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Are you Ready to be an Athlete?

10/6/2015

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This article was written for and originally posted on FreestyleConnection. It is a collection of my thought on what it means and take to be an "athlete", the liver of an athletic life. Photos courtesy of FreestyleConnection

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Are you Ready to be an Athlete?

I don't CrossFit. I don't power lift. I don't Olympic lift. I don't do gymnastics. I don't cycle. I don't hike. I don't swim. I don't climb. I don't play team sports. And I certainly don't run, not at all. I made these affirmations at various points in my life, leading to a lifestyle that was not active, not athletic. As opportunities came up I simply chose not to participate. Each time I opted out, the divide between me and an active life expanded, and as I grew older I found myself opting out more and more. It's not that I didn't want to participate. I liked athletics and I knew the benefits. I just always had a great reason not to engage and I'm not alone. Many of us tell ourselves seemingly good reasons why we can't participate: we're out of shape, don't know how, or can't make the time. Our back/knee/shoulder [insert body part] hurts. The list goes on. I had the best excuse ever: At the age of eight I was struck by a semi-truck and my leg was mangled almost beyond recognition. I had a physical disability.

My leg is a mess. Half my knee is gone, I'm missing critical muscles, some of my major nerves don't work, and my bones are twisted and deformed from abnormal growth. My leg is skinny, crooked, two inches shorter, covered in scar tissue, has joints that bend at weird angles, and requires the constant support of a foot-to-hip brace. Nothing about my leg says athlete. Despite my condition, I held out hope that one day I could walk into a gym or onto a court and I would not be disabled or at least not SO disabled. A day where I would be "ready" to participate. After my initial recovery from the accident the doctors projected, "Technology is advancing all the time. In five or ten years there could be a new surgery/implant/orthotic that will restore your ability". The notion was comforting. A nice mental escape from the reality of the obliterated leg that lay in front of me. I could hold out for a time in the future when my condition could be “fixed”. It seemed plausible, I was young and my life seemed to stretch out to an unending horizon. So I directed my energy into this idea. I sat on the sidelines and I waited. However as the years passed and the seemly infinite became finite, my faith in this proposition began to erode.

At the age of 30 that hope finally died. After more than a decade since my last major check-up, I went to visit the best orthopedic surgeons and orthotists in California. During the appointments, the message was hauntingly familiar, "There is nothing more that we can do for you now, but the next five to ten years looks promising for development, come back and see us then!" Twenty-two years had past and no solution had been delivered to me. Furthermore, I now had no reason to believe the next two decades would yield any different.

So there I was, on the edge of a chasm between the life I wanted and the life I had. I had stared at this gap my entire life, but now I was seeing it clearly for the first time. I finally saw the realities that I should have internalized a long time ago: there was no quick fix and there never would be. There is only today and only the body I have left. I now looked down at my mangled limb with the understanding that it was here to stay. It wasn't an external obstacle, it was part of me. If I was ever going to participate, it was coming along for the ride. No more hoping and waiting. My leg and I were going to do this together. Time to stop expecting the world to deliver a solution. Time to take my well-being into my own hands. Time to take one step forward into the gap.

The first step I took was into San Francisco CrossFit. I stepped in with a serious physical disability, a poorly functioning leg brace, a major body image issue, and no plan beyond showing up. A great list of reasons why I should have turned around and walked right back out the door. But this time, I didn't let these issues prevent me from participating. I now recognized that these issues only had the potential to define HOW I participated, but not IF I participated. The decision to participate was completely up to me. It was also up to me to come back the following day, and I did, then the day after that, and so on.

Over the following months and years I went from not being able to air squat, to squatting 300 pounds. From not being able to run, to running an 11 mile race. From never hiking, to summiting a 16,000 foot mountain. From being ashamed to wear shorts, to not giving it a second though. One by one I addressed my list of issues. As I gained momentum, the focus on my own well-being, learning and lifestyle became more important than all the bullshit I dragged through the door with me on day one.

Now looking back, I can see the exact point at which I became an athlete. It was not after I hit a certain threshold of ability, the day I became in-shape, or the day I first competed. It was the day I made the decision to participate. The moment I took my first step into the gap. It turns out that the gap to the athletic life is only one step wide. The athletic life is a state of being. It's about expectation and commitment. The expectation is that we can get more from our bodies tomorrow than we did today: more functionality, more utility, more capacity, and less pain. The commitment is to work towards that expectation. It has nothing to do with what you bring to the table, it's the decision that you belong at the table. You can be uncoordinated and become an athlete. You can be out-of-shape and become an athlete. You can have a permanent injury and become an athlete. You can be disabled and become athlete. It comes down to a simple choice: to participate or not. You are ready. You have always been ready. Now take that first step and just keep moving your feet. Welcome to the club. 

Now, I CrossFit. I power lift. I Olympic lift. I do gymnastics. I cycle. I hike. I swim. I climb. I play team sports. I run (I hate it, but I do it). I play tennis. I snowboard. I backpack. I trapeze. I TRX. I parkour. I ultimate frisbee... Now, I'll pretty much do anything because I am an athlete.

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Points of Reflection

11/18/2014

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During the last couple of months I have had the privileged opportunity to participate in several powerful events. They have served as salient points of clarity on my long journey. Below is my first attempt to capture a slice of one such experience.

A Court Abandoned

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It's Sunday 9am in La Jolla, California and I'm naked in public for the first time in my life. I'm sitting on a folding chair surrounded by a few thousand others who have traveled here to occupy the nicely manicured park for the day. An energy, unnatural for this early in the morning, emanates from the mass. The buzzing crowd and brightly colored temporary structures create a surreal feel that complements the strange level of comfort I am experiencing. Athletes move hurriedly to specific destinations. Spectators seem to rush around to nowhere in particular. I simply sit, my stare far-off, my race done. My gaze transitions back into the foreground, the shaved head of a competitor takes focus directly in front of me. We are in mid-conversation, his rapid speech aligned with the pitch of the commotion. Like me, he has just completed the one mile open water swim of the Challenged Athletes Foundation San Diego Triathlon. A swim that only one month ago I had no idea how I would complete. With his speedy monologue seemingly only near it's midpoint, I subconsciously give myself permission to drift off again. I look down at the white towel wrapped around my waist. It's only long enough to cover down to around my knees. I gaze further down, past the towel, to my deformed right leg. I see it all in the morning sun. The awkward angle, the abnormal rotation, the child-like girth, the wholesale vacancy of standard anatomical reference points. I know these hallmarks well. I have stared at them for the last twenty-five years. My stare deepens, past the physical damage to the emotional scaring that lies beneath. Hopelessness. Embarrassment. Inadequacy. Shame. A familiar urge begins welling within to grab for another towel and cover up my limb. However, for the first time in my life, I don't. I simply continue to stare. Then, spell broken, I look up and reengage in the conversation.

In 1989, at the age of eight, my body and a twenty ton semi-truck attempted to occupy the same space. Marred from that day forward, I became an expert at hiding the resulting damage. It started small. I stopped wearing shorts. I only bought pants that were baggy enough to hide the abnormal contour of my leg. I wouldn't change clothes in front of others. For most of my life this self-preservation was seemingly superficial, a minor inconvenience, an everyday accommodation. However in the last few years I began to realize how deep the charade had progressed. I noticed how more and more I was tactically managing the environments I was exposing myself to. Heeding an anxious inner voice to avoid potentially uncomfortable situations. Hot tubbing? Nope, everyone will see my awkward leg on the way to the tub. Pick-up basketball? I can wear track pants but I don't want people to see me limping around the court. Beach? Okay, but I will wear pants and not go in the water. Every activity had to first pass this screen. I'd attempted to banish my deformity to an unscalable tower, behind a locked gate, in a sealed box, convinced the imprisonment would nullify it's impact on the rest of my life. However in doing so I successfully accomplished the opposite. I inserted my fear into a position of maximum effect; I had granted it first veto power over every decision in my life. Regardless of the merit of the experience, fear now stood as the unyielding judge, jury and executioner. What I'd attempted to relegate to a corner now held court over the rest of my faculties. 
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After living for decades under this arrangement of inhibitions and lost opportunities, I began to grow weary. Emotionally exhausted, it became abundantly clear that the bargain I made so long ago was holding me back. With the path to unwind this construct unclear, I did the only thing I could think of, walk straight towards my fear. Force myself into situations where I had to deal with the uncomfortable. The last year of navigating this path has taken me many places, this weekend I found myself at a triathlon. A competition I committed to specifically because I knew with the crowds of people there would be nowhere to hide. Where would I change into my wetsuit in privacy? How would I manage getting down to the beach without the brace that covered up my disability? I didn't have the time to fret over the answers because a much larger question loomed. How do I swim a mile in the waves without drowning? I had no training. No trainer. No wetsuit. No access to a pool. My first time in the water revealed, with my horrible technique, that I couldn't swim more than 100 yards before losing my breath. By signing up with only four weeks to prepare, I placed myself in an emergency situation that required an override of all normal operating procedures. Under threat of flood, the court was indefinitely suspended, all veto powers revoked.

I didn't drown. In seven days I found a pool, a wetsuit and even a trainer of sorts. In fourteen days I swam a half mile. In twenty-one I swam my first mile. On race day, my fifth time in open water, I smashed my previous time by over fifteen minutes which even included mid-race breaks for pictures and a pee. A few years ago I would have never dreamed of sitting in a public place so exposed, my disability naked for all to see. I now sit casually in the triathlon transition area among other challenged athletes, individuals who, by virtue of their presence, overthrew the same internal arbitrator. It has been a long road to this point, and I know there is still work to be done. The specter remains. I can still feel it as a layer upon me. But now it’s thin, almost transparent. The sting has been blunted. I'm buoyed by a new sense of contentment, the exhilaration of accomplishment, the spent adrenaline of physical exhaustion, but perhaps most of all, by the knowledge of a commitment to another competition in less than 7 days. A completely different event, in a different city, with a new set of urgent questions. Court will have to remain dismissed.
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Using writing for this type of self expression is a new for me. I would love feedback, comments or otherwise.
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My First Post - Letter to San Francisco Crossfit

3/11/2014

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This is an experiment. Time will tell if I can actually think of enough useful comments to warrant a blog.

To make things easy on myself, my first post is a reprint of a letter that I wrote to the owners San Francisco Crossfit, Kelly and Juliet Starrett thanking them for their support over the years. This letter was originally intended for their eyes only however they found the letter interesting enough to ask me for permission to post it. If it's good enough for their audience, then it's probably good enough as my first entry. Enjoy.
Kelly & Juliet,

Happy New Years to you both. I have been remiss up to this point for not taking the time to tell you how large of an impact you have had on my life. With a new year upon us I thought that it would be a great opportunity to do so. I am sure you get these types of emails frequently, so at the risk of boring you, i'll focus on the special facets of my particular case in the hopes of paying you an original complement.

To put it as simply as I can, I came to San Francisco Crossfit as an individual with a tactically managed disability and came out the other side as, for the first time in my life, an athlete. It contributed to a complete change in perspective on how I viewed my disability as it relates to my life and most unexpectedly my interaction with others. Over the months and years that I've participated, crossfit routinely exposed my physical and mental compensations. At SFCF there was no place or time to hide from them. Never in my life had my vulnerabilities been on display to so many.

Up to this point in my life I had become an adept controller of my environment. The activity i was willing to take part in was solitary and narrow. Nothing outside of my comfort zone. I took every measure to conceal my disability. I didn't wear shorts. I didn't swim. I didn't run. I didn't hike. I didn't engage in any activity that would expose my limitations to others and on a subconscious level to myself. SFCF was the catalyst to becoming aware of how confining, self defeating and exhausting this parade had been. Kelly, I credit your skill as a PT and coach for convincing my rational mind that your perspective on fitness would be beneficial for even my compromised state. Combined with the culture you both developed, for the first time I let my guard down. The results became apparent immediately.

Crossfit begin to slowly chip away at what I thought I knew to be possible. Almost every movement on the programming I had never attempted in my life. Somethings came easier, pressing, gymnastic bar work, etc. Slowly things I though to be impossible begin to come as well. I went from hardly being able to air squat to box squatting close to 300 pounds. I went from not running, ever, I mean not at all, to running to the dock and back. Then twice, then 4 times in a workout. Then a mile. I begin to run on my own. After 6 months, I ran a 10k. I went from avoiding long distance walks to hiking a 16,000ft mountain.

Up to this point I haven't even mentioned the specific physical knowledge which has been imparted on me. While this is obvious for anyone that is involved in crossfit, I want to make sure that you fully appreciate what it means to someone living with a life long condition. Dealing with a disability for 20 years is physical compensation writ large. I had no normal movement patterns and I had no idea. The knowledge I have acquired has influenced not only my physical activity, but how i move on a daily basis and has guided the design of my latest orthotic gear. It will be a tool that I use for the rest of my life.

I could go on about how all of the technical knowledge is utilized for my specific dilemma but I don't want to dilute the main point. I didn't realize at the time and it has taken a while to come to terms with it but the sobering truth is, I came into San Francisco Crossfit ashamed of my disability and I came out proud.

Your friend always,

Max
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    Survivor of '8 year-old Pedestrian v. Semi-Truck' accident. Passionate about doing whatever it takes to live the life I want.

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