Big Sarge

S1, E3: On a half-pipe covered in mud, Bill “Big Sarge” Hansen throws his shoulder behind an exhausted brother; two others reach out and pull the man to the top. High above Lake Tahoe, another of Bill’s wounded warriors has finished a Tough Mudder competition. When the vehicle in which Big Sarge was riding in Iraq hit a brick wall at 55 mph, the other soldiers stumbled out and began “John Wayne-ing it”; despite doubts something more serious was wrong, Bill followed suit and was given painkillers to go back to work diffusing IEDs. Only when his tour ended was he diagnosed with the fractured back and traumatic brain injury he had suffered. Rendered sedentary and depressed by the narcotics he was prescribed, Bill gained 90 pounds. A WWP cycling event got him off the couch and a Tough Mudder competition reconnected him with a sense of purpose and a mind-over-matter mantra. At age 48, Bill becomes a peer mentor through the Wounded Warrior Project and begins training a group of 12 warriors for a Tough Mudder competition. Finding that many veterans are too injured or too depressed to leave their homes, Bill founds Phoenix, a mobile gym training business, supporting his four daughters in the process. We follow Big Sarge as he mentors two younger warriors, redefines himself and takes a squad of 12 men and women back into battle against extraordinary obstacle courses – both on the ground and in their minds.