Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. I hope you are able to get some time away from work to relax and appreciate the things you’re grateful for this year. Thanksgiving is always an exciting week for the NFL. As we prepare to take on the Bears at home on Friday, I may be out recovering from an injury but I’m always there for my team, every week.
Being injured actually gives me time to step back and think about some of the people I’m especially grateful for this season. There is my family, of course — they all know who they are and I hope they always know how much I love them.
And then there is this trio who have become family by choice: Gabe, Brian, and Ken. All three of them have been critical to my success in football – and my mental health.
I’ll start with Gabe, Gabriel Rangel. Gabe is a Marine vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He not only looks the part — I had to lure him away from L.A., where he was training Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, among other ripped celebs and athletes — he’s deep into his craft. Yes, he is down with the latest in exercise science research and physiology; yes he knows how to safely rehab me after games and injuries; yes, he is seeing to it that I recover from this current injury and come back stronger than ever. But more than that, he’s guided by a very particular philosophy: existentialism.
See, back when he was at Cal State Fullerton, Gabe took a sports psychology class. He didn’t know it at the time, but his professor was one of the most revered sports psychologists in the world, the late Dr. Kenneth Ravizza. (One of Dr. Ravizza’s mentees wound up becoming my go-to sports psychologist, Dr. Brian Cain.) Anyway, at the start of every semester, Dr. Ravizza assigned all of his students to read “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. The book is all about Frankl’s experience in the Nazi death camps. “Um,” you might be thinking. “Where are you going with this, Lane?” Well, what Gabe took away from this book is the idea that we have no control over the past, or the future, or the what-ifs; we can only focus on the moment. Our breath. Our action. The way our bodies and minds are feeling right now. And that’s the framework that guides my work with Gabe.
Gabriel Rangel helping Lane train
Every year, we lay out a macrocycle, which is a zoomed-out picture of the year. Where are we starting and where do we want to end? Gabe likes to say that this kind of planning and discipline is applicable to anything in life, that it makes the day-to-day decisions a lot easier, and causes way less stress. That’s because every decision we make comes back to the top, main goal. We get very specific on the goals, whether it be from a body fat percentage or a movement goal, and we just attack it. We pivot if we need to, like to address injuries.
Gabe tracks every single aspect of my workouts, so that I am always pushing myself further. He doesn’t try to be my therapist or my doctor or my physical therapist — but he communicates with every person who works with me in those areas, so that he knows how to push me physically and mentally as far as I can go. He reminds me constantly that no one person has all the answers — and that we all need to ask for help. Crucially, he has really normalized getting therapy. When I struggle with my mental health, he will flat-out tell me that he’s happy to listen for as long as I want — but that there are experts trained in mental health who I also need to talk to. And I do.
Then there’s Brian Bradtke. Brian handles all the stuff that comes with being a professional athlete — the press, social media, marketing, community events, all that stuff, which can be especially intense when you play in a sports-focused city like Philadelphia. And he’s not out there chasing any ol’ exposure — he’s been with me for more than a dozen years and knows the values I hold close; he will only seek out or agree to things on my behalf that line up with what’s important to me. That’s mostly wellness, the outdoors, mental health, the military, and families.
Lane and Brian Bradtke at Wrestlemania
Last year, I mentioned something to Brian about how I was interested in doing cold and hot therapy at my gym back in Oklahoma; before I knew it, Brian had done all the research on the most effective products and brands, secured a sponsorship deal for me, and had them installed. He takes all the stress out of that part of my life. Sometimes I feel like Brian and I share a brain — that’s how much I trust him to make decisions for me off the field, so that I don’t have to feel stressed or anxious or distracted about those decisions. He knows the real me — when I go see him in Texas, he knows I don’t want to stay at a fancy hotel or get driven around. I crash at his place and we drive around together (like we did a couple years ago for Wrestlemania!). I know that he’s a big part of my mental stamina and that the kind of bond we have is both rare, and priceless.
And finally, there’s Ken Sarnoff. Ken is my agent, but he is so much more than the stereotypical agent you might be picturing from movies. He has been with me going all the way back to before the draft in 2013 — and has been by my side for all of the extreme highs and lows since: the Super Bowl wins, the injuries, and my mental health challenges. When I had my first mental health setback and drove from Philly to Oklahoma, Ken dropped everything and got on the next plane to be by my side. He believes in me so hard, and with no judgement. I know I can talk to him about anything. He talks to my mom constantly. I feel like he’s a part of my family, and I feel like I’m a part of his.
In some ways, Ken and I are really different as men — I grew up super “country,” and he went to law school and calls Chicago home. But what he gets about me is this: I don’t care about the money. Don’t get me wrong: I am thankful for every part of this privileged life and grateful to be able to do nice things for the people I love. But what I really care about is being the best right tackle in the history of the game. I want every deal Ken oversees for me to be in the service of that goal, that legacy. Ken respects that — he has never once put his own goals above mine.
Lane and The Trio. Left to right: Brian Bradtke, Lane, Ken Sarnoff, and Gabriel Rangel
A lot of professional athletes have to expend a lot of mental energy changing around their “team” or wondering if the people around them have their best interests at heart. I have never had to worry about that, thanks to Gabe, Brian, and Ken. Gabe likes that expression “you are who you surround yourself with.” He tells me he wants to be around people who care about being the best, whatever their path in life may be. He has friends who have chosen wide-ranging pursuits after the military, from accounting to sanitation work, and they’re all out there trying to be the best at what they do.
I feel lucky that if, as Gabe says, we’re all an average of the people we spend the most time around, my group includes Gabe, Brian, and Ken. We have forged a true brotherhood together — not in some macho, frat-like way, but in a way that lets me be my truest, most vulnerable, most authentic self. And in my own search for meaning, I’ve come to understand that when it comes to your mental stability, relationships like this are as meaningful as they get.
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Lane Johnson training July 2024