On my left knee I have a long scar from an ACL operation. I've had both knees reconstructed.
I've had an operation on my knee, two operations on my hand, injuries on elbows and stuff but you get through it.
My knee was torn up. I tore every ligament in my knee. It was a very, very bad injury. I had to do what the doctors told me to do, and I did that. The next year, I came back and led the league in rushing.
The knee was all deformed, bloodied up and leaking with puss. I just couldn't move it. Stiff. It was like I had a spare leg. All of my quad was skinny. It was like a pole with a pineapple in the middle of it.
I'd had a really bad car accident years ago, and basically, the ligaments in the back of my neck were ripped, and I'd never addressed that.
I've rolled and torn ligaments in my ankle.
I tore up my knee break dancing. I have no idea how that happened. Apparently these legs are meant for swimming, but not dancing. I was watching an MTV video, thinking, 'I can do this.' Definitely not. I heard a pop. I sat down and it blew up like a watermelon. I had to go to the hospital and get surgery.
I had two ACL injuries in my life, and both of them happened when I was training with bigger guys; a heavyweight and a light heavyweight. Sometimes it's not even because the guy is good, you just get hurt.
A squirrel attacked me. I got attacked by a squirrel in Battersea Park. They're dangerous. It's rare. I've torn most of the ligaments in my knee. So no football for me. It's early retirement now. I've got a floating knee-cap!
I tore ligaments in my shoulder completely off the bone.
Your cruciate ligament, like many long-term injuries... when they come back they're expected to be what they were before the injury. While fit it sometimes takes a little bit longer for some than others.
Over the years, I've had two ankle operations, torn my hamstring, had my hip resurfaced, and snapped the anterior cruciate ligament in my knee.
I used to play a lot of tennis and then, next thing you know, same thing with tennis. That banging on the knees, the jarring, twisting motion - I couldn't do it. All of a sudden, every time I played, my knee would swell up.
I tore my right shoulder to pieces - three external tears, a labrum tear, and a detachment of the bicep tendon.
Oh, there's a lot of breaks in our sport. Strained muscles, breaks, tears. I've seen teeth fly out before mouth guards were compulsory. Feet fractures are quite common, cheeks, faces, jaws, legs.
It's the one that the players fear. The No 1 is the ACL - the anterior cruciate ligament - closely followed by a real tear of the hamstring, because you know that's the one injury that kids you.
I was injured at the end of 'Kill Bill.' I hit the ground, instead of hitting the mat, pretty hard and busted my ribs and had to have surgery. I was being blown out of a trailer in a harness and actually landed on my coordinator instead - who broke my fall a little! My arm smacked into the ground and obliterated one of the ligaments.
Just because it was multiple ligaments, just because of the trauma of the injury, they compared it to like a car accident. I didn't have anybody to follow, there was no timetable. I could get better, I could not get better. You just don't know. People fear what they don't know. I'm in the dark, and everything is just about faith.
I was hospitalized five times in 2011 because of my skiing. Fracturing my left shoulder twice, snapping my anterior cruciate ligament once and smashing my scapula into five pieces.
The only way to get a three to four-month break would be to tear a tendon or a hamstring or something like that.
Steroids build your muscles, but they don't build your tendons or ligaments.
I've separated my shoulder and my collarbone; I've messed up my knee a million times. I've broken my foot in several places. I've broken my toe a bunch, broken my nose a couple of times, and had a bunch of other annoying little injuries, like turf toe and arthritis and tendonitis. It's part of the game.
