Lowery’s Missions Impossible

Damon Lowery is no stranger to pain, but the former NBL champion is pushing himself beyond limits even he thought were possible.

What’s most remarkable, is he’s doing it at the ripe old age of 53 – and soon to be 54 in just 4 days.

Throughout his monthly exercise “missions”, Lowery has clocked up some insane distances and crushed some truly eye-watering physical and mental feats.

In March he skipped 67,000 times laden with a 10kg vest. In July he ran a total of 160kms weighed down by a 15kg vest, and also ran barefoot on occasions. When July was done he’d loaded the vest with 20kg and run for 128kms while being swooped by magpies. If all that wasn’t painful enough, recently he “bear-crawled” on his hands and feet for more than 12kms.

“There’s no quitting. I’d die first,” he said triumphantly about this.

By now you should be asking, “Why?”

Well, Lowery explains it all stemmed back to Boxing Day 2020 when he tried to play one-on-one basketball with a close friend but wasn’t fit enough to get through more than three of the nine games they had planned.

“I was extremely out of shape and told my friend I would be risking death if I continued to play,” he explained.

“I had never been this way before in my life and I didn’t like it.”

The realisation of just how unfit he was sat uncomfortably with Lowery who has always prided himself on pushing through and rising to any challenge.

“During my playing days, I never missed a game and I was proud of that,” he declared.

“I would always play, no matter what, and I would push through serious injuries and circumstances a normal man wouldn’t have endured. I always got through.”

Summoning up that mental strength he was once famous for, Lowery now a vegetarian, decided to challenge himself in the most extreme ways.

“I spoke to a friend of mine who told me about the Navy Seals and the things they endured during training,” he explained.

“He challenged me to read up on the seals and discover what true mental strength and resilience was all about.

“I read a few books, Living with a Seal by Jessie Itzler and Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins and they inspired me to get myself in shape mentally, physically and emotionally.

“One of these guys crawled the New York marathon and threw up 52 times! I was like, “I gotta give that a go!”

While Lowery’s missions are extreme, they didn’t start out that way.

“Like we all do, it started with a New Year’s resolution. So on January the first this year my mission was to run five laps of a local oval, and increase it by one lap every day,” he said.

“I also decided to do 50 chin-ups each day, and increase those by 10 as I went.”

Come February Lowery paid the price.

“My body was completely broken. So, I took the entire month off and geared myself up for another mission in March.”

For his last mission, this November, he openly states he wants to “go to hell”.

“I’m trying to go out with a bang,” he said on his Instagram account, 

“Get to the point where everything is screaming out to quit, and of course I don’t quit.”

Every odd day from November 2, Lowery has committed to doing 100 excruciating Navy Seal burpees, which will take him about 45 to 50 minutes to complete, and on every even day it’s a half-marathon or 21.1kms.

“This month I’m out to find out what I’m really about.”

Lowery’s missions are there for all to see on his Instagram page and he’ll soon be speaking about them too live on TV as the newest addition to the National Basketball League’s broadcast team.