How CrossFit Prepared Me For a Broken Neck

A human head weighs 10-12 lbs. This load increases 60% if you tilt your head forward, causing strain and a curved neck and spine. The dreaded hunchback. I heard this all the time from people trying to get me to stop staring at the ground in front of me. (Well, not the data, I looked that up.)

When I started CrossFit, good form dictated looking ahead, keeping your chest up (coach should see the writing on your shirt!) and using the body as it was meant to be used with stability and strength from that upright posture. I began to notice how my downward facing habit affected my neck and shoulder muscles, and how a poor squat can throw everything from your knees and your back into limbo. I thought functional fitness was about staying healthy and avoiding sprains and strains.

Then I broke my neck.

The accident

I saw the front of the car coming straight at me from the driver’s side as they charged across the lanes to take a left turn. I heard a scream. There was nothing I could do. It was inevitable, watching that car on its course and that helplessness was the last thing I remember. That and the scream. One word. “No”. Yelled like a play-by-play soccer voice saying: “Goal”. Drawn out, one syllable, but involuntary, desperate to push back and change the trajectory. The word itself was useless, like yelling “stop” at a thief. It’s encased in a moment with no before or after, and completely nonsensical, but as important as any memory I own.

I don’t know how long I was out, but it was a while as the next thing I remember I was surrounded by the white of deployed airbags and EMT was there. I was on my right side, disoriented, not sure which way was up or forward. Tentatively I moved, testing my extremities in fear and hope, while in awe of the pain. I never knew there could be such pain. My head was exploding. The rest of me hurt like an echo of that, and I was relieved I did not seem to have broken limbs, but dear God the pain around my head. It seemed impossible to have such pain, I should be in a million pieces, but it was undeniably, forcefully, how can I cope with it, real.

I heard a calm male voice saying, “We got you. Can you move?” As I crawled about not sure where I was going but heading to the voice behind me, the fog of pain moved with me. That was disturbing, it should stay in the car. Surely this reality was confined to the car and I could be myself again and this accident would be behind me.

Standing up didn’t help. I stiffly stumbled to the curb and sat down. That didn’t help either.

There was a van lying on its side across from me. The car that hit me. I felt the suggestion of wonder as this was on a city street and doesn’t a car have to be going fast to flip? I moved my head a few inches to look at my car. The passenger door was open and my groceries (charcuterie, a treat for a Friday evening) were spilling into the street.

I obeyed every direction given. For the first and, so far the last, time in my life I didn’t ask questions. I hurt too damned much. I couldn’t think straight. I was drowning in a fog of shrieking, stabbing, vindictive torture all around my head.

So hours later, when the emergency doctor gently said, “You have to stay, you have a broken neck,” I was surprised. My neck? I thought a broken neck meant you were paralyzed or dead immediately. My neck? Surely it was a mistake and just a hit on the head. I knew I didn’t want to stay and mumbled, “But I have meds I need to take, I need to go home,” because after all, there are no meds in a hospital. She said, “Don’t worry we’ll get them for you.” I protested incoherently and she said, “You knew something was wrong, you told me. You need more tests in the morning.”

I wanted to cry but it hurt too much.

The diagnosis

I had some firsts. First time in an ambulance. First time in the ICU (for 5 days!) First time to receive morphine. (Amazing. I hadn’t known.)

And I learned a lot about my neck and spine.

I had a hangman’s fracture in my C2. There were also fractures in my C4 and C5, but any time I was transported the aides would say, “C2 coming through!” and people got out of the way immediately. Like I was royalty. Or seriously injured. I suspect the latter. But why did they yell “C2”?

It turns out that if the C2 breaks fully it’s death or a wheelchair on a breathing tube. Access to breathing and movement goes through the C2. As it stood with the fractures, I would be in a hard neck brace for 6-8 weeks, then a soft one, with regular scans to see if the fractures were healing.

The second I heard 6 weeks it became my goal.

Going home

Five days was a study in drifting in slow-moving chaos where no one could answer any questions or had any insights. So when a nurse finally said, “If you can get dressed then you can be released,” I was ecstatic. Freedom!

Hah. In my vision I would bounce right up and everything would be like before. I had not stood or even moved beyond reaching for a drink or a book in 5 days. There was pain again as I figured out how to stay connected to all the tubes and get up. Getting dressed in my bloody clothes was a process of discovering how little I could move. Lifting my arms, stepping into my shorts was shaky, and any time I moved my head even a fraction my neck barked, threatening to bite me again. I didn’t realize just how hurt I was until I tried to move.

I started getting scared. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe lying in bed was best for my recovery. If I could barely dress myself, how was I to cook, take care of my dogs, stay upright?

Life realities

Entering my house the fear hit like a wall. Could I do this? I held the walker around me like a shield to keep from being knocked over by joyous canines. I realized I couldn’t stand like that forever so tried to acclimate myself to being home. It felt foreign. I didn’t know what to do, or what I could or could not do. What would I do if it was any other day? I couldn’t think of anything. For a while I tried moving about, hoping for inspiration and normalcy, always holding onto or leaning against something. A doorway. A wall. The kitchen counter. I was lost in my own house. And then reality set in.

The first eye opener was sitting down (or standing up). It hurt and frankly I couldn’t manage it without falling. I had to stop, straighten, bend my legs, push my butt back, and not lean over. In other words, a squat until I hit the target. A chair. The toilet.

Walking. I had to remember putting one foot in front of the other while carefully keeping my head up. I reached for support whenever I could. Going down the 4 steps to the porch was terrifying as I have no rail so I carefully stood very upright and moved very slowly, reaching a foot down to the next step without looking. Praying I wouldn’t fall. Getting up the stairs I gave myself the grace to allow myself to crawl…head in line with my shoulders of course.

The realizations kept coming. Everything I did was not like before. I couldn’t brush my teeth unless I stood straight and did a quarter squat, looking straight ahead, not at the sink. Each night I bathed in toothpaste and water running down my face and chest.. Cooking, putting dishes into and out of the dishwasher, required partial squats and balanced limbs.

Getting in and out of bed was extraordinary. How do you lie down or get up without leaning back or forward? I figured out if I squatted (a tiny one) onto the mattress and went down on my side, keeping my head in line with my shoulders, and then swinging my legs around as I rolled to my back was the least scary and painful, but very prone to warning shots from my hurting body. In the morning I had to muster the courage to rise by reversing the process as that movement required a lift instead of a fall and so tended to evoke greater pain glimmers.

I sat in a chair to get dressed one awkward limb at a time, and pulled my leg to my chest and my foot in my lap to tie my shoe without looking at it.

It dawned on me that had I not learned all these techniques in CrossFit, I would not have been able to function. The movements were so elemental they were part of everything; and absolutely undoable without the ability to adapt to this reality. We bend all the time. We twist our limbs like Gumby. I became humbled and deeply grateful by what I never noticed before. And that I had been given the tools to do this.

But there’s another aspect that I see now as I write this. Yes, the ability to do a proper squat and "stack the bones” with aligned forms enabled me to get around my limitations. But it was also knowing that I could modify and adapt the movements. To see a task and say, “How can I do this in my current state” and not say, “Oh I can’t do that since I can’t do such and such”. When the such and such involves movements that are found in just about every action we take, I would have been helpless. Instead, I squatted and stood straight and had my chest up. And I managed, without outward disruption, in my home. My den. My safe space.

Coming back

I counted every day of those six weeks. Another first was that I did not shirk the rest and recovery process. That wasn’t from intention, I simply couldn’t. Healing is exhausting on the body and mind. The first time I walked the 3 blocks to the Thursday EAV farmer’s market, I carried my phone and a credit card and still had to rest in both directions, but I got my fresh tomatoes and it was a goal I had set internally and reached (I did keep thinking about my 170 lb. deadlift PR in the “before” days and couldn’t believe the change). Each visit to the spinal center for x-rays meant progress and the hope of “could I get out of that hard brace”.

Six weeks to the day after the wreck, with my Doctor’s blessing I walked back into the door of CrossFit Downtown Atlanta with my new soft brace and attended class. That day and forward, the coaches worked with me. I modified movements with baby plates in each hand instead of a barbell, moved to the floor for hanging work, and tested ranges of motion to see what I could do. Every day was and is another chance to learn. It was an extraordinary period and I felt and feel so blessed to be alive, able to move, and have such a village around me.

Six months later I made it to the quarterfinals of my age group in the CrossFit Games. I am proud of that accomplishment, but it didn’t even register as a goal in my recovery journey. A friend even reminded me that I had broken my neck just months before and how amazing was that! What I most value was being able to live independently, care for myself, and recover from an injury that could have changed my life forever.

These days, I still catch myself looking down sometimes. Then I hear my coaches reminding me: chest up, eyes forward. It turns out that advice was never just about lifting weights. It was about how to face adversity. I used to think CrossFit was about preparing for the next workout and making physical gains. Now I know it was and is preparing me for life, both in movement and mindset, when I needed it most.