Hope you can keep up!
Something on your mind? Ask me!
Something on your mind? Ask me!
We all know pain. We know the feeling and we push ourselves through it or we stop and take it easy until it’s gone. Sometimes it’s a little too much to bear, it puts us out for good, can’t be healed and causes a severe halt to our lives. Pain is what makes and breaks us, the signal of hard work or a sign to get downtime in.
Pain, for me, has been, and what feels like, an eternity.
My High School sports career was great. I was the fastest soccer player on my team, a lethal forward, and was ultimately a strong, hard working sprinter and triple jumper on my track team. I felt great. No severe injuries, nothing putting me out and just bounced back to it if I was knocked down. Then college hit and things changed.
During a race (can’t remember if it was my 1st or 2nd year of track) my left leg locked up and stopped moving. I had no feeling except pain jolting through my lower back and walking, even standing on it rushed this intense feeling of discomfort. I had to put my season on halt, any activity on hold, and try and figure out what happened. For months my Mum and I would visit doctors, get multiple x-rays done and see what was happening. The news was that it was just muscle fibers inflamed or something was tweaked and needed physical therapy (which we went through and it didn’t work at all). However, after a recommendation to visit a Chiropractor, we found the problem. My Sciatic Nerve, L4 and L5 were being choked on by my own spinal structure due to my hips crunching everything together. This scared the crap out of me.
Immediately, I was treated for months (now it’s officially been 3-4 years) and for the first few months I couldn’t do anything except low impact exercises and stretches. It sucked and I was extremely depressed. I felt useless and even unaccomplished. I have to say though my coaches (one of which who is now my CrossFit coach) were a huge positive reinforcement on my life to just get through everything and the motions and press on to build myself back to being a better athlete. Low and behold it began to build to that point.
Surfing was the first sport to get back into my life due to the water being a huge help on my body in restoring strength and movement (just couldn’t chase large swell haha). Then yoga and soon enough running! A year and a half later, my active lifestyle continued growing and even with a few stops in the road it continued to flourish up into CrossFit.
With CrossFit, I would get the occasional issues, but no lock ups (thank you God) during certain workouts. My coaches have been on top of me to make sure my lower back isn’t hurting and have been helping me build more strength there by setting strength percentages each week during certain lifts. All in all, it’s been great not stopping or ceasing my activity on halt because of my lower back (unless I see the issue of my legs locking up or worse). I plan on striving through my pain and living life to the fullest even in the most negative of circumstances.
I’m living through the pain. I’m not quitting.
