Movement may be one of the most powerful tools available for people living with multiple sclerosis. In this episode of Hope & Health, Mathew Embry speaks with Trevor Wicken, founder of The MS Gym, about how targeted movement training can help people with MS improve mobility, strength, and neurological function. The conversation explores neuroplasticity, foot drop, and the discipline required to stay consistent with movement when living with a neurological condition. Trevor also shares how a spinal injury at 16 shaped his philosophy and how two women living with MS ultimately changed the direction of his career and led to the creation of The MS Gym.
Trevor Wicken's path into neurological fitness started at 16. A football player with a badly injured back, he had three surgeons recommend spinal fusion. His father refused. Instead, Wicken ended up with a neuromuscular therapist who assessed his imbalances and began rehabbing him through targeted movement. Within two months, he was squatting, deadlifting, running, and swimming again.
"If movement broke me, then movement should heal me," he said. He started studying neurology and physiology in high school, then carried that into undergraduate and graduate degrees, applying the same principles over the years to heal a shoulder, his knees, and his wrists. After graduate school, he built a career working with elite athletes, Olympic athletes, NFL draft picks, NCAA competitors — rebuilding bodies through biomechanical analysis and neuromuscular training. Then two referrals from neurology clinics in northern Colorado changed everything.
A 35-year-old mother with MS who wasn't sure she'd be able to parent her child. A woman over 50 with MS who couldn't get on the floor to play with her first grandchild. Both struggled to walk. Both had been referred to Wicken by their neurologists.
He scaled down the same methods he used with professional athletes — regressed them, made them appropriate for the two women's abilities, and the results were immediate and emotional. The younger woman came back and told him she'd played soccer with her son. The older woman got down on the floor and played Barbies with her granddaughter. "The amount of joy and hope and emotional freedom that came with those women, I saw it in their eyes and I was like, this is who I want to work with."
Referrals followed from neurologists, physical therapists, and chiropractors across northern Colorado. Wicken became the continuum of care, the person patients went to after the medical system had done what it could.
At 33, Wicken's own body started failing. Spasticity in his legs. Weakness in his hands, a serious problem for someone doing manual myofascial release work. Fading eyesight. Weak feet. He was diagnosed first with celiac disease, then with chronic neurological Lyme disease, with lesions on his brain stem.
"I had two major flare-ups where I lost the use of my feet and was in bed for five to six days at a time, massive pain, massive spasticity. I had to crawl to the bathroom. My hands were in spasm. My eyes just didn't work. Profound anxiety, cog fog, bladder incontinence." His symptoms presented almost identically to MS.
His physicians took a wait-and-see approach. Wicken couldn't accept that. He went back to the same instinct he'd had at 16: if movement healed me before, it can heal me now. But this time, he went deeper, into neurocentric, brain-based movement training. Eye drills, vestibular exercises, breath work, spinal reflex work, joint receptor work — all designed for high neurological payoff. He'd do a set of eye drills, then deadlift. Breath work, then bench press. Targeted neurological input before each traditional lift, reconnecting the brain to the body.
Today at 47, he deadlifts 350 pounds for reps, sprints, swims hard, does box jumps, and walks in Florida heat wearing a weight vest. "This is better than I've felt in probably 20 years."
For years, Wicken's in-person clients kept asking the same question: do you know anyone like you in Texas, in England, in China? He didn't. So he turned to online training, initially posting exercises on Facebook during the week and combining them into a movement circuit on Saturdays. No income, no following, just he and his wife filming content for nearly a year straight.
People found him. The MS Gym grew into one of the world's largest platforms for people living with MS, focused on movement and mindset, with core curriculum programs spanning every mobility level, from people who exercise lying on a mattress to high-mobility individuals who still want to address neurological symptoms.
Wicken's central metaphor is a highway system. When the main neurological highway between the brain and a limb is damaged by demyelination or inflammation, the signal breaks down. But the body has built-in contingency routes, side roads, frontage roads — that the brain can learn to use instead.
"What we do inside the MS Gym is allow your brain to find those side roads, feel safe using them, and then develop them through neuroplastic change," he explained. "Those side roads become the preferred pathway. They get thicker, they get faster, and they become the new main highway."
The approach starts with fundamental human movement patterns, ankle flexion, hip hinging, standing and stepping, then customizes to each person's symptom profile. Someone with foot drop needs different targeting than someone dealing with arm spasticity or optic neuritis. Different parts of the brain stimulate different functions, so the programming must be precise.
For foot drop specifically, Wicken outlined a protocol anyone can start at home: first, use a foam roller or lacrosse ball to release overactive muscles in the quadriceps and calves, the protective tension that's shutting the foot down. Then stretch those muscles using dynamic ballistic stretching (hold 10–15 seconds, release, repeat) followed by a long static hold of one to two minutes. Only then do you begin strengthening the opposing muscles, hamstrings, glutes, anterior tibialis, and peroneal groups, using assisted resistance like a band or towel. "Once the brain feels it has stability laterally and front to back, a lot of times that threat response signal starts to reduce."
Wicken is clear that movement alone isn't enough. His tagline inside the MS Gym is "living a life by design, not by diagnosis," and he speaks constantly about building a complete healing lifestyle.
"If you have bad nutrition, poor hydration, if you're a stress ball, if you have hopelessness, you're fighting an uphill battle." The brain needs fuel to learn. Without proper nutrition and stress management, no amount of training will produce optimal neuroplastic change. Stress is the single biggest trigger for his own flare-ups, and he's had to build a deliberate stress management practice alongside his movement work.
For those struggling to start, his advice is architectural. Create a dedicated exercise space, not your office, not the laundry room, so that entering it becomes a cue. Make movement a daily non-negotiable, even if it's only 10 minutes. The MS Gym mantra: it's not all or nothing, it's all or something. "I just did five minutes of core work that turned into five minutes of breath work, and I actually feel better. That discipline creates habits in your brain. And habits in your brain teach your brain to recognize the pattern of movement."
