A Herniated Disc Has Kept VanCan Off The Bike for 8 Months (Interview)

Our good friend Nic Zilinski, who runs the popular MTB YouTube channel VanCan, has been off the bike injured for the last 8 months and he is not out of the woods just yet. We first became aware of his injuries on our last visit to BC when he told us he couldn't meet up to ride due to a herniated disc he was dealing with. To our surprise months later, he still was off the bike dealing with the same injury that seemingly had no specific cause. He didn't have a bad crash and can't pinpoint the exact moment that led to his herniated disc.

Recently he made a video detailing the recovery process and how he has mentally dealt with this injury, as well as what the recovery process has been looking like. Broken bones are easy to diagnose and have a healing process, but herniated discs are more complex and VanCan gives us an inside look as to the frustrations with this style of injury.

You can watch his injury update video here:

You recently had a pretty bad back injury, what happened? 

I've been dealing with a L5S1 herniated disc which has resulted in back and leg pain. In the beginning it was difficult to walk and I required pain medication daily for 4 months. The cause is unclear, but in general it's hypothesized to be an overuse injury from a combination of factors including my height, weight, riding, genetics, and bad luck. It should be noted that you could have a herniated disc and not even know it, but the flip side is that when your body knows it, you can be in a lot of pain.

When did you first realize you were going to be in for a long recovery?

That's hard to say. At first I figured it would be 6 weeks, then I figured 3 months, then 6 months. My best guess now is it'll be a year to get normal-ish and I'll deal with some annoying but tolerable symptoms for another year after that.

How much did this injury not being crash related affect you mentally? 

Not having an obvious mechanism of injury was difficult to process. It was hard to understand what was going on and when/if I was going to get better.

Was there any point during your injury that you thought things were never going to improve? If so, how did you overcome that? 

The whole time? Even now it's hard not to constantly worry that things won't stop improving. I suppose you just ignore it the best you can.

The entire injury must have been hard mentally, what are some things that helped you cope throughout it? 

That's hard to say, nothing really helped. The only thing that made me feel much better is when I healed to the point I was more or less mobile again in day to day life.

What do you feel like was the biggest help in your recovery physically? Did you change anything in your diet or was physical therapy a big component? 

That's also hard to say, the biggest help is time. Reviewing the literature on these types of injuries the general course of action is dial things way back, then be as active as you can within your limits while trying to push those limits. Basically graded exposure to build yourself back up and let your body heal the injury while adapting to increasing loads. In my case this was done under the supervision of a physical therapist. A physical therapist doesn't provide treatment exactly, but is more of a coach to guide you on how to do what I just outlined.

In terms of diet and lifestyle, in general there isn't much data on helping this injury specifically beyond just trying to be healthy. That is, being a healthy weight, eating whole foods, and drinking enough water is great advice for most people anyways and is something I'm still working on doubling down on.

Did you have a support group outside of me checking in every month with a DM (lol)? 

Yes, family and friends would check in pretty frequently.

Being sponsored and getting injured has to be a bit nerve wracking. How did companies take the news and how did they help throughout? 

Definitely not ideal. In general most of the brands were completely understanding and told me to just let them know when I'm better.

Getting back into riding and the swing of things, what is the game plan for easing yourself in? 

Basically I'm riding the easier trails I know very well right now and just pushing myself a little hard every week.

Is there any advice you have to people going through something similar to what you went through? Any advice on prevention? 

That's another tough one - probably just stay off Reddit. The best thing for me is knowing this injury is very common and the vast majority of people recover. If 90% of NFL players within this injury can return to playing professionally, I figured it would be no problem for me to get back on a bike. There are people on Reddit and other forums ready to tell others they'll never jog again, they'll never play soccer, etc. Funny enough a lot of those posts are quite old and you'll often see the original poster did in fact fully heal, and all the people telling them their active life was over were simply confidently incorrect.

As far as prevention, that's a tough one. I'm no expert in this area but it does seem the best thing you can do is weight train with a focus on core and back strength/mobility.

Is there anything you learned about yourself through this?

Not really. I learned just how much a serious injury can suck, but I already had an intuition about that.

We wish Nic all the best in his recovery!

-Mo Awesome