Coach Cash's Injury Re-Hab; Lead Up

So, I have been under regular chiropractic care since 2006, if you’ll recall the end of the previous entry in this series. While I felt my body becoming more efficient, and more balanced, I remained chronically injured. I thought that it was an unavoidable side effect of the particular brand of extreme exercise to which I was subscribing. The phrases; “pain is weakness leaving the body”, or “no pain, no gain” offered motivation to push past walls, limits, and, ultimately, into movement modalities that were injurious. 

Here’s where I want to pick back up; my movement patterns as an exerciser were very bad. I had gotten coaching from “professionals” in a particular vein of exercise, and was performing at a very high level. However, there were very (in hindsight, with my current level of expertise) elementary problems with many of my movements. The particular (it has almost grown to a cult by the time of this writing) brand of workouts and the coaches who oversee them have, no doubt, gotten better. Yet, I still see videos and pictures of athletes with terrible form, and a lot of the same injuries I suffered through, held up by the governing body as ideal and correct. In 2008, I met Marc Hordon, and my tale, my workouts, and my career path, changed drastically.
Within a few short months of meeting and starting to work with Marc at HordoN HEALTH, I had drastically reduced my state of injury, and was still in incredible shape. That it was possible to change my body for the better as much as I did never occurred to me. I thought I had become close to as fit as I was ever going to get. The addition of HordoN HEALTH's International Trunk Training (ITT) to my daily routine increased my athleticism in countless ways. Marc Hordon is the innovator behind a revolutionary injury treatment brand of massage called NodroH. NodroH is a proprietary blending of neuromuscular and myofascial massage with aspects of movement patterning and re-education (learn more about this incredible techniquehere). With a few NodroH treatments, and regular workouts with Marc, I added a preposterous amount of muscle, lost body fat, reduced my injuries to almost zero, and moved much more efficiently than I ever had. 

As I moved from client to colleague, apprenticing with the University of HordoN HEALTH (to which I am still enrolled, even as a senior trainer), I continued to get adjusted on a regular basis. My need for adjustments decreased, as my musculature was growing to protect my spine and maintain perfect posture, even under the stresses of my very aggressive workouts. I was getting adjusted monthly.
I continued on this great path until very recently. In the late spring and early summer of 2012, my position as manager at HordoN HEALTH – North End had me doing a few things that directly affected my training and diet; I was writing a training and supplement blog for a well-known nutritional supplement company, I was a featured model in a major fitness photo shoot, and HordoN HEALTH had moved to a new location, necessitating (in my mind) having an ideal physique to hold up and extoll the benefits of our training methods. I was not forced to do anything I didn’t want to. Quite the opposite; I loved how I looked. After ramping up to a fevered pace of exercise, I was starting to break down physically. No amount of correct form, diet, supplements, etc. can possibly maintain the tempo I had set. Therefore, I needed to ratchet my activity back. Much like the seasons of nature, our bodies need winters of lower activity to regenerate, and make it possible to streak past plateaus and remain uninjured.
I took two weeks off. I spent a month doing nothing but very light ITT and BLaCK Yoga. I got quite a few NodroH treatments, and continued to get adjusted. I felt better. My injuries faded back away. I did a month of pretty aggressive ITT and started to add in GPP, still doing yoga, NodroH, and chiro. I started to ramp up my cardio and ITT in anticipation of ski season, and was just starting to add resistance work back into my routine in November, getting adjusted regularly the whole time. 

Next week... the exciting climax. I write that more than a little tongue in cheek. Stay tuned.