I was rolling back to my truck in a parking lot
and all of a sudden I just hear, "Hey!
Hey!" and I look over and see
this giant spartan dude running over at me and I'm thinking,
oh my God, you're gonna get robbed Bryan.
You're gonna get robbed.
Bryan looked rough, I just felt like I needed to stop.
And so I slammed on my breaks and I whipped it next to him
and I jumped out of the car.
And he was just like, "Hey, I'm David Vobora,
retired NFL player.
What happened?"
This is Buckshot.
He was one of the IED detector dogs our unit had.
It was April 18, 2011.
I'm walking in the boot prints of the men in front of me
and I'm like alright Buckshot we're gonna jump.
And right as I pushed off with my right foot,
my left foot's off the ground and kaboom.
Everything goes black from all the smoke and dirt flying in the air.
I've had over 30 surgeries.
I can't even describe how much that stuff hurt.
And you go and you tell them, hey this still hurts.
And they're like, "Well, I think you're abusing your meds."
And I'm like, okay well I'm gonna go buy heroin.
The time when I stopped in that parking lot
he was severely addicted to heroine, had just got out of his second detox,
and he was going to bed every night with a pistol next to his body.
He felt like he couldn't be the Marine that he was when he left
our country to go serve.
He was broken, completely broken, a place that I was familiar with.
I told him I used to play football, you know, I had a gym
downtown and I'd love it if he'd join me.
The following morning he showed up and we trained
and we started to explore different things,
the way he could do things and for the next three months
he came every day.
So we just hit it off.
I watched the life come back to his eyes.
We just experimented with all kinds of different exercises
and from there we just built a program around it.
After going there regularly, getting stronger,
getting healthier, my body pain decreased tremendously.
My confidence levels changed.
It all became a lot more feasible.
I was like man, yeah, I can do this.
This isn't, this isn't impossible.
Pick number 252, last pick in the 2008 draft
making me Mr. Irrelevant.
It was the St. Louis Rams selected me that last pick
and started my rookie year.
In 2011 I suffered a traumatic shoulder injury
and it's lead to a very aggressive pain medication addiction.
It started with prescriptions and it quickly manifest itself.
And it was anything but dealing with pain.
It was the first time in my life I had to look myself
in the mirror and ask who's David without football?
It just took a year to rehabilitate my mind and my body.
So I said what if we started a gym in Texas
and so we moved here and I launched The Performance Vault,
training for elite athletes.
I was having success man, NFL athletes, Olympic athletes, making good
money, finding the groove and then it all changed.
Staff Sergeant Travis Mills is one of five living veteran quadruple amputees.
He was blown up serving our great country in Afghanistan,
stepped on a IED, lost all four limbs.
I was way across the room, I just , I saw him walk in
and I was just drawn to him and I looked at him and I said,
"When was the last time you worked out?"
He looked at me and looked down at his prosthetics
and said, "I'm sorry, I don't want to make you feel like
an idiot but I don't have arms and legs."
I said, "Travis, I want to train you."
And he said, "Well, do you have any experience?"
And the first day we trained I asked him, I said,
"What are you most afraid of?"
And he said, "Well remember, no arms, no legs,
gravity wins so falling."
Then I realized, wait a second, if Travis is in this position
that he can't really go to a typical gym, I said, "Wow, all of these
people, veteran, civilian.
There's people with physical disabilities, they've sort of been sidelined.
They fall under the rehabilitation process but eventually insurance ran out,
cash ran out and where do they go?"
Right, where do they go to be part of a collective group
that has this community and this ability to push each other?
(inspirational music) You know as they graduate
this nine week course and they continue to train as alumni,
they recognize that they have this ability to train new people like them.
All the world class medical care out there,
the great prosthetics, frequently there isn't
a kick in the ass, something that just pushes you
to get going.
You know, something like that would never show up in hospital rehab.
There's no tire flips, there's no sledge hammers,
there's no sled pulls, none of that stuff.
You don't do medicine ball slams.
They make you stronger, they instill some insane confidence and
self worth back into you.
Not just that, they're giving you something to do,
a place to be, a little sense of community with everybody.
David's program, it's invaluable.
- It's a strong dude!
It's a strong dude!
Come on, come on!