Patience learned through years of injuries:

As a kid, I had the belief of invincibility because of how fast my body recovered after working out. Young athletes in general, have an extremely high threshold that their body can take and recover quickly from. In my personal experience I pushed that workout threshold ever since I was in sports when I was 5 years old. I tried every sport, and played multiple ones through each season. I remember my mom taking me from one sport’s practice to another that same evening. I scheduled so much in my day that I never had any rest periods. I traveled to a lot of different tournaments throughout the weekends, while still managing all my homework and studying. In high school, I went from doing multiple sports to just focusing on one (wrestling) after my freshman year. I remained a workhorse, and when I say that I mean I never took days off, EVER! I did two to three workouts a day in H.S.; depending on the day, I would lift weights in the morning, hit a wrestling practice in the afternoon, and run later in the evening. Or I would run in the morning, practice in the afternoon, and hit a second practice in the evening. I had the mentality, the more work I put in, the more I would get stronger, faster, and better as athlete in my sport. On top of all the hard training, I cut much more weight than I needed to in high school and college. I was constantly de-hydrated and usually in a bad mood (go to nutrition blog). My mentality was a “tough-man”, but my workload needed to be smarter. I should have evaluated exactly how my body reacted to the stress of training/dieting and taken time periods of rest. Some of the warning signs of fatigue and lack of recovery are: extended soreness, tightness, lack of quality sleep, mood swings, etc. I pushed through a lot of these signs especially heading into college. Once in college, the wrestling season is never-ending; training and competition occurs all-year round. I had received a full-ride scholarship and was slated to start for four years.

My first major injury in college occurred at the NCAA championship in 2016, at the end of my sophomore year. I hurt my shoulder in my fourth match at the tournament, and wrestled through the injury the next two matches. After the NCAAs I didn’t take a break, because I had also qualified for the 2016 US Olympic team trials, which were 3 weeks later. I decided to compete injured, and I made it up to the quarterfinals before losing that match and hurting my shoulder more in the process. My decision to push through the injury led to the injury becoming more severe. I was not able raise my left arm above my head. I got a MRI on my shoulder and found out that I had major tears in my rotator cuff. I decided to get surgery the following week. The surgery took an extensive four-hours, in which I was forced to stay at the hospital overnight with a nerve block in my shoulder. I remember when the nerve block wore off, the pain was excruciating. I had just turned 21.

Fast forward, I spend the next 6 months rehabbing, getting stronger and coming back from a surgery that the doctor told me could be a career ending injury. I competed a little over 7 months after surgery, and won my first tournament back at the Cliff Keen Invitational in December 2016. As I wrestled throughout the year, I still had tightness anytime I raised my arm above my head. I finished the season as a Big Ten champion and third place at NCAAs. Later in the spring, I made it on the US Senior National Team, and competed internationally throughout the summer of 2017. In October, a little over 10 months after first competing back from shoulder surgery, I tore my ACL. I competed at a tournament to try to make the age 23 and under US World Team. I made the finals; and during the finals match, I landed in a position of torque that tore my ACL. I didn’t know it at the time, because of all the adrenaline during the match, but I could tell something was seriously off. The last 2 minutes of the match, I felt I had no drive off of my right leg. After the match, the trainers at the event evaluated the injury as an ACL tear. The doctor confirmed the news after taking a MRI on my knee, two days later. The news shocked me, and I immediately started crying. The timing couldn’t have been worse, because I had my senior season still left on the OSU wrestling team. I was given the option of either having surgery and ending my senior season before it started, or wrestling though my senior year with a torn ACL. I decided I was going to push through it, especially because the team needed me to compete if we were going to have the chance to win the NCAA team championship. My goal of winning the NCAA championship as a senior didn’t happen, I came close (3rd) and the team finished second in one of tightness team races in NCAA wrestling history.

In my college career I took 1st, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd at NCAAs, and won the Big Ten championship all four years. After my senior season, I got surgery the following month and was back on another road to recover. My college career didn’t finish the way I had hoped, especially with wrestling through the injuries. I wasn’t in a good place mentally. I needed to stay positive, I had to lean hard on strong friendships, my faith and trust in God, and remember my purpose in life (glorifying God in everything). My focus was on the small gains in rehab everyday, discipline in my diet, and development as a person. After a little over 7 months, I competed at the Midlands Championship in late December of 2018, as a postgraduate. The tournament was held in a hockey arena, which made the environment cold. Early into my second match of the tournament, I got in a position that I felt my hamstring strain, but kept wrestling. Next thing I know I felt it pop towards the end of the match, and as I went to walk back to the center of the mat my knee buckled underneath me. I knew something was really wrong, and I was forced to medically forfeit out of the match and tournament. Looking back, I didn’t warm up enough in between my first and second match of the tournament, which may have led to the injury. Throughout the next two days I waited, because I couldn’t go back to Columbus until my flight left after the tournament. I could barely walk. Once I arrived back at OSU, I saw the doctor, and he originally told me that I had strained my hamstring. But after getting a MRI taken the following day, I was told to go immediately to see a specialist. I knew that this couldn’t be good news. The specialist told me I had torn the three tendons of my hamstring off of my sit bone, where it connects. I had no option but to get another surgery. The news rocked my world. I couldn’t believe what I heard.

The specialist told me the road to recovery was very challenging and could take 6-8 months to get full strength back. But I was stubborn, and believed that I could come back from the hamstring injury by the 2019 US Open, in the end of April, after only 16 weeks post surgery. The US Open was my only shot to qualify for the U.S. World Team Trials and Final X. At that moment after surgery, I did everything I could to recover and train my body in different ways to prepare to compete again at the top U.S. senior level tournament in the country. I was in great shape when I was cleared to return to drilling. But, I had only 4 weeks of wrestling specific training and only 2 weeks of full-go wrestling before competing at the US Open. Mentally I was hungry to compete and prove myself, but my hamstring still needed more time to get back to full power. One week before the tournament, the doctor told me that he couldn’t give me the “okay” to compete, but he also wasn’t going to stop me from going. He left the decision up to me; I was stubborn and believed that it was my time to make it to the top. I felt I had no other option, so I competed in the US Open on April 26th, 2019. I felt great early on in the tournament; I won by tech-fall my first 3 matches and was headed into the semis later in the day. I felt my hamstring was holding up well, and I produced some my best wrestling. But I hit a brick wall in the semis, one of the strongest competitors I have faced so far in my career, Thomas Gilman, who was a past world silver medalist. He pushed my hamstring to the maximum during the match by pushing and driving into me. I fought hard, but I knew in the back of my mind my hamstring was not 100% back yet. I lost the match, and felt immediate soreness, especially after my adrenaline came down. I decided to medically forfeit to 6th place the following day. I could feel pain shoot up my spine anytime I bent over, and it lingered throughout the next week. I had qualified for the US World Team trials, by placing in the top 7. But the Trials were only 3 weeks after the US Open. After a week of praying and seeking guidance from friends, I made one of the toughest decisions of my career: I was not going to compete at the 2019 US World Team Trials, which meant another summer of not having a chance to make the US world team, and achieving my goal of winning the World Championship. My decision was simple: in order to give my best shot at the 2020 Olympic Championships, I truly needed to focus on getting back to 100% strength and power in my both legs. I also felt I needed to put in an extended period of wrestling focused training, which I had not had consistently for 3 years due to injuries.

In conclusion, life is about learning from your past, making changes and moving forward into the future. It has taken me 3 major surgeries, and extended rehab periods to realize that I need to slow things down, listen to my body’s warning signs, take recovery days (“off days”) during training cycles, and have patience in my body’s healing/recovery process.. I believe that my impatience with each injury has led to further injuries, physical pain, and pain of disappointment. I am a “go getter”, and for the longest time I didn’t know when to put on the breaks and slow things down. But I am learning through the injuries “trials of life”. I don’t know what my future career holds, but I believe I will get back to competition even stronger and smarter than before. I am pursing the 2020 Olympics each day, and hopefully many more years of competing after. Through experiencing some of the toughest life lessons of patience, I’m excited to see how far I can go in the sport of wresting.