Michael M.

My testimony is not going to be very original and pretty much in line with other cases, but after years of struggles, I’m finally seeing the end of the tunnel so I wanted to thank you.

I started to experience left knee pain early 2016 after running on uneven terrain mountain. The diagnosis was the very generic “runner’s knee syndrome” since I could run 20min before the pain would start and then the IT band was rubbing on the outside part of the knee causing more friction and pain.

Physical Therapy, shots, massages have been tried => nothing worked. You could see bursitis during MRI. A knee specialist proposed to do plasma injection. I declined and moved on to other sports not as painful as running.

I’d thought “now I have to live with my runner’s knee…nothing can be done.”  But it’s OK I’m playing other sports I can manage since I’m still active. That was until the end of 2018 when I started to feel inner thigh pain, in the other leg this time! Very tender and I had a huge lack of mobility. It would go away when my body was warmed up and playing tennis or badminton but very painful when cold after sports. It kept worsening and after countless doctor appointments the verdict was: “you have a labral tear, also called FAI or hip impingement since your bones are rubbing against each other”.

1st treatment was PT, which I did for 6 months with the 3 best PT of my city. Results => zero improvement but less money in my wallet. Also having to suffer a couple times a week from dry needling my adductor/pectineus area will be something I remember!

2nd treatment: sport massages, chiropractor and acupuncture.
Results => zero improvement but even less money in my wallet.

3rd treatment: cortisone shot. The sports doctor who found my FAI diagnosis told me: “one or 2 shots and in a week you’ll run again like before”. Results => zero improvement, huge disappointment and no more money in my wallet.

I’m a foreigner, so I even went abroad to my home country to have a second opinion, similar recommendations (plus some doctors said that’s it’s only the beginning and I’m going to have arthritis soon…(thanks dude!)

My last chance was to do a surgery so the surgeon would “shave a bit of my bones so they don’t rub on each other anymore”.I asked for advice from the 3 PT’s I saw before and they confirmed the surgery was my best option now.

I reached the point I couldn’t cross my right leg over my left leg…putting on my socks or shoes was very painful.

I’m not yet 40y old, have been doing sports since I was 5 (martial arts, racket sports, marathon running, etc. I was the guy doing 10+ hours of sport every week BUT never stretched or ever saw a foam roller in my life). I was miserable not to be able to do anything.

Shaving my bones didn’t sound appealing for me (plus the cost and the recovery process and even more PT etc,) so I did more research and it just didn’t feel right. I felt my body was messed up but shaving the bones wouldn’t help. After more research I started to find some of Shane and Matt’s videos online, read some comments and reviews and that was the beginning of my resurrection!

I enrolled in the FAI Fix program and followed it exactly. It was tough! This program is no joke! I was waking up 1:30mins earlier to do it every single day. After 2 weeks I started to see very small improvements…was I dreaming ? Maybe not…so let’s keep doing tissue work, stretching, & strengthening. A couple of months after I could walk and live with less pain, and few more months of the program I realized how my much my mobility improved!

I also started yoga and slowly, went back to higher intensity exercises. 10min running, rowing and so on. Slowly increasing the intensity. After 6 months I was back on tennis courts…a bit nervous but no pain. This method works! Amazing.

So I then went for the “Runner’s Knee program” on Got ROM, to see if the “magic” would work for my IT Band syndrome. The program is actually a bit similar to the FAI Fix but with less “self-tests” (I’m happy I knew the methodology from FAI Fix first so I could use a similar testing approach for the other Got ROM program.)

Now, my left knee is better as well! I can now play tennis again, run around an hour without pain. When I look back a year ago putting shoes on was very hard. I’ve come a long way and so glad I didn’t do the surgery and found Matt and Shane’s materials.

This experience allowed me to realize few things:

• I now have tons of stuff at home! Foam roller, lacrosse ball, resistance band and so on
• Doctors actually don’t know a lot about the human body. Even sports specialist/knee or hip experts. When I see all other people experiencing the same as me online I’m confused how come only you guys figured it out?!
• The human body is an amazing machine and when you understand how things are connected and work together, you realize what needs to be done to improve some conditions.

Sorry for the long email, and as I told you at the beginning it is not very original, but I wanted to take some time to share this with you. Big thanks to Got ROM / FAI Fix crew!

You guys are awesome and changed me!