Honestly, finding sand. I grew up in Arizona, ended up in Hermosa Beach, and started training on the beach — running, playing volleyball. Pushing down into instability, exploding without impact, strengthens muscles that never get touched on hard ground. That runs all the way up: ankles, knees, everything. I credit that shift to my best years, 34 to 38, right before I retired.

The AxisBoard has been a big part of that for me — ten, fifteen minutes a day at home. It's the same kind of proprioceptive, single-leg work as I used to do in rehab. What it does is strengthen the knee, and for me, that's always meant recovering quicker, because I'd already done the prep. As an athlete, the most important thing for me is my legs. If my legs are working right, we can figure out everything else. I've always recovered quicker because I'd done the prep. If a muscle is weak and it gets hurt, that's a bad space. If it's strong and it gets hurt, it just becomes weak. That's the difference.

Knee injuries keep you out the longest, and your knee has two completely different jobs — takeoff and landing. You've seen players get hurt attempting to take off, and you've seen them get hurt landing. Most training only builds one direction. My physio pointed out that golfers always swing one way and never train the other side. Basketball players are always jumping up — we never practice the strength of coming back down.

I got a lot out of the LadderPod for that reason. It's double-sided work — you can practice the strength of the takeoff, but you can also strengthen your body on the way down.

The Muscle Scraper, honestly, is intense. With a physio it's very intense, and I've come to appreciate that — the more I can handle, the quicker I recover. At home you control the pressure yourself. My physios mostly worked on my hip, that's where I held tension, and releasing it opened up my gait, which affects your stride length and everything downstream.

It's also how I got my wrist back after tearing a ligament in 2004 — two pins, a cast, two and a half months with no mobility. It broke up the scar tissue until my wrist had the same range it had before the injury. A wrist that can't move fully snaps when you fall on it. A wrist with full mobility absorbs it.

Not everyone gets three or four hours a day with a physio like a pro does. The real work — the part that determines whether you come back stronger or weaker — happens on your own time.