The interview had nearly wrapped up, or so I presumed. Then came a gift-wrapped starting point, compliments of Trevor Harris.
“I’d just like to add something,” said the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ No. 1 quarterback, who missed the CFL team’s final 13 games of the 2023 season due to a knee injury.
“A lot of people have been asking me, ‘What’s it going to be like coming off of an injury?’ Or, they’ll say, ‘You’re coming off of a major injury.’
“I’m not coming off of a major injury. I already came off of it.”
The superbly conditioned Harris is so far ahead of schedule with his rehabilitation that he is comfortably distanced from the restorative phase of a customarily intensive off-season regimen.
Now the unwavering emphasis is on looking ahead.
“It’s time to prepare and go at this thing full frickin’ throttle,” he continued. “A big thing for me is FFT, because I’m full frickin’ throttle this whole off-season.
“It’s not about coming back and dipping my toes in the water. I’m jumping in the deep end and it’s time for our team to take off and really dominate this league and do the things that we’re supposed to do as a team.
“It’s not just a matter of coming back and seeing if we can improve from 6-and-12. Naaah. Forget that! We’re coming back and we’re coming for everything.
“We’re not coming off a bad season. This is a new season and it’s time for us to put our feet full-throttle on the ground and see how high we can take this thing.”
This is how Harris responds to a low point.
Glass half-full, he resolves to turn misfortune into a mission.
“Something I’ve learned in life is that every form of adversity comes with an equivalent seed of opportunity to strike back harder and get better,” he said. “That’s what I’ve opened it up to.
“I thought this off-season would be tough in terms of how I would approach it, but I was blind to the advantages and opportunities that come with this and I think I missed the boat.
“A lot of times, everybody just wants to get back to homeostasis — and I hate that. I’m not a person who ever wants to get back to where they were before.
“I’d like to have the opportunity to get my body to a place that’s better, that’s more prepared, that’s more bulletproof. That’s really the opportunity that I’ve had.
“I’ve said, ‘What can I take from this to get better? How can I grow from it?’ That’s exactly what I’ve tried to do with this opportunity.
“Every season is an awesome thing because it’s a great barometer for how well I’ve prepared and how it has worked out. I’m excited to see how it does work out.”
Working out is a way of life for Harris, who resolved to emerge better than ever after suffering a tibial plateau fracture in his right knee in the fourth quarter of a July 15 home game against the Calgary Stampeders.
“(Doctors) initially told me it was probably going to be eight to 10 months,” he said. “That’s kind of the standard. Five months, six months, would be a record-pace kind of deal.
“Right around that five-month mark, around Christmas time, I did some drills where I was like, ‘I think I can play.’
“I’ve been working really, really hard at this rehab — harder than I’ve ever really grinded at anything in my life.”
Harris attributes the accelerated recovery to a therapeutic tool known as ARPneuro, which safely uses electrical stimulation to accelerate the healing of a stricken area.
“I’ve got to give a lot of credit to ARP,” he said. “It has really changed the game as far as opening up new avenues and ways that I can prepare my body, treat my body, and elevate my fitness and my strength in my legs and core.
“I always thought of it just as a recovery device but, as we were working on the recovery and the rehab with this machine, we’ve really cranked it up a notch as far as making it into a pillar this off-season in terms of how I’m going to train and prepare myself.
“It’s something I’m leaning on and leaning into this off-season for my strength and recovery and preparation. I feel like it has just been amazing to work with the people at ARP, namely Jake Kozens. He has just been instrumental in my off-season so far. We’re just going to keep grinding away at it.”
Harris had expected the rehabilitation process to be an extended grind.
But he, like me, was delighted to discover that some presumptions can be erroneous.
“It’s funny,” Harris reflected. “I initially thought I would like to get as close to 100 per cent as possible. I thought I was going to be too devoted to rehab to focus on true grinding in terms of getting ready to play some ball and bettering myself.
“I think I’m going to have a new 100 per cent that would be more along the lines of 120 per cent of what I was last year. I really feel strongly about it.
“I’m just going to keep pressing every single day. I’ll find any weakness I can and attack it. I’ll find my strengths and make them even sharper. I’m getting ready for the season and really going hard at this thing.
“For whatever reason, I just feel like it has been a new gear and a new mindset shift that has gotten into me.
“I’m just super-excited about this year and with the fact that I feel this good this early.”
