Former athletes, veterans bond through fitness, wellness program

Co-founders Nate Boyer, Jay Glazer use MVP to help veterans, retired athletes bond through physical, mental work
Serving his country in Afghanistan during the summer, then heading home to suit up for the Texas Longhorns football team in the fall, Nate Boyer’s life had a tempo like few others.
And he was hooked on it.
However, his dual roles as a U.S. Army Green Beret and a football long snapper left twice the hole in his life when they ended.
Boyer finished school, then his military service ended, and at 34, the Seattle Seahawks signed him as a long snapper in 2015.
Just a few months later, he was released.
“I remember literally the next day waking up,” he said. “I don’t have the camouflage anymore … now football is over. Maybe another team will call, but maybe not. I was 34 at that time, and it was definitely like this ‘now what?’ moment.”
Boyer found a way to fill the void by co-founding Merging Veterans and Players.
MVP works to bring people together from both of Boyer’s communities: veterans and retired professional athletes. Through physical fitness and wellness programs, the organization helps people cope with post-service or post-sports challenges.
With the help of Jay Glazer, an NFL analyst for Fox Sports and a co-founder of the Unbreakable Performance Center home gym, whom Boyer had met before his time in Seattle, MVP grew from a place of teamwork and community focus.
After he was released by the Seahawks, Boyer was invited to the Hollywood Veterans Center, a veteran transition house in Los Angeles, where he worked with fellow vets. He decided to take some of them to the Unbreakable Performance Center in West Hollywood, California.
“I brought them up to the gym, and we worked out one night and then went and got tacos after,” Boyer said. “We just B.S.’d and I was like, ‘Well, these guys are just like me, too.’ I knew we had the connection with the military, but the fact that they were down on their luck and living in a shelter and all that, it didn’t really matter. … I could easily see myself in this position. I just was lucky to have football.”
The next time they met for a workout, he told Glazer to join and bring some athletes. In “true Jay fashion,” Boyer said, Glazer brought Tony Gonzalez, the former 14-time Pro Bowl tight end of the Chiefs and Falcons, and six-time UFC world champion Randy Couture.
“We worked out together for a short (time), just like a 30-minute deal, get a little sweat going, and then we just sat on the wrestling mat afterwards and just talked a bit,” Boyer said. “Jay led this huddle … he just got people talking, and that’s how it was born, like that’s the genesis of it.”
Boyer’s journey to football was a unique one. He joined the Longhorns roster as a 29-year-old freshman after teaching himself long-snapper tools by watching YouTube videos. He had never played organized football before.
He later found himself in the spotlight after penning an open letter in the Army Times addressing former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to sit during the national anthem.
“I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war.”
At Kaepernick’s request, the two later met and as the quarterback struggled to frame the best way to protest, Boyer suggested he kneel instead. At the next NFL game, he did, and Boyer stood next to him during the national anthem, his hand over his heart.
Needing a routine
Whether it’s former athletes such as Gonzalez and Couture, or veterans from the Hollywood Veterans Center, the challenges are often similar. They find themselves without the routine that was cemented into their life for years. They had learned to work within a team, their life molded around a sense of camaraderie.
Then one day, whether it comes purposefully or abruptly, it is gone.
“Sports and the military (are) very long associated, really powerful experiences and careers that become a fundamental part of your identity,” said Lindsey Mean, an associate professor at Arizona State University. “So you have a crisis when you transition out, especially if it’s a transition for unexpected (or) traumatic reasons … even when it’s planned.
“But with those transitions comes a loss of identity in many ways.”
Mean said that both sports and service bring a certain expectation of battling through pain.
“It’s an identity that all athletes, all people in the military are kind of subject to,” she said. “So this kind of notion that you should fight through the pain and fight through the agony and still be OK, that’s what makes you a good athlete or a good soldier.”
However, Mean said that mindset is actually problematic.
It’s OK not to be OK, and a great way to spread that message, Mean said, is by having leaders recognize it and promote it. Anyone from local leaders to famous athletes or veterans can share these ideas with their community.
One leader promoting the message is Chuck Hale, senior program coordinator for ASU’s College of Health Solutions and a U.S. Marine Corp veteran.
Hale, an MVP member, enlisted in the military when he was 21. Hale’s grandfather, a World War II veteran and a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, took his own life just a year before Hale enlisted.
At the funeral, he watched his cousin, who had just graduated from Marine Corps boot camp, and three of his uncles, who all served as Marines and survived the Vietnam War, talk about the “brotherhood” of the service.
“I’m sitting on the sidelines,” he said. “What am I doing? I’m not doing anything with my life at all, and 30 days later, I enlisted.”
Before Hale lost his grandfather, he recalled conversations he had with him about serving. His grandfather told him “Our family has done enough. You don’t need to do this,” but Hale thought, “What have I done?”
That drive led to almost seven years of active duty as an infantry assaultman, where he started as a dragon gunner, eventually finishing his time in the service as a sergeant at the Marine Corps Security Force Company in Iceland.
At ASU, Hale helped start the Military and Veteran Resilience and Health Collaborative (MVRHC), which has multiple initiatives in relation to the service. It benefits those who are pre-service, those in active duty and those whose service has ended. In his work with veterans, Hale came upon MVP.
He found it in search of veteran organizations that offered physical fitness to help MVRHC. He then saw that MVP had its own movie, and he wanted to screen it and invite veterans to come for free as a “Salute to Service” event.
A common goal
When he got in contact with the organization, they saw that Hale himself was a veteran and invited him out to a session.
“It got me back into a gym,” he said. “It got me back into being involved with vets and in this space of what we were trying to build here at College of Health Solutions … it got me back into yoga and pilates.”
Hale had a lumbar spinal fusion, so he needs to stay within the frame of what his doctors and physical therapists allow, but the MVP instructors help modify workouts so he can be involved.
His dedication helped him kick-start a mindset of physical well-being. Since then, he’s hiked and camped around Mount Rainier and hiked The Narrows in Zion National Park from top to bottom. Twice.
Hale had volunteered with Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) but despite years of work with the organization, he was told he wasn’t doing enough. So he left.
With MVP, he found he can go at his own pace and is still encouraged. He can be as involved as he wants. Whether he makes a session or misses one, he is welcome.
And he was pleased to learn that unlike the VFW, an MVP membership is free and good for life, regardless of one’s activity.
Michael Maisano, a veteran and professor of multiple psychology and veterans counseling courses, said that camaraderie in these transitions is very important. A group of people with whom veterans or former athletes can build meaningful bonds can be beneficial — just as MVP has been for Hale.
“It’s the connection; whatever you might go out and get connected to,” he said. “Don’t isolate.”
Although nothing’s official yet, Boyer and Glazer hope to open a collegiate chapter of MVP. Boyer said NCAA athletes are professionals and unless they’re part of the small percentage that advances to the next level, they also will go through the difficult process of moving beyond their sport.
“We are seeing an increasing recognition of how the psychological and mental health aspects of sport and for athletes are significant,” Mean said. “We’re still in the very early days of managing those effectively and allowing athletes space to be supported and to manage those things.”
Even while they’re on the roster, many mental challenges can arise off the field, whether it’s in the classroom or with decisions about entering the transfer portal or seeking NIL money. But the athletes aren’t the only people on campus who may benefit.
The program would be aimed at veterans on campus, too.
“There’s a lot of veterans (who) go to school. I was one of them,” Boyer said. “Then there’s people (who) haven’t even served yet, but they’re in ROTC and they’re part of that community. I think all of that, we’re down to do more with.”
Boyer recognized the challenge in it, adding that as he thinks back to when he was a 20-year-old, he might not have wanted to join something like MVP because he would have viewed it as something to help people whose career had ended – not him.
But he recognizes now that even people like his 20-year-old self need to be ready to face that challenge when it comes, and MVP can help reshape their lives as they move forward.
“You have to (adapt) if you want to grow,” he said. “You’ve got to change.”