FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

David Rendon was in a bad place, and his family knew it.

An Army veteran who served from 2005 to 2016, Rendon was stumbling back toward a past that included substance abuse. “I was starting to get lost,” he says. “I had nowhere to go. After a visit to (a VA facility), my mother told me, ‘You have no life in your eyes.’”

That was then. On this warm July evening in Los Angeles, in the parking lot of Unbreakable Performance Center above Sunset Strip, the life is back in Rendon’s eyes. Surrounded by nearly 40 other veterans – ranging from the post-9/11 era to Vietnam – he’s warming up for another Merging Vets & Players (MVP) session. He’s bouncing around, hugging and shaking hands with people he considers brothers. 

“It was almost like a miracle that I found MVP,” says Rendon, a member of Hollywood American Legion Post 43. “The camaraderie. Knowing that I’m in a safe space. It’s allowing me to take that next step in my recovery.

“My mother loves this. She has seen a huge difference when it comes to my attitude, the way I speak, the way I present myself, the way I’m not anxious, the way I’m not depressed. I have more good days than bad days. Now she doesn’t have to worry about me.”

Founded two years ago by Fox Sports NFL and mixed martial arts (MMA) reporter Jay Glazer, MVP brings together veterans and former professional athletes for weekly workout sessions followed by “fireside chats” where no subject is taboo. The owner of Unbreakable, Glazer teamed up with MVP cofounder Nate Boyer – an Army Green Beret veteran and pro football player – to grow the Los Angeles program. Similar programs have started in Las Vegas and Chicago. 

MVP combines peer-to-peer mentoring with a workout that includes MMA. Participating weekly helped Army and National Guard veteran Heraclio Aguilar drop from more than 320 pounds to 240, giving him more confidence at a time when he really needed it.

“I knew the direction I wanted to go that fat was not going to be received well,” says Aguilar, also a Post 43 member. “The great thing about this program is that a lot of the veterans who do come, we’re not all on the same set path to get to become a physical trainer or to become something in the movies, become a writer, whatever. We all have different dreams and aspirations.”

MVP’s physical side is what attracted A.J. Perez – a Navy veteran, MVP program coordinator and Post 43 member – to the program. Immediately, though, he saw the benefits of the chats.

“We sit here and just open up to one another – the good, the bad and the ugly,” Perez says. “We put the elephant in the room. It’s that safe space where people can share what they want to share. There’s no judgment. We just tell each other, ‘Hey, I’ve been there.’”

For Perez, MVP came at the right time. His transition from sailor to civilian was difficult. He’d been fired from various jobs, was fighting substance abuse and anger issues, and generally lived in a daze. “It felt like quicksand. The more you try, the more you sink.”

MVP gave Perez his footing and helped him see he wasn’t alone in the transition process. Hearing other veterans’ stories made him realize that it’s OK to struggle, he says. “It’s OK to feel how you’re feeling. In the civilian world, we say certain things or react a certain way, and people look at us like we’re crazy. We’re just so used to a certain kind of culture. With MVP, it brings like-minded individuals (together). We save each other and help each other out in any way we can: sharing resources, a simple phone call, text, go hang out, things like that.”

That’s what Boyer likes to hear. A veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he spent three years as the University of Texas long snapper and played briefly for the Seattle Seahawks in the 2015 NFL preseason.

“I know how hard it is to transition out of something like that, to have a locker room and a community, a specific mission and purpose and identity, and then to not have any of it,” he says. “It’s hard for us, because we’ve been trained to suck it up and drive on, don’t ask for help. It’s easy for us to fall through the cracks, and let ourselves go physically and mentally.

“(With MVP), it’s consistent. Every week we meet up. We train together. We fight together. And then we talk about stuff. It’s hard to want to open up to people who haven’t been through something similar. This provides a space for us to do that. And it all stays here. That’s really what it is. There’s no magic beans or secret sauce. It’s just being here for one another.”

BUILDING A TRIBE  Marine Corps veteran Krishna Flores experienced military sexual trauma that resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the service in 2008. A member of Palisades American Legion Post 283, she’s been participating in the MVP program for a year and a half.

Being around the program’s male veterans is “kind of like exposure therapy for me,” Flores says. “I get a lot of anxiety. I’m still working through those symptoms. We all come with a lot of weight on our shoulders. We get to put it on the floor in a punching bag, and then we get to sit down and really lay out our heart.”

It’s also given her the opportunity to meet other female veterans. “There’s not a lot of us out there,” she continues. “If I can meet more of them, I can continue to build my tribe and my network and support group.”

Andi Ward, another member of Palisades Post 283, served in the Navy from 2007 to 2010. She came to MVP last February and enjoyed it so much she rearranged her entire schedule so she could could keep coming back. 

“When you walk in the room you almost feel like you’re back in the military,” Ward says. “People doing things together, sweating together, going through stuff together.”

Workouts facilitate a strong chat session, she adds. “Because there’s a physical aspect at the beginning, you form this bond with each other that you just can’t form in any other therapy session. You really feel like you know these people. You feel like you can trust them. You’ve just sweated with them for an hour. It just gives you this bond with them. You feel like you’ve been friends forever.”

Jacob Toups, MVP’s executive director, says the program’s physical and mental portions are interdependent. “There’s amazing evidence about how physical fitness opens people up,” he says. “It makes you vulnerable. If you took away the physical fitness part, I don’t think our peer mentoring would be as effective. It has to be both things together.”

‘THE HUMAN INSIDE US’  At Xtreme Couture MMA in Las Vegas – owned by former UFC champion, Army Airborne veteran and MVP board member Randy Couture – a similar mix of veterans and athletes gathers on Fridays to grow physically and mentally. The latter has been especially helpful for former NFL player Gerome Sapp, a high school All-American in 1998 who went on to play for the University of Notre Dame and then had a five-year NFL career with the Baltimore Ravens and Indianapolis Colts. 

With a finance degree from Notre Dame and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Sapp tried to enter the entrepreneurship world after the NFL but was unsuccessful, leaving him depressed. “I lost my identity,” he says.  

Then he met Noel Huerta, program coordinator for the new MVP program in town. Sapp immediately found the outlet he’d been needing since leaving professional football – and with a group of people with whom he feels a connection.

“I’d always had an affinity for the military,” Sapp says. “A lot of times professional athletes and those who enter the military come from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. And with MVP, we’re all looking for something we had before, whether in sports or in the military. The ability to interact with other people who share that need has really been therapeutic in a nontraditional way.” 

Huerta, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan, was with MVP at the ground floor in Las Vegas. He’s seen the program make a huge difference in less than two years.

“There are (veterans) who are displaced, alone, who didn’t have a place to be themselves and open up to each other and show how great they really are,” Huerta says. “We really wanted to give that to everybody … create that unity we once had.”

The results are like something out of a Hollywood movie, he adds. “Seeing guys who were really close-minded and didn’t want to be around people, and how they change – seeing where they’re able to put their ego aside and work as a family – it’s amazing. You see the human inside us.”

For Leo Garcia, 55, MVP started as a way to take off weight. His doctor told Garcia, an Air Force veteran and member of American Legion Post 8 in Las Vegas, that he was getting heavy. After joining the program, Garcia lost 25 pounds in two months. The program has also been a stress reliever. 

“I needed something to release all the pressure that I go through,” he says. “I run four nonprofits. This was a great release for me. My wife noticed that my demeanor totally changes when I come home because I take it out on the bags or on the mat.”

Like others who have found MVP, though, the benefits for mental health have meant the most. “The peer-to-peer portion of the program is great, because what’s said here stays here,” Garcia says. “(Veterans) mental health care at our facility (in Las Vegas), they’re just overwhelmed. Three months later you may have a new doctor. (At MVP), they’re building a community, and that community stays here, and it grows. You know you can always reach out to someone here.”  

Steven B. Brooks is social media manager for The American Legion. 

Learn more about Merging Vets & Players here.