Re-Posted from Aug 2016: Getting Shocked by Adversity
"With adversity you are shocked to a higher level, much like a rainstorm that is so violent, but yet afterwards all plants grow.” - Bruce Lee
In December of 2015 I was Christmas shopping, but had to leave the mall due to some pain in my abdomen. I had been experiencing the pain for a week or two and had already been to the doctor who prescribed some medicine, but it wasn’t getting better. A little later that same day I started to experience some other serious symptoms as well so my fiancee (now wife) drove me to the emergency room and I was immediately admitted to the hospital. I became deathly ill, and ended up spending two weeks in the hospital. Most of the time was spent running tests so the doctors could try to determine exactly what was going on. It was quite an ordeal. I’m going to skip the gory details because I just don't want to get into it on the internet, but believe me when I say it was really scary and bad; and it was a much closer call than even the doctors initially suspected. On the morning of January 1st 2016, which was the the tenth day of my hospital stay they had finally diagnosed the problem. They immediately called in a surgeon to operate. I had major abdominal surgery that same morning where they had to remove an ulcerated pocket from my intestine. I was released from the hospital I think four days later. The good news was the doctor’s prognosis was a full recovery! Although, I couldn’t have known at that time my recovery would be much longer and tougher than anyone anticipated. In fact at the time of this writing it is well over a year later I am still recovering from the fallout of that event.
During my hospital stay I had lost a ton of weight due to my illness. The week I went into the hospital I was a lean muscular 180 lbs. The first time I weighed myself a few days after I got home I was 165 lbs and that was after I had already started eating again. Honestly, I really don’t know how low my weight got at the lowest point. The surgery had left about a six inch vertical incision on my abdomen. I couldn’t sit up, walk, or really even move without a lot assistance. I had barely eaten during my hospital stay, so I was starved, but my digestive system was still sensitive from the surgery. The thought of eating made me sick. In addition, the incision from the surgery was excruciatingly painful. I felt pretty miserable, but I was upbeat, it was over. Or so I thought.
Over the next couple of months the recovery went slow and steady. I went back to work in mid February. A few half days at first, then full days. I was still very weak from my illness and also the surgery. My first day back to work I could barely make the walk from the parking garage to my office. But I needed to get better and soon because my fiancee and I were getting married in March! As the wedding date got closer I continued to recover and got stronger. By the time the big day rolled around I was just starting to feel somewhat normal again, though I lacked endurance. Other than the reception ending a little early because I ran out of energy the wedding went off without a hitch. It was awesome! Everything was progressing, and I was on my way to a speedy recovery just like the surgeon had said. I couldn’t wait to get back in the gym.
Around the end of April of 2016 I started feeling sick to my stomach. I felt weak and my stomach hurt. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I would break out in cold sweats. I was nauseated, weak, and lightheaded...something was wrong. After a barrage of tests it was determined that scar tissue from the surgery was rubbing against my internal organs and causing inflammation. The doctor said the scar tissue itself was inflamed and it should get better after some time. Due to my previous condition I couldn’t take any anti-inflammatory drugs, so I would have to just stick it out. For the next 4 months I would be nauseated and weak to some degree or another pretty much everyday. I would wake up to get ready for work and as I moved around I would begin to feel sick. Then I'd just have to sit on the couch with my head in my hands and wait for the sick feeling to pass. Sometimes it would, but often it wouldn’t, and for the next several months this was the new normal.
Finally around the end of August I started to feel better. I was excited, but by now I had grown only cautiously optimistic. I still got sick sometimes, but not as bad and not as often. Although I was getting better I noticed that my back was sore and I would get numbness in my calf and foot. My doctor referred me to a spinal specialist, I got an MRI, and it was confirmed: two torn discs in my lower back. What happened was I did a lot sitting in a slouched position during the previous several months because I felt sick to my stomach, and with no abdominal muscles to support my weight it had taken a toll on my back. Basically the spine doctor said that because my spine was unsupported all my weight was just hanging and pulling on it. I was pretty devastated. Although there was good news, no surgery just rehab. I talked to the doctor about a training routine I could start to rehabilitate my back and we discussed different exercises. Pretty soon I was training again, but much differently than I ever had before.
And that is where the story brings me to the Bruce Lee quote at the top. When my training was taken away I had to do something to fill that gap in my life. Since I couldn’t train I studied as much as I could about strength and resistance training, diet, nutrition, and of course low back rehabilitation. It's not like I didn't have a decent understanding of these topics before, but now I was definitely stepping up my game. To be honest I wouldn’t have nearly the knowledge I have today without going through this whole medical debacle. My condition required me to adapt if I wanted to train, and the only way to do that was to become more knowledgeable. I had to get better at doing the exercises I had always done, learn new exercises, find new ways to train, and new ways to achieve my goals. One caveat to my situation was that I had to completely rebuild my core strength because my abdominal muscles were severed from the surgery. The problem was that core strengthening exercises such as planks would aggravate my stomach, which would cause me to slouch, which would make my back worse. All of this while still trying to recover from my illness. Needless to say this was a slow and frustrating process that took a lot of patience and perseverance........ seriously a lot.
I literally had to start over from ground zero to do any type of physical activity. That meant learning a lot of new exercises, re-learning a lot of old ones, and focusing on absolutely perfect form. Because of injury to my back I had no room for error. One of the books I read was the The Back Mechanic by Dr Stuart McGill, which has some great information on back rehabilitation. McGill had a great anecdote in the book that stuck with me about a power lifter who had a couple of herniated discs in his back. The power lifter had to start over from scratch by doing all the exercises he performed for his power lifting training with little to no weight and just work on perfect form. His back eventually got better and over time he began to add weight back to the movements. A couple of years later he broke a world record at a power lifting meet. Afterwards he credited his back injury saying he would have never been able to lift the record setting weight without executing the lift with perfect form. I'm not trying to be a world record setting power lifter, but it would be nice to get back to some good old strength and resistance training. And I can say that my form right now on many lifts is better than it has ever been, although it is still far from perfect.
A good example of how I started over in my own training was with the squat. For this exercise I read some books and articles, and watched videos about squats and proper form. Then once I was able, I began practicing body weight squats focusing hard on achieving perfect form. I would imagine I had a barbell loaded with a ton of weight and I would just do set after set of body weight squats in the kitchen watching myself in the reflection of the sliding glass door. I would focus on externally rotating my hips, and bracing, and all that stuff your supposed to do when you squat. I did it over and over again. After a while the form for my squat drastically improved. So in the end all the reading and research I'd done on technique, strength training, and rehabilitation made me not only more knowledgeable, but better at performing exercises. I guess you could say I'm having a similar experience to that power lifter, minus the world records! I read that Bruce Lee had the same experience when he injured his back. He was unable to perform martial arts for 6 months, so he spent that time reading about exercise and philosophy. I can't help but wonder if that was the genesis of the quote at the top of this blog post. It certainly struck a chord with me when I was in almost the exact same situation as him.
Reflecting back much of the recent knowledge I've gained and improvement in technique happened because of my illness and subsequent rehabilitation. That's why the Bruce Lee quote is so poignant to me. My traumatic medical experience shocked me to a higher level, or at least it led to progress/improvement in some areas. I first read the quote at a time I was needing to find something positive to come out of all this mess. I feel at this point I've weathered the storm and I've come away with some things I wouldn't have otherwise learned. I know the Bruce Lee quote is really just a different way to describe what a lot of old cliches already tell us like "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" and all of that stuff. The thing about old cliches is they are cliche because they're usually true, and maybe its true in my case....or maybe not. I mean sure.... I've picked up a few things, but that doesn't mean I can just stop because I've done enough. In my mind to truly hit that higher level I have to keep pushing to maintain what I've done and hit new levels. I definitely believe that Bruce Lee was right that adversity can shock you to another level. However, now I have to keep it going and continue to push myself. I have to show that Bruce Lee was right and prove it....if to no one else, then to myself.
