Jase Robinson was cruising down U.S. 31 on his motorcycle going 55 miles an hour on a Friday afternoon in November 2015 when a truck pulled out in front him to set up an ugly collision that left Robinson fighting for his life.
The Columbus resident was put on a helicopter and rushed to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis with doctors unsure if he was going to survive. Robinson had major internal bleeding and his abdomen swelled, causing him to gain 22 pounds from the moment of the collision to the time he touched down in Indianapolis.
His insides had been ripped apart, including his pubic symphysis, a cartilaginous joint at the bottom of the pelvis that has a minor gap in between. The accident caused Robinson’s gap to be stretched 70 millimeters wide.
Robinson went from laying in the emergency room with his life on the line and not knowing if he would ever walk again to walking into work at his Deathproof CrossFit gym on the next Monday morning, just four days after the accident.
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“No surgeon ever had to go in and do anything,” Robinson said. “My pelvis didn’t even break … that’s why we named the gym Deathproof. It’s this notion that if you’re super healthy and you’re real fit and strong, it becomes difficult to impart damage to you. So wouldn’t it be great if everybody trained that way? Then you’d last an awful long time and live an interesting life.”
It was that ideology that caused Robinson to join the national health and fitness Lurong Living Championship Challenge and eventually get the members of his gym involved.
Deathproof Gym’s 11-person team finished first in the country for the small teams division in the challenge that ended in October. The gym won more than $3,500 in prizes.
The Lurong Living Championship Challenge is a six week competition that consist of three categories — nutrition, exercise and lifestyle. Participants from all over the nation can participate from wherever they are and send in their progress online.
“One of the aspects of CrossFit is that you make people compete, whether it is against themselves or against each other, and they will try harder,” Robinson said. “People will survive for their country, but they will die for points on a scoreboard.”
The nutrition portion of competition deals with the diet. Many of the Deathproof participants said that is the hardest aspect of the challenge.
The competitor must send in videos tracing their nutrition progress as well as their completed exercises each week. The athletes gain points based on their category performance. Robinson said his team made sure to complete their exercises as perfect to form as possible.
“Every athlete, every workout has video (with) strict movement standards,” Robinson said. “If their squat wasn’t quite low enough, they were told that one didn’t count; you have to do another one.”
The lifestyle category is a small portion of the competition that works on the honor system of making sure competitors are taking time for themselves to do something enjoyable like attending a movie. Jason Maddox, who competed in the 40-49-year-old division, placed third overall as an individual.
“I don’t think that was my goal going out, to want to finish in the top five across the board in the country,” Maddox said. “As you start to get into it and check the leaderboard and seeing what other guys are doing, that competitive drive kind of kicks in.”
That drive has continued to stay with the Deathproof team, and it will look to defend their national title when it the competition starts back up again in January.
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Eleven athletes from Deathproof CrossFit who competed in the Lurong Living Championship Challenge:
Michael Bonnell
Jen Corsi
Scott Fellows
Zac Grimes
Chelsea Layman
Audra McNear
Jason Maddox
Lisa Maddox
Martin Muadi
Orlando Perez
Jase Robinson
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