"Strength always comes back the moment you begin to show up again." - Futurist Jim Carroll
Today is a big day as I FINALLY head back to the gym.
For ten weeks, my world has been defined by limitations.
Don't twist. Don't lift. Don't rush. When you live in "protection mode" with a spinal injury for that long, it’s easy to believe that you’ve lost your edge. You start to wonder if the engine has rusted over completely.
But data doesn't lie, and it doesn't care about my worries.
Before heading back to the gym today, I ran a diagnostic on my own recovery when I went into my home gym on Saturday. And I was impressed with the results.
Looking at the hard numbers from this "shakedown" home workout. I expected to see weakness; instead, I saw a lot of capacity. My body handled 60 reps of heavy pulling without a single complaint from my back. My heart rate recovery has hit a "safety floor" and refused to drop further. My VO2Max has actually started to go back into the upper-edge of "above-average" with all the indoor 'mall walking' I've been doing.
The charts proved that while I was busy healing, I wasn't decaying.
My foundation is solid!
It might have to do with a screen I shared early into the story of this process - my biggest exercise for 2025, before slipping on ice and breaking 3 small bones on my back - was back extensions!
I've had long-running conversations in a chat with Google Gemini AI about my situation and recovery. One moment, it pointed out that what probably saved me from greater damage was all the muscle I built back there!
And my test workout shows that muscle never really left - it's just the bones that had a 'thing.'
That realization shifts everything.
I am not walking into the gym today to "fix" a broken body.
I am walking in to reactivate a strong one.
One way to put it - the rust is just on the surface—the steel underneath is as solid as ever.
Time to get to work.
Futurist Jim Carroll will be working out with the guidance of his neighbor, a professional personal trainer, and has a tightly defined set of exercises that are compatible with recovery from his injury.