Jillian Michaels Opens Up About Health Condition That Left Her Worried For Her Life

The fitness guru was involved in a freak accident back in 2021 that changed her workouts forever.

Jillian Michaels knows everything there is to know about helping others with fitness, but it wasn't until she was faced with her own serious injury that she needed to re-train herself.

The celebrity fitness trainer said her workouts have changed forever in a new interview with PEOPLE, where she opened up about a freak accident in the spring of 2021 that left her feeling like her life was over.

"I wish it was some gangster motorcycle story where I told you I was racing motorcycles or Lindsey Vonn-ing downhill at 60 miles an hour, but it wasn't," the 49-year-old told the publication in a new story published on Wednesday, March 1. "It makes it that much more disturbing, because in a way, it wasn't preventable."

According to her retelling of what happened, Michaels was walking into the bathroom to get the attention of her wife, DeShana Marie Minuto, when she slipped and fell, hitting her back on the bathtub.

"I went running in and I smacked onto the edge of the bathtub with my back," she explained, noting that she spent weeks trying to convince everyone—and herself—that she was fine, until things seemed to take a dark turn.

Six weeks after the incident, Michaels was unable to get out of the car while arriving to have dinner with her family one evening, and she also felt "a lightning bolt down [her] leg," prompting Minuto to take her to the emergency room. Still in crippling pain at the hospital, her doctors told her there was some sort of "nerve impingement" and sent her home with pain meds.

"I couldn't sleep," the Biggest Loser alum recalled. "The pain at night was so bad. I truly thought to myself, 'The only thing I think would be worse than this would be burns.' It was so crazy. I couldn't walk, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't stand. I was having to crawl on the ground. I'm like, 'My life is over.'"

After going through multiple doctors who brushed off her injury, Michaels eventually connected with spine expert Dr. Stuart McGill, who diagnosed her with a fractured vertebra and advised that she engage in very little movement for a month.

Dr. McGill also noticed that the at-home rehabbing Michaels had been attempting actually made her condition "so much worse," and even destabilized her spine.

At the time, Michaels said she wasn't sure that she would get better, which is why she kept her condition under wraps from the public, posting old content on social media to keep her fans from noticing her absence.

"Nobody has any idea as all of this is going on except my immediate circle. I'm like, 'I'm not telling this story until I know how this story ends," she stated.

Luckily, about five to six months after seeking help from Dr. McGill, Michaels was finally on the road to recovery, and now, she has a whole new wisdom that she brings into her workouts.

"Most important is the biofeedback, listening to your body," she said. "Even now, when I jump rope, if I jump rope for longer than 10 minutes, it bothers me the next day."

Still, the mother of two is trying to live life as normally as possible. "I'm riding horses. I'm riding jet skis. I'm snowboarding. I'm just super, super careful."