My Strength Journey: Part 1
As many of you did, I grew up in the era that idolised Posh Spice, Britney and Christina. No one gave an absolute shit about being strong, and it wasn’t something that was a part of my narrative growing up in the 90s in NZ. My mum had anorexia when I was a child, and there was a lot of talk about good and bad foods, which became very much ingrained in my eating habits as I entered my teenage years. Despite always being ‘skinny’, I was hell bent on being smaller, and would go on ridiculous diets that closely resembled starvation, finding a huge amount of validation in seeing the number on the scales go down.
My efforts to exercise as a young adult involved hours of cardio to cancel out the McDonalds or Jägermeister bender I’d recently engaged in, and I honestly don’t think I touched a barbell until I was almost 30 years old. My early 20s were mostly consumed by relationship misadventures, substance abuse and a restrict / binge cycle in terms of my eating habits. I exercised purely to ‘be hot’, and being strong or having any focus on health in general wasn’t on my radar. Back then, my training sessions began and ended with a cigarette, smoked whilst driving the 1km to the gym down the road, which, even 20 years ago, was fairly unorthodox.
I moved to Melbourne in 2012 in a dual attempt to escape a toxic relationship and ‘sort my shit out’. Working in hospitality at the time, my life as a chef consisted of fairly similar behaviours to those from back home; basically not looking after my physical or mental health but being OK with that, as long as I could still fit into my size 8 jeans. Training didn’t come back into the picture until that became a struggle. Whilst the whole strong vs skinny era was definitely a thing around that time, the habits of my youth were still deeply entrenched, so I started doing excessive cardio. (The obvious metaphor between running away from my former life and my initial training practise is by no means lost on me).
What began as dabbling in running and bootcamp style training turned into a full blown obsession to complete a half marathon. With absolutely zero focus on strength training, I started attending daily bootcamp or high intensity cardio sessions, on top of going for regular runs which increased in duration with each performance. My ‘more is better’ mindset became firmly set, and I began restricting my calorie intake under the guise of ‘clean eating’ - something that was strongly encouraged by the personal trainer I worked with. My self imposed 6 week diet challenges lead (again) to chronic binging of all the foods I had banned myself from and subsequent fluctuation to my body weight, allowing me to draw the (incorrect) conclusion that I wasn’t doing ‘enough’.
As I kept running and under-eating, I began to get significant pain in my knee, something which I ignored and pushed through in my efforts to complete the half marathon I had signed up for months prior. By the time I got to race day, my knee hurt to walk, but I was hell bent on completing the Great Ocean Road 21km Event which I had been training for the past few months. My knee hurt from the start, but the thought of not completing the run and ‘failing’ hurt more. I soldiered on for the first 15km and basically limped the last six, bawling my eyes out as I crossed the finish line and received my participation medal. I couldn’t walk for a week, and made the only logical decision I had made in the past two years of training - I went to see a physio, which was where my strength training journey officially began. So technically, you’ve just read the prequel.
I’m a firm believer that we are exactly where we are intended to be, and, whilst the start of my story doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in my ability as either coach or athlete, I believe this humbling experience was necessary for both mental and physical growth. It taught me a lot, not only about my body and training in general, but gave me what would eventually become one of my greatest attributes when applied correctly - ridiculous levels of stubbornness and determination.
Part two of this story dives into where my strength journey started, so stay tuned!
