It was just after 5am almost a decade ago. I was coaching the early EARLY class at Village CrossFit when after demoing a very simple movement I felt a shooting pain across my low back.

After seeing a doc and getting an MRI within the next few days they determined a disc in my back was herniated and the fluid was pinching a nerve to my leg and foot, causing it to ‘flop’. They recommended surgery the very next day.

The scary thought was that it wouldn’t improve on its own. In a flurry of information, I declined surgery and decided to try to heal it myself first.

I had no real plan after declining surgery. My only plan was to get stronger. I tested my foot daily to see if the ‘flop’ was improving and worked to strengthen my body, back, and core.

This worked! Amazingly well.

Fast forward almost 10 years later and we’re moving out of our house… and into an Airstream trailer for an undetermined amount of time to work and travel wherever we want to be.

We are deep in the land of boxes and tape as I write this going through everything we own… over 2 decades worth of our life together in various homes… and deciding what we need in the Airstream and taking the rest to storage.

Not only that but we’re doing this all on our own.

Though healing my back without surgery was a success as I see it (the only reminder of the incident is that I have numbness down my leg and onto my foot in some places) there were many years were I had to be so careful with what I did.

Picking up odd objects, moving furniture, helping someone carry a heavy load, or even picking up a toddler were things I was fearful of.

Even when I owned and operated Triat CrossFit, I was in a place where picking up dumbbells, moving heavy gym mats, and moving weights around the gym was something I stayed away from. I was doing power cleans, snatches, and box jumps but wouldn’t take a 40lb dumbbell back to the stack. I felt like I was ‘healed’ but I wasn’t fully capable (yet).

As I think back to that time, yes I was lifting weights but I was mainly using barbells. I wasn’t using odd objects or even dumbbells regularly. The loads I lifted were very controlled and stayed within a certain ‘bar path’ in relation to my body. Obviously this is what we want when lifting barbells, but it wasn’t transferring over to life when I needed to pick up or move something that wasn’t a barbell.

It really wasn’t until I started working out regularly with dumbbells, that I truly started to feel strong and capable… fully capable again.

Moving a pair of heavy dumbbells from the floor to the rack takes leg, back, core, and grip strength. Doing this with 15s, then with 20s, and onto 25s… to the 50s made me have a stronger body.

In the last two weeks, I’ve moved 100-lb stall mats on my own, dozens of boxes, pieces of furniture… and I feel fantastic : )

I truly believe that without strength training, bodybuilding, and a dose of CrossFit this wouldn’t be possible (oh hey that’s the Digital Barbell Training Method!)

In that furry of fear and decisions, as I faced back surgery, someone gave me hope that I had THE POWER TO GET STRONGER.

I hope this story does the same for you.

Blakley