Lane Johnson stands in the middle of his “Bro Barn,” hooked up to an ARPWave machine like some modern-day Bionic Man, except wires are attached to pads around his core rather than his upper body.
“I feel like I have a lightning bolt going through my hips,” Johnson says, explaining the sensation.
The Eagles tackle is three days removed from playing through a torn groin tendon for a second straight game and he’s receiving treatment for the injury under the supervision of personal trainer Gabe Rangel.
The ARP — acronym for accelerated recovery performance — uses a low-voltage electrical current to stimulate the nervous system and reduce scar tissue. Johnson is connected to the machine for only 15 minutes, but as Rangel increases the frequency, his breathing becomes heavier.
The Friday before the NFC championship game, they reached 67 out of a maximum of 100 on the gauge.
“Let’s go to 70,” Johnson says 11 days before the Eagles play in Super Bowl LVII.
Through incremental knee lifts, the 6-foot-6, 325-pounder is upright, but wobbling as the seconds tick down.
“See how it’s pulling him in different directions,” Rangel said, “and he’s trying to stay centered?”
There’s discomfort, but it’s momentary, and he feels more nimble afterward. The 32-year-old is still freakishly athletic. But it takes a certain amount of mental strength to endure the ARP therapy, Johnson later explained, and to a greater extent, playing through his current injury.
It can be cliche to glorify athletes who continue on despite physical duress. Johnson has overcome various setbacks in his 10-year NFL career. But it may be his persistence in the face of mental health struggles, and an openness in doing so, that has spoken most to his resiliency.
And as he attempts to play through injury yet again and win a second championship, adding to the Hall of Fame-caliber resume he’s building, his toughness is unquestioned, if not its origins.
Like his father’s height and his mother’s light hair, he and others say he gets it from his parents.
“All three of them … his mom, his dad and him, they’re all the same,” Rangel said. “They won’t show you any of their [struggles]. His mom — she has a don’t-feel-sorry-for-me attitude. She’s like, ‘I’m fine.’ His dad’s the same way.
“They all come at [hardship] with the same mindset. That’s what I’ve noticed from afar.”
Johnson’s father, David, recently had a new pacemaker implanted into his chest and acted like he was going in for a routine checkup, according to Rangel. His mother, Ray Ann Carpentier, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma six months ago, but hasn’t slowed down since.
“You hear stage IV and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s close to death,’” Carpentier said. “But after research and getting some second opinions, it’s more of an autoimmune type of cancer. And it’s something I will die with, not of. I’ve just maintained a very optimistic attitude towards it.
“It’s almost like I don’t have it.”
Initially, Carpentier was told the cancer would need to be treated. But when Johnson found out in October, he enlisted the Eagles and others for help and flew her up to Penn Medicine for a second opinion about a month later.
“I was concerned because they said stage IV and she needed chemo,” Johnson said. “It was a big deal and there was an initial scare. But it wasn’t as bad as we originally thought.”
Still, there was angst. Johnson’s off-field issues have been a reminder that behind the 30 straight games without allowing a sack, and a tendency from some to view professional athletes merely as a source of entertainment, there should be more humanity extended to these modern-day gladiators.
Like anyone with familial relationships or otherwise, Johnson sometimes has outside forces — like the ARP machine — working against him. That he can exist on an island in pass protection and seemingly always remained disciplined — despite whatever may be going on in his life — is a testament to his fortitude.
But it’s always a mental grind.
“It’s mortal combat every weekend,” he said.
Johnson has had a whirlwind last few years, from the breakup of his marriage to his nearly quitting football after he left the Eagles in October 2021. Carpentier offered some tough love at the time, which led to a brief falling out. But they eventually reconnected, and even though she didn’t initially tell her son about her diagnosis, it has since brought them closer together.
“And that’s one reason I didn’t want Lane to know,” Carpentier said. “I didn’t want it to be a pity party. ‘Oh, Mom’s diagnosed with cancer’ and blah, blah, blah. But it ended up all working out and kind of got us all in the same frame of mind of how short life can be and don’t take things for granted.”
Darkest moments
Johnson’s parents weren’t exactly athletes growing up, but they were physical people. David was a bull rider and could have gone pro, according to Lane, but fatherhood took precedence. He competed through collapsed lungs and other injuries, his son said.
“The bull-riding culture is very similar to football,” Johnson said. “Guys don’t die in football like they do bull riding. But there are so many guys riding with injuries like torn groins. It’s almost like part of the gig.”
Johnson was named after Lane Frost, the Texas bull rider who died in competition 10 months before he was born. His story became the movie “8 Seconds.” David Johnson shifted to construction work for the highway department.
Carpentier, an only child like Lane, was into ballet until she was 18. She liked the lessons, she said, but “put me on the stage and I would freeze up.” Johnson’s parents divorced when he was young, but they co-parented through whatever travails life presented.
“We’ve both been through the road of hard knocks,” Carpentier said. “We’re physical people. We’ve both done physical, hard work our whole life. My father is that type of person. We just don’t let stuff get us down. Sometimes you have jobs to do and bills to pay, and you just work through it.
“And Lane grew up with that mentality.”
Carpentier said she cleaned houses and mowed lawns to put herself through college as she raised Lane. A social worker in the criminal justice system, she was essentially a therapist for inmates, many of whom she said experienced mental breakdowns.
Johnson was an outgoing child, Carpentier said. He begged her to play football and she finally relented. But basketball was his preferred sport until he realized that football would open more doors. It was around that time, late in his senior year at Groveton High, that Johnson first experienced symptoms of anxiety.
He kept it secret for years. His mother knew something was awry and Johnson eventually clued her in. But there was only so much she could do.
“When he was at his darkest moments, I was scared to death for my child in many ways,” Carpentier said. “I knew he was struggling. As a mother, especially working in the mental health field, for me to not be able to go in and fix it because he’s a grown man, it was tough.”
Johnson had managed, with therapy and antidepressants, to key depression at bay. But an ankle injury that lingered over three-plus seasons, and was still bothering him after surgery, had him in a very dark place at the beginning of the 2021 season.
He was also experiencing withdrawal symptoms — vomiting, internal pain, and insomnia — while trying to wean himself off Paxil. Johnson didn’t show up for the Week 4 Chiefs game, instead driving to Crescent, Okla., where his father runs his ranch.
Carpentier met him there and offered “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” advice, which she said upset Johnson.
“He completely shut down, which he’s done in the past,” Carpentier said. “When he’s hurting, he just wants to avoid everything. He gets it from me. I can be the same way. I need to work through this myself. I just want to be left alone.
“So I got a good dose of my own medicine.”
Mind focused
Johnson eventually reconsidered his retirement plans and was coaxed back to Philadelphia. He resumed his appointments with his therapist and the regular dose of his antidepressant and was back at right tackle after missing three games.
He picked up where he left off and since returning has been named All-Pro — second team last season, first team this season — in consecutive years for the first time in his career. But on Christmas Eve, he suffered a core muscle injury and an MRI two days later revealed that he tore one of his three abductors.
Surgery would likely end his season, even if the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. Chargers defensive end Joey Bosa missed eight weeks after having the procedure last season. William Meyers, the noted core muscle physician based at the Navy Yard, told Johnson that he had only known of NHL players who played through the injury.
But Rangel found out that Cam Jordan had done so over the Saints’ final five games of the 2019 season. Johnson reached out to the defensive end he often faced.
“He was like, ‘Good luck. It’s just going to hurt pretty much like [bleep],’ ” Johnson said. “Even if he didn’t give me great advice, just knowing he went through that [bleep], gave me confidence.
“I was like, ‘Well, God damn, if he can do it, I can do it.’ ”
Johnson couldn’t do further damage because “it tore off the bone and is hanging,” per Rangel. There was the chance he could tear one of the others because of compensation, but not any more percentage-wise than he would playing normally.
Still, Johnson said he was skeptical when he returned from a two-game absence for the divisional playoff vs. the New York Giants. Carpentier, who had flown up for the game, observed her son in the hours before the prime-time game.
“He was kind of being a little anti-social sitting playing Sudoku,” she said. “And I said, ‘Don’t you want to take a nap or something?’ And he was like, ‘Could you take a nap if you knew somebody was going to try and kill you when you’re injured?’
“And I was like, ‘I’m just asking you a simple question.’ And he was like, ‘No, this Sudoku keeps my mind focused.’ ”
Rangel, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, watched from the stands at Lincoln Financial Field and questioned how long Johnson would last when he was clearly ailing after blocking the few bull rushes.
But after the initial stretch, he locked into a zone and finished another game without allowing a pressure as the Eagles coasted by the Giants. The NFC championship would pit Johnson against 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, and that caused its own trepidation, but he said he felt better heading into the game.
Jalen Hurts was rarely touched while the Eagles knocked out both San Francisco quarterbacks in another blowout victory. The offensive line would not escape without further injury. Guard Landon Dickerson left with a hyperextended elbow.
He plans to wear a brace in the Super Bowl and play.
“I’ve had my fair share of stuff this year and, no offense, I don’t tell you [reporters] about it,” Dickerson said Thursday when asked to share the mentality of playing through injury. “I don’t need sympathy. I don’t need an article. You get to a point where you ask, ‘Why are you in the NFL? Why do you play football?’
“In college, I had a lot of setbacks. And I just found that I love this game way too much. The only way I’m not going to be on the field is if I’m dead or I’m in a wheelchair.”
Enjoying it
Carpentier didn’t attend last Sunday’s game, but she watched from her home in Huntsville, Texas.
“I told Lane, ‘You made Bosa look like a rag doll,’ ” Carpentier said.
The Monday prior, Johnson took his mother to Penn for an appointment with her oncologist, Elise Chong. Carpentier, who retired 2 ½ years ago, said she has no symptoms from her marginal zone lymphoma, and won’t need to return to Philly for a follow-up until August.
In the meantime, she’s eating healthier, being active, and reducing stress, partly under Johnson’s care.
“Lane is so much into health,” Carpentier said. “He studies everything there is on the planet about taking care of your body, and especially through his mental health issues, about how stress can wear down your body. I know that myself — how stress — the effects it can have on you.”
The body also fuels the mind. Johnson hired Rangel, who has a master’s in kinesiology and is getting his doctorate in acupuncture, away from musician Adam Levine in 2018. They collaborated in renovating the barn behind Johnson’s Moorestown home into a weight and conditioning room.
Eagles, including Hurts, and players from other teams have spent part of previous offseasons working out at the “Bro Barn.” There are outdoor contraptions for more space and inside Johnson’s garage he has more equipment, along with a hyperbaric chamber and a sauna.
Johnson said he could see himself post-retirement working in fitness and with college and high school athletes. He wants to create an identity outside of the game that has earned him nearly $100 million in salary.
He said after the 49ers game that he still plans on playing for two more years, but it’s clear he has one eye on life after football.
“My kids are getting older, my parents are getting older, and you spend a lot of time away from the people you love in this game,” Johnson said. “It’s a sacrifice we all make. I love everybody in it, but at the same time there’s more to life than the game.
“But, right now, I’m enjoying it.”
Johnson’s children — Jace, 9, Journey, 6, and Channing, 3 — live in Oklahoma with their mother, but they visit him and come to several games throughout the season. They’ll be heading to Arizona for the Super Bowl, which coincidentally will be against the Chiefs, as will Carpentier.
“You’re dang right I am,” she said. “I’m packing my bags.”
The entire Johnson family in all its various factions will be in attendance, per Carpentier, to see Lane tough it out once more this season. Those closest to him know that he’s endured mental anguish far greater than any physical pain.
And that he has withstood the push and pull of external factors. To illustrate her son’s improvement, Carpentier recalled playing a dice game with her son and several others before the Giants game that induced him to unbridled laughter.
“We had a moment where I saw him really have fun,” Carpentier said. “And I told him, ‘Son, this means more to me than anything in the world to see you happy and be your old self.’ I just saw true happiness and joy and his belly gut laugh.
“That’s my boy.”
