4 months of leg numbness. Gone.

Liz came to me four months into it.

Leg numbness. Couldn't bend forward without bracing for it. Had already done the chiro route. Got some relief, then it came back. Got some more relief, then it came back again.

But what frustrated her most wasn't the pain. It was that nobody had actually asked her what she was trying to get back to. They were treating her symptoms. Nobody was treating her goal.
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She told me this:

So we started at the beginning.

Phase 1 was about finding the real problem.

Not where it hurt, but why it kept coming back.

What we found was that her body had been overloading the same tissues on her right side, over and over, for long enough that it had started running out of efficient ways to move.

So it compensated. Borrowed from other structures.

Found workarounds just to keep her going.

By the time she got to me, her body wasn't moving badly because something was broken. It was moving badly because it had been protecting itself for months.

That changes how you approach it.

We didn't start by loading her. We started by reducing the tension and guarding first. Helping her body feel safe enough to absorb load again. Re-establishing support from the ground up before asking anything more of it.

Once that settled, we moved into Phase 2. Unilateral work. Alternating patterns. Rotational work. The goal was restoring hip rotation and pelvic movement so pressure could distribute through her body the way it was supposed to, instead of piling onto the same spot every time.

When her body stopped fighting movement, things shifted quickly.

Less numbness. Less hesitation before she moved. And then one session, she bent forward and just... didn't brace for it. Didn't scan for the pain first. Just moved.

That's the moment that matters. Not the outcome. That specific Tuesday when her body stopped feeling like something she had to manage.

Now we're in Phase 3. Gradually layering bilateral lifting back in. Building her tolerance to load progressively so when she's back under a bar, her body can actually handle it.

This was never about avoiding lifting. It was about rebuilding her capacity to handle it again.

That's a different problem than most people are being treated for.
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Gabe

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PS: If you want some of the exact moves I gave Liz, check out my
​Movement Manual here.