RK
Every protocol on this site was written for one damaged nervous system and tested on it first. This is whose.
- First concussion
- 10years old
- Diagnosed
- 15+concussions
- Career ended
- 2004age 16
- Isolated
- ~15years
01The record
Started playing hockey the year the Avalanche came to Denver. Like a lot of kids in the metro, that team made me want to be on the ice. Travel hockey, lacrosse in high school, football. An athlete before anything else.
First concussion. They didn't stop after that. By sophomore year I'd taken enough hits that a doctor probably should have pulled me. Nobody did.
Reached Midget Major AA — the highest level of youth hockey I played. Still taking hits, still not being pulled.
A hit during a high school hockey game ended it. Stretchered off the ice. Career over at 16.
My goals were D1 college hockey and serving my country in uniform. Starting my junior year I pursued the Air Force Academy. Failed. My symptoms wouldn't let me run beyond 400 meters without blacking out — I couldn't complete the physical fitness tests. I left for college but kept trying. A Marine recruiter gave me a good recommendation: pace yourself, try swimming, work back to it. I still couldn't get there.
After school I met one of my first professional mentors — my boss at my first job, a former Navy Captain. He encouraged me to explore the Navy route: Intelligence, Cryptography, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. I tried for four years. Nothing. Hockey had been taken. Then the ability to serve was taken too.
Playing CU Boulder's Open Intramural top tier. A dirty elbow put me on bed rest and canceled my school year. Finished my fourth year of college in my sixth. That's the tax.
02The dark years
For years after that I isolated myself and lived in negativity. I believed there was no real solution, no way out of this. I took notes — years of notes — on what worked and what didn't, and I kept all of it to myself. I didn't think anyone would care. I wasn't sure I cared.
03The turning point
CrossFit changed everything. The first gym I walked into was a blast — I trained alongside five or more CrossFit Games athletes. The intensity, the community, the competition. For the first time since getting stretchered off that ice, I felt like an athlete again.
That feeling is hard to explain to someone who hasn't lost it.
When your identity gets taken from you at 16 and you spend the next decade wondering if you'll ever get it back, and then one day you're standing in a box with your lungs on fire and you realize you're home — that's what CrossFit gave me.
I moved from Denver to Colorado Springs and struggled to find a gym that matched what I'd had. Then the shoulders started going. Two torn rotator cuffs — the kind of damage that takes kipping, heavy overhead and snatching off the table. I experimented with strict Olympic lifting, bodybuilding-style training, Nick Bare–style hybrid programming. Nothing felt right the way CrossFit did.
So I built my own system. DarkWolf came out of necessity: protocols designed to train hard while respecting a brain that fights back and shoulders that won't cooperate. Form over intensity. Function over ego. Strength as the foundation. The Neuro-RPE framework came from realizing that your muscles and your brain have different limits, and if you only track one you'll crash the other.
I've got two shoulder surgeries on the horizon. When I come out the other side, CrossFit is waiting. That's the plan.
04Why this is public
I finally decided to let the biggest negative in my life become the biggest positive. It dawned on me, even after all those years of notes, that maybe my purpose and my therapy is to help other people with this.
For me it's public or bust. I'm either all in or nothing at all. The best way to do that was to embrace the discomfort, sack up, and be real about everything over the years. Those around me deserve to hear it. And maybe those I don't know will resonate with it if they're going through the same thing.
I want to offer community, support, guidance and lessons learned. I want people to be comfortable enough to reach out, comment on a post, share their story — and by that, we grow the strongest community imaginable.
Maybe on that trajectory I'm not only helping others, but the "from student to teacher" idea applies and I gain even more recovery, more insight, and finally turn my life toward something positive in this regard.
If you're here, I want you to know: DarkWolf knows what you're going through, and we're here to help.
The mission comes first. The protocols, the research, the community — that's why this exists. Not to sell you something. To help you train smarter and stop suffering alone.
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