The Rebuilding Phase

If you’ve ever taken a few weeks off, or a few dozen months in a row, and you’re trying to get back into fitness, I suggest taking some time to re-evaluate your body’s strengths and weaknesses before going wild in your next workout. This is a process called rebuilding. It doesn’t feel like much fun, but it is key to keeping yourself healthy while you work up to your former levels of fitness.

Why the need to rebuild?

Anytime the body disconnects from a regular workout routine, it begins to settle. This means your cardio will slowly disappear, then your strength and finally your image in the mirror. While your body is changing, your mind remembers the good old days. The next time you workout your mind will tell you, “I can do this” and then your body will later tell you, if not immediately, whether or not that was a good idea. Your mind hasn’t recognized the settling changes, and it can seriously hurt your body by holding it to a too high standard. Or your mind is convinced you can’t do what your crazy friend has recruited you into, you need to try whatever that exercise is at your own pace on your own terms before jumping in with both feet.

How do you know where to start?

Since you want to evaluate your total condition, you can start just about anywhere, but always start at low intensities, with low weights, medium repetitions and medium sets. Remember, your body has changed: it could be in worse condition than you know, or it could be in much better shape and just needs a little fine tuning. You won’t know until you start training. Going slow gives your body a chance to wake-up. Your mind remembers how to do the perfect squat, but your body might not. You might think that a warm-up set is harmless, and then find that you’ve pulled your inner thigh. It’s not like that happens to people. Okay so it might have happened… to a friend of mine…

What’s low intensity and medium supposed to mean?

Go slow and think about form. If you don’t know what good form is, ask for help. Most gyms and sports teams have people who are licensed professionals who know what good form looks like. Most gyms and sports teams also have people who don’t use good form, so don’t take a look around the gym and emulate the guy in the corner, he may not be a good example. Also, your body might have limitations you’re unaware of that will effect your exercise. A professional will be able to help you identify how to healthfully exercise, preventing future injuries and keeping you healthy longer.

Form?

Form is a difficult thing to describe. Great form makes specific movements look effortless. Period. Performing an exercise with proper form keeps your body in alignment and also uses principles of stacking. Your body is made to move, and made to make compound movements. When you stack your body in a proper movement, the movement becomes much easier. When you’re not stacking properly movements become very difficult and feel impossible. Everything is possible, with the right form. Eighty percent of what you do as an exercise should be done in proper form. Ten percent should be experimenting to find that form and the other ten percent of the time when you’re pushing your limits to extend your fitness.

Rebuilding is ninety percent of the equation.

It’s taking time to get comfortable and establish a solid foundation for your fitness. Building the foundation allows you to safely push yourself as you discover what your body can do. It takes a great deal of humility to start low and go slow. It takes even more humility to recognize when you’ve overdone an exercise and need to stop for the day. That’s the least fun part about rebuilding, uncovering the foundational flaws in your movements.

Rebuilding is an attitude.

It looks at your long term goals and weighs them as more important than your short term goals. AKA looking like you’re the most awesome person in your particular style of fitness. By going slow you’ll outpace the competition: keeping your fitness longer, with less injuries and setbacks, which means you’ll be able to do more of what you enjoy without having to worry whether or not you’re doing it as good as anyone else. That is the key beating the competition.

Competition!

Working with others is a great way to motivate yourself. It’s a great way to motivate others. It’s a great way to grow, but it can function as a two-edged sword. While exercising with others is undoubtedly the best way to improve your fitness; however, focusing on what others see is a formula for burnout. No one else knows your body but you. Only you know your limits. You may not have more you can give in a workout. You might be holding back. Until you are ready to push your limits, don’t let someone else push you around. Only when you feel the time is right should you push yourself.

How do I know when the time is right?

There’s not a timetable for this. It’s an internal thing that develops over time. When you’re ready you will know because your body and your mind will say, “Yes, I can do this!” When your body and your mind agree about what you can do, that’s when you’re ready. Afterwards your body and mind will feel good, even if you are a little sore. Your mind will be at peace and your body will be at rest. This is how you will know you’ve rebuilt your fitness.

Paul wrote to the Romans, “… we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Rebuilding means something has been lost, otherwise this article would have been entitled, “The building phase”. Rebuilding means something has been broken, and while the practical side of this article is light, rebuilding often comes from a place of deep pain, or in some cases, deep lack of pain called numbness. Rebuilding is about righting what has become wrong. About moving what has been frozen. About healing what has been broken.

Rebuilding sounds very, very simple and easy, but it is not always so. It takes time and continuous effort. Suffering is the recognition that something is wrong. Perseverance is the effort required to make it right. Perseverance often sucks. It’s slow, can feel like nothing is moving or changing, and can be a major grind. Perseverance is the desire and effort to be made whole. Perseverance is as much a mental attitude as it is a physical force.

Out of the desire to be made whole, our character also changes. Where once pride and arrogance reigned, humility and patience take their place. Compassion for others often grows as character takes shape. We recognize that many others have been hurt and injured. That there are some who will never have the opportunity to be made whole again because of their living arrangements. Character is not only about our attitudes toward ourselves, it’s also about our attitudes towards each other. Character is not selfish, nor is it completely selfless, it is somewhere in between. It recognizes when it can make a difference and moves on when it cannot, but it never gives up hope.

Hope. The enduring form and piece upon which this entire article rests. If we have no hope, we will never start rebuilding. If our hope dies, so does our journey. Hope believes that even in the darkest, hardest, and most painful experiences something can be redeemed. Hope says it’s not over. Hope says there is life.

Paul also wrote, “… hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Hope, that suffering can be redeemed. That a dark angry and frustrated world can be melted through love. Not partial love, but total love. Effused into every part of our body and soul until it comes out with every breath. In every motion. This is what it means to hope in God. To be filled with his Holy Breath, to breathe life into a world of misalignment, dysfunction and disappointment. It is this hope that gives us the courage to persevere, and to start rebuilding each and every day. Until there is nothing left to rebuild, because everything is as it should be: healthy and whole.