Functional fitness is more than just a buzzword. It’s a way of life. I love playing sports and exercising my heart out. It makes me happy. Exercise-induced happiness makes me sleep sounder, drink more water, and find it easier to make lemonade out of life’s lemons. It reminds me of this great quote.
Dear husband, I exercise for you, too. So that I won’t shoot you. You’re welcome.
Fitness and I haven’t always been sympatico though. There was a time where I cared more about pushing my body to the limits waaaay more than I cared about taking care of it and preserving it for my future quality of life. It took me hitting an absolute wall of pain and misery to finally learn the hard lesson that if you are going to push your body and demand it jump through hoops for your enjoyment, you better also take damn good care of it. That is – if you want to be able to enjoy exercise -> create endorphins -> be happy -> not shoot your darlings.
Here’s my story of how functional fitness restored my body and therefore my happiness and trigger finger control. If you’re struggling with pain and injuries from sports or life in general, please keep reading. And take a lesson from a reformed hard head, stop ignoring the pain! Functional fitness has the answers. You just have to be man or woman enough to admit there might be a better way to exercise than the only way you’re used to.
The No Pain, No Gain Days of Yore
Rewind about 6 years. We travel back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to visit the ghosts of my fitness mistakes past. After baby #2, I had so many new aches and pains. I had lost the baby weight, but still….running was painful. Weightlifting was miserable. I had aches in places I didn’t even know I had muscles. Gutwrenching pain in my right heel – now known by its devil name – plantar fasciitis. I also had a stabbing pain just outside my left knee, aka IT band syndrome. I thought I had to get back in shape to stop the pain – but the same exercises that used to make me were now breaking me!
Of course, stubborn me, I just kept on trying to run and lift like I did before having babies, even though the pains in my heel and knee were worsening. I also had pain under my left shoulder blade and all over my lower back and hip, right side only. At the time I really thought I should just power through it. No pain, no gain. You hear that, body? Stop your sissy whining, it’s go time. Luckily for me and my body, we got transferred to Washington DC before we could do permanent damage.
Stubborn’s Last Stand
This picture says it all. Normally I’m smiling when I cross a finish line but here’s me at the Army 10 Miler that year in horrible pain and my slowest 10 miler ever. My stubborn IT band seized up so badly during this run I had to alternate walking and
jogging. There were also several Wounded Warriors running and wheeling the race that day. I’m so grateful for the inspiration of 1 guy in particular. I never spoke with him, but I tagged along behind him and his battle budy for a couple miles, admiring his tenacity and wondering what happened to him. And feeling like a weenie for feeling sorry for myself having knee pain when this guy’s been to hell and back and had to leave half his legs there. This guy’s out here running on blade legs and I’m having an internal pity party because one of my two legs has a boo boo. He eventually pulled forward and I lost sight of him. I wanted to fall out and jump on the medic bus but I had to finish now. I owed it to my friend whose name I never knew. I finally hobbled across the line around the 2 hour mark. I boarded the metro feeling inspired by the other runners that day but crushed that I’d lost the ability to run well. I took a month off running after that race.
Intro to Functional Fitness
My month off gave me time to regroup and study. I read books on barefoot running and thought maybe that could be my silver bullet. But then I actually tried it and realized I just couldn’t handle naked feet running. The biomechanic principle of it seemed logical but – the sticks and rocks and threat of broken glass were just too much for me. I bought Vibrams and tried those for running but just wasn’t feelin it. I was trying to find the answers on my own, but my toolbox just didn’t have the right tools in it yet. I needed help. What I really needed was a trainer!
Shortly after the move, I started working part-time as a trainer at a small gym in the DC suburbs. It was there that a new colleague introduced me to functional movement screens, corrective exercises, and kettlebells. This is where the magic happened. I was ready to admit I couldn’t keep running down this insane trail of doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results. Finally at the end of my stubborn rope, I let go and accepted that I needed help.
What my friend helped me realized was that I couldn’t pound my body back into shape. I had to stop thinking of pain as a sign of weakness or just something I had to deal with now that I was “getting older” and had popped out a couple kids. I had to listen to my pain talk. Analyze its root causes. Become a student and let my pain be the teacher. Learn to heal it at its source, instead of continuing to try to numb it with advil. I realized that my new friend at the gym really might have the answers I needed. I just had to turn my stubbornness down a few notches so I could actually hear her. And actually commit to make some changes.
The Functional Movement Screen
It started with the FMS. I scored a 14 (out of possible 21), which was severely humbling. No kidding, there I was, a personal trainer, former college athlete and Army PT test maxer-outer, and I couldn’t even “pass” a basic movement screen test! My FMS test results basically said to me – your body is broke and you are at extremely high risk for injury! It’s time to make some changes! Well duh, FMS! I’m already injured, but thanks for pointing that out. Info that would have been helpful yesterday!
Then my pride and “know-it-all” mechanisms started playing defense against my newfound knowledge. I’m a personal trainer though! I’m doing all these awesome textbook workouts with textbook form! I stretch! I’ve been doing these workouts and running fast for years! I don’t need to change, I just need a new knee brace. Maybe a higher dose of anti-inflammatories or a cortisone shot. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll call my doc tomorrow and set that up. One last grasping at straws before I could admit that I really wasn’t succeeding on my own knowledge.
Thankfully, newfound knowledge rued the day. I asked my friend to teach me the ways of the functional wizards and she obliged. She introduced me to corrective exercises and single leg balance drills to help rebalance my body. A quick spin on the foam roller left me wanting to vomit from pain that promised to exorcise the demons in my IT band as well as my lunch (I promise though – foam rolling gets easier, the more consistently you do it!).
I left that session with a to-do list of corrective exercises picked just for me. I also learned of new websites and books to research. Neither the exercise list nor the website videos looked anything like my “conventional” textbook workouts. 
The beautiful thing about finding a cause for the pain is that it brings hope for a solution! I threw myself headfirst into learning about functional movement from Gray Cook’s books and website and videos. I completely changed the way I trained. I started including more mobility drills and foam rolling several days a week. Yoga once a week became a requirement on my priority list. More stability training for my hips, core, and upper back. I selected exercises for their “total body” qualities. Like kettlebell swings, which were really foreign at first, but now a staple in my life. I started doing proper “dynamic” warm-ups before exercise and never skipped my cool down stretches.
Gradually, one workout at a time, my body started feeling better. Six months into my “new” exercise adventure, I could do things like pistol squat get-ups and side plank stars and balancing half moon (a yoga pose) that I couldn’t do without falling on my face that year of the second baby. And how was my running you ask? Amazing. Simply amazing. Less than 3 years later, I had taken 22 minutes off my broken 10-miler time – not to mention feeling strong during training runs and enjoying races again! I could get back to working hard, like I’d always done at the gym, but now I was also working smarter. Today I score a 20 on the FMS and very rarely experience anything other than good pain, in my muscles, after a great workout or extra long run! Life is good.
Crossing Over to Functional Fitness
For me the real transition between “old school” and functional fitness came when I realized two things. First, that pain is not something to be ignored, numbed with pills, or pushed through. It’s a call to action. An empowering opportunity if you are willing to accept there may be a better way than the only way you’ve known. Only stubborn idiots would dispute that. Second, that the key to longlasting fitness happiness is finding the right balance between pushing your body to its limits while also taking really good care of it. Remember, nothing ruins an endorphin high like a steaming pile of pain. Smart people today know that “no pain, no gain” attitudes are going out of style. Functional fitness really has changed my life for the better. If you’re struggling with stubborn pain, maybe it can be the gamechanger you need too!
PS – Please consider donating time or money to either of these two fine charities. In honor of my friend whose name I’ll never know. Thank you, sir, for your excellent example. To all wounded veterans, keep on keepin on. We’ll try to keep up.
