August of 2020. I went in for my first surgery. It was to remove three pieces of bone I had broken off in my ankle while spending some time in another country.
The thing was, that was 1 of 3 that I was going to get in the next 6-12 months.
A lot of people would have taken it easy because you’re just going to go down under the knife again and again. I did not. I wanted to be strong as fuck for when I went under the knife again in March for a lot more major surgery than this one. I was getting some hardware installed so I knew the recovery was going to be rough, but I was looking forward to it. I made the decision that I was going to get into the best shape of my life after I got “fixed up”.
Being resilient is a skill, in my opinion. You aren’t born with it. It is something you develop throughout life. It is a choice to become this.
How to develop it? Volunteer for some hard ass shit that you don’t know if you are going to be able to do or not. I am not saying don’t have confidence, expect to win but the task should be challenging. A lot more challenging than what all of your friends and family are doing with their life.
Resilience in my opinion is simple. When you get your ass knocked out, do you stay down and feel bad for yourself or do you do whatever it takes to get back up on your feet and keep fighting?
March of 2021. I went in for my second surgery. It was to fuse my right SI joint, which requires 3 Ifuse screws to be drilled into that area. You lose that mobility that you have of having an SI joint, so they said. “You will lose a lot of mobility and probably won’t be able to do things like heavy deadlifts and things like that”. The recovery process is 5 weeks of no weight on that side of the fusion. For 5 weeks I did exactly what my boss ass surgeon told me to do, which is don’t bend, twist or turn and hobble your ass around with that walker. I said yes sir.
Not gonna lie to you, that shit sucked. I had never been depressed like that or been down like that. I followed his instructions to a T.
April of 2021. 5 weeks later exactly, I started to learn how to walk with both legs again. It was weird, I didn’t want to fuck this up. After a day of practicing on my own, I called the hip surgeon (also a boss ass surgeon) and told him I was ready. Right hip labrum repair and shaving some FAI’s down. He told me to check with my neurosurgeon to get the green light and because I listened to him, he trusted me when I said that I was good to go for this next surgery, he said go ahead.
That next surgery put me down for another 3 weeks of no walking. Again, entered the gates of hell and very very dark times of just having to sit there.
ALL I could think about was getting back into training. Its what my life consists of. Like I said, I made the decision before all this that I wasn’t going to be a little bitch about it and this is just a bump in the road that every road will have and when this is all over, I will get into the best shape of my life.
Which is what you guys see me trying to get too every single day on social media and in life. That will never stop no matter what.
Being resilient to me, is second nature. I made the choice to be this way.
Nobody is going to make you resilient.
It’s up to you.
Being Resilient is the key to unlocking a life you want and the person you want to become.
