a reminder that something’s come alive.

I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, breathing in her baby smell, delighting in the feeling of her super fine hair tickling my cheek, in time with the rise and fall of her chest against mine. Half expecting to get a whiff of something from the ‘lower decks’, half expecting my shoulder to light up.

Anna must’ve heard the commotion, and came wandering in.

“You alright in here?” she asked?

"Yeah, we're alright"

Trust Ya Guts

Fortunately, I had a physio follow up not long after this little ‘event’. I walked in expecting bad news, but there wasn’t any. No setback, no retear, no drama. All that slow, repetitive rehab work to this point had done its job. Even though I wasn’t anywhere near getting back under the bar, I’d got the shoulder to a point where I could start relying on it again. I’d rebuilt more than just muscle and tendon, I’d rebuilt trust.

The lifter’s instincts - the micro-adjustments mid-squat, the sixth sense for when a bench rep turns ugly - had quietly migrated to something that mattered infinitely more. The timing, the spatial awareness, the speed – they all had to be spot on, and they were.

The feeling of hearing what my gut already knew is hard to explain. Obviously, there was relief, but there was almost a quiet type of pride mixed in there too, knowing that I’d walked that fine balance of protecting my shoulder to protect my daughter. Going back to Ep I, and that ‘paradox of protection’ thing, this was the first proof that those two protection instincts — the ancient one and the newly learned one — were finally starting to separate.

Lessons in Reflex

That catch was a rep - not the kind you log in a spreadsheet, or celebrate, or even talk about in the gym.

It’s the kind that makes every other one count.

It’s the kind that reminds you what you’ve actually been training for all along, even if you didn’t realise it.

We’re born with an entire set of instincts built into us, including the “don’t let small human hit the ground” one. It’s understood that you can’t directly ‘train’ or improve an instinct, but everything after the fire alarm gets raised is fair game.

Without going too far down the psychological rabbit hole, there appear to be three main elements that can be trained in relation to these kinds of things: recognition speed, response selection, and recovery time. And there is a neat little dovetailing between being a new parent and a recovering alcohol … I mean lifter.

For example, there are similarities between spotting someone lifting weights in the gym, and helping your baby learn to stand, walk, or otherwise experiment with gravity. Through practice, trial and error, watching other more experienced people do it, the odd YouTube video, you will train your systems to respond appropriately.

No one wants to train with someone who jumps in waaaay too early on the bench, and then says, “You had 95% of that mate.” Similarly, you don’t want to get caught out and have to do a rescue mission whilst your training partner has every last bit of air squeezed out of their lungs by the bar. Timing, judgement, learned response and restraint.

So many things in life revolve around this thing called ‘controlled exposure to risk’. Strength training, rehab, and small human raising are no different, and it cuts right through each one. Without that, none of those three progresses. Picking up on cues, deciding what the most appropriate response is, and knowing when to intervene are critical skills that we learn and can get better at.

An injured shoulder doesn’t improve if you don’t push it just enough, a lifter will never learn how to grind out that last rep if you snatch the bar too early, and your baby will never learn to walk if you don’t let them go. It’s a fine line, and there is often quite a lot at stake.

Being strong and following your rehab program diligently, for example, doesn’t stop these moments from happening, they make you ready for when they do. It’s like knowing how to do CPR and hoping that you never have to put it into practice.

And thinking back to that moment with the fuzziness of time, that single, silent rep counted for more than any PB I’d ever done.

The shoulder held, the instinct fired, the rehab mattered.

So Much for the Afterglow

What’s the point of training, of chasing numbers, of counting reps and checking off milestones, if you can’t use that strength to keep something precious safe? Strength (of any type) means nothing if you can’t use it for something that matters.

How could I ever be proud of a world title if I failed that test? Would I trade that medal to keep that inch of space between her head and the concrete? Every day.

They’re not just philosophical questions, and it’s not meant to be dramatic. It’s just perspective, sharpened by a moment where there was no room for doubt, no time for hesitation, and no second attempt.

Getting my shoulder opened up, grinding through months of boredom and pain, it was for a moment in time like this. If I’d delayed the surgery, waited until she was older, gone too hard or too soft with my rehab … if my shoulder wasn’t ready … I doubt that I could’ve moved like that. The thought that the ending could have been very different still catches in my throat.

Strength, in that instant, wasn’t about numbers or medals. It was about responsibility. About care. About being ready when something smaller than you needed protecting.

Every rep counts, but some count louder.

This one echoed through everything that followed, quiet proof that patience and stillness had done their job.

After that came the quiet reps.

The ordinary days.

The slow rebuilding.

The small movements no one else sees, let alone applauds.

But first, there was this one.

The catch.

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