Avenue Magazine Calgary

As far as job hazards go, punctured lungs and dislocated knees are not all that common. Neither is getting your face stepped on by a 2,000-pound bull. Unless you are a professional bull rider, like Robert Bowers.

At 34, Bowers is one of the oldest athletes competing in a body-punishing sport dominated by 20-somethings, and he has the battle scars to prove it.

His resumé of rodeo injuries started with a broken back when he was a teenager. Since then, he’s broken his arm six times and his collarbone three times.

That doesn’t include the times he’s been knocked out cold, including once at the Calgary Stampede while being followed by National Geographic for a day-in-the-life story. The reporters were appropriately concerned when Bowers was packed out on a stretcher. He eventually woke up, shook it off and competed the following day.

When he broke his left arm in the middleof the National Finals in Las Vegas, he switched to using his right arm to hold the rope in order to finish the competition.

In the battle of man versus beast, Bowers walks away bruised and beaten, but almost always victorious. Clearly the bull sometimes gets the better of him.

Bowers is still recovering from a split-second run-in with a bull at a rodeo in February 2008 in Memphis, Tennessee, which resulted in a dislocated shoulder. For eight seconds, he perfectly counteracted every attempt the bull made to shake him off. It was only after Bowers dismounted and his boots hit the dirt thatthe still-flailing bull hip-checked him into the air. He landed hard on his elbow, ripping his shoulder out of its socket.

At first, Bowers attempted to rehabilitate the injury on his own following an exercise program given to him by his physiotherapist. Six weeks later, he tried to compete again,but the pain was too much. This past August, he underwent shoulder surgery and moved from Brooks to Calgary to be closer to rehabilitation facilities.

He also began training with Mark Barrett, director of Strong Cowboy Strength & Conditioning. Along with training hockey players and skiers, Barrett has created customized fitness programs for more than 50 rodeo athletes.

Under Barrett’s guidance, Bowers strengthened the muscles surrounding his damaged shoulder using equipment in the gym at his condo complex.

The main concern is not whether Bowers is able to hold onto the bull — he injured his riding arm, which is the one that’s looped through the rope and in a relatively stable position during the ride — but whether his shoulder will be able to react when he attempts to get down once his ride is over.

Bowers is also working on building the intense mental energy required to tell muscles how hard to contract and react physiologically during short bursts of time.

“Your brain is sort of like a car battery,” says Barrett. “It stores mental energy, but it uses a lot of that up for those eight seconds.” The trainer says some estimates put the energy expended during an eight-second ride on a bull at equivalent to running a marathon, and he points out that bull riders shake or drip sweat immediately following their event.

To prepare, Bowers performs quick activities such as sprints at his maximum level for 10 to 20 seconds.

“There’s nothing you can do to make your body ready for what it goes through when you are riding a bull,” he says.

“Everybody says they’re not scared, but you have to be nervous and scared. It’s a dangerous thing, but part of being a champion is putting that out of your head.”

Bowers has been ranked Top 10 in the world standings three times, and has been Canadian champion twice. In 2004, he won the Calgary Stampede bull riding championship, a goal of his since he was a toddler riding sheep on his father’s acreage near Brooks.

Before retiring, Bowers wants to repeat all three titles in the next two years, starting with the Canadian finals in Edmonton in November. A win there will help secure an invitation to the 2010 Calgary Stampede — a late start to the season prevented his invitation this year.

Bowers’ ultimate goal is the world championships in Las Vegas in December 2010.