Fitness Training
For Nev Schulman, running means community
After a spinal injury, Nev Schulman’s recovery reaffirmed his passion for running and for the running community. It also led him to the Wings for Life World Run.
On Sunday May 4, filmmaker and TV host Nev Schulman is going for a run in Hoboken, New Jersey. He will join hundreds of thousands of runners around the globe, in the Wings for Life World Run: a race with no finish line, where the proceeds fund spinal cord injury research, and competitors run for those who can’t.
Sign up here to participate in the world's biggest running event and join Nev's team for Wings for Life World Run.
Ten years ago, Schulman got serious about running. He found a coach, set goals, and worked to achieve them. He found a community in running, he set personal records for marathon running, and he became a guide for runners with disabilities. Being a runner was a part of his life as much as being a husband or a father. And, in August of 2024, he nearly lost all of that.
While running a routine errand on his ebike, Nev collided with another vehicle. The crash put him in the hospital, where an MRI revealed a fracture on his C6 vertebrae. They performed a laminectomy to alleviate pressure on his spine and to prevent any further injury. While the bedside manner of Nev’s care team was serious, the outlook for the injury did seem positive: Nev maintained mobility and feeling in his limbs and extremities. Nev says, “I knew that there was certainly a more severe version of this, and paralysis was the assumed diagnosis based on my report when first arriving at the hospital, but much to the surprise of the doctors, I could feel and move everything.”
Nev Schulman
© Lani Lee
By the second day of his stay at the hospital, Nev was shuffling himself from the bed to the bathroom. Shortly after that, he was walking slow laps through the hallways of the hospital unit, “It was then that I realized how miraculous my circumstances were, based on the other patients on the flood with similar accidents, that I had somehow managed to have a serious crash, fracture my neck, and still be upright and mobile. And I could see the effects that this was going to have… not just on me, but moreso on my family: my wife, my kids, my work… everything stops, and in a way just disappears. You realize how fragile your whole life and everything you’ve got going really is when you have an injury that is potentially so debilitating.”
Before the accident, Nev was halfway through a training program for what would hopefully have been a PR-setting run at the Honolulu Marathon in December 2024. Now, his fitness journey would have to incorporate six weeks of healing time for his vertebrae before he could even think of lacing up his running shoes again. “I was really training aggressively because my goal for that race was to run a PR, which would have been a sub-3 hour marathon. And I was feeling really good, and really fit, and then the accident happened.” Nev says, “I think active people like myself, when they have an injury, immediately start thinking ‘when can I get back to training? I’ve built up all of this fitness and I don’t want to lose it,’ and that was me. The doctor said I’d be in the neck brace for at least six weeks, but I’m just thinking when can I start running again, if I even can."
Nev adds, “I was fixated on the idea that I will run again. That I have to. I have this goal, and I have to get back out there and running again.” This fixation kept Schulman going through weeks of wearing a brace. Despite the physical pain in his neck and the nerve pain that radiated throughout his arms and hands, he was determined to get through. “I was thinking as soon as the doctor clears me I’ve gotta do a check in. I was just so desperate to see if I could run again and how much discomfort I’d be in.”
Nev Schulman
© Lani Lee
After six weeks, the fracture had healed and he had the green light to resume physical activity. Schulman was excited to resume training and Nev’s wife, who’d given up running after a knee injury prior to their meeting, was inspired and decided she would join in the recovery. “She said, ‘OK Nev, if you’re going for your first run after breaking your neck and you’re going to power through, I’m going to see if I can power through with you. So we went for that first run together, at the track near our apartment. I think I ran two laps maybe, or not even ran but speed walked or jogged. But I remember being so relieved that it didn’t hurt. That I could do it. And that’s when I knew I could run again,” says Schulman.
In addition to his wife joining him in his return, Nev was motivated by the community that he had built as a guide for runners with disabilities. Earlier in 2024, Nev had signed up for the New York City Marathon, to be a guide for a blind athlete, a friend who he had guided on previous marathons in Boston and NYC. When Nev expressed some hesitation in his ability to guide the marathon in November, his friend balked at the idea. “He told me something that I’d heard him say before. He said, ‘Look Nev. The effort and the difficulty that it takes for disabled athletes to train for races and then compete in those races, oftentimes the hardest part is just getting to the start line.’ And I realized what he meant in that moment, more than I ever could have before: Many of these athletes, whether their disability is from birth or something later in life… the idea that despite that incredible obstacle and inconvenience, they have chosen to put in the hard work, which is hard for anybody, and get to that start line. And his insistence, his strongly-worded encouragement to me was ‘You are doing this with me, so don’t give yourself an out. Commit to it. Find a way.’”
Schulman continues, “And that’s what I needed in that moment. I wanted to do it, but I didn’t know if I should or could, or if it was a good idea. I could have easily found a reason not to, and his words were the motivation I needed to commit.” By the end of September 2024, Nev was training in earnest, set on guiding his friend in the November marathon. They completed the race, and it was difficult, but Nev felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in the work and having regained his place as a runner.
Nev Schulman
© Lani Lee
Coming out of his injury, and now more than six months into his recovery, Schulman has a renewed sense of commitment to overall fitness and health. Nev was shocked at how quickly his body lost its strength and mobility, “It was amazing how much strength I lost in those 10 weeks from complete immobility to moderate mobility. My arms and back and shoulders, my entire range of motion was all screwed up.” He has found success by committing to a routine of movement. A mixture of physical therapy, strength training, running, and biking have helped get him on track to be as strong and as fit as he could be.
In an effort to maintain as high a level of fitness as possible, he has changed a lot of his habits. Things like cold plunges and an emphasis on stretching are now part of the weekly routine, and Nev says that this new focus on health is an unexpected positive outcome of the injury, “As a 40 year old, the idea of taking my fitness and mobility and flexibility more seriously was definitely in order. This has turned out to be the check-in that I needed.”
All of these experiences meant that when Nev was approached by the Wings for Life USA, a 501(c)(3) non-profit spinal cord research foundation, and asked to participate in the Wings for Life World Run, he was excited to rise to the challenge. “What I’ve discovered through all of this, and which I already knew, was how important running is for me. I knew I loved it and how good it was for my mental health, but I didn’t know how much I needed it until I couldn’t do it. And how this running community for the past 10 years has changed my life. The friends I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had, and the community I’ve built around it have become so important to my physical and emotional health… and had I lost that, it would have been truly devastating. And so to be able to use running to support people who can’t do that any more, and their families, while growing and building the community of runners is so meaningful to me.”
Nev says, “I’ll have just come off of the London Marathon, and this race will be my second or third run after that, so I’m sure I’ll still be recovering. I don’t have a goal for distance, I’ll just go until the Catcher Car catches me, but I want to get a bunch of people to join me. I’ve already gotten my wife and a few other friends to sign up, and I’m excited to use my platform to get others to join as well. And it’s so cool that runners can do it from anywhere, whether they show up with me in New York, or if they join me from elsewhere on the app, I just want to get people involved.”
After all, it’s the Wings for Life World Run’s global community of runners, all running at the same time and for the same cause, that inspires Nev. It’s why he’s rallying as many friends and fellow runners as he can to join him in running for those who can’t, and raising money to find a cure for spinal cord injury. “There’s just something about the connection you make with people when you share a difficult physical experience, that really requires focus and energy, is hard to describe. And an event like this [Wings for Life World Run] where you mix that physicality with the humanitarian element of supporting research to help those who can’t, or may someday move again, just feels like a very poetic combination. We’re moving our bodies so that hopefully someday you can move yours, because we want you to feel this too.”