My Story

This post is to expand upon the small "About Me" section:

Chris Kelly is a student at York University in Toronto, studying Athletic Therapy while obtaining a Ba in Kinesiology. He is a rugby player recovering from ACL reconstructive surgery and this blog is about the process of getting back to game shape and overall health and fitness.


I have been playing rugby since I was 13; so its been about 10 years now. I have been very successful, representing the province of ontario at multiple age groups and as a member of the senior mens team at the age of 19. I have also represented my region at the under 20 level for numerous years including winning a national championship, and at the under 18 level winning gold at the ontario summer games. I have also won two provincial championships as a junior with my club the Burlington centaurs.


I have always been a rather small player both in height and weight/muscle. Below is me at 16 playing in a senior mens game and as you can tell I had always been rather skinny.

Despite my lack of size I'm proud to say I've never been afraid to run into much larger players and adapted a style of play based around my agility and quickness. I started working out in the gym seriously around the age of 18 and quickly grew from around 130lbs to 150lbs. Still rather small but a dramatic increase. I followed a very basic workout then that generally used upper and lower body splits. It worked well for me as I stuck to the same program for several months with regularity.

In the off season leading up to the 2009 season I had been working very hard and got up to 165lbs and was fairly lean but more importantly I was the strongest I had ever been and I had developed a lot of power in my pass which is an asset for my position (scrum half). In my mind I was poised to have a very successful season. Unfortunately while playing indoor touch rugby my cleat got caught in the fake turf and another player collided knee on knee with me while my leg was extended and slightly twisted. This resulted in an ACL tear. I worked with an Athletic Therapist and managed to regain my strength in time for the season, but at a tryout for the regional team my knee once again buckled (either fully tearing the ligament or it had already been fully torn but my muscles had allowed me to continue without one). After this I went to my sports med doc, had an mri, and went to a surgeon. 

I had the surgery on April 29th 2010. I waited a year due to my school because I have to be able to run out onto sports fields, gyms, and ice to treat injuries and emergency situations. It was really successful, and my surgeon is one of the best in Ontario, probably Canada (he is one of the surgeons for the CFL's Toronto Argos). Right from the start I progressed quickly with the hard work I put into it. I was off crutches in 5 days and had my full range of motion back within about 3 weeks. This allowed me to focus on strengthening. At the month mark I was progressed to running in straight lines. Most of the recovery was based around increasing the size and strength of my severely atrophied left leg. At about 8 weeks I was allowed to do agility work and plyometrics with my brace on (some people think this is early but I felt great and had the blessing from my surgeon and therapist). By five months in my bad leg was actually slightly stronger than my right leg (kind of overshot that and created an imbalance but it's pretty much back to normal now). Soon after I was out of the therapy clinic and just focused on getting into game shape and increasing general strength, size, and fitness while ensuring that my leg is strong and able to handle the demands of contact rugby.

Due to my severe loss of strength and size throughout my body I decided to use a program from trainer Jason Ferruggia called Triple Threat Muscle. This program is designed to increase size and strength while keeping agility and athleticism in mind. This is the exact mix that I require in order to return to rugby which starts at the end of April usually. This gives me only about four months to get into game shape and that is why I chose this program. I have been reading and following Jason for over a year now and have complete faith that this program is the best option for me and better than one that I could formulate for myself at this time. I have and will continue to make minor modifications to it based on the needs of my knee (for example: doing more agility work to replace certain finishers he advises); but for the most part I'm sticking to every word and rep of his original plan. 

Having just finished the first month of the program I am very happy with the results so far. I started at 160lbs and am now 164lbs but I have also gotten visibly leaner. I didn't get fat percentage measurements done due to my hectic schedule but my educated estimate is I'm down to about 12% maybe a bit less but still not 10%. This happened while seriously overeating; eating healthy but much more. At the end of this program I will be switching back to a much more plant based diet and will drop fat quiet easily as I normally do (In September I lost 5lbs of fat in two weeks while doing a vegan experiment with no weight loss goal in mind).

Anyways that is about it. Sorry for the length but I thought I would put down pretty much everything in order to get it off my chest and so that I am held accountable in regards to doing everything I can on my return to playing. This is what the whole point of this blog is. To monitor my progress, and to write down and analyze my actions and learn from both my successes and failures.