Ask Vicki how long she expected to be in a boot, and she’ll laugh before she answers. “Three weeks,” she says. “I figured I’d be super healed.” The doctor had said eight.
She wasn’t wrong about her stubbornness — after 28 years running a business with her husband Casey and a lifetime of skiing and gardening, sitting still has never been her strong suit. She was wrong about the timeline. And when the boot finally came off, healing turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was everything after: relearning strength and mobility she hadn’t realized she’d lost.
A Door She Almost Didn’t Walk Through
A physical therapist got her moving again. A fellow member pointed her toward Legends, Destination CrossFit’s program for adults navigating exactly this stretch of life — recovery, or just refusing to accept that getting older is a one-way street. Vicki almost said no. She remembered watching CrossFit classes from the sidewalk years earlier, thinking it wasn’t built for someone like her.
“Do you remember who I am? I’m your friend’s mother.”
She came anyway. And the door turned out to be the hardest part of the entire process — everything after it, she says, was guided, welcoming, and far less intimidating than she’d braced for.
What Her Brain Was Doing the Whole Time
There’s a science thread running underneath Vicki’s story that’s worth pulling on, even briefly. Dr. Tommy Wood — a neuroscientist and performance coach whose new book, The Stimulated Mind, focuses on cognitive longevity — argues that the brain isn’t on a fixed decline schedule. What determines whether it stays sharp is closer to a habit than a fate: regular exposure to things that are new, moderately difficult, and slightly uncomfortable. Wood calls the buffer this builds “headroom.”
Learning to hang from a bar you were once afraid of. Trusting a joint that betrayed you. Picking up a barbell you’ve never touched. None of that is just physical. It’s the exact kind of novel stimulus Wood’s research points to as protective — which means functional fitness in Walla Walla isn’t only shaping how members move. It’s very likely shaping how their brains age, too.
Further Than Before, Not Just Back to It
A year later, Vicki isn’t back to her pre-injury baseline. She’s past it. She’s hanging from the bar that once felt impossible — “I can’t do that, Nikki,” she remembers saying — and working toward her first proper kip. The 40-lb bags of potting soil in her garden don’t register as heavy anymore. Her skiing has sharper reflexes than it did before the injury ever happened.
Bring the Whole Family
This fall, Vicki and Casey are headed to Acadia National Park in Maine, planning a trip built entirely around the park’s network of carriage-road bike paths. It’s not a trip she’d have planned a year ago. And it’s not just the two of them building an active life at DCF — her grandkids have come through the kids’ CrossFit program, and her youngest grandchild, not yet two, is already what Vicki calls “a natural kipper.”
“There are things you think, well, that part of my life is over. But it’s not.”
Start Before You Feel Ready
Vicki’s advice for anyone circling the idea of functional fitness but not quite committing: come to a class. Don’t wait to feel ready — the readiness tends to show up after, not before. It’s a philosophy we hear echoed across our Actually Doing Things podcast episodes, and it’s the whole premise behind Destination CrossFit’s approach to coaching every stage of life.
Curious what your own comeback could look like? Book a free consultation and let’s find out.
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