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Episode #56: Strength Training Will Save Your Life with Bruce Trout | He lost his leg & gained a daughter in the same week but never gave up barbell training
Despite undergoing a below knee amputation, Bruce Trout never gave up barbell training. In fact, he made a career out of it. After a major accident that cost him his leg, Bruce Trout realized strength training saved his life and continues to inspire people to barbell strength train despite the odds, as if their life depends on it.
It’s easy to give up and fall into a depression when a major injury threatens to take away your abilities. It’s even easier to do so when it’s not just an injury but a major trauma that takes away your leg and threatens your life.
In this episode strength coach, Bruce Trout, shares how his experience getting hit by a car and losing his leg was influenced by strength training and how his accident influenced him as a trainee and coach.
The purpose of this podcast interview is to help athletes feel less alone when experiencing serious injuries affecting one or more limbs. As well, we hope to provide coaches and clinicians with tools to help barbell athletes process their injuries and continue to train even when training is not ideal. Hopefully this interview will provide you with some tools for managing training and rehab around lower limb/non-weight bearing injuries.
Bruce was in a car accident in 2019 which resulted in the loss of his lower left leg. He attributes the fact that he only lost a leg and not his life to his commitment to the Starting Strength Method. Since his recovery, Bruce has found his calling to help other individuals find their own strength and live a longer and fuller life through coaching at Starting Strength Columbus.
Bruce Trout shares his story about losing his leg and barbell training and coaching with a prosthetic limb. In this episode we cover:
How he lost his leg
What was the driving force to push him through the initial injury
How strength training saved his life and influenced his recovery process
His experience with phantom pain
How he progressed training initially after getting out of the hospital and once he received his prosthetic leg
Why he can’t squat and how his right leg picks up the slack plus other challenges he faces training his amputated leg
The role of physical therapy after an amputation
The biggest lessons he learned from his accident
Connect with Bruce on Instagram @brucebruce28
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Bruce Trout: [00:00:00] I would tell my wife all the time, you know, I'm just training to be harder to kill, just training to be harder to kill. It was tongue in cheek and it was kind of silly, and then you fast forward to 2019 and I'm hit by the car, I'm nearly dead, and I'm like, it turns out I actually was training to be harder to kill. It turns out I trained at least just enough to where I didn't die.
Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: [00:00:20] Welcome to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. We're your hosts, physical therapist, strength coaches and clinical coaches. Dr. Alyssa Haveson and Dr. Rori Alter. Join us on our journey of barbell strength training and rehabilitation. Welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, and in this episode I'm speaking with strength coach Bruce Trout about how his experience of getting hit by a car and losing his leg was influenced by strength training and how his accident influenced him as a trainee and coach. The purpose of this podcast interview is to help athletes feel less alone when experiencing injuries affecting one or more limbs as well. We hope to provide coaches and clinicians with tools to help barbell athletes process their injuries and continue to train even when training is not ideal. Hopefully this interview will provide you with some tools for managing, training, and rehab around lower limb or non-weight bearing injuries. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast was because of this whole element of people getting injured and they stub a toe and they're like, I can't train. I'm just like, no, but you can. For just a little bit of my background, when I first decided to go to physical therapy school, the population I actually wanted to work with was vets with amputations. I don't know what about it, I think because I was a dancer and if I lost a piece of me that allowed me to do what I loved so much, I would be a mess, you know? I didn't ever want someone to experience not being able to do what they love to do. Really, there are no excuses, you know? There's a very famous tap dancer who taps with one leg, and he puts a peg as his other leg instead of a full prosthesis with a foot, and he taps amazingly. You were just saying before we started recording that as a coach when someone says, I hurt this or I can't do that, you're like, well, but can you? So first of all, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm very excited to speak with you. Briefly introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your history as a trainee, as a coach, and then tell us a little bit about your accident.
Bruce Trout: [00:03:09] Yeah. All right. So my name is Bruce Trout. I'm currently a coach at Starting Strength Columbus. I've been with them since they opened. I found starting strength in, I think it was around the summer or fall of 2015. I actually heard Matt Reynolds on a random podcast that led me to Mark Rippetoe that led me to starting strength. I did it by myself for a couple of months, and then it was right around that inception of the Starting Strength online coaching. That had kind of just kicked off, and so I was one of the earlier members to get in on that. I got paired up with Nick Delgadillo, who I didn't know at the time was, you know, the man. That turned out to be a good thing for me and I worked with him for several months, maybe eight months or something like that. Then I kind of had some other things in life. You know, my wife and I were wanting to have children, so I'm like, yeah, this is deep. At the time it was a pretty good price, but I thought, yeah, I'll put it off to the side. I can probably handle it on my own. I trained for a little while with other coaches or with other friends and family, and it didn't work as well as when I was working with Nick, but it still worked nonetheless, which was good. The accident is kind of the pinnacle of all of this, really, because I didn't have any real large interest in coaching. I had a pretty good job, our first child was on the way, and so it was like, coaching would be great. It'd be fun, but I'm in no position to do that right now and make good money doing it, and I can't afford to just switch my career around. My accident was in November of 2019. November 22nd, specifically, and my daughter was actually born a week later.