Brian Johnson broke his arm and documented his recovery through surgery, stem cell treatment, and a disciplined rehab routine. He progressed from step-back squats to one-handed planks to full burpees, hitting his goal in 3 months and 5 days instead of the planned 4.5 months. The focus: gratitude, fundamentals, and incremental optimization.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about my first burpee post surgery. I laugh at myself as I think about how much I love burpees. Yep, I'm weird and proud of it. That is like me. We've got a link to that plus one now. I promised I'd share some of the plus one incremental optimizing things I did that I think most contributed to the speedy recovery. But first and foremost, I had a great surgeon, Dr. Ryan Dellamijoria. I've received a lot of praise for his handiwork from my doctor friends who have looked at this X ray. We've got a link to it and who know a good job when they see one. Thank you, sir. And thank you ER team as well for setting my arm at the right angle. Little wobbly. They fixed that. Then there's my wifey who found Dr. D by reaching out to some friends teaching to see who they might recommend. Barry Michaels, wonderful wife for the recommendation win. Thank you, guys. And Alexandra basically hammered the whole process. Thank you, babes. And the first person we called was Ben Greenfield. As he always does, he went off on what we should do, which included a recommendation to go to Next Health, a place in Los Angeles for stem cell treatments with his friend, Dr. Darshan Shah. Thank you, Ben. So on the day of surgery, we visited Next Health and I got some stem cells. Oops. This arm. Now, I have no idea what role they played, but there was no way I was going to leave anything on the table as I wanted to not only hit my burpees again, but make sure I didn't miss a beat with our core wisdom and coaching program. Thank you, Dr. Shah. By the way. Kind of fun. I broke my arm on Friday, three days after launching our coach program. Then I showed up pre surgery the following Tuesday, had surgery on Thursday, then showed up again the following Tuesday. Got a little misty typing that as there was no way I was letting down our coaches. And of course, I used the experience as a core part of our program by creating module X antifragile response ability, AKA this is what we train for. Check out a fun picture of that session here with my arm looking about like that. By the way, too. I got that stem cell injection right before the surgery and then cadaver bone inserted into my arm during surgery. Did I mention that before? So not only did I get bionic, but I also got to experience the birth and death cycle of other humans all in the same day. Now that's all part of a longer philosophical chat, but makes me want to stroke my beard as I contemplate the inter beingness of it all. Then I had the great fortune of running into our optimized coach, Dr. Julie Beck, who has been Sing it with me. Awesome. I got tears in my eyes as I typed that as well. So that just turned into a long thank you, didn't it? Which is perfect. Well digging. Group hugs of gratitude. Remember, you gotta remember who dug our wells. We've got a link to that as well. As with all things we can be proud of, this little story started with great people. So moving on to other practical things we did, I'd say the most important variable in going from the first burpee in nine to 12 months was as the diagnosis to the three month and five days was the willingness to step back from the prognosis and say, really? Although Dr. D hammered his part of the process, he didn't know who he was dealing with. Normal distributions are interesting when thinking about statistical variance among large groups of people, and they're pretty much irrelevant when it comes to predicting where any given individual may land in that normal distribution. Especially, ahem, if that individual is me. So obviously you don't want to foolishly ignore the numbers for the sake of it, but I'm less interested in the normal distribution and much more interested in what's possible, which is where Dr. J comes back in. Now, I thought we could do it much faster and she knew we could do it faster. Enter our target of 4.5 months. Note having someone you trust believe you can do something is a huge part of self efficacy 101, aka the science of confidence. We've got a link to that +1 as well. 1 of my favorite topics. Then we got to work. Obviously my commitment to fundamentals had to play a role. I did my normal pretty dialed in eating, moving and sleeping. And Dr. J jokingly said that Dr. D's normal distribution curve was made up of people who eat McDonald's multiple times a week. And well, I kicked that habit over a decade ago. So then I simply showed up. As Teddy Roosevelt put it, do what you can with what you have where you are. Basically the day after the surgery, Maybe it was two days, I got back to my normal one plus 10 plus 100 plus 1000 plus 10,000 routine, modifying it with what I could do. Now, I couldn't do a burpee with my arm immobilized in a cast in a sling, but I could do a step back squat to my knees and then back up. So that's what I did. 10 sets of 11 every day, four weeks. Then I could do a step back to one handed plank with the fingers of my bionic arm barely touching the ground. So that's what I did. 10 sets of 11 every day for weeks. Then I could put a little pressure on the fingers of my bionic hand. So that's what I did. 10 sets of 11 every day for weeks. Only by this time, now that the bone was healed and I knew I wouldn't do any damage, I started playing with the edges of my pain, putting just a little more pressure on my hand until I could get my palm down and then putting just a little more pressure on my hand until I could actually hold some weight on that hand. Fast forward another X weeks and we're on track to hit our first burpee in 4.5 months, which is about six weeks away at that stage. From this story, I'm saying I'm sharing now. Now I'm doing my thing. I didn't even mean to do a burpee. I just felt pretty good and thought, why not just go down to plank and see if you can jump back? That worked. So I thought why not just see if you can do a little push up now? That felt a little weird, but worked. My left elbow hadn't seen much action, but the daily band work I'd been doing helped the cause. Then I jumped back up and what the. Fantastic. I just did a burpee. Then I looked at the calendar, literally counted it off. 3 months, 5 days. Plus 1. Incremental Optimizing for the win. But that's way too much about me. Today's plus one. How about you? Any times you've surprised yourself in the past? Any assumptions or diagnoses or whatever that could use some work in your life right now? Do what you can with what you have, where you are. Plus one. Plus one. Plus one. P.S. let's do this.
