Man Stands Up From Wheelchair For First Time After Breaking Neck Playing Rugby

More than three years after breaking his neck in a college rugby game and becoming paralyzed below the chest, Robert Paylor independently stood up from his wheelchair in El Dorado, California, on September 7.

Footage of the incident shows Paylor straining to lift himself up before eventually arriving upright.

Paylor wrote, “I stood up out of my wheelchair on my own for the first time today! It took me 1,220 days to achieve this goal, and it was worth every second. No better way to celebrate Labor Day!”

The Sacramento Bee reported Paylor, a former UC Berkeley rugby player, suffered three shattered vertebrae in his neck, which sliced into his spinal cord. After 11 months of rehabilitation in Colorado, he became a social media star, graduated from Berkeley, and became an inspirational speaker. Credit: Debbie Paylor via Storyful