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Dig Profile A New Look It was less than two years ago that Dax Holdren came to the conclusion that he'd never be the same. Not as a volleyball player, anyway. This was after surgery to repair his knee, and he was getting increasingly frustrated with his inability to do routine workouts. And the jump that helped him win 13 tournaments? It was gone.
"That's just a warm-up for everybody else," he says. "I felt like I was in junior high again trying to relearn everything." On the positive side, if he had to drop back to remedial levels, he had the perfect teacher. It was an accident, really. Right place, right time. He was in need of fixing, and Marcus Elliott, a doctor from Harvard Medical School who had worked with NFL players, had the right tools, and he also just happened to live in Dax's hometown of Santa Barbara. One day at the gym, they talked. Holdren was impressed immediately with how quickly Elliott got a handle on what was wrong with him. If this were a TV movie, that would have been it. Doctor maps out plan, player follows it, player rips opponents apart, roll the credits. Life never works that way, though. The program Elliott put him on was painful, both mentally and physically. He began to get discouraged, so much that he seriously considered a career change. "I was looking at sales, looking at anything, because what I was doing wasn't fun," he says. "Volleyball has always been one thing that I'm pretty good at, and I love to play. And I just couldn't do it. Couldn't fully jump. Couldn't move the way I wanted to. Couldn't jump serve. There were just so many things I couldn't do that I used to be able to do,"
But the jump had been a big part of the problem. All those seasons, all those matches, he'd landed - and landed hard - on his toes, and that punished his knees. It took nearly two years, but once he learned to center himself and keep his weight back, his game began to come around. As he trained for this season, for the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt good. That hadn't even been the case at last summer's Olympics, where he and Stein finished fifth after a nice upset of Germany's Markus Dieckmann and Jonas Reckermann. But shortly after, things began to click. The jump was becoming more natural and less mechanical. The pain was gone. And he was doing plyometrics again. And doing back squats with three and four plates on the bar. "Basically," he says, "I was doing workouts the way they're supposed to be done." The payoff came in May at his home beach in Santa Barbara, where he teamed with is partner, 6-8 Jeff Nygaard, for his 14th career victory. It was the first win since his surgery two years ago. Afterward, as he cooled down outside the players' tent, he took time to talk to DiG about the highs and lows of his comeback, his love for the Dallas Cowboys and his rough season of fantasy basketball. DiG: You've had a lot of big moments in your career, including an unbelievable comback with Todd Rogers when you won in Hermosa Beach in 2001. Where does this win rank? Dax: After all the stuff I've been through the last couple of years with knee surgery and just battling through volleyball when I didn't want to play, this is probably No. 1. Going to the Olympics was right up there. But I went through a lot the past couple of years, and this kind of justifies the suffering and pain. DiG: People say you grow a lot as a person from tough times. Was that true for you? Dax: Definitely. In those two years, I probably lost more games than I had in my previous six years, and you learn to take the good with the bad. I had a lot of good for a lot of years, and I had a few years of bad, minus the Olympics. I wouldn't trade that for anything. If Stein and I hadn't gotten to play together, who knows? Maybe I would have never gotten to that point. I needed somebody that could hit on two and be a workhorse, and Stein has a great attitude and was willing to put up with the good and the bad of me being injured. Without him, none of that would have been possible. DiG: And you said finding your trainer, Marcus Elliott, was huge, too?
DiG: It wasn't too long ago that you said you'd never again jump as high as you once did. Dax: I didn't think I would. DiG: But now you're back to where you were? Dax: If it's not the same, it's probably better. DiG: Amazing. Dax: The way I move and the way my feet hit the ground are totally different. It's way more explosive. DiG: Lets talk about A-Rod and the $25 million he makes each year. You were a good baseball player as a kid. Any regrets? Dax: No. I wouldn't have met my wife (pro beach player Jen Holdren), and there are a lot of things that wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't be living in Santa Barbara. I'm not saying I wouldn't like making $25 million, but this lifestyle is more me. You're not on a field in hot weather wearing pants and a hat. And you don't have to deal with a steroid scandal. (laughs) DiG: You're always been a sports junkie, but you have two kids now. (Kobe and Ellis) Still got time to read every box score in the paper? Dax: I've got time in the morning from about 7 to 7:20 while we're eating breakfast. I try to follow the box scores and make sure I'm up to speed. DiG: But you're not as good as you used to be if someone says, "How many hits did Vladimir Guerrero get last night?" Dax: No, I'm so far away from where I used to be. I used to catch SportsCenter three or four times a day. Now I catch it once a week, if I'm lucky. DiG: You had a fantasy basketball team, though. How did you do? Dax: I had Kobe (Bryant) this year, and then he just went in the weeds. He was killing me with his turnovers, and then he got hurt. And I had Jermaine O'Neal. He went down with an injury. I had a lot of injuries. And then (Ron) Artest got knocked out. I had a rough fantasy year. I think I ended up fifth out of eight. DiG: Your fantasy team went through the same thing you did. Dax: Yeah. It had Holdrenitis. (laughs) DiG: Speaking of Kobe, can you give us your best defense of him? Dax: I don't defend him. I defend him when people tell me he's not a good basketball player. He's still one of the top five players. But I can't defend his actions and the way he is. It's sad really. These guys are married, and who knows how many kids they've had by different women. I can't defend that. But I can definitely defend Kobe's basketball. DiG: You're an old school guy who won tournaments for years with Todd Rogers using great ball control. Don't you feel a little like a sellout getting a 6-8 monster like Nygaard to block for you? Dax: It's either you sell out or you don't make any money. As much as I'd love to play with Todd and just ball control and defense everyone to death, it's just a completely different game. When they changed the rules in 2001, it went from volleyball to Big Guy Ball. If you don't have a big guy at the net who can take over - or at least take a lot of area - it's impossible to play defense. DiG: Knowing your reputation, you'll probably spend your Santa Barbara prize money sensibly. Will there be one frivolous expense? Dax: I was talking to my brother-in-law about going up to Oakland to see the Dallas Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders. I haven't ever seen the Cowboys live, and they're my favorite team. That might be a possible choice. DiG: The Dallas Cowboys? How does a kid from California get to be a Cowboys' fan"? Dax: When I was growing up, they were really America's team. They had (Tony) Dorsett. Roger Staubach had just retired, but they had all the big name guys. I was a star struck kid, and now I can't help but love them. DiG: What do you do when the clip of Montana to Clark known as "The Catch" comes on ESPN Classic? Dax: It makes me want to vomit. I'm so sick of it. The one team I hate losing to is the 49ers. DiG: Ok. Last question. What's the biggest thing you learned about yourself from your injury ordeal? Dax: I learned that being injured isn't fun. (laughs) No, I learned that I'm stronger than I originally thought, and that I can definitely go through adversity. It makes some of the holes that I'm in now - like being down a few points - not seem like a big deal. If I can get through what I got through the past two years, the rest of it is a piece of cake. Interview: Don Patterson |
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Here he was one of the top players in America, on his way to represent the U.S in the Athens Olympics with Stein Metzger, and he couldn't hoist 135 pounds in a basic back squat.
Adding to his challenge was that Elliott was completely reconstructing his jump. You learn how to jump when you're what, a year old? And at age 31, he was doing it all over.
Dax: Yeah, thank God I met him. Most trainers don't really understand the physics. They understand how to make you jump higher, but they don't understand the way everything's supposed to go together. I'm just really lucky to have him.