Scottish boxing champion from Elgin, David Grigor, reveals all about suicide attempt, broken ankle, and CRPS diagnosis
If it wasn’t for taking up boxing, David Grigor is convinced he wouldn’t be alive today.
The sport has helped him overcome a suicide attempt, severe depression, a broken ankle and a rare and agonising pain disorder - now he is a Scottish champion and a thriving coach at Elgin Amateur Boxing Club.
Getting fit and health in the gym against all the odds helped the 28-year-old Elgin-based joiner turn his life around, and he is forever grateful for a decision he made in the summer of 2021.
“I tell everyone that boxing saved my life, and it really did,” he said.
“I was suffering from depression and it was one of my friends who told me he was going to start boxing for fitness and he wanted me to come along.
“I was going through a rough spot where I actually tried to kill myself.
“So it was amazing what boxing did for me after that.”
Even when sport strengthened David’s physical and mental health, and he began competing in boxing bouts, more adversity was just around the corner as he was involved in a motorcycle accident in 2022.
Initially told he had minor injuries, a misdiagnosis saw him unaware that he had a broken ankle for many weeks, leading to him undergoing reconstructive surgery - six months after his crash.
He then discovered he had CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), an extremely rare disorder affecting just 16,000 people in the UK.
“It’s a condition where literally your body thinks it’s injured, worse than what it actually is, and it goes into a protection mode,” he explained. “If I got even the slightest knock, my leg would swell up thinking it is back to being broken.
“So I had lots of inflammation, and a severe amount of pain.”
Facing a long journey back to fitness, David admitted his mental health suffered again, but he used boxing as a primary focus in his determination to get better.
He found that physical activity helped his condition, and began a rehabilitation programme involving walking, swimming and cycling.
Unable to drive, he relied on boxing club colleagues to take him down to sessions in the gym, and was encouraged to coach other boxers while he was unable to do the sport himself.
Head coach Paul Gordon put David through a coaching course and he was able to guide fellow boxers while he continued his own recovery.
“It helped my brain to stick in a boxing situation and kept me in the game. To be able to have the club there to support me when I was injured, that was amazing.
“Without them, I don’t think I would have been here, to be perfectly honest. I was in a real bad place.
“Being part of the boxing club has kept me in so much better a place.
“I am a firm believer in not taking medicine if I can help it. When I was taking stuff with my leg, it was a downer but being active in fitness and sport, it gives you this pain relief in your head and your whole body that no paracetamol or ibuprofen can give you.
“Sport has been like my drug, it has kept me on the straight and narrow and not put me down to the places where I was before.
Giving guidance to club colleagues through coaching also provided David with a greater knowledge of his own boxing strengths and weaknesses, so that when he was finally able to return to the competitive ring, he had learned new skills to implement in his fights.
But when he was put forward to compete in last month’s Boxing Scotland development championships, he didn’t hold high expectations of success.
“I didn’t really care if I won or lost, I just wanted to have that feeling back in the ring,” he said.
The championships were held over two weekends at the Ravenscraig regional sports centre in Motherwell, and David was elated to win his first bout.
His confidence grew as he battled his way through his next two fights to reach the final, and when sheer grit took him to victory and the Scottish title gold medal, he was overjoyed and emotional.
“It was amazing. I felt like crying when I won it,” he said. “I didn’t know I had it in me to win.
“I knew I would be back boxing but at no point did I think I would ever achieve that, having four bouts and winning them all and becoming the Scottish champion.
“Even the first time I had my hand raised I was in shock.
“By the time of the fourth bout and winning the final, I couldn’t speak. I was shaking and just so happy that everything had paid off.”
It was a special moment for David, and one that he dedicated to a club he now considers to be his family.
“The whole network of the boxing club was just so amazing,” he said.
“When I went through another dark spot with the injury and being off work and training, just not generally being in a good place, the coaches and all of the boxers definitely saved me.
“It’s like a massive family to me.”
He paid tribute to the work of local physiotherapist Helen Teasdale, whose KCR (Kinetic Chain Release) treatments have aided his recuperation.
“She has been keeping me fit and ready for boxing and doing a lot of work with my ankle on a weekly basis. And she sponsored me as well, even not knowing if I would get back in the ring or not.
“The coaches were so patient with me and if I came into training one day and I was sore, they would give me other things to do, different workouts based around standing still rather than training. They were so supportive.”
David knows he will have to manage pain for the rest of his days, but sport provides him with medicine.
“I’m in pain all of the time, literally every day. It is manageable more so now, but there’s days when it is agony.
“CRPS is more likely to happen if you have a prolonged injury, and for myself it was because I was in the boot and a cast for so long.
“When I was first told I had this, I said ‘so you are telling me that I’m not injured but my head is telling me that I am’ - it’s not that simple and I thought it was a problem with my own head, but you can’t stop it from happening.
“I get weak ankles, and I am more susceptible to injury while I am walking because my ankle doesn’t really do what I tell it to do.
“If I am walking it can roll by mistake or if I take a step funny it can cause more injury. I’ve got to be more aware if I am stepping off a bigger kerb or going up and down steps, things like that.
“I have been doing some strengthening work on the joints, a lot of working out with and without weights to try and strengthen the muscles around the joint to try and help it.
“That has really been working, especially with me stepping back into the boxing ring.”
David’s Scottish title glory has opened the door to future opportunities in the ring, while he plans to continue his coaching stints.
“I’m hoping to be entered into the Scottish intermediate championships in January.
“I will just go into it looking to have some fun. That is how I box.
“I’m not going to turn pro and be this amazing boxer, I just want to have fun and enjoy the sport while I’m fit enough to do so.
“Even with my coaching, I put 100 per cent into that. I want to give back the same as what boxing has given me and what my coaches have given to me.
“It has saved my life, and I’m not going out to try and save lives but if I give that one person just that small bit of hope to keep going, that’s what I’m aiming for.”
