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A year following almost losing his life, Charlie Davies is back on the soccer field.
In October of 2009, Charlie Davies was at the top of his game as the forward for the U.S. national soccer team that had just qualified for the World Cup. But on Oct. 13, everything changed. One day before the Yanks’ final match of the qualifying round, Davies suffered severe injuries when the car in which he was riding crashed near Washington, D.C., killing a fellow passenger. The accident left Davies with a broken fibula, tibia and femur on one leg, a torn ligament on his other knee, a fractured elbow, eye socket and nose, serious head trauma, and lacerated his bladder. In an amazing recovery physical therapy program, the 24-year-old forward is back on the field with the reserve squad for Sochaux, his French pro club. His goal is to rejoin the Yanks. Although his coach says that won’t happen till at the very least January. As of January 2011, Charlie was off to Tunisia Training Camp for 5 days.
Chris Floyd from ESPN in a dialogue with Davies recounted the moments of Davies recuperation.
Immediately after waking up, still out of sorts and in a state of panic Davies thought someone wanted to steal his internal organs and began to pulled out some of the staples in his abdomen. A nurse ran in and had to explain exactly where he was and what had happened. The three weeks following Davies was in a haze and didn’t remember much.
4 weeks following he was transferred to a rehabilitation clinic and had his first steps on crutches in so much pain that it brought tears to his eys. Davies stated “Putting pressure on my right leg and believing it would hold me up felt like trusting somebody with your life on a 300-foot cliff”. 5 weeks after the incident, he proceeded to go to Delaware to rehab with trainer James Hashimoto, who had worked with him on the U.S. team. Hashimoto began Davies walking the corridor which left him breathless, exhausted and about to faint . Movement was agonizing because each step was tearing scar tissue.
In short order, he was doing athletic exercises like small hurdles and dancing. There were setbacks with his leg, but the left arm was in a whole lot worse shape with only a single intact nerve in his elbow. It wasn’t until late December that he could wiggle his thumb. After two months of making an attempt to painfully straighten the elbow by Hashimoto’s manual force, the decision was made that Davies would have to have surgery due to the bone growth in the joint. Davies said “I couldn’t feel my left hand or use my fingers for several weeks. It turned out I was lucky because a single nerve was still firing near the elbow”.
Through all this he was nevertheless making advancements. By the time January rolled around Davies was already jogging on a low gravity treadmill by AlterG, which takes pressure off your lower extremeties. The AlterG treadmill lets the therapist or patient adjust the exact amount body weight down to 20% of a person weight. Davies started at 60% of his body weight, but would up it to 70% when Hashimoto wasn’t looking. Davies was trying everything to rehab quicker, so when teammate Oguchi Onyewu was rehabbing without pain meds, so was Davies. In February, Davies sent videos of his agility drills to teammates and they’d responded with “You’re kidding me? You were almost dead. What are you taking?”
The hard reality came after he moved back to France and started training with his club in March. There was no AlterG and he was working out with world-class athletes. Davies said “It felt as if I’d never played soccer before”. His best moves were not there and teammates were gettting aggravated and Davies was gettting anxiousness headaches.
His purpose of making it back again in time for the World Cup was ruined in May when a coach Bradley of the Yanks let him know that he was not ready for training camp, but was doing a great job of recovering. Davies mentioned “looking back, in my heart I know I couldn’t have competed then at the international level. I have no bitterness and now no deadlines: I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”
Davies is making a fantastic recuperation in that his physical fitness has improved drastically in recent months. His strength and endurance is completely restored and his speed is coming around as well.
My goal here is to talk about not only the game of soccer itself but also getting in shape for the soccer season.
