My job and passion are personal training because I love improving people through exercise. However, not everyone loves exercise, especially clients I have had in the past.
There’s no need to name names.
However, most personal training clients see the value in torture, and that’s one reason they stick around. A personal trainer is similar to having a professional best friend, as the client will rap about the good, the bad, and the ugly in their life. Once, somebody told me a story about the Eagles frontman Don Henley that will make you laugh, but to hear it, you’ll need to become a client, ha-ha.
It’s easier to train when things go your way, but it’s a challenge when life starts whizzing fastballs at your head. You’re too busy dodging, weaving, and reacting to worry about anything else, especially training. Here, I’ll get into the value of training when life has you by the short and curlies.
Tragedy, Well Not Exactly
I went with the training through the tragedy headline because it’s catchy, but that’s not exactly what I mean. Tragedy is great suffering and destruction, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe. Yes, that has happened to my clients, but what is meant here is when life isn’t going your way.
It could be a tragedy, like cancer or a death in the family or spraining your ankle and being out of commission for two weeks.
Now, let’s bring it back to you.
Remember when life got on top of you, wrapped its arms around you, and squeezed you so tight that you barely had time to come up for air? When life puts you in the spin cycle, you either embrace and work through it or put your head under a rock and hope everything goes away.
However, it helps to have something to hold on to, a rudder that can guide you through the chaos. For me, that’s exercise. Rather than crawling underneath a rock and waiting for the madness to pass, setting aside time to move your body can help.
But don’t just take my word for it. With the assistance of my current clients, who have experienced emotional trauma, I will explain why training through tragedy helps.
Training Through Hard Times
My fork-in-the-road moment was watching my father take his last breath as cancer overran his body. I had just started to hit the gym, but biceps curls were the furthest thing from my mind. Besides being in disbelief, I just wanted to duck my head under a beer tap and black out in the darkness. Being inside my head was too much, and I wasn’t mature enough to find another outlet for my grief.
But enough about me because one of the true values of exercise, outside of vanity, is about to be revealed.
Some of my clients have experienced challenges over the past few years. Here are events my clients have experienced and continue to train through.
A sudden break-up.
The death of a mother and stepmother.
Their child’s mental illness and divorce.
The death of their son.
It’s pretty heavy stuff, right? Events like these make it challenging to focus on daily activities, let alone worry about getting stronger. But they continued to show up and train regardless, which got me thinking. How can they put this stuff aside, put on a happy face, and lift weights?
If you’ve experienced similar things, it’s hard to stop thinking about them, as they play like endless loops in your head. Probably, you would give anything to stop these thoughts and to focus on anything else besides the pain.
So, what does lifting weights have to do with any of this?
Training gets you out of your head and allows you to focus on something other than the pain. You could say you’re swapping one pain for another. It sounds silly, but it helps.
Wrapping Up
We all have tough times; sometimes, it’s difficult to put one foot in front of the other and exist. Rather than engaging in unhealthy distractions, having a healthy one, like exercise, can help you feel better and remind you of how tough you really are.
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