Car Accident Sidelines ZA Anderson from 2017 CrossFit Games Season

ZA Anderson took 10th place at the 2013 CrossFit Games. Since then, injuries have plagued Anderson. He missed the 2014 season with a back injury. In 2015, Anderson was diagnosed with palsy in his serratus and latissimus. Last year, Anderson was able to compete but finished 12th at the Atlantic regional.

This year while Anderson’s brothers, Alex and Jacob, were near the top of the leaderboard, ZA’s name was nowhere to be found. Yesterday, ZA posted on Instagram why he was unable to compete this year.

Anderson wrote, “The day of the first open workout announcement I was rear ended [editor’s note: in a car accident] and badly hurt my back. For the past 7 weeks I’ve barely been able to stand or walk due to severe pain. Yesterday I was finally able to have surgery to fix my herniated discs.”

👊👊👊 Just wanted to do a quick little write up as to why I’ve been AWOL these past couple months. My training was in full gear and I was excited and prepared to compete in this years @crossfitgames Season. The day of the first open workout announcement I was rear ended and badly hurt my back. For the past 7 weeks I’ve barely been able to stand or walk due to severe pain. Yesterday I was finally able to have surgery to fix my herniated discs. Thank you to everyone who has reached out. I promise, this will not be the end of me. Also, huge thank you to all my sponsors for continuing to have my back throughout this extremely difficult time. And to my amazing physical therapist, @lapolivka11, whose had to talk me off the ledge more than once these past couple weeks. Having another season taken away from me has been extremely difficult to swallow. I’m not sure what God has in store for my future, but I do know that I will continue to battle. I fully intend to rehab as hard and as smart as I can so that I can get back to training as soon as possible. #CrossFitGames #AndersonStrong

A post shared by Zach Anderson (@zaanderson023) on Apr 18, 2017 at 4:18pm PDT