The fifth day was when the gravity of loss hit hardest.
Tom Morris grew up an athlete, and envisioned being a professional strength coach. Being active and physically fit was a core part of his life; in addition to his work in the weight room, he often competed in cycling races, 24-, 36- and 72-hour adventure races, and triathlons.
But after a mountain biking accident injured his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down, a core part of him was seemingly gone. He remembers that his lowest point came five days after his accident.
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“I had lost all independence. I lost the ability to do everything,” he said. “I rocked me to say I didn’t have any independence.”
Morris quickly rebounded from those feelings of defeat, recalibrating his attitude and vowing to work as hard as it took. He agonized through rehabilitation, constantly pushing himself. Even on the most difficult days, when his body ached and he didn’t think he had the energy to keep going, he persevered.
Today, Morris has risen above his injury. He is the senior assistant athletic director for athletic performance at Indiana University, primarily with the men’s soccer team. He is in charge of all the in-season and off-season strength and fitness for the team, and oversees 15 strength coaches.
At the same time, he uses his story to teach others about never giving up, to keep fighting, to be resilient.
“My journey is about gaining back my independence, about being able to live and do everything I could before, without losing those barriers of what a quadriplegic is labeled as,” he said.
Morris has started working with Tatiana Kolovou, a professor at the IU’s Kelley School of Business, to teach the importance of resiliency in all aspects of life.
The two will be presenting their program Friday as part of Leadership Johnson County’s Women in Leadership program.
“We’re going to talk about how resilience is a learned skill. Tom will talk about how he’s learned to build his resilience based on his life, and then what do you do with that? How do you take it back to your life and your workplace?” Kolovou said.
Kolovou teaches presentation and public speaking at the Kelly School of Business, as well as coaching others in those skills. She started working with Morris to help him as he developed his presentations on resilience.
Upon discussing the topic, they realized his message was similar to presentations Kolovou gives in corporate settings. She had created a course with the networking platform LinkedIn on building resilience in business situations.
“I talk about, in the course, how some people are able to deal with adversity in the workplace. Some people deal with adversity much better than others. Other people break down under pressure, and in human resource departments, people are often asked to go work on building their resilience,” Kolovou said.
Together, they worked to create a program that would address overcoming any kind of issues, whether it’s in sports, business or your personal life.
“It’s a learned skill that, stuff is going to happen. Adversity is going to hit. How can you be better prepared? How can you be stronger? How can you raise your resilience threshold,” Kolovou said.
Morris’ own experience provided a crystalline example of that.
In the spring of 2012, he was working as strength and conditioning coach for Indiana University. On May 17, 2012, he went out for a ride on his mountain bike at a Bloomington park. He doesn’t know exactly what happened, but his bike hit something on the trail, sending him careening head-first over the handlebars.
The accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. That moment was his lowest point, he said. He underwent emergency surgery, and learned that his spine had been pinched at the base of his neck.
Laying in the hospital bed, Morris was optimistic at first. But doubt started to creep in. He thought of an incident that occurred when he was a student that foreshadowed his situation.
While studying at Penn State University, he volunteered in the weight room as he worked toward a career in strength and conditioning.
One day, as part of one of his other classes, he was required to spend a day in a wheelchair, going about his daily schedule while gaining a better understanding about disability. Just two hours into the experience, Morris was resigned to the fact he’d never be able to work in the weight room while in a wheelchair.
“I started trying to live this life as a guy in a wheelchair, an active strength coach who was going to do this profession,” he said. “On that second hour, I thought I couldn’t do this. There was no way.”
Morris recalled that incident, and how difficult just a few hours in a wheelchair had been. But he had grown as a person from that point, and he adopted a positive outlook on recovery.
“I always believed that attitude was the driving force to getting anything accomplished,” he said.
He went through intensive rehabilitation in Louisville. With time, he regained feeling in his arms and torso.
Most importantly, he was able to return to the job he loves — helping others get better.
“I went from having the life that I could only dream about, to zeroing out,” he said. “But I climbed out of that hole and got back to that life I had before, just doing it in a different way.”
Morris has continued his work as a strength coach, but has also added a different facet to the concept of being strong. Since his accident, he has used his own situation to inspire and help others.
“It’s something that has become a real strong passion of mine, to go out and share, to motivate, give hope and allow people to see that you can really get knocked down,” he said.
His presentation ideally walks people through the steps he went through to recover. If you put some intent behind those steps, you’ll build that resilience that prepares you for adversity, he said.
Talking about the experience forced Morris to look not only at his life since the accident, but his life before that as well. Even suffering a life-changing event, he told himself he had to figure out a way to move on, figure out what the rest of his life would look like.
Morris focuses on three main points: building a solid team around him to help him succeed, pushing himself to do things that give him discomfort every day and being able to have an optimistic attitude.
“My attitude is based around the word ‘can.’ It’s the way I approach everything,” he said. “Those three lessons, which I’ve really embraced, (are) what has allowed me to regain my independence and regain the world of sport.”
Both he and Kolovou acknowledge that few people will experience a physical accident such as the one that impacted Morris. But the hope is that the foundational values that he held onto can apply to anyone.
“People are going to lose jobs, they’re going to lose clients, they’re not going to get promoted, they’re not going to get good performance evaluations. If they’re able to mentally work themselves through that rejection, (they’ll) be stronger,” Kolovou said.
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Women in Leadership: Resiliency
What: A hands-on course to help people assess their own level of resilience, and provide learning strategies for strengthening their ability to bounce back in their work and beyond.
When: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday
Where: Compass Park Community Center, 690 S. State St., Franklin
Cost
- $99 per person for Leadership Johnson County and Franklin College alumni, Franklin and Greater Greenwood Chamber of Commerce members.
- $119 per person for the general public
Information and to register: www.leadershipjohnsoncounty.org/women-in-leadership-workshop
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