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Olympic figure skater Ashley Wagner has opened up about her debilitating battle with concussions while posting naked for ESPN's The Body Issue.

'I have suffered about five concussions. Back in 2009 I received a concussion from a really bad fall in which I fell onto my back and my neck snapped and my head hit the ice' Wagner, 26 told ESPN The Magazine.

'My body started to shut down on me entirely. It was bad enough that I would suffer from full-on body tremors, I could barely walk, I couldn't even speak through them. I would have heart palpitations.' Wagner explained.

'I just felt trapped in my body,' she added.

Ashley Wagner opens up to 'ESPN The Magazine' about the vicious symptoms she's suffered as a result of concussions 

Wagner suffered a brutal concussion in 2009 that she says completely debilitated her, posing here for ESPN's The Body Issue 

Wagner wants people to understand the serious athleticism that goes into figure skating. 

'I think figure skating has this stereotype as a sport for little girls -- that we are these pretty porcelain dolls. I don't think people put a lot of thought into the athleticism that goes into the sport,' she said.

The sport she loves and holds dear left her unable to fully utilize her body for months after her fall. 'I was experiencing these symptoms for probably three months, and for three months no one could tell me what was wrong and I was getting no relief. 

'I was worried that this was a lifestyle that I was just going to have to adjust to.

Her skating career was in jeopardy.

'It was coming up on Olympic trials -- that moment when you don't know if your season is going to be possible is terrifying.' 

Wagner talks about the importance of a strong neck and back to have the strength to be able to hold your head properly in a fall

She also described how the falls skaters experience are frighteningly impactful. 

Wagner said: 'When we're coming down from these jumps, we land with something like 500 pounds per square inch of force. It's a ridiculous amount of force.'

'I'm in the air for 0.7 seconds, but I am hyperaware enough that, if a jump is off, I know where to put my hands and how I can safely get out of it. At this point, I've been professionally falling for 21 years.'

After Wagner's 2009 concussion she went to every specialist she could to figure out what was happening to her body. 

'I went to a neurologist, I went to a cardiologist, I went to just about any -ologist you can come up with. 

'Finally I came across a chiropractor, and he suggested I take a look at my neck.'

Wagner falls during the US Figure Skating Championships in 2010

'What ended up happening was the vertebra in my neck was actually pressing into my spinal cord. The vertebra would become dislodged, press into my spinal cord and literally cause my entire body, including my heart, to short-circuit.'

It wasn't just her body that was affected by the fall. 'The concussions definitely rewired my brain in the way that I process information. My short-term memory is not that incredible; talking to me is a little bit like talking to Dory from "Finding Nemo."'

'I had to go through a couple months of really painful adjustments, so that way I could get my neck strong enough to be able to help pull the vertebra back into the place [it] needed to be in,' Wagner says of the work that went into getting her back on the ice. 

Its hard enough to perform these routines on ice, but Wagner has an added hurdle as a result of her concussions. 

She told the magazine: 'It's really affected me in the way that I learn programs because you have to memorize this choreography and the choreography is very intricate. So for me, retraining my brain to be able to learn choreography and be able to remember it, that's probably my biggest challenge.'

'I've also become ridiculously dyslexic -- when I say dyslexic, I mean more with my body. My choreographer has to be right next to me physically doing the movements with me. That helps me process it better, and then after that it's repetition, repetition.'

Like homework, Wagner takes video of her routine home with her to watch. 'I'll film it, so that way I can look at it. As long as I can see it, I'll watch it over and over again until I start to feel it.'

Wagner jokes that she's been professionally falling for 21 years, but the results of those falls are devastating, pictured after a fall in 2016 at the ISU World Figure Skating Championship

Wagner says she's learned to use her arms to cushion her falls, her in a 2012 fall during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final

'I forget what my next move is when I'm performing all the time! I have gotten to the point where I'm in the middle of the ice during competition and had five seconds of panic because I couldn't remember my program and I had to make up a little bit of it. You just kind of freestyle at that point, and then try not to panic, stay calm and it will kind of come back to you.'

The trauma athletes suffer as a result of concussions has become a hot button issue in recent years. 'When I was coming up in skating, the thought was you fell, you hit your head, dust yourself off, get up and try it again. But I feel like the sports world is taking concussions much more seriously, and I think that mentality is slowly starting to creep into figure skating.'

'I've worked on strengthening my little itty-bitty muscles in my neck, and that has helped me so that when I do fall, I have the strength in my neck to support it as I'm falling back.'

Figure skaters don't take hits like football players do, so their concussions can occur differently. 'A lot of times in figure skating, whiplash is what gives you a concussion more than anything else. You don't even have to hit your head on the ice to get a concussion, so having that neck strength has helped a lot in that aspect of my life,' Wagner explains. 

'In the past, openly admitting ''Hey, I've had a lot of concussions, I'm having balance issues, my memory is not the same; I still want to go to the Olympics, so try not to take that into consideration!'' You just didn't do that. But I think now because concussions are something people are taking more seriously, I think athletes are more comfortable to talk about them.