After 3 ACL surgeries and over 4 years recovering there comes a point where you say “f*ck it” and see what your body can handle in it’s new state.
This is the mindset I had going into my sophomore year of college.
I had recovered my body “enough” to make the club soccer team as a practice player my first season.
Then COVID hit.
I wouldn’t have a sophomore season.
I was upset and really wanted that time to prove myself on the pitch and in practice.
But subconsciously my body knew something my mind didn’t.
I wasn’t prepared for the season to come.
I wasn’t in the gym.
I didn’t want to train my body.
I was tired of rehab.
But why?
Who was running the show?
FLASH FORWARD
It’s junior year.
I’m on the team.
I’m proving myself useful.
But, I’m de-conditioned, weak and stiff.
Why?
I didn’t strength train nor did I know anything about mobility training.
WHAT HAPPENED
Every week in both my junior and senior year it was a miracle if I didn’t injure myself to the point where I had to stop playing.
In hindsight, I should have stopped but I didn’t let myself.
I pushed through a lot of pain.
I leaned into the injury-prone identity, consciously and subconsciously.
I would show up to practice after a weekend of games and have 2-3 minor injuries.
These soft injuries would nag me the rest of the week and into the next weekend of games.
I did nothing to fix them.
Maybe I rolled my quads, iced and rested.
Which does nothing.
I did this for at least 6-9 months for 2 consecutive years.
Playing with pain, and not doing what I needed to do.
It’s not like I didn’t know the answers.
I knew how to take care of my body.
I had just spent the last 4 years learning how to train properly.
Why after recovering for so many years, did I not see the importance of Strength and Mobility training?
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
My ego and my injury-prone identity were running the show.
I wouldn’t have admitted to my injury-proneness is college and actually if you had asked me it might have ticked me off.
But my subconscious mind (also known as the ego) was doing everything in its power to help me survive by seeing that my injury-prone identity got maintained.
Why?
When you are rewarded for your athletic abilities and physical strength you experience suffering when those attributes begin to disappear or fade away.
My identity was based on these traits and is threatened with collapse.
I was deriving my identity from a mental image of an athlete (a concept of who I was).
When I got injured this concept collapsed.
This identity rooted in my ego, fought to survive because once the ego has an identity it does not want to let it go.
The person who I perceived myself to be, the person who I had always known I was, had died the day I got injured.
Who would I become?
THE INJURED ONE
I became the injured one.
Being only 14 when I first tore my ACL, I didn’t have the awareness to understand that my athletic identity was not my true self.
This said, my ego was running the show.
The subconscious mind (ego) had decided to cling to my new illness (injury) because it had become the most important part of who I perceived myself to be.
As Eckart Tolle says “The ego in search of a stronger identity can and does create illnesses in order to strengthen itself through them” (A New Earth)
Little did I know my ego would do this for the next 8 years…
BACK TO THE STORY
Why after recovering for so many years, did I not see the importance of Strength and Mobility training?
I wasn’t strength training because my ego was trying to survive in the new role it had adopted.
Injured.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of my weak and stiff body, it’s that the voice inside my head was telling me stories that made it easier for me to rest in my off days then get back in the gym.
This might be something that you can relate to.
You have the awareness but a part of you just won’t get you to do the right thing.
My ego was in the driver’s seat and my intuition (self-trust) was being dragged behind the accelerating car.
Without my intuition in the driver’s seat, my ego maintained this role throughout my entire college soccer career.
Every week I was playing with a nagging injury and didn’t do anything to fix them.
I didn’t know how, didn’t spend the time learning, and couldn’t get myself to a space where I was observing myself and my behaviors.
WHAT CHANGED?
I graduated college a year ago.
One day, after 4 months of trusting my ego in a new job, I finally listened to my intuition.
I am not sure why in that moment the universe told me to trust myself, but it did.
I quit my job, and went inward.
I had been in chronic knee pain for 8 years at this point.
4 years in high school to recover from 3 ACL surgeries (8th grade, sophomore year HS, and junior year HS).
And another 4 years not taking care of my body because I was trapped in an injury identity.
I had 2 months without a job and all I would do was lay in bed and cry.
Seriously.
I was in pain both mentally and physically.
I didn’t know who I was.
I was sick of being injured.
I was sick of being ANGRY.
I thought I was an athlete, but after serious meditation, I realized I hadn’t known who I was ever.
That big insight aside (maybe another story) I was still in physical pain.
THE SPARK
I quit that job and didn’t know who I was.
The only other job I’d ever had was coaching soccer (an addition to my athletic identity) so, I hit up a head coach in the area and had a meeting.
I was interviewing for a coaching position for the fall.
This man went by Cookie.
Yeah, I know, Cookie?
Anyway, I am talking with Cookie and he asks me about my past experience.
I tell him my years of coaching experience and how it stemmed from a young age because I was always on the sidelines observing.
He asked why, and I told him the story of my injured self.
He shocked me with 5 words.
“Have you heard of Knees-over-toes-guy?”
“No”, I replied.
We finished our conversation, he offered me another on-field interview and I went home.
I followed my intuition again.
Fell down a rabbit hole of ATG and Knees Over Toes Guy.
I knew only one thing: I had to get out of pain.
The rest?
Well you know the rest.
I quickly became a certified personal trainer and L1 ATG coach.
I got out of chronic knee pain for the first time in 8 years.
I gained tremendous strength and have more mobility and flexibility than I’ve ever had.
I feel great, and have picked up a few new sports.
I started my own business called Actualized Athletics to provide a safe and judgement-free space for athletes to gain clarity about what’s holding them back.
I’ve trained youth to professional athletes.
AND it’s been less than 9 months since THE SPARK.
Welcome to my life.
I am so excited to share more about who I am and who I want to become.
With love,
Iz Quane