#49: A Painful Reminder 🤕

hopefully I’ve learned my lesson

This was the first year that I’ve spent Thanksgiving away from family, but I still conducted my pre-Thanksgiving dinner ritual — hitting the gym. As someone who eats healthy, but also loves food, Thanksgiving is one of the few days when I completely let loose. Like the average American on this magnificent, yet gluttonous holiday, I wouldn’t be surprised if I consume over 3,000 calories in one meal. To do some proactive damage control, but also take advantage of the caloric surplus entering my body, I aim for a grueling workout beforehand. The first meal after an intense bout of physical activity hits. Sometimes we’re so exhausted that even fast food tastes divine. Like when I ate 8 Burger King entrees after hiking Half Dome in Yosemite. This Thanksgiving was no exception. That morning I set out to set myself up for an evening filled with food, friends, and festivities.

The legs are the best candidate for a pre-Thanksgiving lift simply because they’re the largest muscle group. I was also excited to get back under the barbell because I de-prioritized weightlifting while I was training for the NYC Marathon. I did my usual warm-up routine of assault bike followed by dynamic stretching and then gradually loaded up the bar. I didn’t get too far into the workout. On the second rep of my first working set, I inadvertently rounded my back on the way up and felt my entire lower back give out. I racked the weight and just stared at the ground stunned. Injuring myself on a weight that I used to confidently squat was certainly unexpected. In hindsight, I hadn’t accounted for my lower back weakening over the prior months of prioritizing running over lifting.

In moments that question my values or test my willpower, my stubbornness serves me well, but sometimes it bites me in the ass. As my back tightened and swelled up, I should’ve called it quits and gone home, but instead I moved onto deadlifts. This was a mistake. In a state of frustration and mental inflexibility, I rigidly fixated on the agenda of having a solid workout before feasting on turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie. As I recount the story, I realize how silly it is to strain my back and then decide that it’s sensible to move onto deadlifts, an exercise that focuses exclusively on the posterior chain. After a couple sets of slightly painful deadlifts, I realized how futile it was to continue so I limped home.

It’s been over two weeks since I injured my back. I still feel a bit of pain first thing in the morning, but at least the sharp pains that force me to grab the nearest structure have disappeared. The first week put me through the wringer. Every minute task needed modification. Sitting hurt, but so did standing. Tying my shoes became such an ordeal that I only wore sneakers that I could slip on without lacing up. I delayed doing laundry by four days because I couldn’t even pick up my laundry hamper. I cautiously lived every moment because even the slightest movement could send a jolt through my lower back. I was moving in painful slow-motion and honestly, it sucked.

Being injured is one of the worst states to be in. The temporary crippling forces me to brush against the edges of my limitations and surrender to a state of helplessness. Whenever I sustain an injury, my mental state transforms into a dark cauldron of gloom, self-blame, and regret. Why couldn’t I have just warmed up a bit more or braced my core better? The fact that it was done onto myself, by only myself, cascades into an avalanche of frustration. Injuries represent the other side of the double-edged sword of self-responsibility. With accomplishments, you can stand on the podium knowing you earned it. With setbacks, you have no one or no thing to blame.

I was physically sidelined, but my mind freely wandered. Although I’ve never broken a bone, this certainly wasn’t the first time I’ve been injured. In high school, the same exact injury happened. I was squatting at XSport Fitness with my friend Albert and sure enough, I strained my back while squatting. In both cases, I wasn’t fully present and only realized after the fact.

Other injuries have stemmed from similar conditions of the mind. In February, I was skiing out of a gulley at Kirkwood. With all the steep terrain behind me and the chairlift almost in sight, I started to fiddle with my action camera mounted to my chest. As the shadows flickered through the trees and texture of the snow morphed, I clipped a small mound of packed snow. I fell forward out of my bindings and landed on my left shoulder with a heavy thud. I sat up half-dazed and realized I couldn’t move my left arm at all. Luckily, a kind local skier stopped and created an X with his own skis planted vertically in the snow so that incoming skiers wouldn’t hit me. Eventually ski patrol came and determined it wasn’t dislocated, but I should still get it checked out. With the help of WebMD and many YouTube videos, I self-diagnosed that I suffered a rotator cuff impingement which set me back from skiing for over a month. During the following month of recovery, I went through many loops of reflection while aggressively consuming bone broth and collagen supplements.

All of my injuries have occurred in near-identical conditions. The physical terrain may change between indoors at the gym or outdoors in the mountains, but the mental scene is always the same. Leading up to the lapse of concentration, my mind drifts away from presence to the far-away lands of the past and the future. It might look like I’m physically here, but on the inside, forgotten errands and looming deadlines seep in and grasp my attention. Once my presence is hijacked by these false realities, my mind becomes a fertile breeding ground for injuries to occur. Strange enough, I’ve never hurt myself with heavy weights or steep runs that are challenging enough to demand my full attention.

I wish I could’ve learned this lesson after the first, second, or even third injury, but it has taken a few more painful moments to internalize the importance of being in presence. I saw somewhere the idea that the universe is going to give you the exact same lesson in different versions over and over until you master it. Since sometimes these lessons can be spaced apart by years, it can be difficult to spot the throughline that connects these seemingly disparate dots. Through accepting full responsibility for what happens to us and proper reflection, we can begin to notice what life has been trying to teach us all along.

I’m slowly easing back into things. The lingering stiffness in my lower back when I roll out of bed is a good reminder of the lesson. Being in presence is the essence of reality. Ruminating in the past or worrying about the future is how we slip out of reality. It’s also how we keep injuring ourselves in completely avoidable ways. Hopefully the past two weeks of wincing and whining have been enough for me to finally learn my lesson.