The MS GYM, 8350 Bee ridge Road, #121, Englewood, CO (2026)

12/29/2025

THE DANGER OF POSITIVE THINKING

If you live with a neurological condition, you’ve probably heard people say, “Just stay
positive… attitude is everything.”

And while a good mindset helps, here’s the truth:
✨You are not required to be positive all the time.
✨You are allowed to have hard days.
✨You are allowed to feel angry, frustrated, exhausted, or completely out of control.

I know this because I’ve lived it too.

There have been days where I’ve been furious at my body.

Days where I’ve felt abandoned, confused, or spiritually shaken.

Days where I’ve begged for answers that didn’t come.

Days where I’ve wondered, “Why me? Why this? Why now?”

And days where doing all the “right things” still didn’t make me feel better.

So please hear me clearly:

💛 You have permission to feel your feelings.

If you need a rest day — take it.
If you need two — take them.
If you need to cry, scream, journal, withdraw, or simply exist… that is OK.

But here’s the part that matters:

💛 You just can’t stay there.
Give yourself space to process, but don’t let the dark days become your home.

After 24–48 hours, start gently moving again.
Reach out to people who truly understand what you’re going through.
Reconnect with routines that support your nervous system.
Get back into a program that helps you rise — step by step — through the ups and downs
of chronic illness.

This journey is a roller coaster.
There will be high highs and low lows.

What matters is that you teach your brain, your body, and your spirit how to climb out of
the hard days with hope, belief, and support.

And you don’t have to do that alone.
💛 The MS Gym community is full of people who know exactly what these emotional
battles feel like.
People who’ve had angry days. Depressed days. “Why me?” days.
And people who — with movement, connection, and guidance — have fought their way into
better days.

I love you. I understand you. I’m with you.

And when you’re ready to move forward again…
The MS Gym is here to help you rise. 💛

12/26/2025

WHY YOU MAY NOT GETTING BETTER
One of the questions I hear most often is:
“How long will it take for me to feel better… and will this actually work for me?”
I wish there were a simple answer — but the truth is, your progress depends on what’s
happening inside your nervous system.
And the best way to understand that is to picture your neurology like a bucket.
🪣 Your “Nervous System Bucket”
Your brain is constantly taking in helpful inputs and threatening inputs.
Helpful inputs are the things your brain views as:
✔️ safe
✔️ supportive
✔️ calming
✔️ productive
They make your system feel regulated and ready for change.
Threats, on the other hand, fill your bucket quickly and overflow your capacity. These can
include:
• Your neurological condition and symptoms
• Relationship strain
• Financial pressure
• Loss of purpose or identity
• Parenting stress
• A struggling marriage
• Overwhelming news or social media
• Old dreams that feel out of reach
• Isolation, frustration, or fear about the future
When your bucket is full of these stressors, your brain has very little space left for
neuroplasticity — the very thing you need to improve.
🪣 Why This Matters
Your exercise, nutrition, sleep habits, and medications cannot take root in a nervous
system that is overwhelmed.
Your brain needs margin or space to change, learn, and improve.
It needs room to heal.
🪣 What I Encourage You To Do
Do an honest assessment of your life:
✨What makes you feel good, grounded, safe, or supported?
✨And what drains you, stresses you, or makes your symptoms worse?
For the things that hurt you or overwhelm you:
• Improve what you can
• Eliminate what you can
• Create boundaries where you can
• Develop a plan of attack for the challenges you can’t remove
You may not be able to walk away from a marriage, a job, or responsibilities — but you CAN
reduce the stress load they create.
And every threat you remove from your bucket gives your brain more space for healing,
learning, and transformation.
🪣 Your Healing Journey Starts Here
When you lighten your threat load, your nervous system becomes more responsive to:
✔️ movement
✔️ nutrition
✔️ sleep

12/24/2025

Ready to get more leg strength, Gymmer?

Yeah… me too.

As you scroll social media and look at any fitness site (MS or not), you’ll almost always see a huge emphasis on #1 squats and maybe #2 hip hinging.

What you will rarely see is medically based fitness professionals—like myself—coaching people on how to get ONE LEG stronger at a time.

Your brain’s ability to find strength, balance, and stability on one leg is one of the most important movement skills you can learn and practice.

Why?

Your brain has two complementary movement pathways:

Right side of the brain → left side of the body

Left side of the brain → right side of the body

With MS, demyelination disrupts the brain’s ability to send clean neurological signals. This affects muscle activation, coordination, and movement—often more on one side of the body than the other.

That’s why many people experience symptoms on one side, but not both.

Because of this, it is essential that we retrain your brain to work around these disruptions by strengthening each side of the body individually. When each side gets stronger on its own, they can work together as a team when you need them to—which is about 90% of daily life.

So today, we’re working on single-leg strength and balance using a great exercise called the assisted kickstand squat to start building those leg muscles safely and effectively.

As you do this exercise, focus on:

Tall, straight spine

Abs engaged, shoulder blades down

Sit BACK into the squat before bending the knee

Push UP through the working leg

Drive through the middle of your foot as you rise

Get ready for some awesomeness.

Let’s move. 💪

12/24/2025

Happy Hips = Happy Gymmers

Over the past 8+ years of working with thousands of clients online, one pattern shows up again and again:
the single most important factor in improving lower-body MS symptoms is HIP MOBILITY.

When the hips don’t move well, the body has to compensate. This often shows up as muscle weakness, spasticity, stiffness, poor balance, and inefficient walking mechanics. Simply put—if your hips aren’t moving properly, sitting, standing, and walking all become harder than they need to be.

Healthy walking requires the pelvis, hips, and lumbar spine to move together in a coordinated way. Each step depends on one hip moving forward while the other moves backward. When this anterior–posterior motion is limited, gait becomes stiff, energy inefficient, and unstable.

In today’s Movement Minutes, I’m teaching a drill called the HIP SLIDEBACK. This movement helps retrain your nervous system to control each hip independently—an essential skill for restoring a smoother, more balanced walking pattern.

During walking, this alternating hip motion around the sacrum allows:

- the front leg to swing forward with less effort

- the back glute to generate forward propulsion

- the trunk to remain upright and stable

- balance to improve while reducing strain on the spine and legs

When practicing the HIP SLIDEBACK, focus on quality over quantity:

Sit tall and lengthen your spine

Keep your shoulder blades gently down and your core lightly engaged

Move only from your hip bones—avoid shifting or twisting elsewhere

Keep the movement small and controlled

Take your time with this drill. Learning new movement patterns takes patience, especially when mobility has been limited for years. Many people develop stiff hips and poor gait mechanics simply from prolonged sitting and reduced movement.

Practice consistently, move with intention, and let’s rebuild better movement—one hip at a time.

Let’s move.

12/23/2025

If you're not currently exercising ( and know you need to) comment 'exercise' in the comments section and I will send you some simple doable exercises like this one to help get you started regardless of your mobility level.

12/22/2025

REDUCING PAIN ANYWHERE IN YOUR BODY

If you’re dealing with chronic pain, here’s one neurologically based strategy that can make
a BIG difference:

🧠 Pain is a threat signal.
Your brain creates pain when it believes a movement or position is unsafe.

To reduce that threat, you must teach your brain that the movement is safe again —
through slow, controlled exposure.

Here’s how to do it:

1️ Move into your pain threshold — but NOT past it.
Gently take the painful joint into the position where your pain first begins (around a 2–
3/10).
Stop right at that edge.

This is your safe exposure zone.

2️ Add tiny, slow movement inside that safe zone.
From that position, perform small, controlled motions:
• tiny circles forward and backward
• slight up-and-down movements
• gentle forward-and-back glides

Keep everything slow, small, and intentional.

This is called progressive threat reduction — showing the brain the joint can move safely
without danger.

3️ Breathe to calm the threat response.
Use slow parasympathetic breathing:
👉 Inhale through the nose
👉 Long, slow exhale through the mouth

This helps your nervous system say,
“Hey, we’re safe here.”

As your brain relaxes, the threat level drops… and your range of motion increases.
Over time, this teaches your nervous system to reduce pain around that movement.

🧠 The goal:
Expose → Move → Breathe → Reassure the brain → Reduce pain
If you do this consistently and gently, your brain will regain confidence in that joint, and
pain will decrease.

This is exactly how we train pain reduction inside The MS Gym — safe exposure, precise
movement, and nervous-system-based correction.

Your brain wants to protect you.

Show it you’re safe, and it will let you move again. 👉

multiplesclerosis

12/19/2025

FORGOTTEN TOPIC: PARENTING WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS OR DISABILITY
One of the hardest questions I’m ever asked is:
“How do I parent when my body doesn’t work the way I want it to?”

If you’ve ever felt that ache — the guilt, the sadness, the frustration of not being able to
play, move, or keep up with your kids or grandkids — I want you to know this:
✨I’ve been there.
I’ve lost the use of my feet seven times.
I’ve lost major function in my hands seven times.

I’ve lived through seasons of depression and anxiety so heavy that I didn’t feel like I had
anything left to give my three little girls.

Parenting with a neurological condition is unbelievably challenging… and unbelievably
emotional.

But here’s the beautiful truth I learned through those hard seasons:

Your children don’t need the “old” version of you.
They need you — your presence, your attention, your heart.

When I couldn’t get out of bed, when I had no strength, when my body simply wouldn’t
cooperate… I found new ways to connect:
🎬 Watching movies together
🎬 Reading books side-by-side
🎬 Doing puzzles or crafts
🎬 Making silly songs
🎬 Trading dad jokes
🎬 Talking, listening, telling them who they are and how much they matter

I couldn’t give them quantity of time — my neurology just didn’t allow it.

So I focused on quality.
I poured into them emotionally.
I spoke life into them.
I invited them into my world, instead of trying to chase theirs — and that created some of
the sweetest memories we’ve ever shared.

If you’re struggling with this, please hear me:
🎬 Your kids don’t need you to be perfect.
🎬 They don’t need you to be pain-free or symptom-free.
🎬 They don’t expect you to match their pace.
What they want most is to be invited in.
To feel chosen.
To feel important to you.
To know that even though your body has limits, your love for them does not.

You may not be able to live the life you imagined right now…
But you can still live a beautiful life with them — in small, meaningful, unforgettable ways.

From one neurologically challenged parent to another:
You’re doing better than you think.
You’re building memories that will last.
And your presence is enough.

12/18/2025

If you like this exercise, comment 'back pain' and I will DM you a free 10 minute MS specific Back Pain routine

#

12/15/2025

THE SOURCE OF MOTIVATION

If you’re living with a neurologic condition, finding the motivation to exercise can feel
impossible.

You’re exhausted. You’re overwhelmed. Maybe you’ve tried before and got hurt… or flared…
or just couldn’t keep going.

And now even the idea of exercising feels threatening to your brain and exhausting to your heart.

I want you to know something:
✨There is nothing wrong with you.
✨You are not weak.
✨You’re not “unmotivated.”

Your brain is simply trying to protect you.

When your body hasn’t been used to moving — or when movement has been scary in the past —
your nervous system views exercise as a threat.

Motivation doesn’t disappear… it gets buried under fear, fatigue, doubt, and survival mode.

But here’s the hopeful part:

Your brain can learn a new story.
And it starts with one step.

Not an hour of exercise.
Not a perfect routine.
Not a heroic transformation.

Just 5 minutes.
Five minutes of gentle, intentional movement tells your brain:
“Hey… this is safe.”
“This helps me feel better.”
“This gives me energy, not takes it away.”

And when your brain begins to feel that shift, it starts to value movement instead of fearing it.

Five minutes becomes seven.
Seven becomes ten.
Ten minutes a day becomes a powerful neurological message:

Movement heals. Movement calms. Movement matters.
Motivation doesn’t come from a perfect speech, a hype moment, or a magic formula.

It comes from your brain slowly transitioning from

🚫 “Exercise is threatening”
to
✨“Exercise is helpful.”

And that happens with small, consistent, neurologically-focused steps — the exact kind of
training we do inside The MS Gym.

So if you’re discouraged, afraid, or doubting yourself today, hear this deeply:

Healing is possible.
Movement is medicine.
And motivation will grow the moment your brain begins to feel safe again.

You don’t have to do everything.
Just start with something.
Five minutes… and hope will rise from there. 🚫

The MS GYM

12/29/2025

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