My journey to Personal Training

Imagine … you’re driving back from a week in Auckland … just coming up on the outskirts of Bulls, roughly 2 hours away from home. Next thing some car drives into the side of you and you’re now 3 weeks away from home!

That was my experience back in November of 2006.

The Trip

I was working as an Employment Relations consultant, just finished a project, so I decided to enjoy a motorcycle adventure to Auckland, and stay with a friend for a few days. My father had not long returned home from a major aneurism operation, so I was looking forward to some “upbeat” time.

While in Auckland I traded in my 20 year old Kawasaki ZZR600 for a brand new ZX14 – an amazing machine! Pity I only got to enjoy it for 3 days!

Accident

Going back to Wellington, somewhere near Bulls, a car pulled out from a side road into my motorbike (left side) hitting my left leg and sending me sliding down the road into oncoming traffic, closely chased by the bike. It all happened in slow motion. He started to pull out, so I slowed down from open road speed. He seemed to stop again, so I thought he’d seen me – but kept an eye on him… 70kph now. He started to move again so I slowed some more, still watching. This happened one more time – now 30kph – then just as I was passing he accelerated into my bike and leg. Fortunately the oncoming traffic stopped in time and were able to safely secure the scene and attend to me.

Injuries

Lying on the ground with the bike some distance away, my foot appeared much closer to my waist than I was expecting. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but something in me thought “this can’t be good”.

Turns out, I suffered a compound fracture to the lower leg bones, tibia and fibula, with the ends of the bones and lots of flesh exposed. Fortunately I was wearing substantial motorcycle gear, with high visibility wet weather protection over the top with a new helmet, so I didn’t receive any grazing or road abrasions.

Rescue

Soon an ambulance, police, and later the Palmerston North rescue helicopter, attended and treated the injuries, pain etc, and transported me to Palmerston North Hospital for an operation to install a metal rod to join the separate sections of bone.

A week later I was transported to Hutt hospital for skin grafts to close up the injury site.

Recovery

After 2 weeks in hospital I exited and moved around with the aid of crutches. That lasted a few weeks. After about 3 months it became apparent that the 2 sections of bone weren’t joining, and there was some discussion about an operation to shorten the leg in an effort to encourage the healing, or even the possibility of losing part of the leg.

I was devastated. For 2 weeks I just felt like crap. Desperate and stressed there was nothing I could do – wishing it had never happened – it was a very dark time.

But the human spirit is amazing, and after the 2 weeks I soon got to work, researching how to give myself the best chance of healing the break. I started loading the leg, walking several kilometres a day, and doing some conservative resistance training. It was pretty painful, but I am often very motivated.

After a couple more months, one of the xrays showed signs of the bones joining, and the operation was postponed, to observe or confirm that was the case.

I continued and increased the activity hoping it would continue to heal. Thankfully that worked and after several more months the injury healed.

I still had a lot of ankle and leg pain, and it was later discovered that I had a ruptured knee ligament. After all, a car did drive into my leg and crushed it against the motorcycle frame, so as you would expect there was lots of soft tissue damage as well.

Continued Recovery

With a lot of pain in my leg and ankle, and disfunction in my walking patterns I sought help from physiotherapists, podiatrist, and later a Personal Trainer/Exercise Physiologist.

The latter was really what made the difference. Training really helped, because it:

kept me motivated with regular appointments
advice about training patterns and human movement
strengthen the right muscles in a balanced way
someone working with me supporting me with a positive focus during a challenging and worrying time
looking wider for a more holistic approach in training

This lasted for a year and the recovery and improvement in my leg pain and function was tremendous. I continued on with a great deal more knowledge and understanding of the benefits of exercise both for recovery, and for improvement of everyday function.

My Personal Training

During 2009 and 2010 I undertook Personal Training tertiary education with a view to becoming a Personal Trainer myself. My experience following the accident was, and is, always on my mind. I am focussed on providing the same kind of support I received to people who need it.

I love working with people who have injuries or past injuries, or health and disability issues, or even a general reluctance, which may exclude them from the “main stream” exercise and fitness industry.

I guess it is true, the change was for the better and you do learn from experience, not that I would wish it to happen to anyone.

Craig

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