I Lift Things Up and Put Them Down

Well, I feel really old now, after looking up the commercial and finding that it was 13 fucking years ago...how is has it been 13 years? I mean at the time, I lift things up and put them down really described my fitness regime. I picked up weights, put them down and did it over and over. I was getting ready for the RCMP at that time, and it was in that window that I really started to program hop. I was happy with my strength, but I was slow and didn't have much cardio. So I stopped lifting as much and tried to trim down and get faster. It kinda worked, kinda didn't because the truth of the matter is I fucking hate running. I would rather do anything other than run. So needless to say, the getting ready for depot didn't go so well. 

One of the first fitness sessions at depot was the Cooper's Run, simple enough, just run 1.5 miles as fast as you can. Sure went well, but not really...it was a time when things weren't quite so gentle and the sergeant of the fitness unit went running past and let me know exactly what he thought, which was that I was a disgrace and an embarrassment. What a start...needless to say I didn't put any more focus on my distance running because fuck that. I can sprint with the best of them, making it to level 13 on the beep test, doing the PARE in 2:45, so I didn't really care that I couldn't run a 20 minute 5km. It may not have impacted me at the time, but that running reminder that I was a disgrace and embarrassment stuck with me. 

Fitness as a first responder is clearly important, whether as a police officer, fire fighter, paramedic etc. Being physically able to do the job is a necessity, not only for helping the community you are sworn to assist, but to make sure that you are able to be there for your co-workers if they need you. But what happens when it stops being healthy? Coming out of depot I was at the lightest I had been in many years and felt like the 6 months in training had done nothing to really get me ready for the streets, especially when my first post was a rough and tumble oil and gas community with lots of guys who were ready to scrap any day of the week. I knew that if I was going to survive I was going to have to get bigger and stronger, not so much faster. So I did, quickly gaining back a lot of weight and eventually getting up to 40 pounds heavier than graduation weight. I needed my sleeves expanded and couldn't button my top buttons because I had beefed up so much. It worked good outside the bars, the scraps still happened but it was a little easier to throw down when I could match the oil boys size. I wasn't really happy with myself because I still didn't feel big enough or strong enough. Then one night I end up having to run a track with the dog services member and got left behind in the woods, then proceeded to throw up all over a citizens front yard. The handler let me know that I wasn't going to be tracking with him any more because I was too slow and a liability. Sounds familiar, you're a disgrace and an embarrassment.

So what do you do? Find a new plan, something that focuses on building a cardio base and getting a little trimmed up. It doesn't feel good to lose the size that I worked so hard for, but if I'm a liability then something needs to change. I tried it, and honestly I hated it. There was no joy to be found in the workouts, I felt beat down all the time because I wasn't see much for results, I wasn't happy with how I looked, I wasn't happy with losing strength. So I changed plans again, still trying to find the happy place for myself. It never really worked, I just went from plan to plan, trying a couple months here, a couple months there. Just permanently stuck in a rut, slowly starting to hate the gym as much as I was starting to hate myself.

As the years passed by and the drain of work started to take more of a toll, I found that the rut was constantly getting deeper and more difficult to see out of. I couldn't seem to figure out why I was never getting stronger, never getting faster, always getting hurt, which started the cycle all over again, with a healthy dose of self hatred mixed in there. With each injury, with each shitty workout, with each plan that didn't give me any perceived results I kept looking in the mirror and seeing an embarrassment and a disgrace. I was constantly worried that I was going to be the reason that someone I worked with got hurt at a call, because I wasn't going to be able to win a fight, or run up a flight of stairs, or any other scenario that my anxiety would drum up. Which then would send me to the gym on days I didn't want to go or shouldn't have gone because I was burned out. I didn't see the need to recover because it was drummed into my head that there could be no days off. If I took a day off I was weak, I was a disgrace. I was so focused on not being a liability that I was pretty well a liability, because I never had any energy, I was always sore or hurt, and I would have really benefited from a serious injury because it would have forced me to take time off. Sure, it wouldn't have been okay at the time because I would have beaten myself down for being hurt, but I'm sure I would have got through it. 

This cycle went on for years, a never ending barrage of self hatred for never being able to see any kind of progress. Just before my mental health break the flu went rampant through our house and I was bed ridden for almost a week. It probably hit me so hard because I was so burned out at my body had nothing left to help itself, which by the end of it I had lost 15 pounds and was under 200 for the first time since Regina, almost 10 years. When I came off the road I bought a pass to the community gym, because I figured it would only be 30 days that I would be off, so I needed to stay in shape. As the time away from work extended, so did my time at the community gym. Sure, I was hiking more to get fresh air, but even those hikes weren't healthy. I was wearing my heart monitor, tracking my time, putting more weight in my ruck, listening to my music so that I wouldn't go slower. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but one day, probably on a hike when my headphones were dead and I had to actually listen to my brain, something clicked. Why was I constantly trying to out do myself instead of just accepting where I was? How was I going to help myself heal if I wasn't actually giving myself a chance to heal. I made a conscious decision that I was going to take a real break. I stopped going to the gym. I stopped wearing my heart monitor and my headphones on my hikes. When I was out in nature I was out in nature, listening to myself, letting my brain do some free association and just working on whatever came to mind. It was not an easy process. There was a lot of self resistance to the idea because I was still in the mindset that I needed to always be ready. I was still unhappy with my physique, I wasn't satisfied with just being me because I was an embarrassment. 

When I went to Kelowna and started the TSRP with Diversified, I did one workout in their little gym and decided that I still wasn't ready. I still wasn't able to accept myself, I wasn't going to be able to not fall back into the self hatred. Which to me was an immense amount of insight and a huge reflection of self-love and self-compassion. So I kept walking, which was great in lake country, just going up the hill and then back down. As I worked through the program and started digging into some of the reasons that I was never happy with myself, lots of it was related to being the tall skinny kid throughout the early years of my life. Shit, even now after being out of high school for almost 20 years, I still see the skinny kid when I look in the mirror. Breaking that cycle still proves difficult, but the other cycle, of being an embarrassment, has been a more achievable goal. Leaving Kelowna we had to come up with post-residence goals, things that would be attainable and do-able at home. One of the goals that I set for myself was to bring fitness back into my life and to do it in a manner that allowed me to continue my healing. I started searching for a new workout program, I knew that if my goal was going to be fulfilled that I would have to do something that was out of the ordinary from what I had been doing for the past 10+ years. I also knew that I was going to need something that I could do outside of the gym, because there were going to be days that I wanted to do something but didn't want to leave the house. In all my searching I found Crossfit Linchpin. Yes, that crossfit, the one that made the goofy ass looking kipping pullup and high rep olympic lifting a seemingly normal part of fitness. Something about Linchpin struck me as being different. Firstly, there were 5 separate options for each day's workouts, which is not something I had ever seen before, and this included scaled and no equipment workouts that could be tailored exactly to how I was feeling on a given day. The program designed Pat Sherwood has made it a point to make Linchpin a fitness for life system, something that can be done without destroying yourself day in and day out. It also helped that there was a free month with a 6 month membership, so I bit the bullet and signed up.

My first session was a year ago and during the past year, I would say that my goal has been met. On average I have done 4 sessions a week, while still being able to continue my hiking/snowshoing etc that I need to get myself out in the fresh air to bring calm to my brain. During the past year I have made it a point to just do what I am capable of doing each workout. Some have been really good and I have surprised myself with my capacity. Other days I have dragged myself through the session because I misjudged how hard it was going to be. And other days still when I haven't felt like going because I've been sore, disinterested or just not feeling up to it I haven't gone. And on those days I haven't hated myself for listening to my body which is a very welcome change.

I believe that part of the shift in mentality is knowing that I am not going back to on the road police work so I no longer have the perceived pressure on myself to make sure that I am in shape for responding to calls. Now I just want to workout so that I am able to keep up with my kids, so that I can show them the importance of healthy self care, especially since I am a girl dad. My only competition is myself, and while I can be a real asshole to myself, its a healthy competition now. Sure, I still see the skinny kid in the mirror and the body dysmorphia is an on-going struggle, but it isn't a raging hate any more. I haven't considered myself an embarrassment or a disgrace for a long time. 

With this post I want to share parts of my story and to bring some light to the struggles that can arise when something healthy becomes so inherently unhealthy. Whatever you may do for fitness, do it for the right reason. Listen to your body, because it truly does know best. Rest and recovery are more important than you might think. 

And to the fitness instructor from many years ago...how about you go fuck yourself, and chances are if I saw you today I'd tell you the same thing to your face.