Take a break

Hiya, welcome to my second blog!

Today I want to talk to you about taking a break from working out.

For a while now, I’ve been suffering from back pain and I've been trying my best to ignore it because I couldn’t bring myself to stop going to the gym.

Let me tell you, this was the worst idea I’ve ever had… well, one of them.

3 months went by and the pain got worse, it went from being triggered by an upper body workout to feeling the pain as soon as I woke up.

Two weeks ago, I thought it’s probably best to stop doing upper body workouts but I continued to do cardio and leg day (my favourite day of the week).

Some of the HIIT’s I was doing involved using my back and shoulder muscles so of course, the pain did not go away and although I wasn’t expecting it to go that quickly, I thought there might be some progress.

I was wrong, it was getting worse so I decided to go to the doctor, they told me it was muscular and to rub ibuprofen gel on it 3 times a day as well as avoiding any strenuous activity to my back and shoulder.

This was hard to hear, although I already knew that's what I needed to do, but I have my brother's wedding coming up in a week and my brain instantly went to, what if I don't fit into my dress or I look fat.

When you really think about it, that sounds so stupid, would my body really change that much within a week? No it wouldn’t, especially if I keep taking creatine, do cardio (not excessively and keep it simple), and keep on track with healthy eating, in reality nothing is really going to change.

When I speak to myself like that, it is so easy to not care about the restrictions I've been put under, but that bad body image always circles back.

But, I tell you what, it has been 5 days since I went to the doctor and I have done exactly what they told me to and my god has there been a drastic change! It still hurts, but I no longer wake up with the pain. It is now only triggered by certain moves, but over time I know if I keep to it, I will be fully healed and able to go back to training!

So, the moral of the story here, don’t push yourself too hard and TAKE A BREAK! It is so important to take a break and I had to learn that the hard way.

As hard as it is, do not let that bad body image devil take over, a break is deserved and will be effective with your journey, whether it’s for staying motivated or letting your body have time to heal and build muscle.

Putting working out on hold out due to an injury has always been hard for me, and it is always because of that stupid devil in the back of my head.

From now on, I will try my hardest to ignore that devil and not let it take over my life, I hope you will join me.

Goodbye for now, but stay tuned to find out if the devil was right about me not fitting into that dress…