Shovel some cafeteria breakfast down and run to class. I'd doze off in 1 or 2 classes, and try to do some work.

After school, I either had practice again with the high-school or gym training. Sometimes I'd be free until evening training with my club team, in which case I would fall asleep.

Even after evening training, I'd squeeze in an extra 15 minutes of juggling to finish off.

On top of all that, like most kids I enjoyed playing some FIFA before bed. So after homework and video games, I'd be in bed at midnight or later.

All in all, a recipe for injury and bodily breakdown.

My no pain no gain mindset during my teenage years drove me down a path of gradual decay and deep set stress that I believe partly led to why I started losing my hair in high-school. That combined with the workoad of getting A's and B's, I was constantly going to bed at 1AM and waking up at 6AM (so I could train before school).

Looking back, it is one of my biggest regrets that I didn't sleep better and give my body the chance to recover and upgrade from all my training. Sleep is so important, and people hear it constantly, even in the mainstream. It is where all growth occurs. It is where the brain recycles and reinforces neurological connections. It is where you burn fat, recycle old cells, and grow new tissue. Sleep must become one of your top priorities, if not the highest.

This first major injury happened during one of those morning indoor sessions on the hardwood gym floor. My body was literally on its last limbs.

I reached for a ball, and my toe caught the floor and stuck. I hyperextended my ankle and that bone on the inside of your ankle below the ankle ball (see navicular bone) erupted in agony.

I limped out in shock. I got nauseous. I had no clue what happened. No one touched me. No one pushed me off balance. There was no excuse to be made.

That was that. My first non-contact injury. To this day, I do not 100% know what it exactly was. I got three different diagnoses from three different doctors. One doctor said it was an inflamed ligament. Another said I was a small portion of the population born with an extra bone there, and I sprained it.

Either way I was in a boot for over a month and then had chronic pain there for years. I even wore a small donut-shaped sponge around the bone to stop my cleat from rubbing on it. The lengths I went to to treat the symptom!

Eventually it healed itself (or so I thought) after half a dozen sessions with a Russian doctor trained in traditional Chinese medicine doing acupuncture. Only recently have I learned how acupuncture actually operates by manipulating fascia webbing and twisting trigger points with the needle. This will be a topic for a future post.