A Note on Injury and Resilience
If you find yourself on this podcast website, I can assume you’re invested in living a physically capable life. You challenge yourself periodically and test your abilities. Through physical training and holistic decisions around sleep and nutrition, you allow yourself the ability to pursue the more adventurous road. For some of us, this has punched our ticket to test our efforts in the arena of martial arts. As hobbyists, competitors, and enthusiasts, we relish in the unpredictable and exciting nature of Martial (of or appropriate to war; warlike) Arts (expression or application of human creative skill).
The older I get the more I’ve realized how much of my life has been dedicated to this pursuit. Ultimately it stems from a deep rooted desire to know, in the end, that I lived. To one day look back and appreciate all the efforts, wounds, scars, set backs, and victories of a life well explored. I would like to emphasize the wounds and scars portion of the previous statement.
In this journey, life will beat us down. We may prepare, anticipate, and gameplan for future scenarios, but life has a special way forcing our respect. For many of us, this will present in the form of injury. Injury that stems from chronic overuse and wear, as well as injury that results from acute trauma or accident.
In either case, our resilience, sanity, and life view will hinge on our mentality. What mental safeguards have we established to combat the depression of uncertainty? The thought that we may never do the things we love with the same intensity?. These emotions can be as crippling as the injuries themselves.
In a world where we overshare politics and undershare personal struggles, these feelings can continue to fester until they begin to affect our immediate environment and optimism to recover. The last thing we need during our return to the activities we love, is a metastasizing belief that we can’t.
My hope for this blog post is evergreen. I want you to be able to return here, re-read, and implement this approach whenever you suffer an injury that inflicts crippling doubt. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that some injuries and traumas are indeed beyond recovery. But that doesn't mean the mindset of the person suffering them is beyond repair. Take Clinton Terry, aka The Blind Grappler, who joined me on Episode 61. He will not regain sight. With modern medicine, this is a reality he has accepted. Yet that doesn’t stop him from competing, and impacting the lives of grapplers in his community. The physical body has been impacted acutely but his mindset prevails. What about Ben Kunzle who joined me on Episode 108? Ben suffered a spinal injury that left him in a wheelchair, and in a flash, eliminated Jiu Jitsu from his life permanently. But Ben’s mind prevailed. He focused on what he could do, and got to work. Now he trains out multiple times a week, plays on a wheelchair rugby team, and just completed the Miami Marathon.
It's all about mindset, not physical ability. That’s what you’re left with when you get injured. Fortunately, this holds true for all trauma. The mindset keeps you focused on the road to recovery. The mindset keeps you motivated when you feel like the chips are stacked against you. The mindset registers encouragement and support from those you love. Ultimately it’s our mindset that recognizes the progress made, and that yet to be achieved. When we suffer an injury in our pursuit of a life well lived, the universe will present two pills.
The red pill will give us misery and despair. We will focus on everything we can’t do. The pain. The agony. The loss of passions. How much better everyone is getting while we’re away. The dwindling skill set. The loss of muscle. The vacated efforts. All cradled by the perverse comfort of wallowing in our own sadness.
The blue pill will ask us one question: What CAN we do? If you gain nothing from this blog post, take one thing very seriously: Immediately consume the blue pill. This is more than a mindset, it’s a framework. It’s a single question that will have the power to shape every single decision we make in the near future. It will help us seek guidance from the right specialists, and develop a sense of gratitude for the incredible aspects of life that are still present in our daily experience. The blue pill will guide us, not destroy us.
This question is essentially what every physical therapist, physician, physical medicine doctor, surgeon, and personal trainer answers for us. They show us what we can do. Even Though they may hold our hand through the process, it’s our openness to the process, and trust in our available actions, that begin to place one foot in front of the other.
The blue pill has a special and unforgiving quality: a calculated, and delayed release. The results take time. Unlike the red pills' instantaneous euphoric and emotional cascade, the blue pill must be digested. We must cultivate the mindset of recovery as the process unfolds. Herein lies the first challenge of resilience. This is where the correct outlook will be shaken and tested.
If you suffer an injury, or unfavorable diagnosis, like I did last Friday, February 16th (see full Instagram Post), Take the blue pill blindly. It’s these moments that truly test who we are, what we believe, and how capably we can tap into our resilience. Stand beside me knowing that it’s okay to be void of all the answers. Not everything will be clear regarding how and when the things we love will fit back into our lives. But move forward, keep pushing, and know that by asking ourselves what we can do, and leaning into the answer, we WILL make progress.
- Abe