Recover With Purpose
The pain running down my legs was unbearable.
But what really scared me was my right foot.
I was trying to move it, and it wasn’t responding the way it should.
Something was wrong.
A few days after the symptoms started, I found myself sitting in a chair waiting for the results of an MRI. After several hours and many prayerful moments, a neurosurgeon from UNM Hospital appeared on a screen.
His first words got my attention.
“I’m going to send an ambulance over right now, and I’m going to meet you at the hospital to perform emergency back surgery.”
I remember looking at the screen and asking, “Can I speak first?”
I knew people in this space. I knew there were other options to explore, and I believed I could work through the recovery process.
Eventually, the plan shifted toward physical therapy and epidural corticosteroid injections.
But I had no idea how much that injury was about to teach me.
Not just about my back.
About recovery.
About patience.
About listening to my body.
And ultimately, about what it means to thrive truly.
Sometimes God Makes You Kneel
During those early stages of recovery, there weren’t many comfortable positions.
Standing hurt.
Walking hurt.
Lying down wasn’t always much better.
But I discovered that kneeling gave me some relief.
Looking back, I like to say that God made me kneel.
Because that’s exactly what I needed.
I spent a lot of time in that position praying.
I prayed for healing.
I prayed for patience.
I gave thanks.
And I asked God to show me what I was supposed to learn from this season.
That position eventually became part of my morning routine.
Even today, I often begin my day kneeling in my hot tub. I give thanks to God and pray that His Spirit will guide me through whatever is ahead.
Something that began as a position of physical relief became a position of spiritual surrender.
Recovery was already teaching me that sometimes progress doesn’t come from pushing harder.
Sometimes it comes from being still enough to listen.
I Was Good at Pushing
For most of my life, pushing was easy.
I’ve been an athlete for as long as I can remember.
I’ve built a career around human performance.
I’m naturally competitive.
I like doing hard things.
Give me a mountain bike ride one day and a backcountry ski adventure the next, and I’m happy.
Throw some strength training in between and even better.
For years, I could get away with it.
Then my body started giving me different feedback.
I’d get back into a groove and start feeling good again.
So naturally, I’d add more.
Bike.
Ski.
Lift.
Work.
Go.
Then I’d wake up one morning and feel that familiar tingling creeping back into my legs.
Not as intense as before.
But enough.
My body was whispering:
Pay attention.
I’ve learned the hard way that if you ignore the whisper long enough, eventually your body will yell.
My Biggest Recovery Mistake
One of my biggest mistakes has been confusing feeling better with being fully recovered.
Those aren’t always the same thing.
I’ve repeated this lesson more than once.
In the fall of 2025, I was running around New York City trying to keep up with my wife while she ran the New York City Marathon.
I wore shoes that didn’t give me the support and cushioning my body needed, and then continued walking all over New York in them.
That created another problem.
Then another compensation.
My hamstring started doing more work.
Then my calf.
Eventually, that entire chain contributed to another flare-up of my back.
Back to the sidelines.
Again.
That cycle taught me something:
Recovery requires patience after the pain is gone.
The absence of pain isn’t necessarily permission to immediately return to everything you were doing before.
Your body still needs time to rebuild capacity.
That’s difficult for someone like me.
But I’m learning.
God Built Recovery Into the Week
One of the conversations that changed my approach to recovery happened with my wife.
I was doing too much again.
She knew it.
I knew it.
My body definitely knew it.
That’s when I decided Sunday needed to become something different.
Sunday became Sabbath.
A day to rest.
A day to worship.
A day to spend time with family.
A day when I didn’t need to cram another adventure, workout, project, or accomplishment into the schedule.
God built rest into His design for a reason.
Yet somehow we convince ourselves we’re too busy for it.
I certainly did.
Recovery used to be something I would do when I had time.
Now I understand that I have to make time for recovery so I can continue doing the things I love.
There’s a big difference.
What Jennifer Taught Me About Recovery
I also learned about recovery by watching my wife.
In 2019, Jennifer underwent chemotherapy.
I remember that first treatment.
We didn’t know what to expect.
She sat in the chair while they connected the line to the port that had been placed in her chest. Over the next several hours, different medications entered her body.
Then we’d go home.
Friday was treatment day.
Saturday was usually the worst.
Her body was exhausted.
She needed sleep.
She needed rest.
She needed time.
By Sunday, I could often see her spirit starting to lift.
We even developed a little tradition of going for ice cream when she was feeling up to it.
By Monday, she might be walking on the treadmill again.
Tuesday and Wednesday, she’d continue rebuilding.
By Thursday, she could be heading back to work.
Then we’d eventually arrive at the next treatment and start the cycle again.
Eight treatments.
Sixteen weeks.
Watching her taught me something I’ll never forget.
Recovery doesn’t always mean doing nothing.
Sometimes recovery means doing exactly what you’re capable of doing today.
Then doing a little more when your body is ready.
Healing takes time.
Strength isn’t always visible.
And progress isn’t always linear.
The Morning I Thought Jose Was Crazy
My relationship with thermal therapy goes back farther than most people probably realize.
When we originally planned Performance Ranch in 2017, I had already considered putting a sauna and cold plunge into the facility.
At the time, we needed the space for training more than recovery, so the idea got shelved.
But it never completely disappeared.
Fast-forward to the winter of 2023.
Jose Maresma kept talking to me about cold plunging and sauna. He was working with athletes and experimenting with these environments, and he kept telling me about what he was seeing.
Eventually, I decided I needed to experience it myself.
So I went out and bought a 150-gallon Rubbermaid livestock tank.
Nothing fancy.
I filled it with water and let an Albuquerque winter take care of the refrigeration.
The next morning, there was about an inch of ice covering the top.
I’d watched Jose’s videos.
Apparently, chopping through ice before getting into freezing water was normal.
So I grabbed a hatchet.
Broke through the ice.
And climbed in.
I had absolutely no idea how cold that water actually was.
My body immediately went into panic mode.
I was gasping and trying to control my breathing.
Meanwhile, our dogs were inside staring through the window trying to figure out what Dad was doing.
Then they started barking.
That woke up Jennifer.
By the time I finished my roughly two-minute experiment, I was standing outside in my swimming trunks, dripping wet, shivering while snow was falling around me.
Jennifer came outside looking at me like I had lost my mind.
My explanation was pretty simple:
“Jose said this is good for you.”
That was January 2024.
I’ve been consistently cold plunging ever since.
Why We Built the Thermal Lab
That livestock tank eventually helped lead to something much bigger.
A few months later, I was talking with one of our clients about adding cold plunges behind Performance Ranch.
Maybe a hot tub.
Maybe a sauna.
Some type of outdoor recovery space.
Then, while we were riding bikes together, he threw out an idea:
Why don’t you put it in a shipping container?
That was all it took.
The wheels started turning.
We brought in a friend who was an engineer.
Plans went onto paper.
A business model started taking shape.
And eventually the Thermal Lab was born.
But the vision was never simply to create another place where people could sit in a sauna or jump into cold water.
We wanted community.
We wanted people recovering together.
Learning together.
Breathing together.
Talking.
Laughing.
Getting outside.
Learning how their bodies respond to controlled stress.
The Thermal Lab isn’t an escape from training.
It’s part of how we prepare people to train—and live—again.
Don’t Overcomplicate Recovery
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is turning recovery into another competition.
We want the newest technology.
The latest supplement.
The expensive gadget.
The perfect recovery protocol.
Believe me, I enjoy experimenting with recovery tools.
But none of those things replace the fundamentals.
Sometimes the best recovery tool available is incredibly boring:
Go to bed.
Sleep has historically been one of my biggest struggles.
For much of my adult life, five to six hours was normal.
I’ve tracked my sleep for years. I was an early Oura adopter—back when the ring looked like a giant green Infinity Stone on my finger.
I have plenty of data.
But I don’t need an app to tell me what I’ve experienced firsthand.
When I consistently get seven-plus hours of quality sleep, I feel different.
My recovery improves.
My energy improves.
My training improves.
My back feels better.
My thinking is clearer.
I’ve also learned that good sleep begins long before my head hits the pillow.
My body needs movement.
Morning sunlight.
Activity throughout the day.
Good nutrition.
A consistent routine.
And eventually, it needs permission to shut down.
I’ve even learned to take a nap when my body needs one, especially after travel or a red-eye flight.
The younger version of me might have tried to power through.
The current version of me knows better.
Most of the time.
Learn to Hear the Whisper
My body has become pretty good at telling me when something isn’t right.
My hips tighten.
My lower back starts feeling different.
I notice fatigue.
Sometimes I feel the slightest tingling beginning in my legs.
Those are signals.
Years ago, I might have ignored them.
Now I listen.
That’s one of the greatest lessons injury has given me.
Body awareness is part of recovery.
Your body is constantly communicating with you.
The question is whether you’re paying attention.
You don’t need to become afraid of discomfort.
You don’t need to stop moving every time something feels different.
But you should develop enough awareness to recognize when your body is asking for something.
Sometimes it needs movement.
Sometimes it needs food.
Sometimes it needs water.
Sometimes it needs mobility.
Sometimes it needs sleep.
And sometimes it needs you to stop.
Recovery Is a Daily Practice
Today, recovery isn’t something I save for after a hard workout.
It’s built into my life.
My daily and weekly foundation includes:
Morning sunlight.
Prayer.
Strength training.
Quality nutrition and hydration.
Thermal therapy.
Sleep.
Sabbath.
I don’t hit every one perfectly every day.
That’s not the goal.
The goal is consistency.
Recovery means giving my body the space and nourishment it needs to heal and adapt.
And that requires commitment.
For me, the hardest part of recovery has never been knowing what to do.
It’s taking the time to actually do it.
Recover With Purpose
I used to think honoring my body meant seeing how much I could make it do.
How hard could I train?
How far could I ride?
How much could I lift?
How many things could I pack into one weekend?
I’m learning a different definition.
God entrusted me with one body.
Being a good steward of that gift means challenging it.
Strengthening it.
Moving it.
Feeding it.
But stewardship also means knowing when to stop.
When to sleep.
When to breathe.
When to pray.
When to recover.
And when to simply be still.
Recovery isn’t weakness.
It isn’t laziness.
And it isn’t something we earn after working hard enough.
Recovery is part of the work.
Because we don’t recover so we can do less.
We recover so we’re prepared to go again.
To ride again.
To work again.
To serve again.
To adventure again.
To show up for the people we love again.
That’s what it means to Thrive Through Recovery.
At Performance Ranch, we’re not trying to help you become better at exercising.
We’re helping you build a body and mind capable of doing the things God has called you to do.
Breathe. Move. Recover. Thrive.
And keep Living Life Beyond the Gym Walls.