Rustin Hughes is a Husband, father, veteran, Para Jiu Jitsu champion, and coach. He lost his leg in 2014 and has been utilizing the lessons he learned from the experience to convey a sense of hope and determination to individuals battling through their own adversity. He recognizes the power of sports and exercise in healing oneself, both physically and mentally. Rustin has dedicated his life toward affecting positive change in individuals throughout northern Colorado, no matter what their abilities are.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Rustin Hughes about lessons learned as a 1-legged champion athlete.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How people with disabilities can achieve their goals by finding innovative solutions.
– Why many people with disabilities have to experiment with techniques because of lack of guidance.
– Why it’s important to instill confidence in people with disabilities.
– How people with disabilities can turn those same disabilities into their strengths.
– Why wearing heavily padded shoes presents a challenge for people with prosthetic legs.
Connect with Rustin:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@rustin_nubjitsu
Facebook
facebook.com/Bboldadaptiveliving
Links Mentioned:
bboldadaptiveliving.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
People often ask me, who’s your market for Xero Shoes? I like to semi glibly say people with feet preferably too. We’re going to explore that a little more on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things that are your foundation.
I’m turning my self view on just in case that wasn’t there and we break down on this podcast, the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, or walk, or hike, or play, or do yoga, or CrossFit, or martial arts, whatever it is you like to do and to do that effectively, efficiently, enjoyably. I said enjoyably, you heard me. If you’re not doing something you enjoy, you’re not going to keep it up anyway, so find something you’d like to do. That’s the thing that’s going to do.
Now, we call this the Movement Movement because we, and that involves you, more about that in a second, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what bodies are made to do without getting in the way with things that are seemingly better but actually aren’t. The movement part, the first part of that that involves you is really simple.
Go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s no thing you need to do to join, there’s no secret handshake. There’s no dance we do every morning, there’s no song we have to sing in honor of our great leader. It’s just a place where you can find all the previous episodes, the different ways you can find us on social media and interact with us there, and of course, the other places you can find the podcast if you don’t like the one where you already found this one. I think that’s it.
All you need to do to be part of this is really simple. Give us a thumbs up, or like, a good review, or hit five stars, or hit the bell icon on YouTube. You know The drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, let’s get started. Rustin Hughes, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Rustin Hughes:
My name is Rustin Hughes. I am an above the knee amputee, and I compete in jujitsu. I also have a company called Be Bold, and we help people of all abilities get into martial arts.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. Before we actually jump in, just for the people who have seen this podcast before and they watch it, a couple of things that I want to highlight. One, normally there’s a whole bunch of shoes behind me that we can use for reference, but we just moved into this new office a day ago and I don’t even know where that box of shoes is. So grid wall, no shoes.
Secondly, normally I have a microphone on the other side, but that’s because there’s a window over there that I never had before that was leaving this crazy shadow, but that’s not important. Just for the fun of people who are really OCD about things like that.
Okay, so we got introduced because we have a number of people who are above and below the knee amputees who have been really hip to Xero Shoes. Let’s back up and do this. How did you become an above the knee amputee?
Rustin Hughes:
I had a massive blood clot in my artery of my thigh. Yeah, it was crazy.
Steven Sashen:
Just out of nowhere?
Rustin Hughes:
I had been feeling a pain in my leg, but being in martial arts, I always thought it was just an injury that I had. Honestly, what I thought that it was was like a pinched nerve. And then this particular day, it was a Sunday, we were in Lakewood, Colorado at a farmer’s market, and I just physically could not move. I was right stuck in the middle of this farmer’s market and could not walk anymore. I would compare it to my leg felt like there was concrete in it. It was super heavy and it was just hard to walk.
My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, she was like, “I’m going to take you to the emergency room.” And I was just like, “No, you’re not taking me to the emergency room. They’re just going to give me an aspirin and tell me I have a pinched nerve.” She was like, “If you want me to get the car, I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
I’m a veteran and I have the VA, so she took me to the Denver VA and I explained to them what was going on and they took me back and was running some tests, and then the doctor comes in and I’m just expecting him to tell me you got a pinched nerve, blah, blah, blah. He comes in and he’s just like listen, you’ve got a very big blood clot in your artery and we’re taking you to ICU right now, and you’re probably going to have your leg amputated and you’re going to be on blood thinners for the rest of your life.
At that moment, it was just like this huge wave hit me. I had to even Google what amputation was because I was just like he’s got to be kidding me. There’s no way. Does amputation still mean what I think it means?
Steven Sashen:
Maybe there’s some doctor version of that that I’m not aware of.
Rustin Hughes:
I’m just like, you got to be kidding me. It was just so surreal, just so…
Steven Sashen:
No conversation, no debate. It’s like we got to go and you’re going to come back with half a leg.
Rustin Hughes:
What they tried to do, they took me into ICU and then they tried to… I was a plumber by trade before, so I relate to everything by plumber’s terms like Roto-Rooter the artery, and then they tried to then put this-
Steven Sashen:
There we go, I was going to say they had some Drano version.
Rustin Hughes:
Yep. The first day they tried that there was no success. They were comparing the clot to concrete. They said the artery was pretty solid of this clot, so they came in the next day to be a little more aggressive with the same treatment, Roto-Rooter, Drano, on the clock kind of thing, and just nothing budged it.
I remember waking up from the second procedure and the doctors are all in there and they’re just like, unfortunately, we cannot bust through this and we’re going to make you an appointment to see the vascular surgeon and we’re going to give you a big bottle of oxycodone and a big bottle of blood thinners is what I went home with, and I didn’t have my appointment for another 30+ days.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God.
Rustin Hughes:
At that time, I really needed to figure out what my decision was going to be or what I’m going to do after this.
Steven Sashen:
What choice did you have? Look, because a medical geek, when you saw the arterial guy, was there any possibility of an arterial transplant?
Rustin Hughes:
They were talking about a bypass, but again, being a plumber, the length of that clot, there’s no way that they’re going to be able to bypass that and make it… They had told me if the bypass failed, I’d become an above the knee amputee automatically.
I had about 30 days to figure out some things. I moved back in with my parents in Nebraska just to separate because my girlfriend and we had been dating about a year and it’s at that kind of point of what do we do? She has two daughters, and we just thought it would be best if I just separated myself so I could come up with this decision on my own.
I just had one question for the doctors. At some point of my life, not now, but at some point, am I going to have to have my leg amputated? I don’t even think I sat down. I walk into the office and it was just like listen, I don’t want to take you guys’ time, but I just want to know one thing. Am I going to have to have my leg amputated? The way I was looking at it is if I have to, let’s just do it right now because I could already see the road that I was going down with the oxycodone and it was not a good road, and I just wanted to get back into life again.
I’d just lost my first wife to brain cancer, and now I’m in this position where I’m sitting in this hospital bed. It was the last place that I wanted to be at, was in a hospital. I was just like I’ve had so many plans. I had just finished culinary school and I had all these plans of starting my own private chef business and looking into getting a food truck and all of these things, and then I’m just like you’ve got to be kidding me.
We decided to do a below the knee amputation. August 21st, 2014, I went in, I had the surgery, came out, and I was in the hospital for about a week and my 40th birthday was the following weekend so my parents and my brother and sister and their families all came out and we went to Estes Park for my 40th birthday.
Looking back on that, it was not a good decision just because of the elevation gain that we had. I was in extreme pain probably after the second day of being there, just uncontrolled pain that I could not touch with any of my pain meds, my oxycodone, morphine. We had to go to the emergency room in Estes Park. I still had stitches in my leg and they were just like… They gave me a shot of morphine to take care of the pain, but they’re like you need to get back to the VA, there’s some issues that you have.
Went back the following day and the doctor took one of those Q-tips, one of those long Q-tips that they had, and he buried it in my incision that I had. I about went through the roof. Oh my goodness, it hurt so bad. He looks at me and he is just like, we need to get you into surgery. Unfortunately, I was on blood thinners at the time, so there was a protocol that you have to be weaned off of your blood thinners for a week, and these were Lovenox shots that I had to inject in my stomach myself, and it was torture.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God.
Rustin Hughes:
We go in the day, it was September 11th, 2014, we go in and they were going to clean out the area and right before they put me under, they’re like we may have to amputate above the knee. Do you want us to wake you up to let you know that that’s what we’re doing? And I was just like don’t wake me up to tell me and to put me back under.
To be honest, I thought that they were going to go in, there was an infection, but I didn’t realize how bad the infection was. I just thought they were going to go in, clean it out, sew me back up and be on my way. I remember waking up from the surgery and I was kind of… Those moments are like what just happened? I remember I look underneath the sheets and my leg was gone and it was just… I would say that’s probably the lowest point of my life at that moment.
I could not believe that I had gone through two amputations in three weeks. The nurses after the first one, they were just like you’re so lucky. You’re a below the knee amputee. You still have that knee joint, and it’s all of these things. Now I’m seeing the same nurses, and now I’m an above the knee amputee and they’re looking at me like… I could not believe that that’s the position that I was in. I’m just laying in this hospital bed and I’m super depressed, didn’t know what… I just turned 40 years old, what the rest of my life was going to… What am I going to do with the rest of my life? There was just a lot of questions at that point.
Steven Sashen:
I want to ask you a weird question, and pardon me if I’m being mildly invasive, but I get really curious about all things medical. As a vet, I can only imagine you knew guys who had for different reasons, been in similar situations where they had something amputated. Had you ever had any of this ever crossed your mind in the past about what would happen if?
Personally, because I’m a freak, I think about these things all the time. What would happen if I didn’t have fill in the blank? This is a dumb variation of that that just popped into my head. Someone said what would it be like if you can’t run anymore? I just was like, what? I just couldn’t even comprehend it. But on the track, I meet these guys who are either above or below the knee amputees and they’re doing their thing, they’re out on the track. I think about that and I hang out with them a lot.
In fact, there’s one guy who’s got the cheetah, the carbon fiber blade for a foot, and I said listen, do me a favor. If that thing ever breaks when you’re in a race, just roll on the ground going, “Oh, I pulled a muffle.” He loved that idea. I’m also that kind of geek where if I see somebody in a motorized wheelchair, my first question, how fast can you go on that thing? What’s the zero to 60 on that? It’s all interesting to me, but at the same time, I can…
Look, for no other reason having two surgeries in three weeks… Normally the three-week mark after a major surgery is when people tend to get depressed anyway, just because all this stuff is changing in your body. To compound that with the additional surgery, again, that was a long version of had you ever contemplated this? If so, how different was it once it actually happened? What was the difference between below and above in your mind?
Rustin Hughes:
I didn’t really have a lot of time being below the knee amputee because they had me in a cast where I couldn’t really bend my knee. They wanted everything to heal up first.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Rustin Hughes:
I was in a wheelchair the whole entire time, so I didn’t really get to experience a below the knee, what that was like. I had over 30 days from when we decided to do the surgery till when I had the surgery, so I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out… I was doing all these one-legged exercises trying to do one-legged squats and balance on one leg when I was doing my curls.
It is nothing the same from where I was then and to where I’m at now, just because it’s so different. The counterbalance is different, but I think what it allowed me to do is just focus on something other than this negative amputation that was going to happen. I was able to focus on how am I going to rehab myself through this. I did a lot of body weight exercises. I was an MMA fighter before and I treated it like a fight camp and told myself every day on this date, I’m going to have this surgery. It kept my mind I guess not focusing on the bad stuff and just focusing on the good stuff that I could focus on.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve got to ask you this question, when you were below or above, first time you did a pull-up or a chin-up, did you go, that’s fucking easy?
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, I was talking about the advantages of being a leg amputee, it’s like I take my leg off and I lose 15 pounds automatically.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. I got to tell you where that came from. Back in my gymnast days, I was at this gymnastics camp and there was a guy there who was an above the knee amputee and pretty close to his hip too. It was amazing watching him vault. He’d hopped down the runway and vault and doing things on floor was really cool, but when he was on rings doing all the strength moves and everyone’s going, oh, and I’m going he weighs 20 pounds less. If I weighed 20 pounds less, I could do all that shit. People got really mad at me, but he thought it was hysterical.
Rustin Hughes:
My guys at my gym, they say, I cheat.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly.
Rustin Hughes:
I tell them, I’m like, I compete at 145 pounds and I don’t have to cut weight except for taking my leg off. I walk around usually about 160, but I take my leg off. I’m 145 and I make weight pretty easy.
Right afterwards, I doubled my socks instantly. That was another positive. I try to look at this as how can I make this the best situation that it could be? I’m in a really crappy position and how do I make this better?
Steven Sashen:
What’s interesting to me is that people, when they typically imagine something like this, they imagine how bad it’s going to be and they assume that’s the way it’s going to be. I imagine again, that when you first looked under the covers and went oh crap, and were depressed from that, I imagine there were some of that, but what people don’t… How do I want to say this? People project in a really weird way and think… Here, let me do this as a question. Do people come up to you and talk to you about how the way you’re handling the situation is an inspiration?
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
In your head, are you going no, this is what anyone would do?
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, it’s just like I had no other choice.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Rustin Hughes:
I guess there is two choices because in my head, I had had it where I was going to do one of two things and it was going to be 100%. I was going to continue on or I was going to give up and it was going to be 100%. I sat there and I was like there’s no way I can give up. There’s just no way that I’m going to give up.
That’s when a lot of things started to change for me too. I found that they have a rec therapist at the VA, and I had a meeting with this rec therapist, and I don’t even know really how this all came about, but I was going to ride a bike from Denver to Omaha. Again, what it allowed me to do is just focus on something else and I’m doing the logistics of where am I going to stop at? How far can I ride in a day? All these things. It really was a therapy I didn’t even know that was possible. I got out of the hospital and I got an upright bicycle and I realized that I was not very good at riding an upright bicycle.
Steven Sashen:
You mean before or after the amputation?
Rustin Hughes:
Both. I don’t think I ever rode a bike more than five miles. What I found out is that the VA will give veterans adaptive cycles, and so I got a hand cycle and honestly, it was so therapeutic. I met another veteran, a combat wounded veteran that had an adaptive cycle himself, and he took me around Fort Collins. There’s lots of trails around here.
I remember when we did 10 miles and I thought that was awesome. Wow, I just went 10 miles on a bike and then we did 20, 25 all the way up. I did my first century ride back in Nebraska, and then we changed the route up a little bit. We went from Fort Collins to Omaha and we stopped-
Steven Sashen:
Let me pause there. Why Omaha of all places?
Rustin Hughes:
My first wife, she did her brain cancer treatments at the University of Omaha, the med center there. I just thought that that would’ve been a good place to end the ride. We did 600 miles in six days of riding. I did multiple century rides back to back, which I’d never done before. We were averaging about 25 miles an hour on these adaptive cycles, which was just… The whole ride was amazing.
We had a SAG that was helping escort us throughout the whole ride, and we were able to fund the whole ride. It kicked off our nonprofit, Be Bold. We had just got our paperwork back, and then we were able to raise $4,000 and give it to another veteran that just lost his wife to brain cancer.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, so it was one of the most… It was tough. There was one day that we got rained on for six hours straight, but it was, again, it was really therapeutic for me just physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, all those things.
Steven Sashen:
For most people doing anything that’s that kind of a challenge is a big awakening, but I can only imagine that after what you’ve gone through and then overcoming… Or not overcoming, but completing that challenge would have just an extra bonus on it.
Rustin Hughes:
It was one of those things where, what’s next? That’s where we really started doing our Be Bold boxing. Boxing helped me out a lot. My good friend Ryan Schultz owns a gym here in Fort Collins called Trials MMA and at this particular time, I didn’t have my prosthetic leg all the time, it was still being worked on. I could really only go as far as my wheelchair would take me, and that wasn’t very far.
I called him up and I said, Hey, is there any way that we could work something out? He would pick me up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and take me to the gym and he would coach class, and I would go over to the heavy bags and figure out how I was going to do all this stuff. Some days I didn’t have my leg, so I was in my wheelchair. Other days I did have my leg and I was trying to figure out, am I going to have my right leg forward? Am I going to have my left leg forward? Can I still throw kicks? Can I plant off my prosthetic and throw a kick?
I realized how beneficial that this was for me to figure all this stuff out and how much it was helping me. If it could help me, it could help a lot of other people as well. I think that we all need to hit something real hard every now and again, just vent out some frustration, but do it in a positive environment and do it in a positive way.
That’s where we came up with our Be Bold boxing classes. From that, honestly, I think we’ve had pretty much any ability you could think of in our gym. One of the coolest things that I had seen was I was doing a boxing clinic and we had two guys that were blind. They partnered up with each other, and to watch those two, it was amazing.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, you’re going to have to describe that a little differently than the very comedic version that’s in my head, which is two guys wandering around the ring, just throwing punches in the air and then somebody accidentally hits somebody and wins. What was it actually like? I got to back up though.
We got a heavy bag in our office and one of the guys in our office said, “God, if I had known you’re going to have that, you could have gotten me for free.” Because it does come in handy. Describe two blind guys boxing because that is… It just sounds hysterical. Clearly that’s not the way it actually played out.
Rustin Hughes:
One of the guys, I had been working with for quite a while, and so he knew the punches and he would listen to where the voice was and he knew where the voice was is where the head is. He knew your ones and twos are your straight punches, your threes and fours or your hooks, and your fives and sixes are your upper cuts.
The other guy was from out of state and he had done a little bit of boxing before he lost his vision, and so he had a good understanding. What they were doing is just getting their distance. I knew when their distance was there, then they would call out the numbers, and Trevor was the guy that I work with, he held pads first. Once he understood where-
Steven Sashen:
To be clear, they were training not having a fight?
Rustin Hughes:
We were just going through some mit work.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. Okay, just for people aren’t hip to this and by the way, I had my first actual boxing lesson about a year ago, and it was so much fun just because the physics of it is a blast. When you really get… You’re using your body well and it comes out through your hands, well, it’s so satisfying. There’s just something incredible about it.
It’s left and rights, one and two is a straight punch, three and four is a hook, five and six is an upper cut. You’ve got the other guy on the other side who’s calling that out typically or a pattern, and he’s got pads that you’re aiming for basically. If you’ve watched B Rocky, anyone, they know the gist of this but didn’t know that’s how it actually goes down. All right.
Rustin Hughes:
Watching them figure out the distance and then where the punches are going to land. I was just in awe watching these two guys. I look at it as it doesn’t matter what your physical ability is, you can do anything that you want to do, honestly. I think that it is just figuring out the way to do it.
There’s no guidebook. I found that there’s no book that you can go check out and say how do you box having one leg? That’s where it was like, I’m coming up with this stuff by trial and error, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work.
Steven Sashen:
Even worse, it’s a punchline. People use the idea of a one-legged kick boxer as a joke. I can only imagine someone has said that to you at some point.
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, all the time.
Steven Sashen:
I got to give you this challenge. When I was living in New York, I rode a recumbent bike, which is crazy enough doing that in New York, I never had a problem because when you’re on a recumbent, people think you’re crippled and so they give you a lot of leeway. There was a bike messenger I used to ride with all the time who is an above the knee amputee, and he wrote a fixie, no breaks, it was all just controlled with his foot.
To say he was an inspiration is not quite accurate. It was just like holy crap, how did you figure this out? He did a cross country trip to raise money for people and he’s riding a fixie with one leg and this guy was fast it. Again, it’s that same thing. It’s like we don’t anticipate that if… For most people or everyone I’ve talked to in this situation, let me say it that way, it’s like one day you wake up and go I got to just figure this out. That’s when everything changes. For you, it sounds like it happened pretty quickly, which is not too surprising, frankly.
Rustin Hughes:
I was very frustrated and I needed to vent out a lot of stuff, and the only way that I knew how to do that in a positive way was to hit a heavy bag. Then realizing there’s a lot of other people that are frustrated too, and coming into this new demographic that I was a part of, I also had learned that people with disabilities are three times more likely to be attacked than able-bodied people in the United States.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow.
Rustin Hughes:
That blew me away. But then I started to think about it as I don’t really believe that that’s an ability issue, I believe it’s a confidence issue and unfortunately a lot of people that have disabilities aren’t very confident, and that’s what I was trying to instill into people is confidence.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Shifting slightly, although I’m curious, backing up to once you were trying to figure out how to box or even just hit the heavy bag with and without your prosthetic, what did you find technically? What’d you find about which foot you were planting what you could do off your prosthetic? The physics of it is really fascinating to me.
Rustin Hughes:
I have a really nice knee, it’s probably one of the best knees that are out on the market. It’s the X3 from Ottobock and it has different modes on it. I created a boxing mode where it will bend at 16 degrees and then lock there so I can straighten it or bend it to that 16 degree mark so I wouldn’t fall.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Rustin Hughes:
I was a south paw before having my right leg forward, and I continued on doing that. I just found that I was more mobile with my good leg to the back. Even to think about as a defense, if anyone wanted to kick my prosthetic leg, go ahead. I’ve had people accidentally kick me in the prosthetic leg and hurt themselves in the process.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God, that’s brilliant.
Rustin Hughes:
A good line of defense. I don’t know, it was so therapeutic to go through all of that stuff. I still spar with our guys and ladies at the gym and it’s so cool to be able to still be in the middle of everything and still working. I’m a coach at our gym as well, and I help the fight team out. To be able to still get in the mix with them is I also…
Look, I’m 49 years old. I think that that’s another part of it too is I have a lot of friends that we’re the same age and they don’t think that they can still do all this stuff that they were doing before. I think that it’s all between… Honestly, I believe that I was more disabled when I had two legs. I think that where that disability was was between the ears.
I look at the loss of my leg as this blessing that happened, to be honest. All of these amazing things I’ve been able to do, and it’s because I lost my leg. I look back on it and I remember laying in that bed and going what am I going to do with the rest of my life? Looking to where I’m at now, it’s just… It’s such a blessing that it happened. It seems weird to say that, but I’ve been able to meet so many incredible people, do so many different things. I just got back from the Middle East, I competed in a couple of world para jujitsu competitions. It’s weird to say that this is a blessing, but it totally has been.
Steven Sashen:
No, I totally understand that. I don’t want to dive too deeply into this, but this is now November, so about 10, 11 months ago… I will do the shortest version possible. I was diagnosed with and then treated for and now over what I refer to as the best cancer ever.
I couldn’t be more serious when I say it, in part because it was relatively easy to treat as things go. I didn’t have to have chemo, the radiation was all localized, but for about eight weeks, I didn’t know if I was going to live or die and from the moment of my diagnosis, literally the second… Well, the second they said, “You have cancer.” But that’s not how it happened.
The way it happened was I was getting an exam and the physician’s assistant said, “Is this your pharmacy? Is this your address? These the medications you’re on?” Blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, “Do you have any questions about your tumor?” I went, “Sorry, my what?” He goes, “Uh, wait.” And he runs out of the room. The doctor comes in and he says, “You have a malignant cancer and we don’t know if it’s metastasized yet.” I said, “Is this going to kill me?” He goes, “We don’t know yet.” I went, “Ah, damn it.” He goes, “What?” I said, “Well, I already told my wife if I was diagnosed with a terminal disease, I was going to go on an all chocolate cake and Thai hooker diet, and she signed off on that, and you’re not giving me anything to work with when I call her.”
But literally from the moment of my diagnosis, everything just seemed so unbelievably precious and special. People would ask my wife how are you doing? She’d say I’m going on a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but it’s hard to stay down because he’s just so happy all the time. After everything kind of cleared out, it’s not like I’m living in this perpetual state of bliss, but multiple times a day, I’m just so grateful and everything is so special.
Yesterday morning, I’m walking the dog. Then the whole time I’m thinking I still don’t know if I’m going to live or die and what would I do differently if I knew I was going to die? The answer was nothing. I’d walk my dog, I’d hang out with my wife, we’d watch a movie, I’d make some pizza. But it all seems just really precious.
Now, I’m not suggesting anyone who has cancer should have that experience, but I’ve always thought knowing that you’re going to die is a great gift because it really gets your stuff in order pretty quickly. It’s a weird extrapolation from that to the situation you’re in, but I can only imagine, and correct me if I’m full of it, that you’ve got moments that are, from what you just said, just like that.
Rustin Hughes:
Oh, yeah. Like you were saying, you start to look at things a lot differently. You’re able to put everything into a better perspective of what’s important and what’s not important. That’s one of the biggest things that I got from it. A lot of the stuff that… The petty stuff, it’s easy just to get rid of that now because you don’t have the time to worry about petty stuff. Even the stuff that you have no control over. There’s a lot of stuff… I didn’t have control over a lot of stuff, and I can’t dwell on it on the stuff that I have no control over.
Steven Sashen:
I will admit though, people driving 10 miles under the speed limit in front of me still gets to me. There’s nothing I can do about that one.
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, that’s one thing that… I’ve been trying to watch my mouth a little bit more and not cuss as much, but as soon as I get into my truck and go to the gym, it’s the test for sure.
Steven Sashen:
I used to use that as a sign of my eventual awakening that I’d be able to drive without getting bothered by people doing stupid things in front of me. Of course it reminds me, I think it was a George Carlin line, did you ever notice that people who drive too slowly in front of you are morons and people who drive too fast around you are maniacs? There’s no way of winning that one, that’s the problem.
Once you got back into doing jujitsu missing a good chunk of a leg, you discover from that and what’s it like for the people who were competing against you?
Rustin Hughes:
I remember going to my coach and saying, “Hey, do you think that I could do jujitsu again?” He looked at me and he goes, “I don’t know, but you’re going to have to take your disability and make it your advantage.” As soon as he said that, this light bulb goes off into my head. I was finding all these ways to submit people that they’d never been in these situations before because they’ve never grappled with a guy with one leg before.
Again, it allowed me to think outside the box and figure out how I was going to do all this stuff. It was community, too. I had a bunch of guys that were helping me try to figure this stuff out and they would come back the next day and say I was thinking about this position or this move since you don’t have the leg that you could probably do this.
Again, it was this therapy that I didn’t even realize how therapeutic that it was for me to figure all this stuff out. I did a competition, I can’t remember when it was. It was 2017 I think, and I got second place in that competition, and the guy got ahold of me and he was like we’re going to form a United States para jujitsu team and we have a competition in la, do you want to join us? I was like sure, I would love to.
We all met up in LA and it was para jujitsu is what they were calling. I didn’t know what they were even going to call it. It’s para jujitsu and there were people from all over the world that were there. I competed against a guy from Costa Rica, the Brazilians had a huge team, there were I believe seven or eight Americans that were there. It was so cool to meet all these other people that had similar stories and how they’ve been able to overcome it.
From that, I traveled to London, Abu Dhabi, Sweden, and I just got back from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago competing in two world tournaments. It was-
Steven Sashen:
How’d it go?
Rustin Hughes:
It was awesome. I got second place in Saudi Arabia and I got first place in Abu Dhabi.
Steven Sashen:
Congratulations, that’s sweet.
Rustin Hughes:
It was just so… I can’t even explain how amazing that it was. Meeting all of these people, I think there were 24 different countries that were in Abu Dhabi that were representing para jujitsu, and people of all abilities that you could think of. Just seeing how they’ve adapted their techniques, their submissions with their body type.
I call my style nub-jitsu. It’s something that we started from the very beginning, and it’s really cool to see how I’ve been able to… It’s just evolved. I started off as a white belt and I’m a brown belt now, about ready to get my black belt.
Steven Sashen:
Nice. Not easy. Just to highlight that, not easy. My niece and nephew were black belts in karate when they were 12 or something. Whole different game in the jujitsu world. You got to work that problem.
Rustin Hughes:
Again, it’s just been this therapeutic, it’s been so therapeutic for me to go through this whole process and try to figure all of this out. Lately, since I’ve been back, I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me, they’ve lost their legs at some point in their life and they had done martial arts before and they didn’t think they could get back into it. They’re like now seeing you do this, man, I’m going to get back into the gym.
I had a kid get ahold of me, he’s 19 or 20 and he was in an accident and he lost his leg. There’s just all these people that have been reaching out to me after me coming back from the Middle East and how they can get involved in this. That’s my goal now is I want to start a Team USA.
I was the only person from the United States that went to both tournaments and I was like we need to represent. We need to bring in as many people as we can because I know how much it’s helped me. I think that it can help out so many other people as well. I look at it, it’s the community. There’s this huge community that you’re a part of. Honestly, I think that regardless of whatever, whoever you are, whatever you’re going through, community is huge. That’s been the biggest… I don’t know where I would be at if it wasn’t for my gym. They’ve helped me so much throughout all of this.
Steven Sashen:
This is a weird thing. Thinking about jujitsu with amputees, do you find… I don’t know how to ask this question. Does it make a difference if you’re grappling with someone who is missing the same side leg as you versus the other side?
Rustin Hughes:
It definitely changes the way you do things. That’s something that I’ve learned. I’ve got certain things I can do. If we mirror each other… I’m missing my right leg, if he’s missing his left leg and we mirror each other, there’s things that I can do differently than if it would be opposite.
You really have to think about who you’re going against and what kind of techniques that you’re going to use. To be honest, I haven’t rolled with another amputee since this competition for a long time. I used to have a couple of guys that would come in to the gym, and it’s completely different when there’s not that limb that’s there. Just trying to understand that difference is it takes a while to-
Steven Sashen:
Look, jujitsu is already four dimensional chest to begin with. Now you add this other component, and I don’t want to use the word intellectual incorrectly, but it is because you’ve really got to work that problem in a way that’s just never been done before. I can imagine it’s simultaneously interesting, frustrating, awesome, confusing, satisfying, everything you can think of because you’re figuring this out on the fly. There’s no recipe manual for this.
Rustin Hughes:
No. That’s cool about it is I tell people we’re pioneering something in 2023, and it’s pretty rare to think about pioneering something, but it’s like there was no one… I couldn’t go and get an instructional video on how to grapple with one leg-
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. Are you making videos like this?
Rustin Hughes:
Actually, I just did with BJJ Fanatics, I put out my first instructional video. I made it for the amputee, but I also wanted to make it for the coaches. A lot of the times, I think when these individuals will come into the gym, they don’t know what to do with them.
I remember coming into the gym and the coach is like all right, we’re going to do double leg take-down today. And it was just kind was like what? We’re doing what? I was like that’s good because no one can hit a double leg with me.
Steven Sashen:
Just throw your prosthetic at them.
Rustin Hughes:
It was one of these things where I wanted the coaches to feel comfortable on coaching people with different abilities, and you have to think outside the box. A lot of it is an experiment. Let’s see if this works. If it doesn’t work, we’ll move on to something else. If it does work, we’ll focus a little bit more on this. That’s one thing that was really… Again, I say therapeutic. It was so therapeutic for me to figure this out. What works, what doesn’t work.
I had a kid that came in, he was paralyzed and he was from the waist down. To figure out different ways that he could use his… I call it a superpower. My missing of my leg is my superpower. How can he use his ability and form a superpower from it? We experimented a lot with it, and it was cool to see how he was able to come and find these different ways to get into submissions. The only way that he could get there is if he had the body that he has.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Of course the joke there is he can’t feel anything from waist down so ankle lock or foot lock is like you can do whatever you want, man, I can’t feel that. If it breaks, it breaks, whatever.
Rustin Hughes:
I’ve had some other people that I’ve known that are paralyzed and they’ve actually dislocated their hips going for submissions. Like you’re saying, they can’t feel, it doesn’t matter. They’re just waiting for the tap. When they’re done, they realize that they just dislocated their hip.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, man.
Rustin Hughes:
I love it. They love what they’re doing so much that they’re… Unfortunately, they go through a little bit of an injury for it, but it’s something that…
Steven Sashen:
No, again, the thing that I want to emphasize, I’m not trying to minimize what you’re saying at all but it’s one of these things again that people, they misunderstand. There’s actually interesting research on loss where people are asked to imagine how they’d feel two years after some loss, like the loss of a child, for example.
What they imagine is so much worse than the reality for people because it’s just the way our brain works for whatever reason. Not to say that two years later, you’re fine, but it’s amazing how much you get back to mostly normal with just bursts of grief or whatever you’re going to go through. People imagine that you’re just going to be devastated forever. Just the resilience of humans in general is the part, it’s such a natural thing to be that resilient is I guess where I’m going with that. That’s the part that I like.
You just reminded me, I had a joke with my wife. I said, if I ever have locked in syndrome where all I can do is bat one eyelid, here’s the list of people that you can call that will put me on the national speaking circuit, and we will become billionaires. It’s like just roll with it, pun intended for jujitsu.
I love the story and I hope people are taking it more as just a invitation to investigate how this could apply to their life, whether they ever have any problem or not because we tend to… What’s the word I’m looking for? Inspiration is a really weird word is the best way I can say it. We tend to look at people and just want to go oh my God, that’s incredible, and imagine we can’t do that. I would argue, and please tell me if you think I’m completely full of it, that it’s a different thing. It’s like no, no, you’d be like this too. I guess what I’ve said before, inspirationally…
I’m a 61-year-old sprinter now the 30-year old’s calling me an inspiration and of course, I give them the finger when they say that and then I give them a hug. It’s a way of distancing instead of meeting somebody and finding out what’s going on. Anyway, that’s just my take on these things.
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, I did a speaking engagement last week and I got to speak to… There was about 300 middle schoolers and teachers and counselors. The way that I ended it was whatever you find to be inspirational in me, just know that you have it in yourself as well.
Steven Sashen:
There you go.
Rustin Hughes:
It takes this whatever to bring it out of us. Whatever that it is, I believe that we have it instilled into… Every single person has it instilled into them and that they would do the same exact thing that I’m doing, maybe not martial arts, but they would find their passion and just do what they’re passionate about.
I look at myself before I lost the leg and I think that we all have a disability. Every single one of us has a disability and there’s something that disables every single one of us. Some of us, it’s easier to hide it, but I think that we all have something that disables us.
We’re able to use that thing that disables us to be our superpower and to focus on whatever it is, and then we can turn that around and to make our lives more meaningful, more beautiful because I think we’re supposed to raise the bar. We’re supposed to continuously raise the bar. That’s what I’m trying to do with this.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. Now, if I was a better man, I would end things right there because that was wonderful, but I’m not a better man. I’m the guy who’s the CEO of Xero Shoes, so I’ve got to do this part.
You’ve got one leg that can’t feel anything from wherever the amputation is down, so you’re not feeling anything with your non foot there, and then when you started just doing whatever and you’re in a regular shoe, big, thick, padded motion control shoe, what was it like just trying to walk where you, for all practical purposes, couldn’t feel anything with either leg or either foot?
Rustin Hughes:
On my prosthetic side, it was like wearing a shoebox and it was heavy. It was so heavy. I remember I was trying to wear the same shoes that I had before the amputation, and I was so tired. It was like 2:00 in the afternoon and I’m exhausted.
I started to realize that above the knee amputees have to exert 60% more energy just to walk, and then when you add on… Ounces mean a lot and when you add on however much that shoe weighed, it just felt really bulky. Even the way that my gait was off, it was exhausting is what it was. Mentally and physically exhausting because I’m just like I shouldn’t be so tired. Switching over to these Xero Shoes, it’s a whole nother ball game. I wear my leg 18 hours a day where before, I was in it maybe six hours and I have to take it off and rest.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow.
Rustin Hughes:
Yeah, I have the Speed Force IIs. I love… Those are my favorite shoes.
Steven Sashen:
That’s what I’m wearing right now.
Rustin Hughes:
I love ’em. Sometimes you don’t even know that you’re wearing shoes.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. We’ve had people accidentally go to bed still wearing their shoes because they forgot they had them on. This is one of those things where there are so many applications for what we’re doing that I wasn’t even thinking of when we started the company, but very quickly started getting hip to, and this is one where for whatever reason, I’ve always been fascinated, again by prosthetics and whatever kind of things that people need for adaptive technology to get around.
This is a community that I’ve been interested in for a long time, and I was so thrilled to get introduced to you and a couple other people who are also local and single leg amputees because this is something I really want to be part of because I know the benefit it can provide.
I’m super, super grateful for your help in this and really looking forward to seeing what we could do to spread the word because it’s so underappreciated because people don’t know there’s an option, and that’s always the problem. If they don’t know, then they just try to live with it and then you find out there’s an option. Whole different game.
Rustin Hughes:
No, totally. It’s crazy how I was able to do more in the day, and that’s huge because if I wasn’t wearing my prosthetic leg, I’m in my wheelchair or I’m in crutches and that changes everything up. It just changes what would be a 20-minute task is now an hour and a half task. Just to be able to wear my prosthetic leg the whole day is huge. I get way more done, I’m not tired, and it allows me just to do more in my life.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. Speaking of doing more in your life, we are not too far away from each other. We’re going to find time to eventually hook up and figure out what we can do to help change the world in a number of ways. It’s been a total, total pleasure to actually have this time to chat. If people want to find out more about what you’re doing, how do they do that?
Rustin Hughes:
I’m on Facebook and Instagram under Rustin Hughes on Facebook and rustin_nubjitsu on Instagram. I have a website, beboldadaptiveliving.com, they can check me out there. Any questions that they have regarding the boxing or jujitsu, please get ahold of me. I would love to talk more about those things and how I can help with, if anyone wants to get involved.
Steven Sashen:
Much, much appreciated. I do hope people take you up on that. Frankly, I would say it would be an interesting conversation to chat even if you’re not dealing with some sort of disability. There’s a lot to be learned no matter what. I look forward to hearing what happens when people reach out.
Rustin Hughes:
Oh, for real. Like anybody, I don’t care if you’re an amputee or not, I want anyone to get ahold of me. We do a lot of work with Parkinson’s patients at our gym. We do rock steady boxing for Parkinson’s. It’s just amazing to see what martial arts can do for people.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Awesome. Rustin, A, thank you so much. More to come. For everybody else, thank you as well. Just a reminder, head over back over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find all the other episodes, ways you can engage with us.
If you have any questions or comments or recommendations, people you think you should be on the show, people, especially if you know someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, that’d be a fun conversation. You can drop me an email. I’m at move@jointhemovementmovement.com. Most importantly, between now and whatever’s next, go out, have fun, and live life feet first.
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