Jillian Michaels opens up about her unlikely accident, her spinal injury and her grueling years of recovery

celebrity trainer Jillian Michaels is known for her hard girl mentality, But after she was involved in a slip and fall accident in spring 2021, she had to find new strength.

“I wish it was a gangster motorcycle story where I told you I race motorcycles or Lindsey Vonn-ing downhill at 60 mph, but it wasn’t,” Michaels, 49, tells PEOPLE exclusively from her Florida home. “That makes it even more worrying because in a way it was unavoidable.”

Michaels went to the bathroom to get her wife DeShana Marie MinutoAttention as she slipped and fell, comparing the moment to slipping on a banana peel.

“I ran in and hit my back on the edge of the bathtub,” said the first Biggest Loser coach explained.

Michaels kept telling herself and everyone else that she was fine, but after 6 weeks of worsening back pain, Michaels couldn’t get out of the car to have dinner with her your family. an evening. They had turned to return home when she felt “a bolt of lightning in my leg”.

Allison Michael Orenstein Jillian Michaels with children Lou, 13, and Phoenix, 10, for the February 2023 issue of People Magazine photographed at Los Flores Creek Park Malibu Los Angeles, CA.

RELATED: Jillian Michaels Is Engaged To Fiancé DeShanna Marie Minuto: ‘So Grateful To Officially Call Her Mine’

Minuto decided it was time for Michaels to go to the ER.

Michaels recalls being in the hospital so crippled with pain that she couldn’t even move properly to have her body scanned. Doctors there confirmed they could see some kind of “nerve imbalance” and sent her home with painkillers, but she got progressively worse.

“I couldn’t sleep,” says Mom Lukensia Michaels Rhoades, 13, and Phoenix Michaels Rhoades, 10, says. “The pain at night was so bad. I was really like, ‘The only thing I think would be worse would be burns.’ It was so crazy. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stand. I had to crawl on the floor. I was like, ‘My life is over.'”

The story goes on

RELATED: Jillian Michaels Weds Fiancee DeShanna Marie Minuto in Private African Ceremony

Allison Michael Orenstein

Michaels admits she used her celebrity name to pull some strings to get her to top doctors, one who brushed her off with three herniated discs that would eventually get better. “He’s like, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not that bad,'” Michaels shares.

But that answer wasn’t good enough for Michaels when she asked spine expert Dr. Stuart McGill, who found that she had fractured her L3 vertebra.

“[She had] two bulging discs along with some loss of joint height, causing joint instability similar to a knee with damaged ligaments,” says Dr. McGill PEOPLE of Michaels. He advised her to move very little.

“What this guy basically makes me do is nothing,” adds Michaels. “He literally says, ‘You’re going to lie on your stomach. You’ll work standing, you’ll walk as many steps as you can, you’ll lie down again and that’s it. ‘ It went like this for a month.”

Michaels realized that the stretching and rehab she had attempted herself had actually done harm.

“I was hanging on the bed to do traction on my lower spine and he was like, ‘You’ve made this all so much worse,'” says Michaels. “It went from a four millimeter break to a six millimeter break. He says, “And you’ve destabilized the spine, which we need to stabilize.”

Michaels kept posting old content on social media to keep the injury from coming out because she wasn’t sure she would be better.

“I post old videos from 20 years ago on social media,” says Michaels. “I don’t do press. I’ve disappeared from the scene. Nobody knows. No one has any idea how all of this is going, except for those closest to me. I’m like, ‘I’m not going to tell this story until I know how this story ends.'”

Allison Michael Orenstein

RELATED: Jillian Michaels explains how she found out about becoming a mother twice in 24 hours

But with the help of Dr. McGill and the db method, an assisted squat machine that takes the pressure off his back five to six months later, Michaels’ life finally took a turn for the better.

decency

“I see it as a tool that is so important in helping people build enough functional strength to maintain their fine hygiene and move safely through their daily lives and activities,” says Michaels, who is now spokesman for the DB method is says. “Getting people to function safely when they don’t have the basic power to do so at all is a pretty big problem. This is an excellent tool.”

“Everyone will be different,” says Michaels. Most important is biofeedback, listening to your body. Even now with jumping rope, if I jump rope for more than 10 minutes, it bothers me the next day.”

Michaels also convinced her doctors to try an epidural, and it helped relieve her pain.

After her year-long road to recovery, Michaels is pleased to report that she feels good and is living her life much like it was before her injury.

“I ride horses,” Michaels shares with a smile. “I ride jet skis, I ride snowboards. I’m just super, super careful.”

Don’t miss a story – subscribe The free daily newsletter from PEOPLE to keep up to date with the best that PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.