Phil Packer is no athlete. For most of his life he did not achieve any particularly spectacular physical accomplishments. We all have an innate physical ability that we are born with. Practice improves it, but it doesn’t make it perfect. We have our limits.

But then Phil was injured in Iraq, sustaining a spinal cord injury.

Since then he has achieved so much.

He has done this through a phenomenal depth of will. I have never seen such stoic, brave determination as Phil demonstrated during our recent Three Peaks Challenge. [As a quick aside, if you are interested in this topic you must read these two books: We Die Alone and Mawson’s Will.]

Where has this Will come from? Has it come about as a reaction to terrible injury? Is a brush with death needed to ignite the anger of seeing for the first time how much there is to lose? An anger that life must be restored as much as possible towards the easy simplicity of able-bodied life that is taken for granted until it’s gone.

Or are we all capable of so much more than we realise? Phil is a very ordinary person. He would argue that strongly. But he has recently achieved extraordinary things. After his injury his life could have gone two ways; he could have moped and felt sorry for himself. Or he could have thrown himself at life so that it is more busy and fulfilling than he could ever have imagined. I think that decision was perhaps the most important one of all. For he is now demonstrating to so many people how amazing it is to achieve your potential.

So what matters more, natural ability or will?

As usual, Cherry Garrard sums it up perfectly,

“If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires – of steel. And if you can’t get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.”