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“You won’t
believe what a good workout it is.
You’ll never work on machines again.”
Leslie Coughlan, 35 |
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In July of 1996, Christine King broke her back, shattering a lumbar
vertebrae in a JetSki accident. She was paralyzed from the waist
down, and doctors couldn’t say whether she would ever walk again. In
an eight-hour emergency surgery, two rods and four screws were
inserted to hold her back together, and bone was taken from her hip
to replace the vertebrae that had exploded.
The surgery repaired her back, but nerve damage and internal
injuries meant a long, slow rehabilitation and post-rehab process.
During rehab, she slowly regained feeling in her lower body and then
gradually became strong enough to walk. Before the accident,
Christine had been in excellent physical shape, and doctors said
this was the main reason she was able to walk again.
To retrain her body to perform everyday activities, she exercised
with resistance bands, hand weights, stability balls, tubing and
other tools. In doing so, she built strength, flexibility, stamina
and balance. This type of training—functional training—targets
groups of muscles simultaneously, mimicking the movements made in
everyday life. It is very different from resistance training with
gym machines, designed to strengthen isolated muscles.
The experience gave her an acute awareness of the importance of
exercise, and especially the benefits of functional training. She
realized that this type of training could make a profound difference
for everyone—from healthy, active people to those with injuries and
medical conditions, to those who want to lose weight.
Before the accident, Christine was vice president of a video
production company. But the accident changed everything. She decided
to dedicate her life to helping people develop healthier lifestyles
and become more functionally fit. After getting certified by the
American Council on Exercise, she became a post-rehab specialist. In
1997, she founded Get Fit! and later became a medical exercise
specialist. For several years, she worked with people individually
and in small groups. Driven by a mission to make personal training
affordable and accessible to everyone, she opened Florida’s first
functional training studio in Delray Beach in 2004.
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