If there is anything working in Eric LeGrand’s favor, it is the same thing that put the junior defensive tackle in the Hackensack Medical Center, victim of a spinal cord injury suffered during the Rutgers football team’s game Saturday against Army.

LeGrand spent his time training to get downfield on kick coverage and make the sort of tackles that left him without feeling below his neck, but his workouts are only going to get tougher on the road to recovery.

According to Dr. Wise Young, director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, his background in athletics can help.

“I think what will help him is that he is an athlete, because the treatment that he does afterward will be very, very important to his recovery,” Young said. “He has to work very hard to recover. Recovery doesn’t come spontaneously — it requires a lot of work. Recovery takes time and I think because he is trained as an athlete, he understands what kind of work he needs and he’ll do well in rehabilitation.”

LeGrand’s injury is at the C3-C4 level, which controls the diaphragm along with C5 and the upper-body muscles.

Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano reached out to Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, who dealt with similar circumstances when former player Adam Taliaferro injured his spinal cord and required surgery on the C5 vertebrae.

Taliaferro walked eight months later, but the higher vertebrae injuries can result in more loss.

“The higher the injury, the more loss you have,” Young said. “[LeGrand’s] is actually very high. Generally, if you have a C3-C4 injury, it affects your breathing and you’re likely on a respirator. But he should be able to get off the respirator — I know many people who had a C3-C4 injury who were able to.”

The American Spinal Injury Association classifies spinal cord injuries into categories A, B, C, D and E. Although Young was involved in some discussions about LeGrand’s condition, he did not know the classification of the injury.

The poorest prognosis is ASIA A, which accounts for 40 percent of the injured population and is a complete spinal cord injury that sees the patient lose all motor and sensory motion. ASIA C is the most common prognosis and often allows for walking.

ASIA B patients have a 50 percent chance of walking, although that classification is rare, and ASIA C patients have a 90 percent chance of recovering to walk.

“Almost everyone with a spinal cord injury will recover something,” Young said. “If you’re in ASIA A and have a C3 injury, that means you may get back C4, you may get back C5. Now, C4 is the deltoids, C5 is the biceps. If he has ASIA B or C, he could have a recovery that includes walking. It all depends on how severe his injury his.”

LeGrand received surgery Saturday night into Sunday morning to stabilize his spine.

Young said he also received methylprednisolone — a high-dose steroid that Young helped develop, along with the ASIA classification system, in the 1990s.

The target time to administer the steroid is within the first eight hours of the injury, or even more preferably within the first three. LeGrand received it even earlier.

The steroid improves recovery functions by an average of 20 percent.

“The first question I asked when I heard he was injured was, ‘Did he get steroids?’ He did, which is important,” Young said.