The real thing keeping me consistent

In my last reflection, I shared that after nine years, I have finally decided to properly rehabilitate my shoulder.

What I didn't expect was how emotional the process would be.

Looking back now, I think I had been trying to do this on and off for years. More recently, at the beginning of this year, I made a conscious decision that I wanted my training to have a purpose again. Rather than simply maintaining my health and strength, I wanted to focus on something specific, and my shoulder felt like the obvious place to start.

The intention was there.

The knowledge was there.

The desire was there.

And yet three months later, if I am honest, I wasn't really doing it.

I was still training. I was still moving. I was still doing the workouts I enjoyed. But the focused rehabilitation work that I said I wanted to do kept getting pushed aside.

At the time, I had plenty of reasonable explanations.

Maybe I was too busy.

Maybe I wasn't ready yet.

Maybe the exercises didn't feel quite right.

Maybe I would get to it next week.

The reality, though, is that if your personal trainer is yourself, you can become very good at avoiding difficult conversations.

You can negotiate.

You can postpone.

You can convince yourself that tomorrow is a better day to start.

And because you know all the reasons, you can make those excuses sound very convincing.

When I look back now, I can see that what was underneath all of that wasn't laziness or lack of discipline.

It was fear.

Fear of revisiting an experience that had a lot of emotion attached to it.

Fear of stepping into movements that didn't feel comfortable.

Fear of discovering that perhaps there was more work to do than I wanted to admit.

And, interestingly, a little fear of success too.

We talk about fear of failure all the time because it is easy to recognise.

Fear of success is much sneakier.

It hides in the background.

If my shoulder stayed exactly as it was, I knew how to live with it.

I knew its limitations.

I knew how to protect it.

I knew how to stay safe.

But if I truly rehabilitated it, if I built trust in it again, if I got back to playing padel or joined a game of beach volleyball without overthinking it, life suddenly became bigger.

And with that comes vulnerability.

Trusting something again always does.

Eventually, the idea came to work with Joran.

What is funny is that asking for help wasn't hard.

Nine years ago, after my surgeries, one of the biggest lessons I learned was that I didn't have to do everything alone. That lesson has stayed with me ever since, so reaching out felt natural.

What I thought I was signing up for was accountability and guidance.

I thought I needed someone to tell me what exercises to do, how often to do them and to remove some of the decision-making from the process.

And to be fair, that has been incredibly helpful.

When somebody else writes the programme, there is less room for negotiation.

You stop spending energy deciding.

You stop wondering whether you should do this exercise or that exercise.

You stop pushing things until tomorrow.

You simply show up and do the work.

But two weeks into the process, I have realised that accountability is only part of what I was looking for.

What has surprised me most is how much emotion is attached to this shoulder.

Over the last few years, through meditation, breathwork and nervous system work, I have become much more aware of what is happening in my body. I feel things deeply. I notice tension. I notice resistance. I notice when something feels safe and when it doesn't.

As I have started moving my shoulder through ranges that have felt uncomfortable for years, I have realised that this work is not really about rebuilding a shoulder.

It is about rebuilding trust.

Trust that my body is safe.

Trust that movement is safe.

Trust that discomfort and danger are not the same thing.

Trust that I can slowly expand beyond the boundaries I have been living within.

What has made that possible is not just the exercises.

It is knowing that somebody is walking through the process with me.

I don't have to decide everything.

I don't have to carry all the responsibility.

I don't have to sit alone wondering whether something is right or wrong.

I can ask questions.

I can share when something feels uncomfortable.

I can trust somebody else's perspective when my own emotions get in the way.

The best way I can describe it is that I feel held.

And that feeling changes everything.

The physical improvements have actually been remarkable. Two weeks in and my shoulder already feels significantly better.

But what has surprised me most is how quickly the body responds when it feels safe and supported.

People often think they join ATTIKA for accountability.

And sometimes they do.

They want structure.

They want a plan.

They want someone to keep them on track.

But very few people stay because of accountability alone.

They stay because they feel supported.

They stay because they feel understood.

They stay because they know they don't have to carry the weight of their health journey by themselves.

Sitting here now, experiencing that from the other side, as a client rather than a coach, feels strangely full circle.

When I started working with Joran, I thought I was looking for accountability and guidance. I thought I needed someone to write the programme, tell me what to do and make sure I actually followed through.

What I didn't realise was that accountability was only what got me through the door.

What has made me stay is feeling safe.

Feeling supported.

Feeling like someone is holding the space for me while I navigate something that feels bigger than a set of exercises.

And perhaps that is why this whole experience has felt so familiar.

Because in many ways, it has brought me back to the reason ATTIKA exists in the first place.

Your body.

Your journey.

Our mission.

Because every journey is unique.

And no one should walk it alone.