Country Music Star Cody Johnson treated for rodeo injuries

HOUSTON - Native Houstonian and country star, Cody Johnson is set to perform at the Houston Rodeo next month. Cody's been receiving a special type of treatment for the last year and a half, to get ready for his performance.

Before Cody Johnson became a country singer-songwriter, he was a bull-rider in his teenage years. He started riding bulls when he was 15 and that’s when many of his physical injuries started. He only rode for roughly five years but his doctors say those injuries have lasted much longer.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re one of those guys with a 90% ride rate or a 50% ride rate when you ride bulls, you're going to get hurt. You could get stepped on or get a bull fall on top of you. I've broken my leg and some ribs and a collar bone, and it was not a real fun go at it, but the thing that's lasted with me the most is my C6 and C7 vertebrae have a bone spur on it,” Johnson said.

The extremely physical rodeo sport caused him to develop a bone spur and a pinched nerve in his neck.

“It literally felt like my arm was on fire from here all the way to these three fingers and for anybody that knows anything about music -- this is important,” Johnson said.

The immense pain began interfering with his ability to perform, putting his blossoming music career at risk.

“I got to the point where I was dropping picks and I never felt the pick coming out of my fingers. I would be holding a glass and be talking and the glass would fall out of my hand because I didn’t have any feeling. I hardly had any dexterity.

“I have two daughters - a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old little girl and sometimes I wouldn’t be able to bend over and pick them up,” Johnson said.

“Putting any strain on my hands like this, it would feel there were ants crawling under my skin. It feels like ants or fire crawling under your skin and it would start to resonate to the point where the pain would distract me from what I was doing. Then I started to notice it on stage,” Johnson said.

The 32-year-old says he tried every sort of physical therapy with no results until Dr. Ed Nash and Dr. Jeff Pruski at 3R Regenerative Medicine Center in The Woodlands introduced him to regenerative medicine about a year and a half ago.
           
Through a simple injection, followed by a heated massage therapy using pulsed electromagnetic fields, Johnson said his treatments have made all the difference.

“When you're in pain, you have a reservation. If you've got that constant, chronic pain, you're thinking, man if I do that, that's going to hurt and to have that taken away. That gives you courage. That gives you a little bit of the courage to step out and try new stuff,” Johnson said.
　
With just a month to go until his fourth performance at the Houston rodeo, Johnson said he believes 2020 will be his best year yet.

“I just feel like this is going to be our most fun performance. I have several surprises that I’m going to pull out that I can’t tell you. You're just going to have to buy your ticket,” Johnson said.

His single ‘On My Way To You” Recently went platinum. Johnson also recently launched his own line of cologne and cowboy hats.