When Momentum Breaks

It was March, and I was finally hitting my stride.

I was at the gym five to seven days a week. Tracking macros. Chicken. Broccoli. Soreness in all the right places. I was surprised by my own consistency, something I’d never really had. I’d dropped five kilos since the beginning of the year and was sleeping better, thinking clearer. It was the kind of discipline that spills into everything else: work, relationships, even my browser tabs were under control.

Momentum is a kind of magic. You don’t question it while you’re in it. You just keep going.

And then, just two weeks later, everything stopped.

Bouldering has no ropes, just a wall. Difficulty starts at V0, then V1, V2, and so on. You graduate by colour. I reached V3 by muscling through. V4 was my overconfidence speaking. The boulder I was working on was an overhang, sloping upward—forcing you to climb while leaning back against gravity, each hold demanding more strength. Halfway up, I was exhausted. I went for a hold and I missed.

I fell.

The fall wasn’t dramatic, but I landed awkwardly. You’re meant to land on your backside and roll. I landed on my foot, then facedown.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. I tried to walk it off, more embarrassed than hurt. Five minutes later, the pain hit—sharp, like a hot stove. Despite the ice, it swelled to a lump.

I’d fractured my foot.

The doctor’s diagnosis was casual: “You’ll be fine. Four to six weeks. Keep the weight off your foot.”

I thought: that’s not so bad. But once I received my crutches, I hated every minute of it. Everything was harder. I couldn’t train. Cooking was an ordeal. Even grabbing a coffee was a challenge. I couldn’t carry a cup.

The optimism that I banked at the start of the year kept me steady and hopeful. I tried to adapt and find ways to exercise, stay healthy, stay productive. But the quiet labour of keeping it together emptied me—faster than the fall itself. Not the drama of pain, but the silence of a stolen routine. Habits unfurling. Energy unwinding. I had nothing left in the tank.

I was mourning the loss of the momentum I’d built. Mourning the self who had finally, for a moment, felt like he was getting somewhere.

The real break wasn’t in the bone, but in sitting still with reality. Kat Lehmann writes, “The soul has seasons, too. Some are for action. Some are for stillness. You can’t force a harvest from winter ground.” Once the grief had slowly passed, I had to acknowledge that I couldn’t get back what I’d started. And maybe that’s how life reroutes us. Quietly, without asking.

I used to think of independence as a kind of invulnerability. I was the one who didn’t need help from others. The hardest part of this all was suddenly needing favours. It scuffs the image you have of yourself. But eventually, you’re humbled into seeing that people don’t mind helping you as much as you think. Help is often there, waiting, if you let it in. The most any of us can do is lean on each other.

During the injury, I never regained the momentum I’d had earlier in the year. But I’m a little more patient now. A little less in love with the illusion of control. A little more comfortable depending on people.

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”— Helen Keller

I’ve just been told I can walk again. The interruption still rests somewhere in me—but I’ve made peace with it.

Now, I feel ready to return—perhaps slower, but a little wiser too.