How Can I Manage Grief During Workouts?

Some advice from the podcast.

Most Mondays, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity.

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QUESTION

from Mick:

My father passed away a month and a half ago, and I find myself hitting an emotional wall during my workouts. I am a fitness lover, and I participate in CrossFit and endurance training, such as half marathons, Spartan races, and duathlons.

How can I manage my emotions while training? Are there any books or advice you'd recommend for compartmentalizing grief during workouts?

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ANSWER

BEN: Mick, I'm very sorry for your loss. It's brave of you to reach out about this. My answer is simple: there's no book or resource for this, and you're not supposed to compartmentalize at this point.

The wound is still fresh — you're still grieving. It's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to be distracting, and there will be times when you feel like you're in an abyss you'll never escape. But you will.

This won't be an issue forever, but it requires time. Six weeks isn't enough time to stop thinking about these things while working out.

I think you should be thinking about this during your workouts. It's something we discuss a lot — most people don't realize there's a voice constantly chattering in their heads.

They only notice it during moments of high stress when the voice starts screaming. Then we go, "Whoa, what's that weird voice? Go away, I don't like that."

But people who work out know that voice is always there. That's powerful. We take for granted recognizing that inner voice. It's essentially trying to tell a story constantly. And, without diving too deep, that voice isn't you. You are not that voice.

That voice is presenting something to you, like images on a movie screen. You're watching a slideshow, but it's a voice.

This is straying a bit from Mick's situation, but when you work out, that voice gets loud. It might be talking about how much you miss someone you love, and that's okay.

Just let it do its thing. Don't try to compartmentalize. That's you pushing things down when they're trying to bubble up.

Instead, experience them. Let them happen.

PATRICK: Yeah, that's great advice.

These workouts create a unique environment where everything else gets stripped away. In our daily lives, we're surrounded by distractions — some we seek out because we don't want silence, others because we're always on alert for threats or opportunities.

But in the middle of a workout, those distractions tend to fade. At some point, you stop hearing the music playing. You stop thinking about emails and what you’re doing next weekend. Everywhere else in life, we’re compartmentalizing.

Don't let the gym — these workouts that are such a big part of your life, Mick — don’t let the gym be a place where you force compartmentalization. It's a beautiful space where we don't compartmentalize. It's where we strip away—

BEN: —where you work through the stuff.

PATRICK: Exactly. It's beautiful that you recognize this is happening, Mick. That's good. Don't fight it. As Ben said, sit with it. Let it be the place where you wrestle with things — things we all need to wrestle with when it’s our turn to do so.

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