The Hidden Cost of Starting Over Every Year

I was out last night celebrating the 21st birthday of one of our former staff members. Happy Birthday, Ella!

As you might expect when you get a bunch of current and former gym staff together, it wasn't long before the conversation turned to training.

One of our old coaches, D'Arcy, was there. A plate of pizzas was being passed around and, when offered a slice, D'Arcy politely declined.

"I'm on a deficit," he explained. I mean...he was holding a beer at the time, so I'm assuming it was a reasonably generous deficit!

I had some pizza, by the way. It was delicious.

But there was a serious story behind the comment. D'Arcy is coming back from a pretty significant shoulder injury (from last Rugby season), and he's effectively trying to rebuild from scratch - whilst working a pretty brutal shift roster featuring some 3am starts. He's managing his food, trying to gradually increase his training and working through the long, sometimes frustrating process of getting himself back into shape.

And here's the thing. D'Arcy knows what he's doing.

He's coached people through this process. He understands training. He understands nutrition. He knows that progress takes time and that there aren't any shortcuts.

But knowing what to do doesn't make doing it easy. There's an enormous amount of energy involved in starting again. The planning, the food preparation, the careful progression of training loads, the frustration of remembering what you used to be capable of.

It can be overwhelming. Even for someone with years of training experience.

And as I was thinking about our conversation, something occurred to me.

D'Arcy didn't choose to start over.

His injury forced him to stop, and now he's doing the work required to get himself back.

And perhaps that's the part we underestimate about starting again.

The biggest cost of starting over isn't necessarily the fitness you've lost. It's having to rebuild the habits that made you fit in the first place.

The routines. The planning. The commitment to showing up. All those little things that, once established, make regular training feel like a perfectly normal part of your life.

When those habits disappear, getting them back can be harder than the training itself.

But every December, thousands of people make a conscious decision to stop training, knowing full well that they'll have to go through their own version of that rebuilding process in January.

And I can't help wondering why.