My name is Jason Root. I study and instruct in the science of human movement and the associated effects on health and performance. In 20+ professional years, I’ve coached or participated in coaching thousands of individuals either personally or in groups in a wide variety of conditions to a vast spectrum of physical goals. Those goals ranged from developing the ability to walk after a spinal cord injury to performing a first triathlon to training for the NFL combine.
I was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. As a kid, I loved sports, basketball, football, baseball, track and field. My father was an elementary school teacher and coached sports during the school year. His favorite sport to coach was football as became mine to play. My mother was a fitness instructor and program director at the YMCA. Because of these two careers, our household was FILLED with learning, sport, health, and performance.
From the age of 10 through high school, I was a 3 season athlete, playing a sport all year round (except the summer which was well enough as anything outside was ill-advised living in the Phoenix area ….lest you keel over from heat stroke). I started lifting weights when I was 14 years old. I was 6’1 ½ ” tall already but only weighed 155 lbs on the first day I walked into the weight room at Peoria High School at the beginning of summer before my freshman year of high school. I was uncoordinated, either owing to the growth spurt that put me at my height so early or my lack of flexibility that had always been a problem for me in sport.
Going forward, though, I had great success with weight lifting, putting on 55lbs of muscle by junior year and developed a competitive (at least at the high school level) strength profile with a 300lb bench press, a 500lb squat, and a 245lb power clean by senior year. In my positions in sports, I thrived (or was at least good enough to compete at a varsity level) in football, basketball, and track and field, where I high jumped, long jumped and sprinted until I made the move to shot and disc. I also found that I was enthralled by the constant qualitative and quantitative evaluation to gauge progress and make adjustments in progressing the athlete.
When I was a kid, I loved 3 things in entertainment: Star Wars, Kung Fu, and The Hulk. I loved Star Wars for Luke’s training in The Empire Strikes Back and how the discipline brought forth his full physical and mental potential. I loved Kung Fu for the same reason in a more Earthly setting. I loved The Hulk for the unbridled transformation of a human into another, more powerful being. This was the big start of my interest in human development.
At around 15 years old, I started developing back pain that was debilitating to my activities. I couldn’t sit still in a chair in class. I had a spasm at a football speed and agility camp that left me bed ridden and missing 3 days of the camp. My spasms started getting worse and more frequent around age 18. This was no good for me becoming Luke Skywalker, Kwai Chang Caine, Bruce Banner, or Howie Long for that matter (my hero on the football field).
Luckily, I had an uncle who was the athletic trainer for an NBA team and physical therapist. Over a short conversation when I was about 20 yrs old, I was telling him about my start in the exercise science program at ASU. I mentioned my back problems and he showed me some stretching exercises and told me to work my mid-section (core) more. This began my study of chronic pain and how to address it.
Over the years, with spasm after spasm and technique after technique to fix it, I figured out how to feel out my own body in order to target imbalances, treat them with corrective exercise, and avoid triggering activities. The spasms got less and less intense and further and further away until today where I am hardly ever stiff, have more energy, and much less worry about my back issues…. though imbalances still show up as knots and trigger points once in a while.
I have been told I am an analytic. As such, my curiosity was piqued as to whether I could increase my success even further. I happened to be taking strength and conditioning and AP biology at the same time in high school.
Unbeknownst to me, the questions that I would ask to connect these two subjects were my introduction to the world of Exercise Science (or Kinesiology) and how to evaluate the biological underpinnings of health and performance.
In my sophomore year in college, I declared this my major with the intent of strength training for college athletes. I had a few internships with ASU and some companies that specialized in strength and conditioning for athletes from high school, college, professional and Olympics. This was heaven. This is what I wanted to do. I was helping people become super heroes!
This was all fantastic. But I knew few high-level athletes outside of my internships. On the other hand, I knew many people with chronic health conditions. Both my parents had chronic conditions, either by birth or lifestyle. This greatly affected their lives. As I looked at them, I longed for a way to alleviate their health issues.
My mother was already on top of it. She trained relentlessly (too much a lot of the time). This was how she mitigated the effects of her condition. However, overtraining led to its own set of issues. My father eventually cleaned up his nutrition and exercised as well. But, without the direction of a professional. With a little guidance, we could have saved both of them years of health issues and improved their quality of life by mitigating these issues at earlier stages.
I decided to investigate other environments as an independent Strength and Conditioning Coach and Exercise Physiologist. I worked, over the next 10 years, in physical therapy and chiropractic clinics, corporate wellness, training studios, and performance centers. I used every different environment to gain more range of experience and knowledge about a different outlook toward developing the human body and different populations with different needs.
All in all, I worked with (or ‘on’ in the case of manual modes of training): athletes (youth, high school, college, professional, Olympic, recreational), sports (too many to list, honestly), all ages (8 to 94 years), spinal cord injury/the paralyzed, stroke, Parkinson’s, back/knee/neck/hip/shoulder and other joint pain, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, depression/anxiety or other psychological issues, and chronic pain through autoimmune disorders.
All along, I also worked with my own body to perform in triathlon, weight lifting, power lifting, obstacle course races, and any variety of other events.
