Step One

Every journey has a first step. This is mine.

I share why I'm starting this show, who it's for, and what I believe about the coaches and clinicians who give everything to the people they serve and forget about themselves. I talk about what it took to get here - including waking up in an ICU in 2023 with a 50/50 shot at making it out alive - and why I believe someone has to go first and show the scars before others feel safe enough to do the same.

If you listen to this episode and finish with a reason to keep going, even though you're exhausted, then it'll have done its job.

And if it serves you, stick around because you're in the right place, my friend.

Links:

Book a free consult call with me: https://calendly.com/unbreakablestrengthonline/firestarter-call-1

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Trying to get consistent with your own training? Get a free copy of the Consistency Catalyst guide: https://unbreakablestrength.kit.com/cac1abf5af

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jared.unbreakable/

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Follow me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unbreakablestrength1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Jared Maynard. I'm a physical therapist, strength coach, and in 2023 I was lying in an ICU on a ventilator with a 50-50 chance of making it out alive. I made it out. And what I learned on the other side of that and through that process changed everything about how I coach, how I live, and what I believe is possible for people who keep showing up. This show explores strength, surrender, and the courage to keep going when life gets hard. This show is meant to be your companion on the road as you keep showing up for yourself. This is Unbreakable. Welcome to episode one of Unbreakable with me, your host, Jared Maynard. Now, I have been involved with podcasts for a number of years. I've mostly been a guest on podcasts, but I have co-hosted a number. So why am I starting my own now? Well, going back about a month, I was at a business event in Miami and I went up to my mentor to ask him a question about my vision for Unbreakable, the ecosystem, what I wanted to create and have Unbreakable turn into. And before I could even ask him the question, he looks at me and asks, why don't you have your own podcast yet? And that kind of stuck with me longer than I thought that it would. Having my own podcast was something that I knew I was being drawn to for quite some time. I had reasons for why I wasn't starting it yet at other priorities, wasn't in the right place, on and on it went. And none of those, none of those reasons are good enough anymore. And I've been told by a number of people recently and also over the years that podcasting is where I belong. Uh not because I have a face for podcasting. You can see me and hear me, unless you're just listening on audio, in which case you're spared the bald glory that is my visage. Um but uh it's I've also been told that people really get value from these longer form conversations. Maybe, maybe it's the late night FM smooth jazz voice. And I am mad about that part. Um so as I did some some thinking and soul searching, especially after that event, I realized that now's the time. And when I put out a question in my mentorship group and put up a post on social media to get people's input on the name and seeing what they thought, uh, there was the results were overwhelming and a resounding yes. You should have done this yesterday, Jared. So here we are. Now I'm gonna come at the gate and tell you this right now. My inner perfectionist is crying. Um I just told you that I've been involved with podcasting for a long time, so you might think this is sort of second nature at this point. And in some ways, yeah. But this is also a new endeavor. And as a recovering perfectionist, a recovering control freak, a lifelong high performer, and someone who's really grappling, wrestling, with being in a phase of life where I'm I'm being told all the more clearly that, hey, that control that you love so much, you never really had it. And I'm being asked to let go. I'm kind of speaking vaguely, but we'll talk more about it as we go today and in general through this show. But I want to let you know that uh this is gonna be, if nothing else, this is going to be honest. This is going to be imperfect. I have an idea for where this show goes, but the path is not clear, uh, both metaphorically and literally, because I'm legally blind and dealing with a progressive incurable blinding disease. And all of that is kind of the point. Going, even though I can't see the full road yet. That's the point. And that's what this show is meant to do and help you with in your life. So buckle up, enjoy, enjoy the ride and the mess, because yeah, you can just you can just imagine that my inner perfectionist is screaming and squirming inside. The other point to that, to going first and doing it when it's imperfect is that uh one of my favorite fantasy authors in one of his books had a character say that someone has to go first. And I'm willing to be that person. I'm willing to be the person to show you my scars, my screw-ups, my lessons, and give you the permission to share yours. Because sometimes all we need is the example of somebody else. Sometimes all we need is the permission and the borrowed belief from somebody else to make us think maybe we're gonna be okay too. And maybe, just maybe, you can take that step that you know you need to. So, who is this show for? Really, this show is a love letter to the coaches and clinicians out there. You know who you are. If you are exceptional at taking care of everybody else, but you're running on fumes, and you're also really good at pushing your own needs and wants aside. This is for you. This is gonna be a place where, whether you are a coach or clinician, or even if you're not, um, I told you this show is gonna be honest, and it will be. That means that we're going to dig into familiar topics, training, rehab, patient care, exercise, physiology principles, psychology, the stuff that you're probably like, yeah, give me that. It's coming. It's also going to dig into topics that you're probably not comfortable with. Grief, loss, wrestling with your identity when the things that you derived worth from, when you don't have those anymore. Um and it's going to focus on those because I believe they're important. They've been important for me, as I've talked about them and shared them with other people, the more that I see the need for us all to be honest with ourselves and with each other and to have more of us say, hey, you're not alone. I'm here too. So if any of that is resonating, if you are that high performer, you are that person who wants to get better, and maybe you're just hurting, maybe it's physical, maybe you're dealing with injury or pain, maybe it's new, maybe it's been around for a long time. Or you're just exhausted. Not just in the way of I could sleep for 12 hours, but I'm talking about the exhaustion that's that lives in your bones when you've been in survival mode for a long time. Maybe you're dealing with inner pain and grief because you don't know who you are anymore. Maybe you don't know if what you're going through right now will get better. You're in the right place. Because I've been there. I still am there some days. And that's another point of this show. I am not coming at you as the person who's on the other side of all of it and saying, hey, it gets better. Keep going, bro. I'm not the big old smiling poster child for it. I'm coming at you having been on the other side of a lot of things, but also still walking through the fire with many others. Someone who's earned his scars, many of which I didn't ask for, and I have anyway. And I will be the first one to show you them and what I've learned through them. So that maybe the scars that you have, or the scars that life will give you, maybe they'll hurt a little bit less. And maybe it'll be enough to keep you going. Because at the end of the day, that's what I think matters the most. I think that it's worth it. And my intent, my goal for this show is to be, to have this feel like you're walking with somebody on the road. Cause when you got an extra extra set of shoulders to carry a burden, things feel lighter. You know what I mean? So some of you may know me, but even if you if you whether you do or don't, here's where I'm coming from. Cause maybe some of this sounds a little grandiose, uh, a little melodramatic. But I grew up as a fat kid. I was beyond pleasantly plump. And the other kids at school made sure that I knew about it. I distinctly remember being in second and third grade and being made fun of by some of the other kids for my lunches, for being different, for being fat. And I was, I was only ever thinking about when the kids were picking teams for sports at gym class or at recess. The only question in my mind was, am I going to be picked last or second last? Do the kids like me less than that other kid that I know they don't like? That was the story that I was being told about my importance in the world, as far as we experienced it in school. And I believed it. I internalized that story. And when it came time for summer break, when all the other kids in the in the neighborhood were outside playing sports with each other, enjoying the beautiful weather, as kids should do, I was in the basement watching TV. I didn't have the words for it at the time, but I had decided in my kid logic that if the other kids were going to reject me, if I didn't feel safe, if I wasn't welcome, then I just wasn't going to be around the other kids anymore. And the TV couldn't judge me. TV didn't give a damn if I was fat or if I was the best player on the team for whatever we were playing. Now my parents saw what was going on, and God bless them, they wanted to do something about it. So we tried different sports. Nothing stuck until we found Kung Fu. Could have been because your boy's a millennial. I grew up watching Mighty Moore from Power Rangers. I desperately wanted to be the Red Ranger. The Green Ranger is the best one, objectively. But still, I wanted to be the Red Ranger. Um, it could have been because I got to hit people and nobody got me in trouble because of it. Um but the other part that changed my world is that I went from a place of feeling unsafe to being given the tools to protect myself and to know that I could protect myself. If you've ever been in a situation in your life where you felt unsafe and someone has given you the ability to protect yourself, you know how how massive of a difference that makes. That completely changes everything for you, right? The other part that I didn't know I was looking for or that I needed was that this was the first experience that I ever had of being part of a community that accepted me. And that welcomed me in and didn't base my worth off of how I looked, what I could do or couldn't do, what my belt color was. We were all just trying to get better. And I found confidence in that community and in myself. To the point where now not only was I welcome in the community, but I was also being asked and invited up to the advanced classes to learn weapons and advanced techniques, and then also I was asked to be part of the demonstration team. Went out in the community and we were demonstrating our forms in our full gear at malls, at parks. Basically, the school tried to make us look as cool as humanly possible to get more people to join our school. Think about that for a second. Going from the bottom rung of the social ladder to now being an example that people are pointing to and saying, hey, come be like us. This was transformative for me. And this was the catalyst that I needed to have the audacity to think that maybe I could actually break out of this box that I had been put in before and that I had allowed myself to be put in. So that led to football in high school, which I played for three seasons. I was not a great player. Excuse me. I couldn't catch a pass to save my life. Was it the vision? Much less so than it is now, but it's possible. But I worked hard. And I started every game that I played in those three seasons. Excuse me. And then between the second and third season, grade 11, grade 12, or junior and senior year, the coaching staff took us out at the end of junior year, grade 11, and did a bunch of fitness testing. The only rule was that when we came back for summer camp in a couple months, if we were better than how we tested at the end of the previous school year, we got to play. Because that meant that we cared enough about the team and about our performance that we trained through the summer, and that was all they required. So that is what led me to my parents' basement to start lifting weights with a dusty old bodybuilding book and some free weights and some machines they had down there. And that was my next hit of confidence. Where now I started to see myself change. Physically, I got to lift more weight. I got to see myself add a little bit of muscle. And especially at that age, 16, 17, 18, you know, getting attention from girls was a big priority for me. So being able to see that progress, that was addictive. The confidence was addictive. So once football finished, I was now no longer on the field practicing for two hours a day, five days a week. So I stayed in the gym. And that continued through undergrad. That led me to train for natural bodybuilding. I never competed. That was it's a whole story that uh we'll get into another time, but it wasn't the right fit. Lots of love for bodybuilding was not the fit for me. So powerlifting became my rebound girlfriend. And this all takes us to the beginning of 2023, which at the time I had been training for, I don't know, 16 years, I think. I am a powerlifter after all, so forgive me if my math is not sharp. But after getting sick in the middle of cold and flu season, didn't think much of it, my my daughters and my wife had the same sickness, supposedly. A week later they were better and I wasn't. So over the course of about three weeks, I started feeling worse, like a really, really bad flu. I went to go see my family doctor because I had insomnia for the first time in my life. Also, really bad sinus pressure. So we thought it was a sinus infection. Antibiotics weren't touching it though. And after that appointment, I kept getting worse, and my lymph nodes in my neck and my shoulders swelled to the point where it's not, we're not talking about when you're sick and you feel under your jaw and you're like, oh, that's that's pretty swollen. I'm talking about a topographical map level of bumping down my neck into my shoulders, which I'd never experienced before, but something was very wrong. So we went to a small, a small hospital because we live out in the middle of nowhere. And the doctor in the ER diagnosed me as having mononucleosis, which was really strange to hear, because I got made fun of in high school for supposedly having mono, the kissing disease. I never had it. My friends were just jerks. I love them. They were jerks, though. Um and I didn't know how I got it, but the doc prescribed some sleeping medication and away we went. Three days later, it was another sleepless night at about 5 a.m. or so. I was sitting at the kitchen table looking and feeling absolutely miserable. My wife was up with me, and she looks over at me and says, You're yellow. The whites in my eyes were yellow, so was my skin. And we both thought, shit. We knew this was bad. And while I don't deal with liver failure often, as a physical therapist and strength coach, I know enough to recognize when it's happening. To me, of all people. So we got some child care and drove further to a larger hospital because we knew we needed the resources. I just spent a little bit of time recapping, you know, my my life's journey, a large chunk of which at this point had been spent in a body that I could trust to do really cool things, I could trust to be strong, and could trust to endure because I built it up to be that way. In that hospital parking lot outside of the ER, with the doors about 20 to 30 feet away from the van where my wife parked. I seriously questioned about halfway through whether I could keep walking and make it to the doors. Or if my wife was going to need to go get a wheelchair to bring me the rest of the way. The nurse, when she took my blood pressure and heart rate, told me that my heart rate was clocking around 200 beats per minute after just walking from the van. My blood pressure was spiked. And after registering, I told the other nurse that I was about to pass out, and I very nearly did. It then began the six-day marathon from hell where my memory starts to go spotty because the delirium was setting in from the mononucleosis. There was something else going on too. This wasn't just mono. There was a consistent stream of nurses and doctors and specialists coming into my room and out trying to figure out what's going on. They moved me and my wife from the ER to short stay. And we're trying to just get a handle on what was happening while my body was starting its downward spiral. My wife told me later that the scariest day of her life was in that hospital, seeing her big, strong husband, six feet, 194 pounds, bearded, but you know, could lift some heavy weight. So helpless and incapacitated that he couldn't even get up out of bed and go to the bathroom by himself. She had no idea how she was going to break the news to our daughters, two of whom, our twins, had turned five the day after I was admitted to the ER. My wife became a single mom overnight. And as we found out, through that marathon from hell, I had something called HLH, which is a rare hyperinflammatory syndrome. It was described to me as an autoimmune. Disease, but it's not a true autoimmune disease. But it's when the body's immune system gets so ramped up that it attacks healthy cells, especially red blood cells. And it can be triggered by genetics, which wasn't the case for me, or a different autoimmune disease, a cancer, or a viral infection. I was lucky door number three. And HLH has a mortality rate of between 50 and 75%. At best, I had a coin flip chance of making it back home to my wife and to my daughters. I was on life support for five weeks. Ventilator, dialysis, kidney failure, liver failure. And my medical team was trying everything they could do, everything that was in their power to treat the HLH, which was triggered by the mononucleosis, which was triggered in turn by influenza A. And still, I was getting worse. About three or so weeks into my five weeks on life support, they had tried the last treatment. And my hematologist told my parents that there was nothing else they could do, and that they should start getting ready to say goodbye to me that we can't tell you exactly what changed. After all of the treatment had been given and the response was not what they were looking for, an end-of-life care was now on the table. I can just tell you that a lot of prayer is being offered by a lot of people around the world. And miraculously, I started to stabilize. The same doctors and nurses who had seen me all the way through the tailspin to the point where the end was very clearly nearing didn't have an explanation for why or how I stabilized at that point the way I did. So they were the ones who gave me the nickname Miracle Man later. But I did not suddenly get better and everybody clapped. When I woke up, I woke up in someone else's body. I couldn't speak, I couldn't breathe on my own, and I was so weak that I was completely dependent on others for everything. I could not stand up to get out of bed if my life depended on it. I couldn't even hold my iPhone above my face because my fingers were too weak. This began the long climb. Because even though I was a physical therapist and a coach, and I was the one that people came to who was supposed to know the road to recovery. It didn't mean jack shit for me. Because it's always different when it's you. Doesn't have to be a medical crisis like I went through. It's just always different when it's you. So my road, my road out of the ICU was not short. It was not linear. It was not easy. It was grueling physically because I had not been that dependent on other people since I was about two years old. So I had to relearn how to walk on my own. Before walking, I had to learn how to even sit up and not pass out, how to stand, how to take steps with assistance, with people, with walkers. I had to learn how to swallow, chew and swallow ice chips because all those muscles in your throat, if you don't eat, eat, swallow, drink, or speak for five weeks, they do what every other muscle does and they atrophy. But beyond all of the physical rehab, which I don't want to gloss over because it was a lot, the mental, the mental road back was just as treacherous. And it was the most profound experience of grief I had had to that point. I've since been even further acquainted with grief, because like I mentioned earlier, I am legally blind, and I have a different rare genetic, incurable disease called choroidureemia or CHM, which wasn't supposed to make me this blind until much later in life, but surprise. So through that journey in the hospital, the three and a half months or so in the hospital, and the even longer process out of the hospital, I had to wrestle with all this. And even though I made it out of the ICU, I was wheeled out of the hospital to go home. The old Jared died there. He never came back. That version of me that was self-sufficient, that was proud of what he'd accomplished as a physical therapist, as a business owner, as a husband, as a father. When I woke up in the ICU bed, he was gone. And I had to wrestle with that for a long time. Part of what that taught me is that life sometimes will take away things and make us put down identities that weren't bad. They were really good. But they're gone. And it'll hand us something different that we didn't ask for. And putting down the past is really difficult. But it's necessary. Because if you're gripping too tightly to the past and it's not coming back, all it does is anchor you down. And it stops you from being able to move forward. To become the kind of person that you want to be, or at least that you need to be now. You have to put down what once was to make room in your hands for what is next to start building. So I started building. And it wasn't easy, it wasn't quick, it was not clean, it was messy, it hurt. It hurt a lot. It still does. In a lot of ways. My wife and daughters and my parents were in the crowd. The same people that saw the whole process and saw me at my worst, they were there. And not only did I have a perfect day, even though I was in a body that hadn't regained all of its strength back, but I deadlifted a lifetime PR of 501 pounds. Not a post-illness PR, not a post-hospital PR, a lifetime PR. And I did it again three months later with 507 pounds. This is why I'm here doing what I'm doing. Here on the mic with you now, it's also why I'm I'm doing what I am in unbreakable strength coaching. And really at the core of what I believe, I believe that people, that you are more capable of coming back after everything falls apart than you think you are. I don't believe that it takes a medical crisis for that to be true. I also don't believe that being able to come back again and come back stronger means that it doesn't hurt right now. I believe that it hurts a lot. And I still believe that you can get up again. Sometimes we think our we think that we don't. We make ourselves believe that we we shouldn't ask for help or we shouldn't receive help because I went to school for this. I help other people do this. Why can't I do it for myself, whether it's injury or recovery or consistency with your training or rehab or anything else in life? I believe that for a long time. It's a lie. Why would you think you are any less worthy or deserving of help than the people that you help every day? You know, why are you so willing to help and jump at the opportunity to help somebody else and still fight when someone wants to offer it to you? It doesn't make sense. You are no less worthy of help than anybody else. And I'm pretty sure you got into this field to help people. So when you start receiving help, when your tank is no longer empty, all those people who are depending on you, whether it's at the clinic or at the gym or at the hospital or at home, they get more of you. And you get to change more lives. And damn it, I think the world could use more lives that are made better. As we wrap up this first episode, that's what this show is meant to do. Like I said, we're gonna talk about the nuts and bolts, the geeky, nerdy things. It's there are gonna be plenty of laughs, plenty of light moments. You're gonna see me. Uh, and I'm slightly unhinged. So that's coming. I also told you it's gonna be honest. This is what we're here for. And I still don't know exactly how this is going to go. The guests, the topics, but I'm going anyway, and I want this to be a source of comfort. I want this to be proof that you're not alone, whatever you're going through. And if you're driving to work, if you're listening to this, and you're just parking in the parking lot, and this gives you enough in the tank to just show up and go for one more day, then it will have done its job. So I'll leave you with this. You are not done yet. I believe that coming back after injury, illness, or setbacks is not linear, nor is it easy. But I do believe that it's possible to come back stronger. And sometimes that doesn't look like picking up where you left off. Sometimes coming back stronger means crying in your car and going into work after, anyway. Sometimes it looks like carrying something you never asked for and deciding to carry it anyway. Sometimes it looks like learning to live with something that's not going away or letting go of something that's not coming back and deciding to keep showing up to become the person that you want to or need to be. I will not sit here and tell you it will be easy or quick or without pain. But I will be on the road with you. And I will tell you that I believe that it's worth it, and that you're not done yet. One ask at the end of this. If you're a coach or clinician who is giving everything to everybody else and you're running on empty yourself, you are exactly who I've built Unbreakable Strength to help. The link to book a call with me in chat is in the show notes. Reach out. Let me know where you are. I'd love to see if and how we can help. Until next time, keep going, my friend.