I have been swimming since I was 6 months old and have been strength training since I was 12 years old. I competed at an elite level in swimming all throughout high school and was recruited by mulitple Division 1 colleges to swim for them. In 2012, I broke the school record at UC Berkeley and placed 7th at US Olympic Trials. My time at trials placed me 25th in the world for 2012.

My movement story starts in 2010. I had a traumatic back injury while training at UC Berkeley on the swim team. I was back squatting 400 pounds. On my final rep, I let my core relax; the bar flexed; my back popped. After X-Rays and MRIs, I was diagnosises with a L4/L5 and L5/S1 disk herniation at the age of 19. Doctor's told me, "Good luck dealing with this the remainder of your life." It took five days a week of some kind of physical therapy, chiropractics, sports therapy, etc. just to get me to function. It helped. I was able to deal with the pain but sometimes something insignificant as sleeping wrong put me out of commission for weeks.

The next part of this story is when I left Berkeley. I came back to Southern California to train and met a great physical therapist who showed me the Functional Movement Program. My mind was blown. We discovered so many things wrong with how my body functioned that no one had caught in all my years of training, like my right ankle was fully locked up. After fixing these underlying movement issues, my back stopped hurting. It was amazing.

After seeing how much of an impact corrective exercise had on me, I knew I needed to share it with the world. I have practicing and preaching corrective exercise since 2014, when I became certified in the Functional Movement Screen. I worked in corporate injury prevention and eventual started traing clients at a corporate gym. After a year of training in the corporate world, I discovered that I had a greater vision than them. They only saw money and numbers, while I saw people and their fixable issues.

So in March of 2020 (right when COVID hit) I started my own health and wellness company. That was also right when my back injury came back and really took a toll on me. Just to manage the pain, I had to take up to 35 different pills, comprising of 5 different medications, just to make the pain bearble. I was still living around a 4 or 5 on the pain scale. Luckily, one of my clients had a stem cell and platelet rich plasma (PRP) procedure done and recommended I check that out.

After my consultation, we opted for the PRP injections for my disks and platelet-poor plasma (PPP) into my glute ligaments. To get these mixtures, they withdrew about one pint of my blood and it in a centrifuge to separate the plasma and blood. They then take the plasma and spin it again to remove all the platelets. Next they make a hyper focused mixture of platelets and my plasma to inject back into me. It is really cool in my opinion. The left over plasma, they use for the PPP injections.

I got my first round of injections March 2021. This consisted of 5 PRP injections along either sides of my L4/L5 and L5/S1 disks and one on the left side of my L3/L4 disk and PPP injections into my glute ligaments. My second round of injections, occurring May 2021, only involved PRP injections into my L4/L5 and L5/S1 disks. Two weeks after my second round of injections, I was off all my medication with only lingering discomfort in my left leg. Follow-up MRI confirmed that my L4/L5 bulge had completely receeded back into my disk with minor protrusion at my L5/S1 disk. So I decided to have a booster procedure done June 2022.

I am writing this at the beginning of August 2022 and am happy to report I am completely and totally pain free and have all of my flexibility back.