Finding Strength from Pain: How fitness has helped me to battle chronic pain

Chronic pain SUCKS, to put it bluntly. For the past 18 years I have been in constant pain. The reason for most of this pain is “unknown,” but the more I am learning about trauma, the more I am lead to believe that the pain is stemming from something much deeper inside of me (more on that in another post). Dealing with this chronic pain is something I have to do on a daily basis. It has taken trial and error to figure out what works best for me, and that changes all the time. Living with this pain has become so commonplace to me, that sometimes I do not even notice it unless I really stop to take a moment and connect with how my body is feeling in the present moment.

My chronic pain began when I was 10 years old after I was in a sledding accident. My back was the first thing to go. Being involved in sports year round caused my body to fall apart piece by piece over the years. I started gymnastics at the age of 14, which is oddly late, but I did it mostly for fun. While I was never a particularly good gymnast, I still put a lot of strain on my body, like my neck and shoulders. Doing track and Ultimate Frisbee for 6 years caused my knees to develop problems as well. When I was a sophomore in college at 19, I started to develop pain in my right hip and my forearms. It was at this point that my doctor thought I might have fibromyalgia.

After ruling out other possible illnesses, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in the spring of 2011. This initial diagnosis sent me into a deep depression. I had no idea why this was happening to me or how I was going to live a life filled with pain. There was a six month period, at least, where I was throwing a full blown pity party for myself everyday. Ultimate Frisbee was one of my favorite parts of college and I QUIT because I believed that I was unable to play anymore. I believed that by continuing to be active, I would put my body into even more pain. It was drilled into my head that sports did this to me in the first place! How could something that I loved so much cause me so much pain? Sports were my whole life; I have always been an athlete in one form or another.

This is when yoga entered the picture. Yoga had been something I practiced occasionally throughout the off seasons of my sports and through an elective gym class in high school. After being diagnosed with fibromyalgia I started to dive deep into yoga because it was low impact. Through my practice, I have been able to become more aware of my body so I know my limits. Part of the reason why I think I was injured so much as a young athlete was because I had a lack of body awareness that caused me to push myself too far for too long. Shortly after developing an at home yoga practice, my pain started to improve dramatically. I even felt good enough to rejoin the Ultimate Frisbee team, albeit I did not play as much or as hard as I used to. This improved quality of life led me to the decision to pursue my Yoga Teacher Training after I graduated with my Bachelor’s Degree.

When I moved down to Florida after college in June of 2013, I finished my yoga teacher training and began teaching at the local CrossFit gym. Lifting weights was never something I did consistently outside of the rare training session for one of my high school sports. Having a new awareness of my body gave me the courage to get back into more intense physical activity that I had been afraid of for a few years. Since I was teaching at a CrossFit, I decided to try out the classes; I instantly fell in love. The workouts were intense, challenging, and diverse. We were doing something completely different everyday, but no matter what we got our butts kicked. I truly believe that heavy weightlifting was the missing key to helping my chronic pain. After about 4 months of CrossFit three to five times per week, I felt the best I ever had in my entire life! My body had less pain and overall, I just felt more stable. Due to scheduling conflicts, I had to cancel my class at CrossFit and lost my membership. If you have ever done CrossFit, you know that it is EXPENSIVE! Long story short, I could not afford to stay at that gym.

Afterwards, I still kept up my yoga practice, but I started to lose my strength. Fast forward about 9 months, and I was now living in Tyler, Texas. In November of 2014, I started teaching yoga at an awesome gym called XTC Fitness; a CrossFit “box” had just opened up inside of their facility. I was back to lifting and was the most pain free I had been in years! There was a time that I even toyed with the idea of becoming a CrossFit trainer, but I never went through with it. After moving away from Texas, I once again, lost my CrossFit membership. Lifting was something that I was nervous to go try by myself at the local gym. Having the community from all of the other members was one of the driving forces behind be even wanting to go to the classes in the first place; I also wanted to make sure that I did not hurt myself.

After I moved to Colorado, I got lucky again! The gymnastics gym that I was working at had a CrossFit gym inside of it! I was not able to join it consistently, but I would join in for a few months here and there over the course of my two years working there. Again, it was expensive! I finally worked up the courage to start going to the gym on my own to lift weights, but I still felt like I wasn't quite doing something right. Enter my new coach, an old high school friend, Christina Montalvo. She lives in Illinois and owns the Iron Phoenix Strength Club and also has an amazing online platform that she uses to coach women all across the country, The Confidence Collective. After hiring her as a coach in the spring of 2018, I have been able to consistently maintain a weightlifting routine (as well as repair my relationship with food, but more on that later). Her programming has so much depth and intelligence behind it that I feel like I found another few missing keys to my healing toolbox: consistency, intensity, and progression.

Being strong has helped me to control my symptoms more than any medication ever did. Throughout the entire ordeal of living with this pain, I have struggled to find the proper dosage of medications to control my symptoms. There was one point where I was on SEVEN different fibromyalgia symptom control medications. When I did my Yoga Teacher Training, I stopped taking EVERYTHING. Now I am on ONE medication for my mental health. Medication is necessary, to a certain extent. I believe that we much take control of our ability to change our health on our own, without the help of medication; that is why I lift heavy weights and do yoga to get in touch with my body and mind.

Weightlifting and yoga together have helped me to create a strong, stable, flexible body. There are times where I slack off and lose a bit of my strength, but I always come back to the barbell. No other exercise makes me feel more empowered or badass as lifting heavy weights. On top of lifting and doing yoga, I also have a multitude of non-fitness tools to help with my pain. Next week's post will give you a look inside my pain management tool box. Here is a short list of some of my tools that I will discuss: foam rollers, yoga straps, yoga blocks, lacrosse balls, heating pads, and more.

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