“One of the hardest things I’ve gone through was stopping skating and the injury. It’s one of the hardest things. It’s not fun having to stop when you’re injured but at least when you are injured there’s always a possibility of you going back to your sport that you love so much but when you stop or retire from a sport that hits you hard because you’re not going back or there’s a very slim chance. Basically what happened was I had a lower back injury when I was 16 and healed a little through physio or what not but it wasn’t completely better. Started doing some personal training, active rehab for myself and I was getting better then I got into a car accident. I was about 18 years old and all my pain came back. I pushed through it because that’s what athletes do right, they don’t listen to anyone and we do what we want. So I pushed through it and the pain got worst and eventually I got a groin injury probably due to the fact that I never healed my lower back injury and kept skating. I pushed through it, we had the National Figure Skating Championship coming up that year and I went to see a sport medicine doctor and he told me that if I didn’t get prolotherapy that I wouldn’t make it to Nationals, that I couldn’t compete. I did that, it was one of the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I was able to compete but training was rough. We didn’t get to train like we wanted to and it’s also tough because you are in a partner sport, it’s not just me right? It’s me and my partner so it was rough. We trained half-assed and we competed but we didn’t train as hard as we would like to.” -Larissa Van As, Personal Trainer, Former Ice Dancer, Future Naturopathic Doctor. (4/5)
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