Dealing with Setbacks

by Terrance Wilkerson Funny thing, I planned for this to be my next blog topic and I literally screwed my knee up the day before I decided to write this. I scraped up my knee really bad and can barely walk right now, and you can forget about me trying to bend it. So quick story, I was flipping the heaviest tire we have at Apollon Gym which is roughly 700lbs. I flipped that bad boy once, it took me 40 seconds, but I got it done. Tried to flip it back, but that didn’t turn out so good. Let’s just say I almost fell into a split with the tire crashing down on me. Enough about my little tire flip story though. DON’T let setbacks set you back. Sounds weird when I say it that way, but it’s true. You can’t let your setbacks completely knock you off the wagon. We all deal with setbacks, I don’t care who you are. These are the times when you must reevaluate yourself and plan accordingly. We all have setbacks for different reasons. Common ones I see often are job switches, school, having a kid, and injuries. All of these issues have to be dealt with differently, but that doesn’t mean that you have to quit your journey alltogether. Let’s talk about scheduling a little bit. This one is probably the king of why people fall off the wagon. Oftentimes you hear people say, “I don’t have the time”. There’s a difference between not having the time and not wanting to make the time. This is what I always tell people. You’re never too busy to be healthy. Sooner or later bad health will catch up to you and you’ll have all the time in the world laying up in a hospital bed. All of us have at least 10 minutes a day to spare. Oftentimes, we use our free time to scroll through our Instagram or Facebook feed. Get some fresh air and take a brisk walk, do push-ups and pull-ups, stretch and do some bodyweight squats. Find ways to keep your body active. IF you don’t use it, you lose it. That’s just how the body works. Injuries can be very discouraging. I have a guy I’m working with now dealing with a herniated disk. The training has to change drastically and the mentality has to change quickly as well. Hard and heavy probably isn’t the way you should be training. This can be a good time to really focus on stretching and mobility. Use this time to work on posture, core activation, breathing, technique, or even some cardio. There’s so many ways to train, because our bodies are capable of so much. Taking a step back because you’re injured can actually set you up for success in the long run. You can improve on different areas of fitness or muscle groups that you neglected beforehand. Your fitness journey never really ends. Fitness is a lifestyle, you can never be too fit or too healthy. Everyone can improve in one way or another which is what keeps our journeys everlasting. Break your training down into phases; everything can’t be done at once. Maybe for 3 months you want your main focus to be building strength and another 3 months you want to focus on your cardiovascular health. Not saying you can’t do both at the same time, but there has to be a main focus, the other will suffer a little. When setbacks occur you just find other ways to keep the fitness journey moving along. Always remember, you’ll have all the time in the world laying in a hospital bed. You don’t want to be that person, take care of yourself.