by Chris Norton
My first day at Barwis Methods, I had a two-hour appointment. I’d hoped to work with Mike Barwis, but he was in Florida training the New York Mets and wouldn’t return until February. My first workout with two of his trainers went well, and the atmosphere, while intense, seemed friendly. The music blared loud, and the walls were littered with jerseys from professional athletes who trained at the gym.
Also displayed on the walls was an array of quotes, like the one from General George S. Patton next to a gigantic American flag. “May God have mercy on my enemies, because I won’t.”
My favorite Mike Barwis quote, “If the people we work with today mean more to us than ourselves, we will be good at our jobs,” embodied what he and the family-like atmosphere of the gym was all about. The gym drew people of varying ages and performance levels, so the facility exuded a busy and enthusiastic vibe. After a quick glance around, I spotted some professional athletes, some disabled people like myself, and even some average athletes.
The trainers first tested my range of motion and strength as I lay on a mat table. It became routine to start there and perform various exercises to isolate different muscles in order to strengthen them. I pressed down against the pressure of the trainer’s hand with each foot ten times, and then I pushed my toes up against the pressure of the trainer’s hand. We did similar exercises with my quads, hamstrings, hip flexors, and eventually all the muscle groups.
After the mat exercises, we tackled the squat rack where I was placed in a harness attached to a weight suspension system that assisted in keeping me upright. The system took weight off my body, so I didn’t have to squat my full body weight, which I was unable to do at the time. I started with fifty pounds and was slowly lowered to forty-five pounds. The trainers instructed me to squat below ninety degrees, a very deep and difficult squat for me. In addition, I had to stand in the correct position—upright with my hips underneath me—before going back down for another repetition. My legs began to burn after four sets of squats. We wrapped the session with a fifteen-yard walk using a walker. I was used to walking on a firm surface like tile or a track, and the turf floor covering turned the routine exercise into a challenge, making my ankles work extra hard to stabilize my body.
Once home, I followed up with a biking session, worked with my Bioness hand stimulator, and did balancing exercises with Emily before bed. I practiced free balancing (not holding or touching anything) to see how long I could stand before falling over, and I only managed five seconds before Emily had to grab me. Between the gym’s emphasis on technique and the turf walking exercise, I went to sleep knowing I was in the right place to progress and help me achieve my goals.
On my second day in Michigan, I was assigned to a new trainer, Mike Rhoades, who was extremely knowledgeable but new to neurological training. The session didn’t go as well as I wanted, and I became frustrated with myself. Later that night, after a day spent allowing doubt to fester, I questioned my decision to move to Michigan. Was it the right place? Would I ever be able to walk again? Had I set an unattainable goal? Would I get better? Would I let others and myself down by not walking? I stewed in uncertainty and fear.
“What’s wrong?” Emily asked. Obviously, she could tell I was troubled.
Worry jelled into frustration. “I just want to beat this,” I said, frustrated to the point of tears.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep, Emily suggested I try walking from the kitchen into the bedroom. I used my unsettled emotions to fuel my walk to bed, walking so well we did it a second time, my best walk yet. Satisfied and encouraged to keep working, I banished the fear and fell into an exhausted sleep.
* * *
“My heart sank. In that moment I knew I was going to do everything that I could to help him reach his goals. I believed in him and knew he would accomplish anything he set his mind to.”
~ Emily Summers, Chris’s girlfriend
* * *
The next day of training went better. Every single transition I’d made since the injury took time and patience to adjust to, and with that in mind, I resigned to let things happen and not get stressed. By the second week, my trainer figured out how my body responded to different positions and exercises, and our time together went much smoother.
However, a urinary tract infection caused my body to weaken and spasm, minimizing my gains. Despite the setback, my squats were down to thirty-five pounds of assistance instead of forty-five to fifty pounds, I started a new leg press machine called the shuttle, my walking improved, and I could balance with Emily for a maximum of five to ten seconds before completely losing my balance.
On January 11, a phone call woke me early in the morning. “Hello?” I said, my voice groggy from sleep.
“Hey, buddy,” Dad said, as if calling at the crack of dawn were normal. “How are you doing? ”
“Good. What’s up?” Something must be wrong. He would never call me this early unless he had something important to tell me. Please no deaths...
After a deep breath, Dad said, “Mom’s doing just fine, and she’ll be okay, but we had to bring her to the emergency room last night, and she had a stent put in her artery.”
“Mom had a heart attack?”
“Yes. She’s in the ICU recovering.”
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard, and I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was thank God my mom was alive. I never would have expected my extremely health conscious mom to suffer a heart attack. My dad assured me I didn’t need to go home and that she’d be okay. I hated that I was so far away, and I desperately wanted to see her and be there for her, but my dad insisted I stay put. With his assurance that Mom would want me to stay, I remained in Michigan and continued with therapy, checking on her every day by phone.
I saw a massage therapist at the conclusion of the second week because the workouts caused my muscles to stiffen and become so sore I could barely lift my head off the pillow. The massage helped loosen my muscles, time eased my worries, and the third week of training went even better than the second. My body responded well to the therapy and my trainer and I were in sync with what was needed to make greater strides in my progress.
By the end of week three, I was able to tolerate three and four hours of therapy at a time, and I improved significantly. I was down to squatting with the assistance of fifteen to twenty pounds, I increased the number of resistance bands when using the shuttle, and I was able to walk twenty-five yards instead of fifteen yards with a walker before taking a break.
Emily and I enjoyed our time together and the weeks flew by, but it didn’t take long for me to become concerned about the amount of time she spent tending to my needs. She never complained or made me feel like a burden, but her life revolved around me 24/7, and I felt guilty for keeping her from her passion of working with at-risk children and others in need. She routinely mentored eight or more kids, her phone constantly rang with calls from kids who needed to talk to her, and yet her life took a back seat to mine, and it couldn’t go on forever. I loved her too much to stifle her dreams while reaching for my own, so I hoped and prayed an opportunity would present itself in Michigan where Emily could utilize her life’s passion and feel fulfilled.
Our prayers were answered after a meeting with the director of development at Barwis Methods to discuss how we could help their First Step Foundation. When we learned they had another foundation called Athletic Angels helping at-risk children through mentoring, athletic, and academic opportunities, Emily turned to me wide-eyed, thrilled beyond belief they had an organization to benefit those she loved to serve. She had to get involved. The next day, after a three-hour conversation with Mike Barwis about why he started the foundation and how they could benefit more children, Emily was offered the opportunity to help expand and grow Athletic Angels!
With my concerns for Emily abated and my mom on the mend, I saw even greater improvement in week four of training than in week three. I squatted with no weight assistance, brought my hips underneath me much
easier, added more resistance bands on the shuttle, and walked a forty-five yard straightaway while raising my legs higher with my steps. Things were coming along. While Emily helped me walk to bed, I was able to take a step with her using one arm to hang onto me, and balancing in the twenty to thirty second time range.
Fortunately, during our short time at Barwis Methods, we made friends through our time at the gym, and we even got to hang out and attend the Detroit Pistons vs. Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game.
By February 2, I felt really strong. I tolerated more sets and repetitions of mat exercises, went right from those exercises to the leg press machine and cranked out four sets of ten reps, and went straight to walking. Instead of fatiguing and my energy and strength slipping at the end of the workout, I excelled. Emily and I walked 150 yards with a walker after my session. I couldn’t believe how well I’d performed on a Monday.
Tuesday went great too. I squatted with no weight assistance with improved positioning. My walking typically struggled after squats, but this time my walking felt its best. I walked twenty-five yards without a break at the end of my session and in a faster time than before. That night, we timed my balancing at a minute, forty-five seconds. Encouraged by my progress, I tried again for two minutes, and made it four! I was shocked and beyond excited about how far I’d come in such a short amount of time. By the end of the week, I’d walked fifty yards.
The following Monday, the trainer let me squat without the harness. I would get as low as I could with my squat, but without the help of the harness, I would hit a point where the nerve signal would just turn off and my legs would give out. Whenever I got to the point in my squats where my legs gave out, one of my trainers stood behind me to break my fall until I regained the connection. A second later, I shot back up to standing. The point of the exercise was to get my body used to squatting lower and to gradually lower the spot where I would lose the nerve connection.
On “Walking Wednesday,” I tried to walk five more yards than the previous week. We decided I might as well walk sixty yards, which I accomplished, but it took an hour and ten minutes. I was dead on my feet after and still had two more hours of training. After working on my upper body for one hour, I finished my session on the shuttle with a record number of resistance bands. After four hours in therapy, I was exhausted.
The next day, I squatted again without a harness, and went lower and slower than the day before. My first three sets were so strong, they put on a ten pound weight vest for my fourth set and I still did really well. I was amazed by my progress. Later that week, needing a break, Emily and I hung out with fellow gym member, Claudia, and her mom, Deb. We went out to dinner and played cards with them after.
I had my best day on the leg press on a Monday in mid-February, pushing more weight and needing less assistance than ever. I remained strong through the four sets, though fatigue usually settled in on the last two. I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows when, while walking, I struggled to go twenty yards and then fell. My trainer and I typically talked trash and teased each other throughout my workouts, but I got to the point where I was so angry about my performance that he noticed and backed off the banter. I always shielded my true feelings of disappointment whenever I was having a bad day, especially during workouts, but there wasn’t any way to mask my frustration.
I couldn’t accept bad days because every day was so important for me in reaching my goal. The fear of plateauing lurked in the back of my mind at all times and pushed me harder in my recovery. On bad days, it felt as if I’d reached a plateau, indicating my recovery was over. Fortunately, that never happened and I always bounced back stronger, but I was in such a vulnerable state that the logic of having an off day didn’t matter. It kept me hungry for the next workout. Even though I’d had my best day on the leg press, walking was most important, and my performance sent me spiraling downward. I put a lot of pressure on myself to get one small step closer to my goal every day. Mercifully, each time I took a step back, I ended up taking two or three steps forward, so with that in mind, I accepted the fall as a molehill and not a mountain.
Tuesdays and Thursdays were squat days. Growing up and prior to my injury I hated squats. I was bad at them, mostly because during my growth years, I had Osgood-Schlatter, a disease that caused inflammation in the bone, cartilage, and/or tendons of my legs. I suffered through a lot of pain from OSD my eighth grade and freshman years of high school—the same time when weightlifting became an integral ingredient for improvement in sports. The slightest touch had me wincing in pain.
For spring baseball, I had to put a sweatshirt under my knee for kneeled throws in order to minimize the pain. Squats were excruciating, but I did them because I wanted to be the guy who fought through the pain and never sat out. Doing one-legged squats for two years on my left leg caused a major strength imbalance, which meant I lagged behind everyone else in squat strength, and my form was awful. While attempting to alleviate the pain, I caved my right knee inward to limit the pressure and shifted all my weight to the left side, a habit that continued once the pain went away.
Doing squats at Barwis Methods Training Center felt normal, as if I were able-bodied. Exercises where I could see improvement in my strength and movement made me feel great, while exercises where I couldn’t tangibly see strength or movement improvement were frustrating. I felt defeated whenever I couldn’t activate a muscle group, no matter how hard I tried. I knew I had to start somewhere, and I needed to work on my weaknesses, but it was mentally hard to muddle through when things weren’t going well. I performed best with a balance of exercises where I could excel on some and challenge myself with others.
The squats on the day after my walking fiasco went very well. I went low and held for three seconds before coming up, did two sets without weight, and completed the last two sets with a weight vest. The next day, “Walking Wednesday,” I had a four-hour workout session where I knew my walking endurance would be tested. I was nervous due to how poorly I’d performed on Monday. Each week, I walked farther, and the idea of walking farther than last week seemed impossible. With God’s help, I walked the full length of the turf in the gym, a total of sixty-five yards, with only two short standing breaks, and no sit-down breaks, in a total time of forty minutes. The prior week, I walked five yards less in seventy minutes, a marked improvement that really lifted my spirits.
Right after my session, Emily and I left for the airport to fly to Moline, Illinois, where Emily’s family picked us up so I could speak the next day to more than twelve hundred North Scott High School students. During my last semester of school, I turned down many speaking requests in order to concentrate on school and enjoy my remaining months as a student. Despite feeling nervous because I hadn’t spoken in months, it felt natural to speak again, and I received tremendous feedback from both the students and the administrators. The next day, my nerves spiked again when I spoke for an hour to a Des Moines Area Community College facility at Newton where my dad worked. Fortunately, I once again received great feedback, including from a man who told me he’d heard hundreds of motivational speakers, and my speech was one of the best he’d ever heard.
I then spoke to four hundred sixth graders in Ankeny, Iowa, where every year the teachers presented my story during their lesson on heroes. The kids were great listeners, and the wonderful experience reinforced my desire to spend my life impacting others.
Our SCI CAN fundraiser was held in Des Moines at Prairie Meadows Events Center the following day. The program was well received by the packed house of four hundred guests. We raised $70,000 and gave some of it away in scholarships to benefit kids with disabilities. We flew back to Detroit on February 23rd in order to shoot the First Step Foundation’s video with a director from Los Angeles. Emily, in her official role, helped coordinate the shoot.
By February 24, I was up to five sets of squats with a ten-pound weight vest, a feat that seemed impossible only a month before. That day, five minutes into my unassisted s
tanding, Emily said, “Keep going. Mike Barwis is coming over.”
I was told there was a chance I’d train with Mike on the twenty-fourth, and I was anxious to work with him. Because he’d been so busy, I hadn’t really seen him over the first six or seven weeks in Michigan. I really wanted to show him my progress and have him update my program. Quickly regaining my composure, I stood really well, and felt encouraged when Mike cheered me on. I ended up standing for seven-and-a-half minutes. Mike was so impressed he started working with me on the spot. He wanted to evaluate my progress and see what new strength I’d gained, exactly as I’d hoped. He said he’d stay with me for thirty minutes, but he ended up staying for an hour and a half and missing his video shoot with pro athletes.
Mike was really impressed with how far I’d come and told me exactly what I needed to do in order to walk without the walker. He instructed me to work more on my glutes and to stand more upright so I wouldn’t rely on my quad strength. He also told me to focus on my abductors and external rotators, writing up a list of ten different exercises for me to work on using those muscles. Blessed with the eye to know exactly what I needed to be able to walk again, Mike wanted nothing more than for me to get rid of the walker and move unassisted. He showed me what I was doing wrong and said that I was at the point where I needed to change to the correct walking form if I wanted to meet my goal.
Knowing he was the expert and that his advice was spot on didn’t alleviate my fears. I knew it would be difficult to make the changes he wanted because I’d been compensating for my weaker muscles and relying on the walker for too long, forming bad habits. I’d neglected the muscles that needed the most work in order to take the next step and stop using the walker. I had to change up my workout and get out of my comfort zone if I wanted to achieve my goal.
