Pandemic can’t loosen tight bond
Athlete with brain injury, trainer prevail
“Make it a great day. If you don’t? It’s your own damn fault.”
GLENDALE – OK, hold on. Before I lose you. Before you stop reading because you're weary that quote is another rah-rah-rah
(blah-blah-blah) pep talk from an eternally perky person who never has a bad day, please hold on.
Give me one minute to tell you about two men in three paragraphs:
Garrett Stangel is a personal trainer who owns one fitness gym in Glendale and opened a second in Wauwatosa on March 1. Great timing, right? He's knowledgeable, super positive, well known and also has a passion for helping everyone of all abilities. Like, fitness challenges and programs for his pre-teen daughters to adults living with multiple sclerosis. And that passion for inclusiveness led him to one really special guy.
Justin Greenwood suffered a traumatic brain injury playing college football nearly two decades ago. His field of vision has shrunk to the size of a pinhole. He has issues with his legs and balance can be a challenge. He's smart and funny, but recently a new chal
lenge has made talking really difficult, so it takes patience for him to enunciate and focus for a listener to understand what he's saying.
Both were down and out during this awful pandemic. They're so used to working out together at the gym and then, in the cruelest irony, they had to stay home … to stay healthy. With saferat-home orders that shut down non-essential businesses, including gyms, in the interest of slowing the coronavirus pandemic, Greenwood and Stangel could not train together. It left Greenwood unmotivated to do at-home workouts alone and Stangel depressed, especially when doctors, nurses and healthcare workers marched to the front lines of the fight for our health and he was left to ask, “Am I not essential?”
OK, are you still here? Because this is what happened a couple of weeks ago.
A concerned Stangel kept checking on Greenwood, and kept calling, and
calling … and Greenwood kept declining to work out alone. Stangel had enough. On a day when it was still snowing in May in Wisconsin (because why not, we love you, 2020) Stangel threw some weights, a medicine ball and a gallon of disinfectant into his car and told Greenwood: I'm coming over. We are doing this. In your yard. Separately but together.
And it began. Snowflakes powdered one workout in Greenwood's Glendale driveway. Greenwood made fun of Stangel's cold ears under a hoodie while Stangel pushed Greenwood to lift, pull and run – with compassion, but no mercy. And both men found their purpose again.
Now, that might sound dramatic. Fifty-pound kettle bell swings and haymakers with a 30-pound cinder block and a TRX strap hooked up to a frozen swing set can make that much of a difference? Well, now you're going to have to keep reading.
Greenwood, 38, played four sports in high school, but his love was football. He was an outside linebacker at UW-Eau Claire.
In a 2003 game against UW-River Falls, Greenwood said, he make a routine tackle – but after suffering a concussion and stinger in the previous game – this tackle was devastating.
“I took a little hit and they call it ‘second impact syndrome.' And it broke a
blood vessel in my brain.”
On a 42-degree Monday morning, after another grueling driveway workout with Stangel, Greenwood recalled the events that changed his life. He was fortunate that UW-River Falls had an ambulance which took him to a helicopter that led to a 7-minute flight to the hospital.
“It saved my life,” Greenwood said. But doctors and nurses could not save everything. Greenwood's traumatic brain injury (TBI) meant that his peripheral vision was gone.
“If you make a fist and look through the hole of your hand – that's how much Justin can see,” Stangel said.
Greenwood was told he might be immobile, living in a nursing home, if he survived at all. Nine years ago, he was featured in this newspaper and he said then: “I can't do what I want. It's about acceptance at this point.”
Losing his strength and coordination was not acceptable. Today, Greenwood struggles more with one leg than the other to maintain strength. He's lost some motor function with his tongue, so talking also takes effort.
But here's the thing. Athletes are really made between the ears. And Greenwood, who works at Industries for the Blind in West Allis, still has that competitive fire to push himself – especially when Stangel or the other trainers at Balance Fitness in Glendale like to
find those plateaus and push beyond them.
“He's an amazing man. I have a lot of respect for him,” Greenwood said. “He pushes me. Like a marine. He helps me work on sets.
“It was hard when you don't have to do something – it's always better to work with someone. I am held accountable. I need it for my mental sanity. I'm lost without it.” Lost.
We know that exercise, conditioning and strength training does so much for our functional fitness. And we know that activity boosts dopamine and serotonin and the feel-good endorphins that are important for our mental health.
But let's talk about what happens when people work out together, as partners, or on teams, or with groups, and especially with a certified trainer.
Stangel has a bachelor's degree in kinesiology, a master's degree in education and is also certified by the American College of Sports Medicine, ACE Fitness and other programs. He specializes in medical exercise, so he is qualified to help Greenwood twice a week when they train together to work with his TBI.
“He was pretty emaciated after being hospitalized with his injury,” Stangel said. “I only saw images of that guy. To the credit to the trainers and doctors he worked with before, he made a remarkable recovery. He had made a lot of progress and done a lot of work prior to me ever meeting him.”
Now, Stangel has Greenwood doing box jumps, gym sprints and boxing at Balance Fitness. All of that stuff is hard. Imagine doing these things while looking through a straw.
Greenwood questions Stangel sometimes: Are you sure? And then he trusts him. When it's over, he's sore and tired – and alive.
“Hell yes, I am! He pushes me,” Greenwood said. “He's the best thing that's happened to me as far as a friend and a coach, a teammate. He's my brother from another mother. I love him like family.”
Stangel hasn't laid off or furloughed any of his employees. Imagine that, when gyms are another small business that have been closed. He took a financial loss himself. And he organized Zoom workouts, like his “Stronger than MS” class, and kept pushing.
A good coach works with our limitations of age or injury or circumstance, but a great coach focuses on our potential. Stangel knows what buttons to push. He just needs to mention a quarterback snapping the ball, and an exhausted Greenwood springs in to action.
“He still sees himself as the athlete even though he no longer has the field of play,” Stangel said. “But he really uses us more as a psychological treatment. He deals with so much anxiety and depression. Just trying to keep his perspective in the right place, it's easy to understand that. He's such a dynamic personality. He just seems to have a silver lining on everything, but that's his outward persona. I think that's taken a lot of work and a lot of coaching from various sources for him to find that place.
“I try to keep him in that athletic mindset, challenging himself. Working for high outputs. Our job is to keep him feeling like the warrior that he is. And help him wipe the slate clean of all the negative thoughts that come in each day.”
Hopefully, Stangel's new 9Round gym in Wauwatosa will survive this pandemic. But on Friday morning, Stangel re-opened Balance Fitness. Greenwood was on his way over – he either gets a ride from his mom, Glenda, or takes an Uber.
And at the end of the workout, the two fall in to their ritual: Stangel: “Let's make it a great day.” Greenwood: “If you don't ...” Stangel and Greenwood: “It's your own damn fault!”