The Long View (10 Years Later)

Categories: Blog Feb 19, 2015

[caption id="attachment_2811" align="alignleft" width="350"] My son, Michael, and his binoculars he got for Christmas.[/caption]

It’s hard to believe a major life changing event occurred 10 years ago. I certainly didn’t see it coming, never wanted it to happen, and without a doubt shaped my future without me knowing or understanding how it could do so.

On Monday, January 31st, 2005, I was in the middle of one of my best workouts ever. I was preparing for a weightlifting meet in March in order to qualify for the national championships. I had just finished my first exercise. It went superbly. I was strong and fast. I took some weight off the bar and moved to my second exercise. As I jumped under the bar, I felt a sharp and distinct pain in my right hip - as if someone had stabbed me with a flat head screwdriver. Being the meathead that I am, I walked it off, reduced the load on the bar even more, and jumped under the bar again only to feel the same thing. I spent some time stretching out my hip flexors, scratched that exercise, and moved on to the next one.

The next workout went nowhere. I still had the pain in the hip despite all the stretching and foam rolling.

I spent the next two months in excruciating pain seeking alternative forms of treatment - chiropractic, massage, A.R.T., acupuncture, acupuncture with electrical stimulation, bone scraping, and other soft tissue treatments only to end up visiting the orthopedic surgeon. After x-rays and an MRI, it turned out that I had torn the labrum in my hip. (The labrum is the ring of cartilage that follows the outside rim of your hip and acts like a rubber seal.)

After a cortisone injection, things started feeling better, until I tore the labrum in my left hip, in September of that year. An MRI on that hip showed not one, but two labral tears, damaged articular cartilage (the cartilage in the hip socket itself), bursitis, and arthritis. I was only 32 years old. I asked my ortho what I should do to avoid making things worse. She said no loaded hip flexion or extension. Well that was the center of my life! I asked her what the end game was. She said hip replacements in 30 years. And if I kept doing loaded hip flexion and extension I asked? 15 to 20 years on those hip replacements. Grim future.

At 32 I didn’t have the wisdom to think ahead to my future. We didn’t plan on having kids and I really had no vision of what my future would look like. All I cared about was the temporary glory of a weightlifting championship title. How myopic.

It’s true: Youth, they say, is wasted on the young.

Little did I know that those moments, those injuries and diagnoses, would change my career path and life forever.

In the subsequent 10 years, there would be some great highs and some great lows. Highs included plugging into the kettlebell community and becoming one of the top instructors in the world - helping thousands of people achieve physical results using kettlebells. Lows would include struggling to be able to move pain free and lift again, spending tens of thousands of dollars on movement systems only to be disappointed.

One of the greatest highs was discovering we were pregnant. (Or my wife was. Obviously.) We weren’t supposed to be. It was a truly miraculous event. (Another story for another time.)

It was then that I finally “got it.”

I finally got a view or a picture of the long haul - The Long View.

I was at a seminar - the second of two weekends of traveling in a row, and once again aiming for glory in Olympic weightlifting, when my left hip shut down and my lower back locked up. At that moment, three months into my wife’s pregnancy, it hit me like a ton of bricks: My life was no longer my own.

I had a son who was going to be born and I couldn’t rob him of his childhood by being a broken down old geezer, hobbled on the sidelines of his life, unable to play with him due to injuries.

And that’s when I quit weightlifting altogether.

I took a “health” approach to exercise as opposed to a “performance” approach.

Not that the two are mutually exclusive - it’s just that they had been for me and are for many others.

Turns out I had A LOT of work to do.

I had neglected so many areas of my body in pursuit of performance.

I had so many holes to fill in, and gaps to bridge.

My foundation became Original Strength. Everything I did revolved around OS. That was September 2010. And that was another great high - discovering that using 5 simple exercises could rehabilitate my body and do the things I couldn’t do using all the other stuff before, like running and jumping.

Since then, the holes have been filled and the gaps have been bridged. My son and I play and rough-house and run around - things that were physically impossible a short 5 years ago, and completely off the radar a decade ago.

Not only that, we now have a daughter who’s a little over a year old.

And keeping up with her is like trying to keep up with a tornado.

Thank God for OS. It helps me keep up with that little tornado.

And OS has given me the Long View on my life.

I know that I can remain healthy and perform - the performances that matter to me most - the ones with and for my kids, the kids we were never supposed to have - simply by doing the resets on a daily basis.

Using Original Strength as a lens to view my physical life has given me hope. And not just hope. Because hope deferred makes the heart sick. It has fulfilled my hopes. It has made my dreams become realities. All based on five simple movements.

What about you?

What’s the Long View of your life look like? Have you looked yet?

You’re never too young and you’re never too old to do so. And no matter where you are and how you feel now, adding in Original Strength to what you see or don’t see can and in many cases will, change the course of your future for the better.

Speaking of, remember that orthopedic prognosis? One of my personality traits is that I can be a stubborn S.o.B. And at that moment, I determined to prove her wrong. I was going to continue loaded hip flexion and extension without having hip replacements. And Original Strength has helped that happen. Sure, I still have 5 to 10 years to "prove her wrong," but so far, none of the symptoms I used to have - pain in the hips and knees - exist today. Definite signs that my body is no longer dysfunctional, and wearing down that connective tissue. In fact, I move better than I did as a 16-year old wrestler. It's like my mistakes of the past have been virtually erased.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about the future. I’m excited to see what the next 10 years holds in store. Based on what I’m seeing now, it’s going to be big. Like that song from Timbuk 3 says, “My future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

I hope yours will be too.

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