What a Hernia Taught Me About Training Ego
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For a long time I ignored something I should not have. Not because I was being reckless, simply because nothing hurt and everything seemed fine. That is exactly what makes a hernia so deceptive. It does not announce itself. It appears quietly, without pain, without a clear warning, and waits until you notice it.
How It Started
I noticed it by accident. After a week away and over a week without training, a small bulge appeared on my lower abdomen. At first I thought it was just fat accumulating and did not pay much attention. It did not hurt, nothing felt wrong, and the bulge disappeared when I lay down and came back when I stood up.
I kept training normally. I was so used to listening to my body for pain that something which did not hurt simply did not register as a problem. Only after a while did I start feeling a tingling in that spot when I coughed. That is when I decided I would rather see a doctor. My GP took one look and said immediately: one hundred percent hernia. The surgeon said the same thing. Two doctors, the same answer, no hesitation. Surgery was a matter of when, not if.
From the moment I noticed it to the operation was over two months. During that entire time I worked normally and kept training practically right up until the day of the surgery.
Where the Hernia Actually Came From
The first thing I assumed was that I had been lifting too heavy or overloading myself in training. The doctor quickly corrected that idea.
In men, the testes begin developing near the abdomen during fetal development and descend later. This process leaves a natural channel in the abdominal wall that usually closes on its own. Sometimes that gap does not close completely, and an inguinal hernia can appear years later, typically between the ages of 25 and 40. The doctor suggested this was probably my case, though he did not say it with complete certainty.
I looked into it myself. I came across a study published in the journal Hernia (Springer) that examined exactly this, whether the presence of an unclosed channel in the abdominal wall increases with age in adult men. If hernias were acquired, caused by lifting or physical strain, the rate should logically increase over time. The results did not support that. The researchers concluded that the cause of indirect inguinal hernias in adults is, just like in children, congenital. The guidelines of the European Hernia Society support the same position, noting that the majority of inguinal hernias in men have a congenital origin and typically present between the ages of 25 and 40.
In other words, this hernia had probably been waiting for me since birth. The break from training during my trip may have been the moment it finally showed itself, but it would have appeared sooner or later regardless. Training was not the cause. I was simply one of those men between 25 and 40 whose channel never fully closed.
Why I Decided to Operate Without Waiting
The surgeon told me I had time, somewhere around six months and did not push me to act immediately. But my personal view was different from the start.
A hernia is not something that heals on its own. Ever. Tissue that has passed through an opening in the abdominal wall does not return to its place without surgical intervention. The only possible trajectory is staying the same or, over time and under the pressure of physical effort, coughing, and everyday activity, getting larger. And the larger the hernia at the time of surgery, the more complex the procedure and the longer the recovery. Waiting for a better moment felt like waiting for a worse outcome.
There was also the risk of incarceration, a situation where a loop of intestine or tissue becomes trapped in the opening and loses its blood supply. That is a surgical emergency, requiring immediate intervention in completely different conditions from a planned procedure. I had no interest in finding out whether it would happen to me.
The doctor gave me the choice and left the decision to me. I chose to operate as soon as the schedule allowed. I have no regrets.
What I Changed in Training and What I Did Not
This is where the ego part starts. Because ego in the gym does not always look the way you expect.
I dropped the exercises that could put pressure on the hernia, mainly leg press and leg extensions. I kept deadlifts, but with one rule: at the first sign of pain I stop immediately. Core exercises I cut out completely. I had naively thought that a stronger core might somehow help, but the doctor quickly corrected that idea.
I had already written about the mental side of staying consistent in How I Finally Stopped Quitting the Gym, the hernia was a more extreme version of the same lesson. Structure matters more than motivation, and that applies whether you are managing a plateau or training around an injury.
What I did not do was stop training altogether. And that is the more subtle part.
One of the reasons I kept going right up until the day of the operation was that I simply did not want to lose what I had built. I knew recovery would mean weeks away from the gym. For someone who had spent months building muscle mass, that is not a small thing. I’d come a long way from where I started, the kind of starting point I wrote about in Skinny Kid, Heavy Weights, and One Beach Photo That Changed Everything, and the thought of losing even part of that progress to weeks of forced rest was hard to accept. Every break costs you. I had seen that myself after the holiday. I wanted to go into surgery in the best possible shape, to have something to lose during the time off rather than nothing to protect.
The biggest change was mental. I stopped adding weight. Instead I switched to higher rep ranges, working until the muscle burns. The goal was no longer to gain but to maintain what I had already built. A lot of this thinking came from a German training science book I’d been working through before all this happened, Trainingslehre. It’s only available in German as far as I know, so it won’t be useful to everyone reading this, but if you happen to read German and want to actually understand the principles behind training, not just follow a program blindly, it’s worth tracking down.
Ego does not protest loudly, it just suggests that one more kilogram will not hurt. That is exactly why the decision needs to be made clearly and in advance, because a boundary that exists only in your head, without a deliberate choice behind it, does not really exist at all.
There was one more signal I started noticing towards the end of that period. Mild pains appeared that had not been there before. Not sharp, not alarming, but different from anything I had felt earlier. I cannot say with certainty whether they were connected to the training or whether the hernia was simply progressing. But their appearance confirmed that the decision to operate had been the right one, and that waiting any longer would not have been worth it.
After the Surgery
I had a laparoscopic procedure, three small incisions instead of one large cut. It is a method where the wound heals faster and the return to activity comes earlier than with open surgery. A study published on PubMed comparing the two approaches showed this in concrete numbers: one week after laparoscopic repair, patients walked further on average than they had before the operation. In the open surgery group, results were significantly worse at the same point. The method genuinely matters for how quickly normal function returns.
A week after the operation I still feel occasional sharp sensations in my abdomen. I try to stay in motion, a bit of walking, a bit of sitting, a bit of lying down, without overdoing any of it. When I get back to training I will start lighter than before and build back up gradually. There is no point returning at a hundred percent in week three and ending up with a complication in week six.
Diet was part of this too, though I won’t pretend I kept it perfect. I tried to stay close to the protein habits I’d built up, the same ones I described in How I Tracked Protein to Gain 10kg, but with training volume dropped to almost nothing, it was hard to keep that consistent. What I did stick to was avoiding junk, no chips, no random snacking, just trying to eat reasonably well. Overeating wasn’t really an option anyway. A few times I ate too much in one sitting and my stomach made it very clear that this was a bad idea right now.
What I Took From This
If I had to say one thing this hernia gave me, it would be this: your body sends signals before things start to hurt. A bulge that disappeared when I lay down. A tingling when I coughed. Mild pains that appeared later and had not been there before. Those were all signals. I went to the doctor and I am glad I did.
Ego in the gym is not just about lifting weight you should not. It is also about ignoring the things your body is trying to tell you — and rationalising that if it does not hurt, it must be fine. In my case the hernia was going to show up regardless, but listening to my body meant I did not ignore it for too long.
The content on this blog is based on my personal experience and does not constitute medical, nutritional, or fitness advice. Always consult a qualified doctor or professional before making changes to your training, nutrition, or lifestyle.