Medical/Injuries

As a child, Annie Thorisdottir took ballet. It didn’t stick for long, though. Like her cousins, she wanted to try gymnastics. She made it to Iceland’s national team but quit to focus on high-school studies.

“Going from training 24 hours a week into training not at all didn’t really work out for me,” the 23-year-old two-time CrossFit Games champion says with her quintessential smile.

So she started ballet again, and dance. That, too… Continue Reading

Kim O’Reilly’s body is 53, but her kidney and pancreas are much younger. They belonged to her son, who donated them to her.

Her failing organs were a result of Type 1 diabetes, with which she was diagnosed at the age of 5. She reluctantly agreed to the kidney transplant in 2001, a couple of years after her daughter died following a similar procedure. Her son was 18 at the time.

“We both woke up from the OR with a… Continue Reading

At 17, Jacqui Pierce was taking a joyride on a moped. As she rounded a curb, she lost control and hit a tree.

“The impact was so hard that my face detached from my skull,” says Pierce, now 26. “I broke every bone in my face. They couldn’t find eye sockets. My eye sockets had powdered.”

On Pierce’s 11th day in the hospital, her father made the decision to stop life support. Three days later, Jacqui came out of her coma. Today… Continue Reading

It’s just before 10 o’clock in the morning. In the past, Tom Butler could be found sitting at home, watching TV and eating pancakes. On this day, he’s at CrossFit Five Star.

“Instead, I get to run in 19-degree weather. God, this is so much fun,” the 55-year-old says with a smile.

About a year ago, Butler was up to 280 lb. He was wearing size-42 pants and XXL clothing. He had consistent knee problems after years of playing… Continue Reading

On Episode 266 of CrossFit Radio, host Justin Judkins interviewed CrossFit success story Nicki Garcia and CrossFit Games competitor and Level 1 Seminar Staff member Katie Hogan. This episode was webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, March 6, 2013.

4:41 When she was younger, Nicki Garcia was active in dance and a variety of sports. That ended 13 years ago when she suffered a traumatic injury in a car accident… Continue Reading

On Episode 264 of CrossFit Radio, host Justin Judkins interviewed CrossFit success story Irene Mejia and CrossFit Inferno owner Bill Grundler. This episode was webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013.

5:40 Irene Mejia has been overweight her entire life and tried everything she could to lose weight. Once she was diagnosed with diabetes, she knew she had to shed pounds to be healthy. She lost about 35… Continue Reading

After a motorcycle accident involving another motorcycle, Jennifer Lazo was left with a compound fracture of her tibia, which was missing two inches, and a fibula that was cracked in half.

“After the initial surgery from the trauma team … the initial prognosis was one of two options,” recounts her husband, Vidal. The couple owns CrossFit Kingdom in Miami. The first option was simply that Jennifer’s left leg would be two inches shorter than her… Continue Reading

Sleep expert Rowan Minnion suggests getting more sleep could pay off in PRs. Emily Beers reports.

When it comes to getting to bed on time and staying in dreamland long enough each night, it seems many of us suffer from “retrospective bias.”

Retrospective bias is a term used in psychology to explain the phenomenon that describes why people tend to remember the past differently than it actually played out, often by… Continue Reading