A wonderful client, Shruthi Athreya, an architect, shares her inspiring journey and transformation; from being bogged down by a chronic injury to achieving her goal of working onsite, practising natural construction…
In her own words:
My story begins in 2017 when I had just completed my bachelors in architecture and had a lot of time to get back to playing badminton and running half marathons. After draining my health for 5 years in architecture, I was excited to participate in physical activities again. I started running 10km runs everyday without breaks or proper training. In a month’s time, I started feeling my knee cracking and slowly developed pain. Since then, I have been suffering with the ‘runners knee’ and it only kept getting worse over the years. Simple activities like cooking, walking, riding a bike or a car became very difficult. I had to rest my knees every 20 minutes. Runners knee is a condition that is more common among women than men. It is caused when the knee is overstressed and the cartilage of the patella or the gel under the knee cap deteriorates and thins out. The allopathic doctors suggested to get a knee surgery. I was only 25 years old and I wanted to try other ways to fix it.
I took tablets for the gel growth, went for physiotherapy treatments, yoga and ayurvedic massages. All of these definitely reduced the pain but it was temporary. The pain always resurfaced in a few days as the knee tired itself. I felt hopeless and had given up. I thought maybe, I had to get a surgery done.
In 2019 December, I decided to give it a last shot through strength training. I met with Janet and explained my issues to her. Since then it has been an upward curve. She has been extremely patient in training me, taking it really slow to avoid any further damage. She personalized the training completely to fit my needs and took a few weeks to completely understand my body.
We started training from scratch, first only releasing the muscles through stretching and working on the muscular imbalances and posture. We started strength training with body weight exercises such as wall sits, push-ups, bridges, squats etc. Janet has a very holistic approach in her training, dealing with the entire body. She identifies what activity or which part of the body is causing pain in another part of the body.
She also introduced me to a great diet system by the 4th month as well. What I like a lot about her approach is how she takes them step by step, making the whole process feel very light instead of a sudden change in everything. We started with small dietary changes such as introducing more protein into the diet, reducing carbohydrate by a few calories, etc. Once I reached a certain point of comfort and started getting regular with the diet, she pushed me to increase the protein intake and other micro nutrients as well. Once I started changing my diet, my body started feeling lighter and I could see the difference in my health. Being a vegetarian, it has been even harder to find the right natural sources. But with her constant guidance and support, I was able to reach the goal.
Gradually I started lifting weights, starting with 1kg water bottles & 2 kg dumbbells. And slowly over a span of 6 months moved up to 17kgs wall sit and squats, 8kg rowing, 4 kg shoulder press, bicep curls and 6kg bridge press.
Today, almost a year later, I am able to do all the regular activities like cooking and driving again. I am also able to carry out laborious farming and construction activities without pain. I lift 10 litre cans to water the plants for an hour a day, I also work with heavy construction material like stones weighing 15 kgs or more and I am able to do physical work for 5 hours/ day without pain.
I workout every morning before I start the day – with full body stretches and some basic strengthening like squats 4 kg (3 sets x 10), Push ups (3 sets x 15), row 4 kg (3 sets x 10). Sometimes I include other exercises depending on what my body asks for. These exercises keep me going for the whole day. Apart from this, I have 1 hour workout sessions with Janet 3 days a week.
It has been a beautiful hard journey and I am extremely thankful to Janet for where I am today. I am able to do the things that I thought I will never be able to do again. To all those suffering with runners knee, please do not give up. The only true relief is through strengthening and caring for your body on a day to day basis. Consistency and patience is our only medicine. I am so lucky that I found Janet last year. I hope that her guidance and training helps more people like me. I highly recommend training with Janet, especially if you are looking to find someone who understands your physical condition and personalizes the training according to your needs.
Hats off to Shruthi for her achievements!! Keep Going 💪