I haven’t lifted in a few months. Okay, that’s not strictly true, but I know I haven’t picked up a barbell more than four or five times in the last six months. It wasn’t like I planned to stop, but at some point, I stopped turning up to train and circumstances meant I had to take a break from coaching and I just didn’t really go back. I still thought about lifting often and missed it, too, but once I’d been out for a month or so, I just lost the motivation to find my way back (until now).
 
In the past, I’ve had to take enforced breaks from the sport due to fractures and sprains, general exhaustion, or overtraining. All the usual stuff. But this time was different and at times difficult to justify to certain people. But before you judge me too harshly for my lack of commitment, let me tell you that sometimes something comes along that is just bigger and more important than weightlifting and suddenly you make a choice you never thought you’d need to. You just stop lifting.
 
Now that I’m coming back into the sport, I realize that taking this break was actually pretty tough for me. As hard as the initial decision to take a break is, it can be just as challenging to deal with the politics of abandoning your sport. Not only are you faced with not being able to do something you adore, but not everyone around you is going to be as understanding and supportive as you’d like. On top of all that, you’ll have a void in your life that you might not be able to fill with anything else.
 
So why the break? This year my son was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and suspected Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It has always been challenging to parent my son, but six months ago he was having a really hard time and he just needed me to be there all the time, and so did my wife, who was his primary carer. When I wasn’t at work, I needed to be at home with them. He wasn’t just more important than my weightlifting, his needs took priority over anything and everything that was optional—and even a few things I’d previously thought of as essential!
 
At first I didn’t mind missing training so much because I was just exhausted all the time anyway from dealing with my son’s meltdowns. I also figured I just needed a couple of weeks or a month off and things would settle back to normal. (I’m naturally ridiculously optimistic). But then I gave up my coaching spot, too, and that felt like a genuine loss. I am not by any means a particularly talented weightlifter. However, I am a good coach, and I get a lot of satisfaction from working with people and seeing them progress in our sport. It was hard to let my coaching spot go because I knew there were no guarantees that I could get it back in the future. I’d worked and studied my heart out to earn the name “Coach.” It was an emotional moment because most of my athletes sent me messages of support but also wrote about how much they valued my input and the relationship we’d formed. This made me genuinely joyful and proud but also gut-wrenchingly sad because it made clear that I was letting people down.
 
Without realizing it, over time I had begun to see my weightlifting and status as a coach as a key part of my identity. It was something I loved doing and that fed my soul. It meant I was connected to a group of people who I’d bonded with because we all loved the same thing and suffered in the same way. I felt that other weightlifters just got me. But when I took a break, some of them couldn’t understand my decision, and that sucked. No one was rude or particularly unsupportive, but they just hadn’t been faced with the same situation and so couldn’t see it from my point of view. Sometimes their lack of empathy made me doubtful about the sanity of my choice.
 
I found myself wanting to fill the space in my life I’d created by leaving the sport, but nothing seemed like a good fit. I started to feel like I didn’t have the right to call myself a weightlifter anymore, especially when I started to lose muscle mass. Clothes began to fit differently and I felt less solid. I’ll even admit that for the first time in a very long time I actually felt unhappy with the way my body looked.  Most importantly, I no longer had an excuse to eat all day long. This may seem like a small thing, but life is grim when you have to start being disciplined about portion sizes and the number of snack breaks you take.
 
The odd thing about it, though, was that no one else saw me differently. Lifters and non-lifters alike still thought of me as a weightlifter, a training partner, and a coach. Not all of them were able to get behind my choice to put the welfare of my family so totally before my sport, but this aside, I feel lucky that I was able to maintain my weightlifting friendships despite intermittent contact.
 
Recently I began to understand that I needed all the things I missed about weightlifting back in my life to be a well-adjusted human being. It started when a couple of people I used to coach started asking when I would come back. Then I went on social media and shared an article I’d written that really mattered to me, and my weightlifting friends were just so supportive in their responses. There were also more subtle things nudging me back: My son is doing a lot better, and seeing muscle retreating on a daily basis started to get pretty irritating!
 
So then one day I just did it. I just walked back into the gym and picked up a barbell. It felt awkward and I was actually even nervous but my body still remembered what to do. I am deconditioned and in pain all the time. I was never going to set any records, but right now I’m also embarrassingly weak. However, I’m determined not to be disheartened by my numbers and almost complete lack of work capacity. My solution is just not to dwell on it. It is what it is.
 
Sometimes it is frustrating to think about the progress lost and the hard work that lies ahead just to get back up to strength. But during this break I learned an unexpected lesson. I learned that the reasons I love weightlifting have very less to do with kilos and PRs and more to do with the relationships and memories made around the platform.
 
If you ever find yourself having to make the decision to take a break like I did, then know that if life hands you a reason big enough that it makes sense to take a break, you don’t have to justify it to anyone else. Also, know that it takes a very different kind of strength to stop lifting and to face big challenges without lifting in your life, and it takes even more strength again to return to the sport. But rest assured that weightlifting will be waiting for you when you’re ready to come back, and if you’re as blessed as I am, so will your weightlifting community.