How Georgia Running Back Nick Chubb Fought to Reconstruct His Career
By Barrett Sallee , SEC Football Lead Writer Sep 19, 2016
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Georgia RB Nick Chubb
ATLANTA — Georgia running back Nick Chubb sprawled to keep his opponent from grabbing his legs and bringing him down. The 5'10", 228-pounder was doing his best MMA impression.
But Chubb wasn't trying to avoid an SEC linebacker, and he wasn't running between the hedges. A mere five months after tearing three ligaments in his left knee, including his posterior cruciate ligament, he was in a martial arts studio, grappling with taekwondo black belt Sean Borders.
"The movement and the different ranges of motion that the body is going through works the muscles and tendons in different ways," said Borders, who runs Borders Black Belt Academy just outside Athens with his twin brother, Cole. "Taekwondo involves stuff that they're typically not used to doing, and it strengthens the muscles that they might not during their typical weight training."
A few months earlier, on Oct. 10, 2015, Nick Chubb was sitting on the training table on the Georgia sideline at Tennessee, a broken man.
He had reeled off 13 straight 100-yard games in the run-heavy Georgia offense, but on his first carry against the Volunteers, Chubb took a hit while going out of bounds that ended his season and put his football future in doubt.
"Everybody loves Nick Chubb. Everybody respects Nick Chubb. I am sure Bulldog Nation's heart sank when you see a guy like that on the sideline," said then-Bulldog head coach Mark Richt on the night of the injury. "He is a true warrior when it comes to playing football, and he is one of the finest people we have on this team."
Ron Courson, director of sports medicine at Georgia, described the nature of the injury to ESPN's Olivia Harlan:
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Olivia Harlan ✔ @Olivia_Harlan
Think Todd Gurley & Nick Chubb both had "a knee injury"? Think again! Fascinating.. UGA AD of sports med Ron Courson
4:32 PM - 8 Sep 2016
52 52 Retweets 127 127 likes
Eleven months later, Chubb carried the ball 32 times for 222 yards and two touchdowns against North Carolina in the 2016 season opener, capping off a miraculous rehabilitation effort, though he's struggled a bit in the two games since, gaining 143 yards on 39 carries.
"I could have done two things, either laid down and never got up, or what I did, and pushed myself," Chubb said after the North Carolina game. "I had a lot of support from everyone around me, and this game, I wasn't out there by myself at all, there was all the other guys out there with me and allowed this type of performance."
Those people who helped Chubb get back to 100 percent after such a devastating injury came from within the Georgia program and out.
"You should give a lot of credit to Ron Courson and his staff," first-year head coach Kirby Smart said, "because they really pushed Nick. And then the second is Nick Chubb is a special person. He's got great humility, a great family, and he works so hard. Not many of you guys know what this kid went through."
Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart (left) and RB Nick Chubb
Courson got creative with Chubb, which is how the star running back ended up on a mat learning mixed martial arts as part of his rehab.
After an injury-riddled 2013 season that saw several Bulldogs go down with knee injuries, Courson tapped the resources of the Borders Black Belt Academy. In a group setting with several members of the football team, the twins taught taekwondo as several Bulldogs rehabbed various injuries. Among the students: Chris Conley (ankle), Malcolm Mitchell (knee) and Justin Scott-Wesley (knee).
With Courson by his side, Chubb walked into the academy as Georgia began spring practice in March. Courson and the Borders brothers worked together to develop a routine that protected Chubb's knee, but also pushed him to the point of wincing at times.
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Georgia RB Nick Chubb after injuring his knee against Tennessee in 2015
"The first few weeks were a feeling-out process," Cole Borders told Bleacher Report. "You could tell that we all began feeling more comfortable with each other, especially with Nick. Everybody was on alert making sure that we weren't pushing it too hard. Once we got to the second month, we started feeling more confident with his body and what it was capable of doing. By June, we were pretty much rocking it like we would with a typical person who isn't recovering."
This unorthodox aspect to Chubb's rehab process went along with the territory for the first-year, first-time head coach of the Bulldogs.
"I hadn't been a part of it," Smart said when asked if he'd ever had a player use martial arts as part of rehab. "I went and watched it a couple of times, and was really impressed with what he was doing."
Part of the rehab included MMA-style training that put stress on Chubb's injured knee and got him used to the rigors of being hit repetitively again—as he would be soon by SEC defenses.
"We're not trying to make anybody an MMA fighter," Cole Borders said. "Our main focus on it was to tailor his workouts to what he needs. We did a lot of individualized ground-fighting drills where he's on the floor working on range of motion with his knee. We worked on tightening the leg up, extending it all the way out, and manipulating it in a bunch of different positions."
The Borders brothers taught Chubb the art of the sprawl—a technique used as a defense to attempted leg takedowns.
"That's sort of like a controlled tackle," Sean Borders said, "which helped him get used to somebody coming in on him. He also did a lot of solo drills, like planting off his feet, hip thrusts, hip escapes and trips. All of that worked his knee in ways that he wasn't used to."
Chubb also worked out with the Georgia track team, which wasn't as much of a jolt to his system.
The Cedartown, Georgia, native competed in the state track and field championships during his senior season at Cedartown High School, which is where UGASports.com's Radi Nabulsi grabbed this ridiculous image:
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Radi Nabulsi ✔ @RadiNabulsi
I was asked if #UGA RB Nick Chubb might be a bit stiff. No, he's not. Here he is showing that 40-inch vertical.
12:08 PM - 13 May 2014
1,176 1,176 Retweets 705 705 likes
Smart credits Chubb's unusual rehab menu and his relentless work ethic as big factors in his ability to hit the ground running to start the 2016 season.
"When you're going out and doing extra taekwondo at night, early mornings, there's a reason why he's in the shape he's in, and it's because of the way he works," Smart said.
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Georgia RB Nick Chubb against North Carolina in 2016
The staff took the reins off of Chubb when Georgia opened fall camp on Aug. 1. Though they insisted at times that he not overdo it, Chubb says his rehab work gave him a sense of confidence that the injury was behind him.
"I had already been through it in practice," Chubb said after the North Carolina game. "I've practiced hard, been tackled in scrimmages, so I was prepared. The coaching staff, training staff did a great job with just the whole team. It was a great outcome."
An outcome that involved an innovative rehab and the heart of a champion.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of CFBStats unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Odds provided by Odds Shark.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.