Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: 'Cats Learn to Embrace the Process
8/26/2015 3:15:00 PM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUspors.com Special Contributor
The one, the senior receiver Christian Jones, is coming off a knee operation. The other, sophomore running back Justin Jackson, is coming off a knee procedure so minor that his coach, Pat Fitzgerald, calls it, "A little oil change."
The one, Jones, practiced in pads on Tuesday morning, but there is no certainty he will do that when the Wildcats gather for their Wednesday evening session. "It's up to the trainers. It's up to my knee, really," he explains. "My knee decides what I do and what I don't do." The other, Jackson, observed that Tuesday practice in shorts and a t-shirt, but is expected to be full-go on Wednesday. "I was running on it earlier and it felt great. I'm ready to go," he explains. "But we're just trying to manage it."
These two, resplendent talents both, are expected to be integral parts of the Northwestern offense in the season just ahead. Yet here, with the Sept. 5 opener against Stanford rushing down on them, they are being asked not only to run routes or to pop through holes. Here, coming off surgeries both big and small, they are also being asked to exercise patience, which is no small challenge for the athlete. It is, in fact, hard.
"Extremely. Extremely," says Jones. "It's like you wake up and you can't ride a bike. First, you have to get a stationary and figure out how to get on the bike. Then you have to figure out how to peddle. Then you go out and actually ride the bike. 'OK. I can ride straight. Now can I turn?' I turn. At one point you're back to what you were used to doing, and then you start adding on more and more until you're all the way back. It's a long process and you get impatient because you're like, 'Why can't I peddle the right way? Why can't I use these brakes?' It's things like that."
This was months ago, back in the conditioning phase of the Wildcats offseason program, and Christian Jones was, he recalls, "Out there dying." He was now in the early stages of returning from the knee injury he had suffered last fall up in Camp Kenosha and here Fitzgerald, who himself had suffered a serious ankle injury as a junior, walked up to him and said, "I've done this before. I understand. Just keep up."
"I," Jones immediately thought, "probably should ask him what he did and how he did it?"
"If there's one person to talk to about (coming back from a serious injury)," Jones explained, "it's a person who has his name on the stadium twice. He's in the Hall of Fame. He's one of the greatest linebackers who ever played college football, so why not ask him for advice?"
Soon enough, then, the receiver sat down with his coach, and here Fitzgerald recounted the process from surgery to immobility, from immobility to rehab, from rehab to some success, from some success to the plateau that is inevitably reached. "Sometimes that becomes the most frustrating thing," he picked up on Tuesday. "You feel you're on the road to recovery, but that plateau happens where you can't improve anymore.
"Then they clear you to get out and get doing things, and you stink. You're rusty, you're not playing very well, and then frustration hits again. You've got to use that frustration as motivation. Then there's a certain point in camp-- or, for me, it really took until we played Duke (in the second game of his senior season) that I really, finally felt comfortable again. It (the damaged body part) feels different, right? It doesn't feel the same way that it did and you have to understand that's the way it's going to be. You worry that, 'If I stick my foot in the ground am I going to break my ankle again? Am I going to pop my hip again?' You worry about those things and I think it's really a situation where you've just got to get experience back out there."
"There's multiple walls," Jones himself echoed minutes later. "'Can I walk the same way?' You've got to break through that wall. 'Can I jog the same way. Can I run the same way? Can I run routes the same way? Can I still catch? Can I block?' All these things. Then you get out there and you do it and you're like, 'Am I going to pull the hamstring in my other leg because I'm overcompensating?' You have all these different walls. Some are big and some are really small, but it's something you have to work through constantly."
Jones, in fact, had felt himself up against one of those walls the previous evening, and he confronted it still when it was time for him to go one-on-one with a NU DB in the practice just concluded. "I didn't know if I could still do it," he would say, recalling that moment he went out to face off against safety Kyle Queiro.
"I'm glad I went against Kyle. He's really good at coverage," he then went on. "I didn't know if I could do well, and I did all right. After I got done with it, it wasn't great, but it was good enough to where I was like, 'OK. I can still work on this. I'm not as far behind as I thought.'"
But, he was now asked, will he ever again be what he once was?
"It's a good question," he said. "That's my goal, to be there immediately, to be there when this game comes up. That would be awesome. But Fitz was telling me it still took him a couple games to get right. He said his problem was focusing on himself instead of what others were thinking, how others were thinking he was doing. So I'm just focused on myself, and I'm a really hard critic. If I'm pleased with myself, I'm going to be at least decent.
"I just have to keep pushing. It's a process."
It was scary. Justin Jackson admits this. He had never broken a bone, had never undergone surgery, had never confronted an injury of any type, and so yes, he admits, it was scary when he went in for his oil change. "But," he says Tuesday morning, "they told me it was a simple thing, a lot of people get it. A quick little in-and-out, a 45-minute surgery, real easy. I was kind of comforted by that."
He would, it is true, have to manage his return, manage the process of his rehabilitation right up to this morning in August. But still it was a far-simpler process than the one Jones yet endures and, he says, he never confronted those walls the receiver yet encounters. In fact, he will aver, already "I trust (the knee) 100 percent."
But this does not mean he was not changed by his experience, which transformed him both physically and mentally. For, while he was unable to run, he labored assiduously in the weight room, and returns for this season a dozen pounds heavier with his body fat down to seven percent. "I got things beefed up that I needed to be a productive Big Ten back," he explains. "The strength staff did a great job.
"Not only am I bigger and stronger. But I'm more flexible and more mobile. I've got a lot more drive, things like that. I just feel great. I'm a lot stronger in the lower half. I got to spend a lot more time in the weight room, so I was able to get a lot stronger and I should be a lot better this year."
Until an athlete is injured for the first time, he is told, he feels bullet proof. Now that he has been injured, he is asked, has his perspective changed?
"For sure. You appreciate everything a lot more. Just being out here and having fun and having a blast, you appreciate it a lot more. You appreciate the training room and all the help we get just maintaining health. It's such a big thing. The older you get and the more reps you've taken and the more games you've played, the older you're body gets. So you've really got to take care of it and manage it. It's the only body you get. So I'm in the training room everyday even if I'm not hurt."
But now that you know you're not bullet proof, are you more fearful?
"Nah. If anything it makes me more confident because I feel-- nothing's tight on me, I'm out there, I'm stronger, I'm bigger, I'm more flexible, I'm not going to pull things, I feel I can do a lot more, I feel I can avoid a lot more hits, things like that."
So coming off an injury, you're in the best shape of your life?
"Exactly," Justin Jackson finally says with a chuckle. "It's a weird paradox. But that's how I feel right now."
••••••
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NUspors.com Special Contributor
The one, the senior receiver Christian Jones, is coming off a knee operation. The other, sophomore running back Justin Jackson, is coming off a knee procedure so minor that his coach, Pat Fitzgerald, calls it, "A little oil change."
The one, Jones, practiced in pads on Tuesday morning, but there is no certainty he will do that when the Wildcats gather for their Wednesday evening session. "It's up to the trainers. It's up to my knee, really," he explains. "My knee decides what I do and what I don't do." The other, Jackson, observed that Tuesday practice in shorts and a t-shirt, but is expected to be full-go on Wednesday. "I was running on it earlier and it felt great. I'm ready to go," he explains. "But we're just trying to manage it."
These two, resplendent talents both, are expected to be integral parts of the Northwestern offense in the season just ahead. Yet here, with the Sept. 5 opener against Stanford rushing down on them, they are being asked not only to run routes or to pop through holes. Here, coming off surgeries both big and small, they are also being asked to exercise patience, which is no small challenge for the athlete. It is, in fact, hard.
"Extremely. Extremely," says Jones. "It's like you wake up and you can't ride a bike. First, you have to get a stationary and figure out how to get on the bike. Then you have to figure out how to peddle. Then you go out and actually ride the bike. 'OK. I can ride straight. Now can I turn?' I turn. At one point you're back to what you were used to doing, and then you start adding on more and more until you're all the way back. It's a long process and you get impatient because you're like, 'Why can't I peddle the right way? Why can't I use these brakes?' It's things like that."
This was months ago, back in the conditioning phase of the Wildcats offseason program, and Christian Jones was, he recalls, "Out there dying." He was now in the early stages of returning from the knee injury he had suffered last fall up in Camp Kenosha and here Fitzgerald, who himself had suffered a serious ankle injury as a junior, walked up to him and said, "I've done this before. I understand. Just keep up."
"I," Jones immediately thought, "probably should ask him what he did and how he did it?"
"If there's one person to talk to about (coming back from a serious injury)," Jones explained, "it's a person who has his name on the stadium twice. He's in the Hall of Fame. He's one of the greatest linebackers who ever played college football, so why not ask him for advice?"
Soon enough, then, the receiver sat down with his coach, and here Fitzgerald recounted the process from surgery to immobility, from immobility to rehab, from rehab to some success, from some success to the plateau that is inevitably reached. "Sometimes that becomes the most frustrating thing," he picked up on Tuesday. "You feel you're on the road to recovery, but that plateau happens where you can't improve anymore.
"Then they clear you to get out and get doing things, and you stink. You're rusty, you're not playing very well, and then frustration hits again. You've got to use that frustration as motivation. Then there's a certain point in camp-- or, for me, it really took until we played Duke (in the second game of his senior season) that I really, finally felt comfortable again. It (the damaged body part) feels different, right? It doesn't feel the same way that it did and you have to understand that's the way it's going to be. You worry that, 'If I stick my foot in the ground am I going to break my ankle again? Am I going to pop my hip again?' You worry about those things and I think it's really a situation where you've just got to get experience back out there."
"There's multiple walls," Jones himself echoed minutes later. "'Can I walk the same way?' You've got to break through that wall. 'Can I jog the same way. Can I run the same way? Can I run routes the same way? Can I still catch? Can I block?' All these things. Then you get out there and you do it and you're like, 'Am I going to pull the hamstring in my other leg because I'm overcompensating?' You have all these different walls. Some are big and some are really small, but it's something you have to work through constantly."
Jones, in fact, had felt himself up against one of those walls the previous evening, and he confronted it still when it was time for him to go one-on-one with a NU DB in the practice just concluded. "I didn't know if I could still do it," he would say, recalling that moment he went out to face off against safety Kyle Queiro.
"I'm glad I went against Kyle. He's really good at coverage," he then went on. "I didn't know if I could do well, and I did all right. After I got done with it, it wasn't great, but it was good enough to where I was like, 'OK. I can still work on this. I'm not as far behind as I thought.'"
But, he was now asked, will he ever again be what he once was?
"It's a good question," he said. "That's my goal, to be there immediately, to be there when this game comes up. That would be awesome. But Fitz was telling me it still took him a couple games to get right. He said his problem was focusing on himself instead of what others were thinking, how others were thinking he was doing. So I'm just focused on myself, and I'm a really hard critic. If I'm pleased with myself, I'm going to be at least decent.
"I just have to keep pushing. It's a process."
It was scary. Justin Jackson admits this. He had never broken a bone, had never undergone surgery, had never confronted an injury of any type, and so yes, he admits, it was scary when he went in for his oil change. "But," he says Tuesday morning, "they told me it was a simple thing, a lot of people get it. A quick little in-and-out, a 45-minute surgery, real easy. I was kind of comforted by that."
He would, it is true, have to manage his return, manage the process of his rehabilitation right up to this morning in August. But still it was a far-simpler process than the one Jones yet endures and, he says, he never confronted those walls the receiver yet encounters. In fact, he will aver, already "I trust (the knee) 100 percent."
But this does not mean he was not changed by his experience, which transformed him both physically and mentally. For, while he was unable to run, he labored assiduously in the weight room, and returns for this season a dozen pounds heavier with his body fat down to seven percent. "I got things beefed up that I needed to be a productive Big Ten back," he explains. "The strength staff did a great job.
"Not only am I bigger and stronger. But I'm more flexible and more mobile. I've got a lot more drive, things like that. I just feel great. I'm a lot stronger in the lower half. I got to spend a lot more time in the weight room, so I was able to get a lot stronger and I should be a lot better this year."
Until an athlete is injured for the first time, he is told, he feels bullet proof. Now that he has been injured, he is asked, has his perspective changed?
"For sure. You appreciate everything a lot more. Just being out here and having fun and having a blast, you appreciate it a lot more. You appreciate the training room and all the help we get just maintaining health. It's such a big thing. The older you get and the more reps you've taken and the more games you've played, the older you're body gets. So you've really got to take care of it and manage it. It's the only body you get. So I'm in the training room everyday even if I'm not hurt."
But now that you know you're not bullet proof, are you more fearful?
"Nah. If anything it makes me more confident because I feel-- nothing's tight on me, I'm out there, I'm stronger, I'm bigger, I'm more flexible, I'm not going to pull things, I feel I can do a lot more, I feel I can avoid a lot more hits, things like that."
So coming off an injury, you're in the best shape of your life?
"Exactly," Justin Jackson finally says with a chuckle. "It's a weird paradox. But that's how I feel right now."
••••••
Be the first to know what's going on with the 'Cats -- Follow @NU_Sports on Twitter, become a fan of Northwestern Athletics on Facebook and check us out on Instagram. For more information on following specific Northwestern teams online, visit our Social Media page!
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