BRANDON PEACOCK
Brandon Peacock is an Ironman athlete, recovery advocate, and founder of Hit the Ground Running, a charity focused on rehabilitation access and community-based recovery.
After being shot as a bystander while shielding another person during a violent attack, Brandon was forced to rebuild his relationship with movement from the ground up, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
That experience reshaped how Brandon understands strength, progress, and resilience. Today, he speaks openly about recovery, emotional regulation, and sustainable habit-building, drawing from lived experience across rehabilitation, endurance training, and everyday movement. His talks are practical and reflective, shaped by the quiet work of rebuilding trust in the body, showing up on difficult days, and choosing consistency over performance. Brandon speaks at conferences, corporations, non-profits, and community organizations, and also partners with a small number of aligned brands and organizations whose values reflect his work.
At the core of Brandon’s work is a belief shaped by lived experience: movement isn’t about performance, but about access, consistency, and finding a way forward when starting over is the only option.
Peer Support
✳︎
Community Building
✳︎
Mental Health
✳︎
Rehabilitation
✳︎
Peer Support ✳︎ Community Building ✳︎ Mental Health ✳︎ Rehabilitation ✳︎
Brandon’s Story
Brandon Peacock was shot three times as a bystander in a drive-by shooting while walking into a neighborhood barbershop after work. In the moment, he shielded another person from the gunfire. As the last one through the door, he was hit in the crossfire.
One bullet struck his chest. Another tore through his femoral artery. While bleeding out on the floor, a woman who had been holding the door helped apply pressure to his wounds and urged him to call his mother. Brandon remembers staying calm, even optimistic, until that phone call made the seriousness of the situation sink in.
He survived an eight-hour emergency surgery and woke up the next morning in the ICU. Doctors weren’t sure if he would keep his leg, let alone walk normally again. At 23 years old, he was told the physical life he knew might be over.
Recovery began immediately. A close friend, a physiotherapist whose work had paused during the pandemic, showed up every day. What started as basic rehab became hours of daily work, seven days a week. The first goal was simple: learn to walk again. Over time, the goals changed. A year later, Brandon ran a marathon. Today, he continues to train for Ironman competitions as part of the same long recovery process that taught him how to trust his body again.
During that process, Brandon became acutely aware of a gap many survivors face: leaving the hospital alive but unsupported. Insurance and public systems often focus on returning people to baseline, not helping them rebuild their lives fully or sustainably. Many people are left to navigate recovery alone, without access to the tools, care, or community they need.
That gap led Brandon to found Hit the Ground Running, a nonprofit dedicated to funding rehabilitation, mental health support, and movement-based recovery for people rebuilding after trauma.
Collaboration Opportunities
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
Brandon works with conferences, universities, corporate teams, and community organizations to deliver talks grounded in real experience and practical insight. His speaking connects personal story with themes of resilience, recovery, and sustained performance, offering audiences frameworks they can apply to their own work, health, or training.
SPONSORED CONTENT & UGC
Brandon works with select brands on partnerships and UGC that align naturally with his training, values, and lived experience. This includes both sponsored content on his own platforms and educational UGC created for brand-owned channels. These collaborations work best when they support long-term performance, mobility, recovery, or mental resilience.
EVENTS, GIFTINGS & DONATIONS
Brandon partners with brands on events, activations, gifting, and longer-term collaborations when there’s a genuine fit. e donations or matched contributions to his charity, Hit the Ground Running, which supports rehabilitation access and community-based recovery efforts.
Featured Talks
This is Brandon’s flagship keynote and the clearest entry point into his work. He speaks candidly about what survival looks like after the hospital discharge papers are signed, when the adrenaline fades and the real work begins.
Brandon walks audiences through the medical, emotional, and identity challenges of rebuilding a life after trauma. He explains how recovery depends on integrated care, disciplined systems, and long-term community support that extends well beyond the initial crisis.
The talk balances lived experience with practical insight, offering a grounded understanding of rehabilitation as a sustained, relational process rather than a single moment of resilience.
Getting Shot 3 Times Saved My Life: The Science, Psychology, and Community Behind Recovery
After experiencing profound harm, many people pull inward or grow understandably cynical. Brandon speaks to that instinct with honesty and care.
Drawing from his own recovery and years spent supporting other survivors, he shares how helping others became a stabilizing force in his life. It provided structure, accountability, and a reason to keep moving forward during periods of uncertainty.
Brandon reflects on compassion with boundaries, rebuilding trust with clarity, and choosing to contribute even when disengagement feels easier. This talk offers a grounded perspective on post-traumatic growth that extends beyond the individual to the people and communities around them.
Why I Still Believe in People: When Helping Others Becomes the Way Forward
In recovery, motivation comes and goes. Brandon shares how small, repeatable actions became the foundation for rebuilding confidence and a sense of self.
This talk reframes discipline as an act of self-respect. Drawing from rehabilitation, endurance training, and daily practice, Brandon shows how consistency builds trust with yourself and creates momentum over time.
The focus is practical and approachable. Audiences leave with a clearer understanding of how progress is built through systems that support them on difficult days, not just on strong ones.
Micro-Discipline in Daily Life: How Consistent Action Rebuilds Confidence, Identity, and Momentum
This talk speaks directly to the realities many men face after trauma, including fear, isolation, identity loss, and pressure to remain silent. Brandon offers a reframing of vulnerability as a skill that supports emotional clarity, accountability, and connection.
Rather than focusing on disclosure alone, he emphasizes the internal work of recovery. This includes regulating emotions, asking for help, and staying consistent through uncertainty. Strength is presented as something built quietly through responsibility and self-command.
The talk resonates strongly with men navigating injury or major life change, while remaining relevant and accessible to mixed audiences.
Men, Vulnerability, and the Work of Recovery
HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
Hit the Ground Running is a recovery-focused nonprofit founded by Brandon Peacock to help people rebuild their lives after trauma.
The organization exists to close the gap many survivors face once they leave the hospital: limited access to rehabilitation, inconsistent follow-up care, and a lack of community support during the most critical stages of recovery. Hit the Ground Running raises funds to support physical rehabilitation, mental health care, and movement-based recovery for individuals navigating life-altering injuries and trauma.
Grounded in lived experience, the work centers on early intervention, consistent support, and the belief that recovery isn’t about dramatic comebacks, but about access, accountability, and sustained care over time. Alongside fundraising, the organization fosters community connection, peer mentorship, and education for survivors who are often left to navigate complex medical and recovery systems on their own.
At its core, Hit the Ground Running is about helping people regain agency in their bodies and lives, one step at a time.
Our goal is to provide survivors the tools and guidance to reach their new 100% after experiencing a life altering trauma.
We believe that with a strong combination of hope, resilience, resources and mentorship, trauma survivors can shock the world in their unique recovery journeys.
CURRENT CAMPAIGNS
Gavin Smith and Isaiah Bryant are both survivors of gun violence. Both were shot as bystanders. Both were left paralyzed by spinal injuries. And both were told the same thing early on: you’re not going to walk again.
Neither of them accepted that.
Isaiah was 26 when he was shot eight times in June 2023. One of the bullets shattered his T10 vertebra. He’s also a father of three, which changed how he approached recovery from day one. With consistent rehab support through Hit the Ground Running, Isaiah has already regained some sensation in his legs and is using a walker and braces to practice walking. That kind of progress this early on isn’t common, but he shows up every day anyway. With continued therapy and another stem cell treatment ahead, he’s focused on one goal: walking again.
Gavin was shot in the spine while protecting his younger brother during a robbery. Like Isaiah, he was told he’d never walk. On top of that, he eventually lost insurance coverage because his progress wasn’t considered “fast enough.” He kept going regardless. In 2022, Hit the Ground Running stepped in to make sure he could get back into regular therapy. Since then, Gavin has regained bladder function, muscle memory, and now walks with a cane. Three years after his injury, he’s still moving forward.
Their recoveries don’t look the same. But the takeaway is simple: when people have access to consistent rehab, real progress happens.
Let’s Work Together
If you’re interested in collaborating with Brandon, please complete the form with a few details about your opportunity.