In the midst of a comeback, a lifelong journey or in the saddle, athletes are impressive humans…even when they may not describe themselves as such. These three and their stories have inspired us today, and everyday, and remind us of the “Today You Are An Athlete” poem written by Mike Eisenhart around the time of Pro-Activity’s founding.
TODAY YOU ARE AN ATHLETE
Today you will make a great and empowering discovery,
You’ll find out some very amazing things about yourself
That you may never have known before.
You’ll learn about triumph and adversity, but press-on
A patient is needy, passive and in many ways broken down
But YOU ARE AN ATHLETE, a valued asset to your team.
Yours may be a team of family members or members to-be,
A team of co-workers, colleagues or friends.
You are expected to SHOW UP READY…to PLAY WELL.
Your event may be to climb a 13-step mountain,
To walk the tightrope of parenthood or to excel on the field of play,
You may work marathon hours or log marathon miles,
Or need to hit a homerun in the boardroom or on the field
Whatever your event, YOU must do it
The path of least resistance doesn’t cut it here
Fears are shown to the door and the Spirit prevails
Here, you can ACCOMPLISH THE UNTHINKABLE
We are here not to fix you, but to help you fix yourself,
To challenge you when we must,
To encourage you when you think you cannot,
To get you back to your game FASTER AND BETTER
Welcome to PRO-ACTIVITY
Let’s Get Started
Wrestling with Progress
It was a pretty common case of low back pain, but slightly less common was the patient’s age… early teen. He was a swimmer and it was clear had an internal drive, but he didn’t initially present as one might expect of an athlete. With a few extra childhood pounds and confidence buried a bit below the surface, his physical therapist Tracy thought that he could use a bit more core strength to overcome the recent pain, and that the existing group of young teenage boys that were training with us might be an ideal group to get the patient, the athlete, Ryan back on track. The interesting thing was, the existing group of boys competed (fiercely) in a different winter sport, wrestling, and when they trained….THEY….TRAINED….HARD!
As a coach, it’s always a fun challenge to integrate a new member into a group. At Pro-Activity, it’s almost like joining a new family, or in this case, a band of brothers. But Ryan and his coach Nick were up to the task. Not nearly as slowly, but definitely surely, Ryan’s work ethic earned him the respect of his peers and Nick saw something special. The training weeks turned into months, into years, and we got a front row seat to watch Ryan transform mentally from a patient to athlete…physically from pain to prowess….and confidently into a well respected leader. In watching him wrestle with progress in his teen years, we were not surprised to see him thrive at Penn State, Washington University, and later as a Physical Therapist himself.
Life-Long Athlete
In 2008 we got a call from a motivated teacher who was interested in starting a new training group with five or six of her teacher friends afterschool. Although only one with a formal athletic background, it was a great group of women who were prioritizing their health and found the unique balance where work (training) IS fun. They were a special group, always up for a challenge no matter how outside the box it might be, and will always have a place in our heart and a chapter in our story. But as things do…well, they change. Life and circumstance pulls us in different directions, and at times apart from one another. Thankfully neither pulled Barb from us.
A self-proclaimed “army brat”, turned PE teacher, turned wife and mom and countless other titles, Barb is truly a diamond in the rough. She’s been consistent in her training, 17 years straight at the time of this writing. Her efforts have brought her to countless highs, like across her first half marathon finish line… and through a handful of lows like recovery from both elective and emergency surgeries. She’s earned her way onto our internal team at times, always willing to jump in to help with various initiatives… and into the respect of all she encounters at BaseCamp. Now a proud grandmother, she maintains the energy to keep up with the kids… and the strength to deadlift just about as much as any grandma we’ve encountered. She approaches life with an infectious energy, and inspires us to be our best. In our words, she’s a lifelong athlete…and we’re glad she’s one of ours!
EQFit
Growing up, “athlete” was not a word that I identified with. I used it to describe my friends who played lacrosse or basketball or soccer or the likes…the people around me that played ‘a real sport’. Although I had been riding since I was 6 years old and started competing at a national level at the age of 11, I hadn’t considered myself an athlete. I had made countless sacrifices, built up strength and endurance through thousands of hours of practice honing my skill set. I had shed more sweat and tears in pursuit of achievement than I could possibly count. I had traveled hundreds of thousands of miles and competed on the biggest stages in my aspect of the equestrian sport. And yet, when I heard the word ‘athlete’, I thought ‘they must be talking about someone else’.
As with most transformations, it happened so slowly that I didn’t even notice it at the time. I had gained glimpses of it on the University of South Carolina equestrian team, but it wasn’t until my first few months at Pro-Activity, where I was thrust into an environment where achievement was the norm and the mantra ‘If you have a body, you ARE an athlete’ was commonplace, that I even realized what had happened. Somewhere along the way, my identity shifted. I began to believe that I WAS in fact an athlete, and that my body and mind could unleash so much more when I held that belief FIRMLY. As I grew in my role at Pro-Activity, I wanted to spread this identity transformation across as many populations as I could. But maybe none were as near and dear to my heart as the equestrian community. I wanted to shift the narrative that as equestrians, we ARE athletes…and deserve to be treated as such by ourselves and the rest of the world. I believed that if we shifted our mindset, it would not only unleash better performance, but increase thriving in every aspect of the lives of equestrians as well as the equestrian community as a whole.
With this in mind, our equestrian focused division was born, with an emphasis on health and performance of the equestrian athlete. Fortunately along the way, there were many individuals who championed this belief alongside our Pro-Activity team. From Ursula Hodgson who helped us make the first (to our knowledge) horse show onsite gym happen at the 2018 All-American Quarter Horse Congress, to Melissa Jones who helped in the development of our first ever ‘EQFit Equestrian Assessment & Program’, to Steph Gentile who had Pro-Activity roots from her days training for the Olympic trials and joined the team to help grow the brand, and so many more who have shouted from the mountaintops that we ARE equestrians and we ARE athletes.
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