The Rehab Games!

I don’t watch a lot of television other than some sports and, given my druthers, I’d rather watch something aside from the popular ball sports. Sometime after surgery last fall when I’d rather have been out running, riding my bike, or hunting, I found myself cooped up at home watching The Crossfit Games championship. Now, I think the crossfitters as a whole are a few fries short of a happy meal given the crazy-hard workouts, but they certainly are amazingly fit. I absorbed the entire event marveling at the hard-bodies and incredible stamina as they lifted, ran, squatted, kettle-belled, and burpeed. Ultimately Tia-Clair Toomey and Mathew Fraser were declared the craziest . . er . . fittest of the cross-fitters.

Cross-fit demands incredible mental fortitude and discipline as well as some degree of luck to avoid injury. This means daily, diverse and constant workout routines always striving for improvement. This is not all that different from physical therapy and injury rehabilitation. This gives me an idea!

What if we establish the 1st Annual Rehab Games!? Since September 2016 I have been doing some sort of physical therapy and the associated rehab for a variety of injuries including ankle sprain, surgeries for torn hip labrum and core muscle injury, and now some sort of acute post-tibial tendon injury. As noted previously I was nicely regaining running form after surgery when my right foot popped.

After consulting with triathlete, runner and podiatrist Dr. Richard Oller, I dug out my frequent flyer card for Novacare Physical Therapy and returned to see Vanessa Bowers. She is my friend and super-therapist who I was hoping not to see professionally for quite some time. But here we are with a new set of daily exercises that do not involve VO2 max, FTP, or T-Pace.

So . . back to my idea. For those “athletes” like me who have seemingly full time rehab regimens, I was thinking of organizing a championship. We could have men’s, women’s, team, mixed, and even junior categories. Contestants could be measured on form and ability. Clearly we’d need some sort of judging panel and scoring system. (Just leave that Russian judge out! They always score low.)

I’m also picturing more objective events such as a crutch race. I think to keep things fair there would have to be some sort of handicap factor. Typically a handicap is a calculated value based on scores used to even the playing field. The beauty of the rehab games is it would be an actual handicap! (e.g. broken bones, torn ligaments, hip replacement, etc.)

Of course we’d need a venue and sponsors. Companies like Rock Tape and AirKast leap to mind. I’m even picturing a lifestyle brand like Nike or Under Armour. Ooh or even better we could score a deal with Reebok for a subsidiary brand: Reehab I like it! I’m sure they’ll be so excited by the idea they won’t mind me taking some liberties with their logo.

I’m not just proposing this because I feel like I could be a contender, but rather provide an inclusive environment for those whose minds say “Let’s go!” but whose bodies say “Not so fast”. I even have a short list of initial invitees in mind. Mostly other folks like me whose Trainingpeaks accounts now list things like “towel hold” and “eversion” or “band stretches” instead of “10x800s at 3:25 with 800 rest”.

I need to get busy. These things don’t organize themselves. Off to Kickstarter to setup a funding initiative. Anyone have a number for Reebok? Or a copyright lawyer?