Becky Johnson has been the poster child for health for the last 50 years. She spent her life staying active, from running ultramarathons to working out at her CrossFit affiliate almost every day. Johnson also focused on her nutrition, ensuring she was fueling her body properly with whole foods.
But this year, after losing motor function on the right side of her body, Johnson underwent surgery for a compressed spine. While receiving brain scans before the surgery, it was discovered she also had early signs of Parkinson’s.
“The day I got the test results back from my brain scan, I came home and was just sobbing on my floor. I was like, ‘Why? I’ve done everything right as far as nutrition and exercise,’” Johnson said.
Despite her devotion to a healthy lifestyle, she was diagnosed with an incurable and progressive disease that was completely out of her control.
But Johnson continues to show up to CrossFit every day. Why?
She hopes to slow the progression of symptoms and keep a sense of normalcy in her life.
That is within her control.
CrossFit Loco Ocho
After a few years of running ultramarathons, Johnson started to experience intense back pain that kept her from running, so she hung up her sneakers and attended physical therapy and yoga for a few years.
When a CrossFit affiliate opened near her home in January 2015, she found a Groupon and thought, “It’s worth a shot.”
She met with one of the coaches at CrossFit Loco Ocho in Sacramento, California, and was immediately hooked.
“I always had a lot of issues of wanting to be smaller and skinny and focusing on appearance. But I found that power, and I felt myself getting stronger, and my body was healing,” she said. “My injury wasn’t necessarily because I was hurt; it was because I wasn’t using proper mechanics, and I didn’t have the adequate strength to be able to support what I was doing.”
Over the last decade, Johnson has changed careers, gone to graduate school twice, lost her mother, gone through a divorce, and moved multiple times.
“CrossFit has been the one thread throughout it all that has helped me hold it all together,” she said.
A Sense of Normalcy
Johnson had been in a few car accidents in her life. But two years ago, she started noticing she couldn’t click her computer’s mouse properly or type as well.
“Maybe I need a new keyboard or a new mouse,” she thought.
But then her office chair started to get very uncomfortable. Maybe she also needed a new one of those?
Soon, she started to trip a lot. “Time to buy new shoes,” she added to the list.
Although she had an excuse for every symptom, she still booked a neurology appointment to get checked out. As it wasn’t urgent, she was put on the backlog and wasn’t scheduled to see the neurologist for eight months.
In November of 2024, Johnson was walking up the bleachers at a football game when she lost her footing and fell.
“That’s when things got really bad,” she said. “I lost a lot of motor function on the right side of my body.”
She started to isolate. She couldn’t walk or eat properly. She couldn’t do her hair and makeup or even write with her right hand.
Given her neurology appointment was still months away, she visited her doctor, who immediately sent her to a series of MRI tests to check for a stroke, MS, and more.
The test determined she had a compressed spinal cord and she was scheduled for surgery with a neurosurgeon to decompress her spine. But her neurosurgeon told her it was still important to attend the neurology appointment she had booked.
After finally attending her original neurology appointment, she received more tests. It was determined she also had early signs of Parkinson’s.
“I went into the surgery knowing they were going to decompress my spinal cord, and whatever motor function came back after that was really good,” she said. “That would indicate how far along the Parkinson’s was.”
After the surgery, Johnson had to relearn how to walk and how to use her right hand again. But within a few days, Johnson was back at CrossFit Loco Ocho. Neck brace on and cane in hand, she slowly walked the mile and a half to the gym, sat down and hung out with her community, completed some of her physical therapy tasks, then got a ride home.
As the weeks went on and her body started to heal, she would slowly return to workouts, heavily modifying the movements based on her doctor’s recommendations.
Just last month, six months post-surgery, Johnson was cleared to fully return to her workouts.
“Who knew I would get excited to do burpees again?” she joked.
But she has overcome just one hurdle. Now that she has healed from her surgery, she is solely focused on managing her Parkinson’s. She still feels stiffness in her right arm, which she attributes to the disease.
“There is no cure for Parkinson’s,” Johnson said. “But what I can do is delay the progression of it through exercise and nutrition.”
Alongside taking medication to boost the dopamine levels in her brain, Johnson continues to show up to the gym consistently and eat properly in hopes of delaying the progression as much as possible.
“(I) continue to show up, and our coaches scale accordingly. Coming to class allows (me) a sense of normalcy in an otherwise life-altering and devastating time,” Johnson said. “CrossFit is more than workouts; it’s a protective foundation, a path through recovery, and a community that sustains both body and spirit.”
Learn More About CrossFit and Parkinson’s:
- Parkinson’s Disease — and the Holy Grail
- Parkinson’s: Using Exercise to Turn the Table on Disease (BBC)
- CrossFit and Parkinson’s
- Scott Hanley: Parkinson’s for Time
- CrossFit Coaching and Parkinson’s
- Why a Doctor Treated His Own Disease With CrossFit
- PRs and Parkinson’s
- Jules King Regains Mobility With CrossFit
- Jules King Competes in CrossFit Open After Parkinson’s Diagnosis