I'M A BURN SURVIVOR. THIS IS HOW I REGAINED CONFIDENCE IN THE GYM.

This story is part of our ongoing “First Steps” series, where we share extraordinary stories of men who transformed their bodies, minds, and lives with a focus on the first steps it took them to get there (because, after all, nothing can change without a first step!). Read all of the stories here.

Below, Joey Coco, 26, shares the first steps he took to get back in the gym and regain his confidence after surviving a near-fatal car accident that left most of his body burned.

IN MAY 2016, I experienced a life-threatening car accident that burned 75 percent of my body. The first time I discovered what happened was when I woke up from a medically-induced coma three weeks after my accident. Most of my fingers were gone. My arms were suspended in the air. I had skin grafts starting at my feet and legs, then up to my arms and torso, followed by my neck and parts of my face.

I wondered how I was going to make it through my healing process, but my immediate concerns revolved around the massive discomfort of hardly being able to eat or drink. I remember having simple thoughts like, when will I get to drink a Gatorade again? Doctors believed I would have walked away from the hospital in around eight weeks if I had not been burned. Now, they weren’t sure if I was going to survive the weekend.

I was in the intensive care unit from early May to the middle of July before I moved to a unit called “the floor,” where my open wounds could heal. Once my open wounds healed I moved to the rehab unit. The rehab unit is where I started having an idea of what my life could look like going forward. I learned to do basic things like walking and going up steps; picking up pencils and opening plastic water bottle caps. It turns out these tasks are pretty hard when your hands have become boxing gloves, due to how the doctors wrapped my skin grafts.

At the end of August, three months after my accident, I was finally able to leave the hospital and come home. I continued my rehab at an outpatient facility, where I then met an important individual in my life. His name was Mo, and he was a physical therapist and part-time personal trainer. Mo helped me continue my rehab, and as we got to know each other he learned that I used to be a gym rat (I’d go to the gym at least fives times per week). Mo told me he was going to get me into the connected gym at the outpatient center soon. I thought, yeah right. Then one day after a rehab session in late December, I remember Mo saying, “Come on Joey, let’s get you on a machine for something very basic.”

My first thought stepping into the gym for the first time since my accident was fear. I wondered, what if I tear my skin or hurt myself? What could I possibly even do in here? I had already been in enough pain.

"Learning how to LIFT WEIGHTS again was more than just building functional STRENGTH. It was a way for ME to get back to BEING ME."

Mo walked me over to a cable machine to do standing bicep curls. He set the machine to zero weight and placed the bar at the top of my wrists. I still had bandages wrapped over my elbows to help prevent infection. Anxiety crept up, and I questioned what might happen if my body started to sweat while working out. I fought through the mental block. I brought the curl bar up and fully extended it back down. One rep. I did another. Then two more. I felt the familiarity of something I was good at again. I felt my confidence coming back.

From that day onward into the early new year, I’d spend an extra 30 minutes after my outpatient rehab sessions inside the gym, testing what I could do with my new body. At the end of January 2017, I graduated from my rehab program, but I wasn't going to stop there. I took it upon myself to keep coming to the center and put more time in the gym. I saw fitness as a way of regaining confidence in myself.

The knowledge I’d gained from countless hours at the gym prior to my accident started to pay off in a different light for me—I was using my knowledge to help modify regular lifts to better accommodate my new body. I can't pick up a dumbbell anymore, but I realized, hey, I can position a kettlebell on my wrists and get the same type of bicep targeting by curling the kettlebell. I can't do a regular barbell bench press anymore, but I can bench press using a Smith machine. I can't do pull-ups, but I can do lateral pulldowns on a lat pulldown machine.

My proudest lift I modified is the plank (my favorite core exercise). My feet and toes can't press into the ground, nor can my elbows sit on the ground at 90 degrees. What I do instead is start my plank by rolling an exercise ball up to the long side of a workout bench. I slowly press my right knee and then my left knee onto the ball, and then roll forward until the exercise ball is on the bottom of my shins and my elbows are laying on the workout bench. I think of it as an elevated plank. The crazy thing is, the workout hits my ab muscles like a regular plank.

Learning how to lift weights again was more than just building functional strength. It was a way for me to get back to being me. The more I committed myself to my fitness, the more I could see that it was possible to go back to living a normal life. I now have over seven years of work that proves what's possible when you set your mind to something. I have Mo to thank, my doctors, my family, and, most importantly, myself.

For a long time I thought being a burn survivor would be my greatest weakness. Now, it's become my greatest strength.

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2024-01-22T17:57:00Z dg43tfdfdgfd