What a year 2025 has been for me, I don’t know who I pissed off but someone or something is out to get me. On Feb 1st I competed at Hyrox and ended up getting Rhabdomyolysis which if it wasn’t for doctors inthe crowd could have been fatal, leaving me hospitalised for 5days helpless andwasting away. Fast forward 2 months while trying to enjoy our first proper family holiday my ACL decided to tear itself to shreds in the knee. Just one of these events would be enough to start messing with someone’s mind but to get both of these in such close succession can really test your mental attitude.
Some would say my mental stubbornness is what lead to the Rhabdo and could have been easily avoidable but I like to pride myself onpushing the body to its limits in competition. But now it’s a whole new mental and physical journey, firstly getting the kidneys, liver and heart back to full health with weekly blood tests and then how to gain back the strength and fitness without full use of one of the knees full capabilities.
So what do you do? This is where mindset comes in. It doesn’t get any simpler than this and I apologise if this offends anyone this is all just my opinion. If you have an injury and do not do anything about it and use it as an excuse to not do anything at all then that’s on you, you have givenup/lazy or you are not prepared to do the hard yards potentially alone and isolated. For example, we’ve all heard of a frozen shoulder, but do we really know what that is or means? Sometimes it’s brought on by sudden injury or specific health issues but majority of time its due to immobility in general or after injury. That is simply put if you don’t use your shoulder, it ceases and makes it a whole lot worse, purely by using it as an excuse, giving up, and not using it. This has now gone from potentially an easy road recovery to some serious long term lingering effects.
I have a busted knee, so what? Should I stop and feel sorry for myself and do nothing? No, what example would I be to clients if that’s the approach I took. I still have another leg and an upper body that is perfectly capable of doing anything. But you’re thinking you’re a trainer its easy you know what works and what doesn’t, yes that’s true, but I have faith in every trainer at Activ8 that they can work around an injury and give you a great workout way better than I could.
This now leads onto the injury itself. Theres this little thing that no one ever really talks about and that’s prehab not to be confused with rehab. This is so important especially if surgery is needed. It is statistically proven that a long-term positive outcome on a surgically repaired part of the body is a lot higher if the necessary prehab is done pre-surgery.
What is prehab then? Think of this like building a house on some unstable land,prehab is the foundations under the house and surgery is the building of the house. You can build the house (get surgery) and it will look amazing and work functionally but after some time you start seeing some cracks in the walls asthe house starts sinking (no prehab, rehab). So prehab is all the necessary building/strengthening/stabilising that takes place before surgery happens.Just recently we have had good testimonials from a top surgeon in town saying how well we had prepared a few clients before their knee/hip replacements.Their post operative follow-up progress was way further through from other knee replacements recipients that didn’t prehab.
If we take my knee for example my main goal before 1stsurgery in January is to get my muscles around my knee as strong as I can mixed in with balance and stability exercises. Like I said above this is very lonely and isolating as I am doing this all on my own but on the other side of the coin minus some modifications I’m doing everything else as normal; normal classes, normal weights, normal cardio. Now I’m not saying every injury you aren’t sore the whole time we have seen clients in pain constantly BUT that doesn’t mean we cannot prehab/rehab that injured area or not even use that injured part while still giving the rest of the body a good workout. That separates a good trainer from a cowboy or someone who thinks they’re a trainer. Am I in pain while pre-habing? Of course I am, is it hard sometimes? Of course it is, but thinking long term longevity compared to a little pain mixed with some hard work short term the pay off is completely worth it. It all comes down to mindset and what you are prepared to do about it. Am I prepared to start from literally zero after hospital barely having the energy to walk to the toilet and knowing my knee could give way at any point and I collapse topushing and pushing and building and building to get back to where I was in 2024? Hell Yes I Am!!! The hardest part of all of this is watching everyone train for next year’s Hyrox knowing I wont be able to attend but hey there’s always 2027.
So, my rule of thumb and take away is stay positive, have a great mindset, the body is an amazing healer. You may have to become vulnerable to a trainer/physio/health worker and trust that they have your best interests at heart even if it is a little painful at the time.
But if you give up,your body gives up!
Do it a little more every week and keep consistent in your new habit. If you need support- get in touch and we can meet for a consult to see how we can support you in prehab or rehab.
