It’s been a quiet week on Kim Lloyd fitness.com.

And for good reason.

Josh ties a mean double knot.

Last Friday I went in for what I had hoped would be a minor surgery on my shoulder, but came out with a full repair of my labrum which means I’ll be in a sling for the next 4 to 6 weeks and recovering for the next 4 to 6 months.

Sigh.

I was typing left-handed but recently discovered the value of talk to text. So I’m dictating this post as we speak... actually as I speak.

Pun intended.

I’ve got one week in the bank which feels really good,  but already this week I’ve discovered what I think the hardest part of being in this position really is. And it’s not just putting a sports bra on over your feet or plucking chin hair with your left hand.

No, the thing I found most challenging in the last seven days is needing other people.

Like constantly.

I can’t tie my shoes, can’t open a bottle of pills, struggle to dress myself and can’t do my hair. Listen I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal because I have a really short hair but actually it’s as annoying as sand in my bathing suit. If I don’t put gel in my hair I look like a baby bird.

My hair is so fluffy… just…so fluffy.

Tasks I haven’t thought twice about in the past, like pumping my gas or putting toothpaste on my toothbrush suddenly go a lot easier with a little help.

And that’s hard.

It takes a lot of courage to ask for help. I think it takes comfort in your own skin. And yes I think above all it takes strength.

I might be strong enough to deadlift 280 pounds but asking my coworker Josh to tie my shoes is really much harder. (Although next time I’ll ask him not to tie a double knot as it took me 15 minutes untie my shoes...)

I've watched the Brene Brown talks on vulnerability. I've got a pretty solid intellectual understanding of what it means to be vulnerable. But living in that space?

That's a whole different animal altogether.

When I was in college I had a wonderful mentor I worked with for two years before he developed cancer. One of the biggest lessons he taught me in the months before his death was how to let other people care for you. Not just that it's okay to need people. But that letting others help you and feel needed is a gift to those people.

What I couldn’t appreciate was how difficult it is to do. And yet he did so with such grace.

My mentor was keenly aware that students like myself wanted nothing more than to do something for him. We needed to feel useful. We just wanted to help. And he gave us the gift of allowing us to help him. 

I’m sure you’ve been in a position before where you’ve seen a friend or family member go through a difficult time. And all you want to do is help. But if the situation is reversed you might find yourself shrugging everyone off.

Nah, I'm good. I got this.

Or find yourself frustrated.

I'm fine! Stop asking! I'm good!

I’m not saying that I got this down pat. I think the next 3 to 5 weeks in the sling is going to be a challenge. But I also think the universe is trying to teach me some lessons here and I'm going to do my best to see what those lessons are and to listen.

And figure out how to deadlift with one arm. 

Yeah, I kind of did the click bait thing there again. But I'm experimenting with new headlines this year. :)

I took the scale out of the bathroom at our gym this week.

Removing the scale was kind, as what I really want to do is take a sledge hammer to it. And while it was 95% about helping our clients stay in a positive mindset when they come in to workout, if I’m being totally honest, it was also about keeping me in a positive mindset.

Though I discourage clients from using the scale as progress, I don’t always practice what I preach. Partly because every time I go in to pee, I’m just sitting there staring at the scale and can’t resist the urge to get on it. 

It’s there, I’m curious, I get on it, and depending on what I see for a number, it shakes up my day a little, even though I know better. And I see it happen with our clients often. They come in to work out, look like they’re having a bad day, and when they finally admit what’s bugging them, they confess that they got on the scale and hadn’t dropped any pounds since last week. 

Or in some cases, yesterday. 

I took the scale out Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday night, I got an interesting text from one of our clients:

“So you took the scale out of the bathroom and about half way through my work out. When I pointed at you is about when I realized you had derailed my usual inner monologue. Instead of demeaning myself during my workout because once again I did not lose 10 pounds since I stepped on the scale the day before my, head was clearer. I also noticed I felt more positive in what I was doing.”

That’s some pretty good self-awareness on her part, but I think sometimes we don’t even realize the kind of inner dialogue that creeps up on us when we do decide to see how much we weigh. That number affects us, many times more than we want to admit. And while we can intellectually tell ourselves that we are ok and we are doing good things all day long, trying to overcome that emotional connection to our weight can feel nearly impossible. 

I’ve written about the scale before, and how it sucks as a way to measure progress. Muscle weighs more than fat, so as you build muscle and lose fat you may even see your weight go up depending on where you start. Use a pair of pants that used to fit a certain way. If you need a number to look at, measure your waist in centimeters.  

But for the love of all things holy, take that &^%(*%^&)(*^%$*()(#$ scale out of your bathroom. 

Motivation is a tricky little devil.

For some people, it lives in the scale. 

For others, it lives in the prescription bottle of blood pressure medication.

My dad's answer to any question that began with why was always the same: to make you ask questions. Works, doesn't it?

And for others, motivation is in the eyes of your four-year-old nephew who wants to do chin ups off of your arm after playing football in the yard for an hour before snowboarding on the X-Box Kinect for two hours.

And you just want to make it to the end of the day in one piece :)

When I was in junior high, I found motivation every time I watched Rocky. The story was cliche, but I thought it was magic. I’d watch the montage of Rocky chasing the chicken and sprinting along the river in Philly and the next thing I knew, I was out running hills in my rural Pennsylvania town.

Thank God my parents didn’t have chickens…

I feel fortunate that I’ve never really struggled with motivation to work out, even through long bouts of depression. For the most part, the high I got from exercise was always enough to get me in to the gym or on a run.  

Until recently. 

With an impending shoulder surgery less than five days away, I found myself re-racking my weights last week and struggling to get through the next set. Tuesday wasn't much better, and by Friday I was walking on the treadmill just to feel like I did something. 

I was, and still am, consumed with an inner dialogue that I can't seem to turn off. All I hear myself saying over and over again is "what's the point?"

I've lost a handle on my "why." 

Why train hard now only to put myself on the shelf for the next six weeks if not longer? I generally strength train and run with the intention to build each workout off of the last. Suddenly last week, I didn't feel like I was building on anything and man did it get harder to put on my workout clothes.

And I WORK in a gym. 

Intellectually, I have plenty of reasons to work out. I know I should be as strong as possible heading into the surgery so that I can heal better afterwards. 

But I am not connected to my why. I'm just not feeling it. 

And that's a difficult place to be. 

If we're not connected to our reasons to do something, the struggle to build and maintain the habit can feel not just difficult, but monumentally so. 

The reason behind your goals. Maybe you work out to lose weight, but what's the "why" behind that? Do you have an emotional connection to that why? What will happen when you lose that weight?

You'll fit into that dress.

And what will happen when you fit into that dress?

There are so many layers to motivation. It's like Shrek says - onions have layers, ogres have layers, and motivation has layers. 

What emotion is tied to the goal?

There's a reason so many people use a high school reunion as motivation to get back into shape or into better shape; high school is often filled with a lot of pain. Teenagers can be cruel - you were made fun of for the way you dressed, the way you looked, or who you hung out with.

If you're busting your hump to get in better shape for the reunion, your motivation is pain. And pain is an incredibly effective motivator.  

As many of you have read, when I first started running, I was battling chronic depression. My why for working out was a desperation to feel better, and quite honestly, try to out run my pain and sadness. 

The transition into strength training came from a similar place. I was struggling so hard with my career, wondering what I was going to do with myself and scared that I'd never find my place in this world - but I gradually came to find my place in the weight room. I got hooked on deadlifting because I needed so much to feel like I was good at something. 

Now I have to re-visit my motivation - so my plan today is to sit down with a pen and paper and act like a toddler. 

And if  you don't know your why either, perhaps you can sit down today and do the same.