by Jessica Pope
A little more than four years ago, Trebor Marple was training for a triathlon when a tragic accident nearly took his life.
Today, as a doctor-described walking paraplegic, Trebor operates CrossFit Valdosta — a unique elite fitness center boasting a strength and conditioning program perfect for everyone, from the housewife to the terrorist hunter, the professional athlete to the senior citizen with heart disease.
Trebor’s accident occurred on a Friday.
He had, just a few weeks earlier, purchased a new bicycle and was eager to get it out on the road and begin training for an upcoming triathlon. He was a well-known endurance activity enthusiast, and he strived to keep his body in tip-top shape 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A private personal trainer and massage therapist at the time, Trebor set out on a seemingly routine 60-mile bike ride. Coasting along U.S. Highway 41, he was coming up on the last few miles of his ride when an elderly individual driving a full-size Ford pickup truck, for one reason or another, veered off the road and hit Trebor.
“I was coming back from Lake Park,” Trebor says. “All I remember was being hit and flying up in the air. I don’t know anything after that, except what I have been told. Before that, I remember that I had enjoyed a good bicycle ride.”
Trebor, who was wearing the appropriate bicycle safety equipment and obeying bicycle regulations, lay on the roadside unconscious and wounded but alive and breathing.
The driver of the truck that hit him stopped and called for medical help, and Trebor was rushed by ambulance to the Emergency Department at South Georgia Medical Center, where he says Dr. Howard Jones saved his life.
“He really helped me a lot,” Trebor explains. “He ran some tests, figured out what was going on with me, and pulled some strings to get me admitted at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. Usually, you have to go first to Shands at the University of Florida in Gainesville and wait for a spot to open up.”
The Shepherd Center, founded in 1975, is a private, not-for-profit, catastrophic care hospital devoted to the medical care and rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injury and disease, acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, and other neuromuscular problems.
Three days after his accident, Trebor underwent spinal cord surgery at Piedmont Hospital, right across the street from the Shepherd Center. Because he suffered a spinal cord fracture, surgeons were forced to fuse five of his vertebrae together.
Trebor left the hospital paralyzed from the waist down, with two metal rods, four connectors, and a set of 16 screws in his spine. He was told he might never walk or regain the use of vital organs again.
Back at the Shepherd Center, Trebor learned how to be independent despite his new disability, while simultaneously planning in his own mind for a full recovery. He returned to Valdosta in a wheelchair.
“I was in the YMCA working out the day I got out of the hospital and came home,” he shares. “I was determined to do whatever it took to get my body — as close as possible — to where it was before my accident. I never let the word ‘can’t’ become a part of my vocabulary.”
Trebor also worked with a local physical therapist until he could no longer afford it.
“I knew that I would never be 100 percent, but I was pretty confident that I could train my body to get around without assistance,” he says. “I knew it was going to require that I work hard every day of the week on areas like balance, leg strength, core strength, and so on. I was stubborn.”
It took Trebor quite a while to retrain his brain to recognize his legs even though they were without any feeling. The first time he tried to walk, he says it felt as if he was walking high upon a cloud.
“I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me,” he adds.
A self-described military brat who was born to a United States Air Force pilot stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Trebor notes that he notices changes in his body and what it can do all the time. He can walk without assistance and has regained some feeling along the inside of his legs and feet.
About a year after his accident, Trebor says that he competed in an Olympic distance triathlon as a disabled athlete using a special hand cycle and a racing wheelchair.
“I needed to prove to myself that I could still do it,” he says. “Plus, I needed to see where I was at in my recovery.”
Trebor opened CrossFit Valdosta in June of 2007. He says that his accident and subsequent recovery have helped him view the overall importance of fitness and good health in a different way.
“I truly believe that my being in such good shape saved me,” he shares. “Because I was so physically fit and disciplined, my body was able to withstand the trauma of the accident and make a remarkable comeback. If that won’t motivate someone to strive for better health, I do not know what will. I tell my clients that you never know when something bad will happen, so you need to prepare for it now.”
Trebor has been a resident of Valdosta off and on for the past 10 years. If one of his clients uses the word “can’t” during a workout, he makes them do burpees ... whatever those are.
According to the national CrossFit: Forging Elite Fitness Web site at www.crossfit.com:
“The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability, making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity. We don’t change programs. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree, not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen.”
