04/03/2026
I hope this story helps someone.
12 months ago, I had shoulder and biceps surgery.
It was serious enough that I spent 2 months in a sling. From the time I got injured to my first rehab session, my arm had barely moved for weeks.
The muscle loss was confronting.
Almost 10kg of muscle gone. What felt like a lifetime of work disappeared in a matter of months.
At first, I couldn’t even lift the weight of my own arm. I couldn’t bicep curl the weight of my hand.
My shirts hung differently. Everything on my left side looked and felt off.
Then rehab started.
Twice a day. Band work. Tiny movements. Small wins. Eventually, 2kg dumbbells felt like a massive milestone.
I did hundreds of rehab sessions.
And slowly, very slowly, I got better.
What surprised me most was that I never really felt depressed. This should have been my worst nightmare. For a long time, a big part of my self-esteem was tied to how I looked.
But when that was stripped away, I realised there was still more of me left than I’d given myself credit for.
So I stopped thinking too far ahead.
I just focused on the next step.
Yellow band to green band felt like a huge win.
Pressing a pair of 2kg dumbbells felt like winning the Olympics.
I learned to celebrate the small victories, because recovery is full of them.
I took this photo on the weekend, my first one in a year. I’ve still got a couple of kilos of muscle to earn back, but I’m proud of how far I’ve come.
Whether your goal is fat loss, building muscle, or coming back from injury, these 3 things helped me:
1. Celebrate every small win.
2. Take it day by day.
3. Don’t let your self-worth depend only on what you see in the mirror.
Sometimes the strongest thing you can build is the person underneath it all.