We are proud to offer more than grants. At High Fives we take the mental and physical health of our Athletes very seriously, giving them access to mental health support and as athlete they have full access to the gym at the CR Johnson Healing Center. Recently two of our Tahoe local Athletes set goals and utilized the in-house personal trainer Nikki to help them achieve their goals.
Personal Goal: Swim across Donner Lake
Injury Date: 08/21/2020
Injury Type: SCI T6
High Fives Athlete #355
Training Focus: Ski Erg
“The gym at the High Fives Foundation has been, by far, the most beneficial thing that has happened to me when it comes to post-accident recovery. I have a spinal cord injury, complete at T6. 2-3 times per week I get to come up and get high quality personal training in a top tier facility. Having this continuation of rehab was so helpful in the early days while I was adjusting to life. I am undoubtedly so much stronger and more capable than I would be without it. Some days we work on practical stuff like transfers, range of motion, and core stability. While this ‘physical therapy’ type training is super useful, it’s even more exciting that we get to tackle big goals. This past summer, the trainer Nikki and I set the goal to swim across Donner Lake. It’s about 2/3rds of a mile and very cold. I had never done such a long open-water swim before I got hurt, but I wanted to do something that scared me a little. We started focusing on cardio in the gym and doing practice swims every week or two, and by the end of the summer I smashed that goal, swimming across Donner in just over 30 minutes. After my first practice swim I thought I had set an overly ambitious goal, but by the time we actually did it I knew I could’ve gone further. The CRJ healing center has undoubtedly changed my life.”
Injury Date: 5/6/2020
Injury Type: SCI C4
High Fives Athlete #360
Training Focus: Rower
Personal Goal: Climb 5,000 vertical feet in one ride a non–
electric mountain bike (7/28/21 –10/28/21)
“A day after my 39th birthday I set a goal to climb 5,000
vertical feet in 24 hours on my normal bike. I had just given
up riding my e–bike. My e–bike always left something lacking
in gratification. It just didn’t move and dance like my normal
bikes did. The only way to get that feeling was to get on an
unpowered bike. I needed to put my head down and work
through the suffering to work towards my goals of riding a
bike the way I envisioned it. This goal was incredibly hard to
achieve. We had an insanely smokey summer so training
wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Slowly but surely I
moved towards my goal of 5,000 vert. I knew if I could get
strong enough to ride 5,000 vert I would be making huge
progress on making my dreams come true riding a bike like
my dreams envision. Nikki from High5’s pushed me and did
everything he could to help me achieve this goal. He rode
with me at least once aweek.Achieving this was amajor step
in achieving my new dreams as I navigate my new normal as
a c–4 spinal cord injury survivor. Abig Thank You to everyone
that helped me on this journey!
