Some of you know that I needed to have an emergency surgery on my spine about 16 months ago, because I was suddenly unable to stand or walk. You might also know that only 10 months later, I competed at RUM (albeit bench only) and hit within 20 pounds of my lifetime meet PR.
What you are less likely to know are the specifics, like what took place between the OR and my return to the platform, or the fact that I have permanent nerve damage and haven't had feeling in my right foot, except for the occasional bout of debilitating nerve pain, in almost two years.
But wait, the surgery was only 16 months ago and that was emergency surgery. So why almost two years?
What actually caused the injury? What needed to be done to my spine? More importantly, what did I do to recover so quickly? Will I ever be able to compete in full power again?
I've had to tell this story a hundred times, at least parts of it, so I will share with you, my readers, the whole story, including the parts that almost no one knows.
I will do my best to keep this as succinct as possible and not get carried away with the prose, but this was a major series of events in my life, not a checklist, so bear with me. There is enough story here to write a novel.
Since I'm trying to keep this to a reasonable length, I'm going to touch on only the bits of the story which are relevant to what preceded and contributed to my injury, the specifics of the nature of my injury, the methods I used to rehabilitate myself after surgery, where I am in the recovery process, and where I plan to go from here. I am not a doctor. I am not making any recommendations in regard to what anyone else should do as far as rehab; this is just the story from my perspective.
This may not be an installment of Mistakes 101, but don't worry, this story is rife with examples of shit you should absolutely avoid.
RELATED Mistakes 101: Schedule Inflexibility
The beginning of this story is waiting for us, about two years ago, floating in the darkness of time. I was sitting on my box in Keyhole Barbell, staring at the gray wall in front of me. I was rubbing my chalky hands together and evaluating a recent social situation I wished I handled better.
All of the sudden, I started coughing.
I remember it as clear as day, even exactly the interaction I was going over in my head, because as soon as I started coughing, I knew I was getting sick. The coughs hurt and felt raw. I was about two weeks out from what was supposed to be the best powerlifting meet of my life. I'm reminded of an oddly appropriate old English proverb:
"There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."
We will get to that part later.
Earlier that year, I tore my left hamstring, but by this point I'd managed to get it back around 100%. My training was the best it had ever been and I was ready for this meet. Third attempts at 715/535/750 would give me a 2000-pound no wraps total at 275, and based on the 5thSet formula for selecting attempts, it was going down. All that stood between me and that total were a couple more triples at 80% and then one speed work session at six days out. That is, until I started coughing.
The next morning was the first day I started coughing up green phlegm. I told myself it wasn't very dark, and, since my training was dialing down to peak for the meet, my immune system would be able to beat it, without antibiotics.
Anything to avoid antibiotics.
They always made me feel like total shit and sabotaged my lifting. As I write this, I am screaming at myself from two years ago in my head for being such a fucking idiot.
More time passed and, you guessed it, the situation was looking grim. I gave in and went to the doctor around five days out from the meet and got some antibiotics. By now I had a high fever and chills, couldn't breathe, and felt like I was going to die, but didn't let anyone know how sick I'd let myself get — partly out of shame, but also because I knew they'd try to talk me out of doing the meet.
That night was the sickest I've ever been. For some reason, while lying in bed in the middle of the night, I started experiencing rigors and shaking uncontrollably. I was so cold I felt like I was going to die, but I'm sure I had a fever. Tarra had to help me into a hot shower at around 3:30 a.m. and after a few minutes, the shaking subsided. A respiratory infection had made me its bitch. That was a pretty scary situation. The next two days I didn't get out of bed at all.
After a couple of days in the sack and with a full dose of the antibiotics in my system, I started to feel like a human again, slightly. My whole body still ached, but I was up and moving around and eating. Despite the fact that I was out of bed, I had coughed so much that my phlegm was now coming up with blood in it, consistently. I'd lost about 12 pounds in three days.
At least I wouldn't have to do a water cut, I thought, knowing in the back of my head I needed every pound of the weight that I'd lost. Fuck it, I was still doing this meet.
We packed our stuff up and the whole team piled into our cars and trucks and headed out for Philly.
I was still too sick to drive, so I rode with someone else. At this point I'd begun to make deals and concessions with myself. If things were too heavy on my second attempts, I'd dial back my thirds. I could still total 1950, I thought.
I felt like a cancer patient. My face was as pale as a ghost. I was lying to myself and I knew it, just staying quiet, so no one would realize how badly I was hurting.
By the next morning I was even lighter and ended up weighing in at only 270 pounds, the lightest I'd been in a very long time. Three weeks prior to this I was around 290. The funny thing about being 290, in shape, is that you can lose twenty pounds and no one really notices. You're still a giant.
I learned a long time ago to never show weakness, never let myself appear to be vulnerable. That is probably not the healthiest way to live your life, from an emotional standpoint, but doing so allowed me to survive things I might not have otherwise. So, it's kind of stuck with me.
I took the rack heights for all of my lifters and submitted them with all of their openers. My own openers were still set off of the original figures from my peaking cycle, before I'd contracted the Black Plague.
That was possibly the only night I've ever fallen right to sleep before a meet. I was utterly exhausted.
Morning came, the way it does, and as I came to consciousness I was very aware of every breath I pulled into my lungs. They were raw and it hurt to breathe deep. I pounded some coffee, made sure everyone was ready and had what they needed for the meet with them. My pre-game shake went down like motor oil and I felt like a feeding snake. I used the last few sips to wash down my ergogenic aids and we were off to the meet.
Now, that morning is as clear in my mind as anything I can remember. I wasn't sure I'd make it through warm-ups, but I was not going to give up without spending 100% of what I had left in me. I had trained too hard for this and my team was watching. It was time to lead from the front. When I see someone give up without trying, that person has lost my respect forever. I will never forget something like that. So, how could I expect my lifters to respect me if I had quit to play it safe? That's not the way I am wired. The thought never even crossed my mind.
My man Clint Darden was speaking at the PLEXP2 about the difference between the Clint the coach and Clint the athlete. He said that Clint the coach would always tell you to be the tortoise, but Clint the athlete could only ever be the hare. I feel his pain. If you know anything about my coaching, you know I always play it safe and consider the longevity of my lifters. As a lifter, not so much.
Some friends of mine were spotting at the meet so I made sure to go over and warn them that I was not feeling my best. Actually, what I said was that I was pretty sure I was bleeding internally, and then I laughed, but I asked them to please keep a close watch on me during my attempts.
I made the decision to move my squat opener down, significantly, as a concession. I moved it down to 600, which would submarine my chances of 715 on a third. But maybe 700, I thought.
During my warm-ups I'd sip my fluids, take a weight, sip more fluids. I realized that as the weights got heavier, the pain in my lungs was getting worse.
Not good. I worked up to 515 pounds, not good at all.
I took my opener and the pain was excruciating. Focusing on my bracing and cues were almost impossible tasks, due to the intense burning in my lungs from holding my air under the load. It was distracting. I soldiered through.
645 was the weight on the bar. That number is a warm-up. That number is not a formidable adversary for me. That number had its best day ever.
As I took it out of the rack, I swear my lungs bled a little. If you watch the video of that attempt, you can see me wince, but I was not about to let that number get the best of me. I buried it and fought through the hardest 645 pound squat, possibly ever in my life. Half way up blood started shooting from my nose and sulfur was fighting to escape my lungs. I racked it, three whites. A small victory. That would be it for squats on that day. Time to nurse my wounds and rethink the game plan. I needed to help my guys and girls warm up for the first flight of bench, which gave me time to figure out what to do about my opener.
My bench warm-ups went well. I felt strong, but these were easy weights. In an attempt to be smart, I moved my bench opener to 485 pounds, down from 500. I had some wiggle room with bench because I was planning to take 500, then 535. That way if something went wrong I could get a second crack at 535, and if it was a smoke show I could take 550. So, moving the opener down didn't really screw up the big picture too badly. I could still make up some ground I'd lost on the squat by taking a heavy third attempt.
485 hurt like hell once it came out of the rack, but it shot up. I felt a little lightheaded after that attempt before I even got off the bench. I only moved the weight up to 500 for my second attempt, because the pain scared me.
500 pounds felt like so much pressure on me that I was actually thinking about whether or not I was bleeding inside my lungs before I started the descent. The bar flew off my chest at an awesome speed. I'm telling you, it moved like a light warm up. After watching the video, I made the decision to quit sandbagging and took 525 pounds as my third attempt.
I had three good spotters on the platform, two of which had been personal friends of mine for years, and still are to this day. What happened next was unavoidable for them. It's important that you understand that. The only way this could have been prevented was if I had made the decision to put on fucking wrist wraps. Learn from my mistakes, because most of you would not be able to live with the consequences.
I was mentally prepared and focused for this lift. My setup was tight. The air felt like gasoline filling my lungs, but I held it. My arms took the bar on a smooth ride down.
When I heard the press command, I fired that fucking thing back up and didn't slow down until lockout. My right elbow locked with the left one about a half inch and a fraction of a second behind it. As I fought and began to lock the left, I felt something amiss. The head judge gave the rack command, but it was too late. The thin bar had moved in my giant hand, changing the balance point on my palm, ever so slightly.
In that moment, I knew I was fucked, but I was the only one.
My wrists gave and the bar fell like a 525 pound guillotine on to my chest. There was no way to catch it or stop it, but the spotters at least got it right off of me. They tried to hold me down on the bench and make sure I was okay, but I would have none of that. I was in battle mode and jumped to my feet. I was crazed on adrenaline and just pushed everyone off of me. Then I started to laugh like a lunatic. Everyone realized I wasn't going to fall down and die at that point, and they started to laugh with me.
It's worth mentioning that a few years earlier I had dumped 550 pounds on my chest on a zealous bench press attempt in a meet and everyone there knew it. It had become the most impressive part of my lifting: not dying.
My girlfriend Tarra was freaked out, but I told her I was fine. She looked at me the way everyone was looking at me: like something impossible, but true. That gave me what I needed to keep moving.
I went into the bathroom to take my shirt off and begin to assess the damage, away from the eye of public scrutiny. There was a perfect imprint of the bar on my chest. I laughed. I had shooting pain coming and going in my leg.
The cup had slipped before it reached my lip. Cashing in on the total I'd been working to build was not going to happen that day. However, it had been years since I'd done a full meet, so I needed to total something decent if I wanted to do full power at RUM in a few months.
Now, as I walk out of the bathroom, playing with numbers in my head and distracted by agonizing pain, I am assailed by one of my lifters, literally in tears, because he missed his second deadlift attempt.
This is the shit I deal with.
I asked if he had seen me drop a quarter ton on myself about an hour earlier. Then I asked if he saw me acting like a bitch. He didn't have much of an answer to the second question, but he didn't whine any more after that, and he made his third attempt.
I decided that if a 655 deadlift would give me an 1800 total for the day, that would be sufficient to bring an end to this horrific shit show.
My esophagus was inflamed. I was having trouble swallowing. My left pec felt like it was going to tear as I warmed up for deadlifts. Pain was radiating down my right leg and my lungs were filled with shards of glass. I was ready to pull.
655 was, of course, very easy with all things considered. One of the officials yelled over for me to take at least 700 for my next attempt, but instead I made one of the only good decisions for myself that day and passed. There was no difference between 1800 and 1850 in my mind. I just wanted to crawl away and die, but I still had lifters to coach and I was not okay with them knowing the kind of pain I was in, so I clenched my jaw and kept that shit to myself.
Later that night I locked myself in the bathroom, made some phone calls and vented to some other guys on my level who I knew would understand. The consensus was that I needed to come back and make those weights lose to me.
I told them the things I didn't want to admit. That I had to eat soft food for dinner, because it was hard to swallow it down; and that I was worried I might be injured, more serious than it seemed at first. I had some shooting pains from my back, down my glute into my hams.
It is an asset beyond measure to have the kind of friends you can count on when everything goes wrong.
The plan was to get my revenge at RUM, a few months down the road.
I'll save you any further foreshadowing or proverbs about the best laid schemes of mice and men. The road ahead was ominous.
And many a slip, many a slip.
Another installment, soon.
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