The New Ultimate Mark: More Community, Less Injury, Same Sick Tattoo

You deeply love your sport and the community of those who play it. But your body, through pain and injury, is telling you it’s time to move on.  At some point in our adult years, we all deal with this transition. And in this episode, our protagonist, Mark, still in his early thirties, talks about his own transition from high level Ultimate Frisbee player (aka Ultimate Mark) to lower risk recreational soccer goalie (aka post-Ultimate Mark) accelerated by the spinal fusion he had back in high school.   In our Season 1 episode, Ultimate Mark described the intensity he brought to the game of Ultimate disc. “I kind of just developed this persona as the person who will get hurt multiple times per game,” he told us. But, as Dr. Mohamad Bydon of the Mayo Clinic explains, the threat of adjacent segment disease made Ultimate an increasingly risky proposition for Mark.  Mark needed a change of sport but feared losing the friendship he’d made through Ultimate. “I dare you to find a better community of athletes anywhere in the world than the ultimate frisbee community,” Mark said.  Can Mark move beyond his Ultimate identity? How can he leave the community loves? Dr. Michele Kerulis of Northwestern University describes the deep emotional attachments we all form to the sports we play. While our other expert guest this episode, Esther Gokhale of the Gokhale Method, concurs that Mark’s body will be at much less risk in the soccer goal than on the Ultimate Disc field.  Listen and learn about Post Ultimate Mark’s transition back to soccer — his first sport, which he played as a teen before spinal fusion — and his evolving relationship to the ultimate community, his own body, his athletic identity, and one very “sick” tattoo he wears over that long spinal fusion scar.    My Body Odyssey is a Fluent Knowledge production. Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney. Show Notes: Our Expert Guests: Mohamad Bydon, MD Esther Gokhale Michele Kerulis, EdD Mark Stoutenberg, PhD Medicine, Sports, and Neon Bending: Exercise is Medicine  UCSF Health about spinal fusion surgery  Mayo Clinic on spinal fusion American Ultimate Disk League Boston Ultimate Disk Invite 2022 NYC Footy Soccer League Sidelined USA Neon Bending