Porter Gustin – Noteworthy
Two weeks ago, the brace and the tape came off Porter Gustin’s right ankle. On a recent morning, he deadlifts so much weight he maxes out the bar’s capability, nearly 600 pounds. Practicing his vertical jump, he is finally free to scale tall buildings in a single bound, but Gustin still feels like a man in shackles. He wants to do more. At USC, he seemingly always could, sneaking into the dungeon of the McKay Center no matter the hour, but now he employs a trainer to protect him from his baser instincts. “I worked a miracle,” Traison Lewis says. If keeping Gustin from pushing himself to the limit of what a human body is meant to handle requires divine intervention, then yes, Lewis, a former Wisconsin football player who trains athletes in Upland and Rancho Santa Margarita, has achieved omnipotency.
Lewis says that Gustin’s full rehabilitation from ankle surgery is a “secret” and that “everybody is writing him off” heading into this week’s NFL scouting combine. His client is buying into the underdog story, too. “People think I’m still running in pools,” Gustin says. The only people who think Gustin isn’t going to compete at the combine haven’t been paying attention. For those who followed his USC career, Gustin coming back from injury faster than anticipated is the expectation, not a surprise. It is the essence of Gustin, and he is following that instinct again, for better or worse. – Los Angeles Times