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I CrossFit to stay active. 

In my college days I had the privilege of playing college football for the US Air Force Academy. At my prime I was a 250 pound guided missile with a mean streak aimed at destruction.  Don’t let the play on words fool you, at my prime I clawed my way up to third on the depth chart, but I loved it.  I truly loved football, I loved competition, and I especially loved my time spent in the weight room.  I considered myself an athlete, and I truly enjoyed any physical challenge. After I graduated college, and finished playing football I slimmed down, married my high school sweetheart and the Air Force sent us to Oklahoma to start our new life together.

Ten months into our married life our world was turned upside down, literally.  Mandy and I were in a serious motorcycle accident.  I’ll spare you the details, mainly because I don’t remember too many of them – but I did get a helicopter ride out of the ordeal. I do not want to downplay Mandy’s injuries, however they were a bit less severe than mine.  We both had bruises and scrapes, Mandy had a pretty serious concussion and chipped a bone in her ankle.  Also, a few years later we both found out we had spinal cord damage and neck injuries, which led to cervical spinal fusions for both of us (more on those later).  

I had a bit more trauma – hence the helicopter ride.  My lower right leg had pretty substantial injuries, including multiple broken bones, a dislocation, and loss of all the cartilage in the ankle joint.  Over the next year I was in and out of the hospital and I had seven surgeries to attempt to repair the damage.  I spent this year in a wheelchair with my leg elevated constantly.  I would use crutches around our small house, but any more than a few minutes upright and the swelling in my leg would become extremely uncomfortable.  This was a low point in my life.  I had to rely on a great deal of help to get anywhere, and I needed constant support.  Not to mention that I had doctors visits almost weekly – once I was released from my hospital stays.

I no longer considered myself an athlete.  I couldn’t stand on my own, I couldn’t walk, I didn’t even think about running or jumping. As the year passed, my final ankle surgery was to completely fuse my right ankle.  This would give me absolutely zero motion around the ankle joint, but the doctors told me this would give me a stable, relatively pain free leg to walk on.  My ankle was then fused and after the surgery healed I began the physical therapy process of learning to walk again.  This was awkward and uncomfortable to say the least.  My leg still would swell quite a bit, and my foot and leg were hypersensitive so that every sensation from pain to a tickle was exaggerated – causing more frustration.  But as time tends to do, it began to heal this wound.  My limp became less pronounced, I was able to wean off crutches, then off a cane, and finally back to a somewhat normal walk. 

Walking without assistance was a huge positive boost for me.  It gave me independence, and a freedom that was striped away after my accident – however I was still in a low place.  I was angry I couldn’t do more.  “I can’t”, was one of my most used phrases.  I was still in the active duty Air Force, but in limbo due to the fact I was a student in Pilot Training at the time of the accident.  As any member of the Air Force I would be required to pass a certain physical fitness standard, which included running.  Also as a pilot I would need to be able to emergency ground egress, or run away from any potential aircraft emergency.  The idea of running frightened me – “I can’t” kept coming to mind, yet I had to try.

I was able to pass the Air Force physical fitness standards again.  I was also able to prove to the Flight Surgeons (doctors) that I could indeed emergency ground egress the aircraft I would be assigned to fly. I also proved that my fused ankle could be used to operate the linkages on the aircraft rudder pedals as well as operate the brake systems upon landing or taxing (if you were wondering that one is a big deal).  So, off I went to slip the surly bonds of Earth, and dance the skies on laughter’s silver wings.  I earned my wings, graduated from Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training, and then went on to fly the mighty B-52 BUFF.

Allow me to fast forward a few years, the accident was in 2004, now in 2008 I was a young co-pilot in one of America’s premier Bomb Squadrons.  I had also given up on my physical fitness days, and through inactivity and telling myself, “I can’t” I ballooned back to 250 pounds.  I was nowhere near the guided missile with a mean streak that played college football.  I was overweight, ate poorly, and didn’t want to exercise.  I had some great friends in the Bomb Squadron -- I have always related being in a flying squadron to a being on a sports team. Something about shared experiences, and working toward a common goal truly resonate with me – and sports and combat truly forge those bonds.  Some of my friends, who were passionate about fitness, wanted to learn about how college football players trained in their off-season.  This interested me to talk about, and I began digging back into my memory of my football days.  This also prompted me to research and study what was new in the world of strength and conditioning.

I started to put together training plans, and teaching my friends how to workout.  I would only join in on certain exercises because “I can’t” do this or that.  It finally clicked one day, I could try these exercises – box jumps, power cleans, short sprints, or broad jumps.  My speed and agility wouldn’t impress anyone, but I was able to do them.  Many of our workouts were rudimentary CrossFit workouts, we would have two or three stations set up and move through them as fast as possible.  There was a small group of us in the gym, attempting to sprint back and forth between a pair of dumbbells to a basketball court to do shuttle sprints, then to boxes for jumps.  One day we were asked if we were doing CrossFit – I had never heard of CrossFit, but after a quick internet search I came across CrossFit.com and I was instantly hooked.  We started following the dot com WOD each day.  Very quickly “I can’t” fell from my vocabulary.  Skills like muscle-ups and handstands were something I had never seen before, “I can’t” melted away as I tried and practiced any number of new skills. I was able to run, jump, lift, climb, throw and try new exercises and skills.  I was able to conquer my accident, put it past me, and look towards the future, but the story doesn’t end here.

We pick up the story in 2010 -- I had reinvigorated my fitness.  I was feeling great, no longer would I say, “I can’t”.  I have been able to push myself to do things I wouldn’t have dreamed of, even at the height of my college football days.  CrossFit had given me a new lease on life, and I was taking full advantage of it.  During this same time, I had begun to grow a small garage gym.  CrossFit Affiliates were not as prolific as today, and the Air Force gym was not very accommodating to our unconventional fitness needs.  So with a few friends from the Bomb Squadron and a few bumper weights, the idea of Bombers Fitness (later to become Bombers CrossFit) was born.  My ankle was no longer an excuse, I was able to adapt and overcome any challenge thrown my way.  

As I was making tremendous progress both physically and mentally I began to experience a slow decline in my strength and general fitness, especially in my lower body.  I have always been very meticulous when tracking my workouts – this began in high school strength and conditioning programs, where we charted and recorded every lift.  My workout documentation increased through my college football days, so when I began CrossFit it was second nature for me to record everything.  I was very glad I did – over a year I had lost approximately 80% of my strength in my legs.  Lifts that should have been a warm-up weight for me were beginning to crush me. This carried over to running and jumping as well, I struggled to jump on any height and running quickly vanished. As thing began to really go down hill, I was really struggling to balance and walking was difficult in anything other than a smooth paved surface.  I had noticeable atrophy in my legs (not just the surgically repaired right leg).  I had gone to the doctor at some point in that year as things declined, because of my baseline strength and CrossFit background I was able to pass any medical test, so finding a diagnosis was very difficult.  

A great friend of mine, who workout with me and also happened to be a Flight Surgeon noticed that it took me a considerable amount of time and effort to traverse a flight of stairs – I may have used the hand rails like parallel bars and traveled up with only my arms.  Obviously he was concerned, and scheduled me an appointment right away.  I saw various specialists, but ultimately had an MRI of my spine, which found significant spinal cord damage in my cervical vertebrae (my neck).  I would need surgery to remove two disks and then fuse together three cervical vertebrae. This was by no means an elective surgery – the disks were damaging my spinal cord, and if nothing was done could result in paralysis.  So, in late 2011 I had neck surgery resulting in fusing three vertebrae in my neck. (Mandy had similar symptoms and had the same procedure done almost a year later).  

My recovery from this surgery was fairly painless, and after about a month of limited activity, I dove back into my CrossFit.com routine.  I started again from the ground up building upon mechanics and consistency. My baseline of fitness was solid, and my body wanted to move so I slowly increased reps, and weights.  I began to walk quicker and progress to running, with even a bit of a sprint from time to time.  I was able to jump again, and started conquering box jumps and broad jumps. As time passed, and I continued to follow CrossFit’s prescription of constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity, I was making progress and returning to my pre-neck surgery form.

I aim to workout 4-6 days each week.  My number one goal each time I WOD is to keep moving and stay active.  Because of the trauma my body has been through, and the multiple surgeries – especially the spinal cord damage – the strength and conditioning CrossFit provides helps keep me moving.  When I take long breaks without exercise my body quickly atrophies, my joints ache and I feel twice my age.  My times and lifts may not compare with my 20-year old self, but I know I’m not competing against that self.  I’m competing against inactivity, I’m competing to continue to walk and run, I’m competing stay functionally competent.

Fast forward to today, I have been following CrossFit’s methods and prescription for 10 years. Every time I workout I have the same feeling I did on my very first WOD.  My lungs burn, my muscles ache, my mind races – I feel great!

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