Three weeks ago today I was about to start my workout when I saw a text message that my grandma had a stroke. The news plunged me into shock. It was a Herculean effort to cross the gym to get to the treadmill. Once there, I managed to walk for about 45 minutes. Nothing has been the same since.
Over the past three weeks I’ve navigated waves of grief through her final days, her death, her burial, and the past week since the funeral.
The grief has impacted my mind, my body, and my motivation.
Although I’m no stranger to grief, it’s showing up in new ways and forcing me to develop new skills to navigate it.
In over a decade of daily workouts, I’ve never faced as much resistance in going to the gym and doing my workouts as I’ve felt over the past few weeks.
Like all emotions, grief lives in the body: it can cause inflammation, affect breathing and muscle coordination, and wreak havoc with cognitive skills and reaction time. The physical toll of grief can impact your workout. It adds weight to the bar, making every lift feel heavier.
Over the past few weeks, movement has more often ignited pain instead of alleviating it, and the only thing flowing seems to be my tears.
I’ve recalled the advice I’ve given to others about navigating workouts during grief: go easy, be patient with yourself, take it slow. But even the best advice is hard to follow when you’re in the thick of it.
If I hear one more person tell me to “give myself some grace,” I might lose it.
Despite this frustration, I’ve been learning a few important lessons through these experiences:
(1) Keep showing up.
Even when you feel like you can’t do much, just do what you can. Some days, you might not even make it past a long warm up, and that’s ok.
Other times, as you start to move your body you might gain a surge of energy and find that you can do more than you expected.
Showing up and going through the motions, even if you’re slow and struggling, will make it easier to get back to your training when you are ready.
You may think it’s self-care to sit and do nothing, but it’s especially important to workout when you’re grieving..
No matter what you do in your workout, remember that the true win is the act of showing up for yourself.
Read: 5 Reasons to Workout — Especially When You Don’t Feel Like It
(2) Scale the load and the movements.
Don’t let your ego get in your way of having a productive workout.
Just because you were able to lift a certain weight last month or last week doesn’t mean your body is capable of doing that when you’re in deep grief.
Lighten the load. Some days, an empty barbell is enough — or no barbell at all. Maybe you want to do some movements with dumbbells or kettlebells — or ditch the weights entirely.
You can focus on conditioning your movement patterns using resistance bands or bodyweight exercises.
(3) Don’t push yourself when it doesn’t feel right.
When your body is telling you to stop or slow down, listen. Forcing yourself to push through when you’re emotionally and physically depleted can create a negative association with exercise, leading to avoidance in the future.
When we push ourselves at times when our bodies are struggling or our mental and emotional capacity just isn’t there, it can backfire. Instead of feeling empowered, you end up creating a negative association with exercise that leaves you dreading even the basics.
I’ve had plenty of moments where I’ve felt resigned and decided I want to just give up lifting forever. That’s when I know it’s time to walk away for a day or two.
If something feels off, let it go. Do what feels manageable. You don’t want to turn something that should be a release into another source of stress.
Those days when you don’t want to lift can also be good times to try something completely different: Pilates, yoga, swimming, or maybe a sport or just a long walk.
(4) Focus on what you CAN do.
It’s easy to dwell on what’s not working. there’s plenty that’s not working. My body seems to have lost its ability to do pull-ups. I also seem to have lost my hinge mechanics. Watching video of myself rounding my back while doing deadlifts at a moderate load — and feeling that rounding in the moment — is incredibly frustrating.
But instead of letting that tear me down, I’m trying to focus on what I can do. (I can’t say I am always successful).
In a recent workout that called for 21 thrusters (a front squat with an overhead press) I was able to get through the full set without scaling back to just front squats. Thrusters are a challenge for me on a good day, let alone when my body isn’t cooperating.
In another workout, I managed to complete a set of 7 deadlifts at 185 — pretty close to my top weight for that volume. Even though I wasn’t in my best form, I completed the set. There was a time earlier this year when I couldn’t even get 5 at 185. So to get 7 on a bad day shows that my strength has improved over time — I haven’t lost it all.
As one friend pointed out: when you focus on what you can do even under stress and grief — when your body is weakened and your breathing is off — it shows you just how strong you are.
(5) Let yourself cry.
Crying through a workout isn’t a sign of weakness. The energy of grief must move through you, and crying is one way it does that.
We hold a lot of emotion in our hips and in the middle of the upper back, behind the heart. When I teach yoga classes, I can see how my students are holding emotion in their upper back. I feel this stuck-ness in my own body.
Deep squats, hip hinging, and overhead movements are going to feel challenging when the body is holding grief. Moving through those areas with enough intensity is likely to release trapped emotion.
Sometimes a good cry can be more effective than mobility work when the body is stuck in those places.
Think of crying as another form of detox— releasing the trapped energy. Don’t hold it in. Let the tears flow. Your tears are just a way of sweating through your eyes.
The more you let it out, the more you free your body to move with less resistance and greater ease.
(6) Grief Is About Many Things
When we grieve one thing, other things usually come to the surface too.
As much as I want to move through this grief energy, my body simply won’t let me. That brings up its own kind of grief—feeling like I’ve lost my vitality and the strength I’ve worked so hard to build.
I’ve long struggled with compensatory issues and neuromuscular disconnection. I’ve worked hard to retrain movement patterns and build strength. It’s frustrating to feel like that’s all evaporated. Like where did my effort go?
It’s easy to fall into despair and wonder what is the point of working out at all if gains and progress is so easily lost.
But a deeper part of me knows this is temporary. The strength is still there, and these movement patterns will come back as my body heals from grief.
(7) Trust the Cycles
It’s hard to imagine that just a couple of months ago I was crushing my PRs and feeling really good in and about my body — victories that have been hard won after years of work to build a better relationship with my body and its capacity.
Even in those weeks of steady progress, I knew the daily milestones and big PRs wouldn’t continue unabated. I constantly reminded myself that life unfolds in cycles, and I would inevitably hit a plateau or maybe even a regression.
Somehow, it’s easier for me to envision that things will take a turn when all is going well. It’s harder for me to envision the upswing when I’m in the low point.
But the same rule applies. Just like the moon waxes and wanes, so too our bodies go through times of strength and times of weakness. We have periods of progress and regression.
Grief is a process, and so is working out through it. Neither happens on your schedule, and both require patience. But there’s strength in just showing up, doing what you can, and trusting that it will get easier as your body, heart, and spirit heal.
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