Program Manager & Professional Bullfighter Discusses Mindset, Training & Lifestyle At San Antonio Rodeo In Texas
Athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Whatever competition presents itself, the sport always has an element of contact. Football, baseball, even basketball have their own possibilities. But when talking about a rodeo, it becomes the implementation of interacting with live animals who can be immensely unpredictable. These riders/athletes have to react within milliseconds. An interesting interaction is between an aspect of sports medicine and the riders. At the San Antonio Rodeo in Texas, MRV: The Buzz Editor in Chief sat down with professional rodeo bullfighter Chip Swisher as well as program manager of Justin Sports Medicine Travis Chipman to discuss prep, psychology and the essence of the sport.
The Buzz: Chuck, training for a rodeo is insane. And, of course, having something like this sports medicine program is good. Can you talk about the balance of training versus actual riding?
Chuck Swisher: We are professional athletes just like your football players, basketball players, and baseball players. So we have to do a lot of training coming up into the event whether it be watching film, watching your bucking horse, or your bucking bull, or even when you're fighting bulls like I do. So you got to be able to pay attention and see everything before you even step into the arena. And that's months in advance -- but once you step into the arena, it's all muscle reaction because you don't have time to think. With my job fighting bulls, if you think for a second, you're already late. So you have to just react, and it just goes off that muscle memory.
The Buzz: Can tell me a little bit of your background, this idea of sports medicine within the rodeo context?
Travis Chipman: So the Justin Sports Medicine program came about in 1980 with Dr. J. Pat Evans and John Justin of Justin Boot Corporation. And John and Justin realized that there was a need for help for these cowboys because every other sport has athletic trainers. And J. Pat Evans, at the time, was the team physician for the Dallas Cowboys. They were good friends, and it kind of grew from there. And since then…they started out in the back of a pickup truck…today, we have 3 forty-foot trailers that go around the United States and cover different rodeos with fully stocked athletic training rooms where we can treat major injuries or moderate injuries within the training room, and then if we need to, we can have those athletes transferred to definitive care.
The Buzz: Now you’re dealing with an animal but you're also dealing with the psychology of how to react to the animal and know which way he's going to go before he goes. Now, can you talk about when you prep? Before you go on, what do you do…is there a sort of pre-ritual?
CS: For me, we'll run to the Justin Sports Medicine room, and we'll have our ankles taped just for extra support. Get a good stretch, make sure we're good and warm before we step into the arena. Because once you get hit by a bull or once you get thrown off a horse, it's usually not always the easiest landing and you got to be able to be flexible. There's a lot of muscle memory that goes into it whether it be riding a horse or riding a bull. Even if your head usually doesn't want to get you there, if your body is already doing so you're going to be right in the right place at the right time.
The Buzz: In the arena, you have all this other stimuli going on. Adrenalin can take over but then instinct has to take over beyond all your training.
CS: You know here we are at San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. It is the biggest PRCA rodeo in the industry. 17,000 fans a night…you won't go and see another rodeo this size anywhere. So whenever you step foot into the arena, obviously, there's a lot of adrenalin… a lot of crowd looking down on you, and everything's going. But that's where just your muscle memory comes back into play. You just go through the motions so many times that you just zone the crowd out, zone the fans out, and just zone all the energy out besides you and your bull, or you and your horse.
The Buzz: With something like the San Antonio Rodeo, what kind of injuries do you have to deal with? And what kind of preventatives do you put in place?
TC: So I open up about two hours before each performance. Athletes will come in, and they may have been injured at other rodeos, and if they haven't been evaluated by our staff, we'll evaluate them, and do re-evaluations. [There is a] lot of preventative care, so [it is also] teaching them how to take care of themselves, [including] proper stretching techniques, even actually helping them learn how to tape themselves, because we only cover 125 rodeos or 130 rodeos out of the year. There's over 600 rodeos each year for the professional rodeo cowboy circuit.
The Buzz: What’s a good basis as far as them prepping before? What do they have to do in terms of these stretches? Can you talk a little bit about that process?
TC: Depending on what event they're in, the stretching will be a little bit different. We try to promote them to go ahead and get a good warm up so that their body's a lot more flexible. And then, just basic stretches. We don't want to overdo thing… we just want to make sure that we keep them tuned up. You know, it's kind of like a race car…we want that car at an optimum anyway. And so, we'll spend some time, you know, if they've got low back problems, or they've got hamstring problems, we can go ahead and address those.
The Buzz: Can you talk about this conception that people have of these riders…what they have to do, how they have to think? There's a psychology to it that relates into their physicality because in this sport you can easily be hurt.
TC: Well, they can, and it doesn't matter. It's not a matter of, if you're going to get hurt, it's a matter of when you're going to get hurt, especially with our rough stock events. If the athletes are not participating, they don't have a chance to make money. Whereas every other professional athlete has a contract and they're guaranteed a check at the end of the night, a cowboy's only going to get paid if he wins. So he wants to do as much as he can to do that. So we've got to help them along the way. There's certain times that they can come in. We may have to adjust tape jobs or a do a specific tape-job so that they can compete that night. We also need to educate them on how to take care of themselves so that down the road, they're still able to participate.
The Buzz: You’re dealing with a couple of riders here today. Without getting too much into detail, can you talk about what kind of injuries you've had to treat? And then how they get to the next rodeo?
TC: So in any rodeo, it can be as simple as sprains and strains from ankles, elbow, wrists. Or it can be as severe as concussions.
The Buzz: And you're also dealing with a live animal. Whereas in other sports, you're dealing against other humans, here you're dealing with an animal. How does that change the equation?
TC: Well, we use a lot of the same techniques in taping, but we have to adjust those to give them a little more strength. And the other thing is, they're only competing for eight seconds at a time…
The Buzz: Wow.
TC: …so we do make some adjustments. And the tech's job's going to be a little bit heavier, depending on what [the injury] is and so forth.
The Buzz: Can you talk about the journey of a rodeo rider because you're talking about a finite amount of time that they can work. Can you talk about your perception, having been in this business?
TC: Depending on what event the athlete's in-- the cowboy's participating in -- he may be able to compete for 10 years in that, or he might be the kind of person to compete in that 20 or 30 years. Depending on the violence, I guess you can say, of the event, [whether] bronco riding or bull riding, [there’s] a greater chance of being injured. And the repetitive injuries give you a decline in your length of being able to participate.
The Buzz: Most of these rodeos are such large, logistical things, so you're dealing with a lot of people at a lot of different times. Can you talk about that?
TC: So just with the sports medicine program, we've got program managers throughout the United States. I happen to live here in town, so the logistics for here at San Antonio, I have local trainers and doctors that I go out and solicit to come in and help us. We use local resources usually because for us to have a staff, that would be impossible for us going all over the United States. We use those local resources. We bring those doctors in, and they do our evaluations and help us decide what our treatment plan is for our athletes. We [mostly] use local athletic trainers. And then, as I [indicated earlier], we've got three mobile training rooms and Justin Sports Medicine trailers that travel to different rodeos. So those suppliers are on board. For an indoor rodeo like this, we've got four or five bags that we'll bring in with all our supplies and set up shop like we would a training room for the NFL .
The Buzz: I was going to ask you is [where we are now] is this considered the training room?
TC: Yeah, this is the training room. This happens to be the visiting training room for the facility. So in the back part, we've got our contestant area, so our contestants are prepping for their event, getting their gear ready and doing some stretching. Then we’ve got our training room right adjacent to it.
The Buzz: And they tape themselves up here?
TC: They do some of the taping. Like I said, we teach them to tape because we can't be at all the rodeos
The Buzz: So a lot like a boxer?
TC: A lot like a boxer. We teach them how to tape, but we're there to tape them as well. And if it's a new injury that they've never had before, we can go ahead and teach them those techniques…as long as they're in a spot where they're able to participate.
The Buzz: Chip… you've been in this sport for a while, so it's about experience, and it's about getting better, better, better. What do you do to push yourself?
CS: The group of guys that I hang out with are the best bull-fighters in the world. So it's cool to be around them because you want to be as good as them, and, obviously, you want to be better than them. So we all push each other to be the best. And it's the same deal with the bronco-riders, or the calf-ropers, or the bull-riders. They hang out with the best guys they can travel with, so, obviously, they're making themselves step up to the next level. And like I said earlier, we're professional athletes, so we got to study film, we got to realize what we did wrong, what we did right, what we should do next time, what we shouldn't do next time, and just keep working…just keep moving forward.
Tim Wassberg
A graduate of New York University's Tisch School Of The Arts with degrees in Film/TV Production & Film Criticism, Tim has written for magazines such as Moviemaker, Moving Pictures, Conde Nast Traveler UK and Casino Player. He enjoys traveling and distinct craft beers among other things.
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