This miracle worker is the Denver Broncos secret weapon

 

He’s not on the team. He’s not on the payroll. In fact, he isn’t officially affiliated with the Denver Broncos in any capacity, but a guy by the name of Adam Ster may be the key to the Orange & Blue hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this Sunday.

Remember when Chris Harris Jr. smashed up his shoulder and didn’t miss anything more than a few snaps the next week? Remember when DeMarcus Ware injured his knee in Week 17 and came back to be a monster in the playoffs? Remember the worry about Darian Stewart and T.J. Ward when they both left the AFC Championship game against the Patriots?

All four of those key cogs will be in uniform for the Super Bowl and Broncos Country has Ster to thank for that.

“I’m the guy that they call when somebody needs to be fixed quickly,” the Master Body Worker told BSN Denver outside of the Broncos team hotel in Santa Clara Wednesday morning.

Is he some sort of miracle worker? I’ll leave that up to you.

In June of 2009, professional motocross racer Bobby McGuire crashed doing a huge stunt on his bike; shattering 76 bones in his body including his: spine, entire left rib-cage, both knees, both legs and every single part of both feet. He was half paralyzed, lucky to be alive and told he would never walk again.

After the first eight surgeries, doctors suggested McGuire have his legs amputated, but he refused. Eight more surgeries, hours upon hours of physical therapy, anything he could find — still nothing. Enter Adam Ster with his unique therapy and treatments, McGuire went from a wheelchair to walking in two months.

Miracle worker? One current Bronco thought so.

“Louis Vasquez. That’s where it all started,” Ster said of his connection with the AFC Champions. “There was a point for Vasquez in San Diego — right before he came to Denver — he had a severe high-ankle sprain, they told him six to eight weeks and that’s actually when he called. I worked on him and he only missed one game. They told him six to eight weeks and he missed about 10 days.”

From that point, Vasquez was a believer.

“I told him right before he got to Denver, ‘You follow me. You let me do what I do. Five days a week, we’re working, you’re going to get paid,'” Ster explained.

“He was on my table when John Elway called on free agency day and from there it turned into this,” he added, pointing to the massive Broncos mural on the side of the Santa Clara Mariott.

By “this” he means his 11 clients on the Broncos: Harris Jr., Ware, Ward, Stewart, Demaryius Thomas, Derek Wolfe, Tyler Polumbus, Ryan Harris, Owen Daniels, Louis Vasquez and Sam Brenner. They fly him out and put him up in whatever hotel they are in to make sure his healing hands are only a few doors away at all times.

“Basically, I keep them healthy,” Ster said of what his miracle practices are exactly. “I’m prehab, I’m rehab, I use a lot of different stuff, a lot of different modalities, a lot of different things and then, on top of it, it’s also stuff that I’ve developed on my own.

“When it comes down to it, it’s all about making sure that the body functions the way it’s supposed to,” he added. “If somebody is injured, usually that’s an imbalance. I fix the imbalance through the whole body so they get better, faster and gain performance value at the same time. What should take somebody six to eight weeks takes me two.”

Let’s take Harris Jr. for example, who jacked up his shoulder, forcing him to, essentially, play with one arm against San Diego in Week 17 and  re-injured it against Pittsburgh.

“I mixed a lot of stuff with Chris,” Ster told. “We did everything from magnetic therapies – actual magnets, I have a 160 magnet that I use, which pulls the metal in your blood to the injured area to help it heal —we did everything from that, to manual manipulation, to movement. Really it came down to there being an imbalance already when he got injured, so we’re working on different postures and things that he can do during the day leading up to the game, so it will keep it in a good position.”

This week’s biggest projects — on top of continuing to rehab Harris — include a couple more extremely essential parts of the secondary, T.J. Ward and Darian Stewart, neither of which finished the game against New England.

“With both of those guys they had pretty not-serious injuries, to me,” said the medicine man. “Everyone else was like, ‘Ahhh,’ but, to me, those aren’t serious injuries because nothing was actually torn.

“Those two guys are relatively new to my roster, so the last two weeks have been about getting their body to a point where it can accept what I’m doing. When guys come to me and I work with them on a regular basis, they actually go up somewhere between 10 and 15-percent of what they’re capable of or what they’ve shown already, just as an athlete. So right now we’re working on their mind getting used to the new body, not just the uninjured one but they new one allowing them to do more. The next two days of practice are going to be huge for them because they’re going to feel themselves flying around. They’re going to feel themselves moving and turning and twisting – all the things that go along with human movement. They’re going to feel it in a way they’ve never actually felt it before and, in that, the injuries go away.”

Of course, Mr. Ster is not alone in his healing practices, The Broncos training staff, led by Head Athletic Trainer Steve “Greek” Antonopulos, are massive parts of the process as well.

“There are a lot of people that go into this and I realize that,” said the quirky specialist, wearing some bungee cords attached from his waist to his feet. “When it comes down to it, without the guys that are doing the rehab, I can’t do my job. They have the ice machines, they have the NormaTecs (pulse recovery system), they have the equipment, I just have my table and my hands. It’s a team effort, with what they’re doing and what I’m doing, we compliment each other very well, to even be allowed in there is an honor anyway. When you get to a hotel like this and there’s security and fans and all this stuff, you just look and you know where your place is, I’m here to do a job, we all have a job to do.”

When I say he’s quirky, I mean he’s quirky.

“Let’s just say sometimes I feel like I’m looking out of their eyes,” Ster said of how worked up he gets on game day. “That’s the truth. I actually go into a meditative state and I feel like I’m on the field. I was connected to all of my guys at some point that morning. So, from an energetic standpoint, I literally feel like I’m on the field with them.”

But despite his healing powers, his vitality to the Broncos having success this Sunday, his body of work of getting so many players back on the field for the Broncos this season and keeping them there, Ster doesn’t want the title I’m slapping on him.

“The unsung hero? Nah, I ain’t nobody’s hero,” he said. “All I’m doing is helping people, I just want people to feel better and perform better, that’s it.”

He can dodge the title all he wants, but if the Denver Broncos are parading through downtown Denver sometime next week, Adam Ster deserves a spot on the float.