How I Achieved My Fitness Goals Without Being Able To Walk

In my life, I have to say this was a dark period, even though I don't remember it as that. In college, my dad lost his house to foreclosure. We went from living in a million dollar home into a $200,000 rental with no insulation because rats had burrowed it all out. When I lived there, I didn't have a bed and so I put a mattress on the carpet. At night I would be woken up by the sound of rats claws scraping inside the walls just inches from my face. It was my nightly routine to pull off all the blankets from my bed because one night there was a venomous spider underneath my blanket.

In college, I ran track and field and placed 14th in the nation for DIII schools my Sophomore year in Geneva Ohio. My marks put me in the upper 35 percentile for all divisions: NAIA, DIII, DII, and DI. Junior year, I had a slight injury which prevented me for competing in my main event, the decathlon. Still, that year I had some massive personal records that year and was enthusiastic about going into my Senior year.

That summer, my dad kept insisting that I drop out of college and stay there with him. He was a very likable guy, but his view of the world was unique in that he wasn't great with navigating the physical world. For instance, he would do things like cut zip lock bags with a knife to open them because he never thought about they concept of them being to work like designed. Money was tight and even though I had student loans, there were still payments. I remember him telling me he wouldn't be able to survive another winter alone if I didn't stay there.

Despite this, I went back to college my senior year. However, I hated the classes I was taking and did feel guilty about putting my dad in that situation to pay. I had gotten my real estate license the year prior and fell in love with the concept of multifamily investing from Grant Cardone's videos. I had the pain and pleasure thing going for me to drop out and so I did.

By doing that, I hurt a lot of people who believed in me. That's something I still have to deal with today. My coach retired that following year after around 40+ years of coaching if I remember correctly. Many of my friends and I cut ties with me for their own reasons. Track and field is an individual sport, but the team aspect of it is a real thing.

An ironic thing happened living back in that rental house with my dad. The biggest snowstorm Oregon had seen in around 50 years occurred. Power was out for more than a week. It brings me back to that point that there was no insulation in the house. Temperatures in the house were below 50 degrees for days on end. What helped us through it was that our neighbor came over and gave us some extra firewood that he had for our wood stove.

For all of this that I was dealing with, I think I compensated by thinking I had to be the most hardcore person. Maybe I truly did need that at the time. I believed that I could break the 7 foot barrier in the high jump because of what I had learned and my massive PR my Junior year. I had barely knicked off 6'9" in my last meet and was thinking about things I could have improved. At college meets, sometimes you see older athletes join as "open competitors." This is what I decided to do as well.

To be honest, going back to those meets made me feel very sad and not included with any of the other athletes I knew. Still I kept going and kept training. I was operating with the mindset that I had to take everything to the extreme. I was getting up at 4:30am and only sleeping 4-6 hours a night. My workouts were high impact nearly every day, when your joints and tendons can really only handle it once a week.

At another meet, I had tied for first place in the high jump. When that happens, they sometimes have you do a jump off. I remember not wanting to do it because even if I win, I'm beating someone who is competing for points for their school and I'm competing for myself. Two steps into my approach, on that first jump off my Achilles ruptures. I hop to the side and get carted off without too many people noticing.

Here is a picture right after I tore my achilles that same day.

I had been wanting to lift weights for a long time because I didn't like how skinny I looked for high jump for a long time. The first thing I did when I got home was take that picture so that I could just look at myself and take a picture to mark what place I was at in life and to never go back there. The second thing I did was crutch over to a seat and used a pair of 25lb dumbbells to start working out my upper body.

Even though my injury was a complete rupture, the tendons were still close enough that it would heal itself whether I got surgery to attach it back together or not. I chose to not get the surgery. The process would take at least 6 months to heal either way where I wouldn't be able to walk.

That healing process did give me faith in how miraculous the body truly is. My calf muscle would completely lock up in a cramp as it pulled the tendons back into place and heal. However, not being able to walk and being in bed all day for months on end did have its own challenges. In those times, there was no one there to help me but myself. I don't blame my dad, but he wasn't really capable of even acknowledging me or what had happened. He pretty much did his own thing and never checked on me during that half a year. My mom had moved to another country after I graduated high school and she had her own thing. I only talked to her a few times a year back then. One day though I did get a card delivered to me from a girl I knew. That card meant more to me than she will ever know.

Because of my injury, I had to be extremely careful in my workouts. I was big into tracking back then and still am. I developed a workout system of micro improvements where I would make a little progress towards getting in shape each day. Here is my system. I would do the push ups off one leg every day and then the shoulder presses, arm curls and tricep dips three times a week. I would take pictures of myself and the progress that I made. This made me feel happy even in those times and even made me feel proud of myself for the process of getting up when I was knocked down.

Here's one picture I took in my room window. You can see I taped pictures on the wall of things, goals and memories. This helped me get some control over my environment. On the autographed jersey, it says, "To Noah, Don't ever give up."

After around 4 months of consistent workouts and healing, I got a walking boot. Still I had to use crutches, but could start to put a tiny bit of weight on my newly attached achilles. While still being extremely careful, I got a membership to the gym so that I could start lifting heavier weights.

Here is a picture of me a few weeks after joining the gym. I had already made a ton of progress with only my home workouts despite not being able to walk. You can see that I'm wearing dress shorts because it was hard for me to change my own clothes. You can slightly notice a tilt to how I'm standing because I still had the walking boot on. My crutches were to the side.

What I learned from this experience was that no matter what, if you're making progress toward a goal, you can feel happy in any situation. I learned that sole responsibility of my life falls onto my shoulders alone. In good times and bad the person you'll always have is yourself. It's important to love that person. Years later I found the quote "Nothing is more dangerous than a man that healed his wounds on his own." I quite like that one.