Member Spotlight: Bella Franz On Training CrossFit While Injured

Back in 2005 Greg Glassman wrote an article in the CrossFit Journal titled “Working Wounded” that discussed how to continue to train with CrossFit while working around an injury. Bottom line up front: the injury will heal more quickly, you can acquire skills and strengths that you wouldn’t have developed otherwise and the mental anguish that nearly always accompanies an athlete’s down time is greatly reduced.

The idea of working wounded brings us to this month's member profile: Bella Franz is from Long Island, NY and has been a member at CrossFit Sanitas since October. She came into the gym after a nagging hip injury limited her options running, skiing and biking. We sat down with Bella, got to know her a bit more and asked her 10 questions about what it’s been like training with CrossFit while working around her injury.

1. What’s your background in sport/fitness/movement?
   I’ve participated in sports my whole life. I started out playing tennis because my whole family did. Eventually I got into alpine ski racing and joined my local mountain team and then started competing internationally. When I didn’t make the cut to ski in college I fell towards running.

2. How did you find CrossFit?
   After being injured for about 6 months to a year, I finally got to the point where I couldn’t even ride a bike without pain. My PT was giving me rehab exercises and I was subjected to the gym until my injury healed. I was getting bored of just lifting weights and was missing the high intensity or aerobic training that running and biking had given me. I started googling CrossFit workouts to maintain and build fitness during my rehab. Once I really got into the workouts that I was finding online I started looking for a gym and found CrossFit Sanitas!

3. What made you want to try CrossFit?
   I was missing the intensity and aerobic fitness that I would get from running and found out pretty quickly I can get that from CrossFit.

4. Can you describe your injury?
   In short, I have a chronic stress fracture in my pelvis. The word for the injury I am dealing with is called osteitis pubis. Which means that my superior pubic remus is inflamed on both sides. First I just couldn’t do any repetitive hip flexion, but once we found out it wasn’t healing (after a few MRIs) that meant I had to stop using my lower body and start changing my diet.

5. What’s it been like coming to class while being injured?
   When I started coming in October it was definitely intimidating seeing women lift almost twice as much as what I was able to lift. I didn’t consider myself weak but I never really lifted so I am not sure where I got that idea from. When I found out in January that my stress fracture wasn’t healing I stopped coming to class because I couldn’t do most of the movements. I would come about once a week when I knew it was mostly upper body work. On the days I wasn’t attending class I would come to the gym and use the ski erg and use my arms only with the assault bike. Recently I reached out to GC and asked what I can do because I really missed coming to classes. I found class to be so motivating and it gets me to jump out of bed in the morning. GC told me to keep coming to class and that the coaches would find movements that I could do even if it was completely different from what the class was doing. I still get embarrassed when I have to ask the coach for a different exercise for not 1 but 3 or 4 of the movements and when I’m the only one doing something different, but coming to class is still one of the best parts of my day.

6. How have the coaches helped guide you through this process?
   Overall the coaches have really helped eliminate the feeling of embarrassment I get when I have to ask for another movement from what the prescribed workout is. They do a really good job still making me feel a part of the class. To be honest GC was a big part of making me feel comfortable in continuing to come to class despite my injury.

7. What advice do you have for others who are injured and doing CrossFit?
   If there are movements you can do without further injuring yourself still come, even if that means scaling everything or doing a different workout. You will be supported!

8. What have you learned about your fitness journey?
   I am strong aka my upper body is not weak

9. What are some of your favorite and least favorite CrossFit movements?
   I love all box jumps, especially box jump overs. I also love anything with burpees, and squats or deadlifts are probably my favorite lifts and I’m working on getting my first muscle-up and strict handstand push-up now that I’m largely limited to upper body movements and holds.

10. What do you like to do when you’re not in the gym?
    Besides running. I love to ski and climb. In my free time when I am not working or doing school work, I am probably climbing or skiing.