The evidence for treating musculoskeletal pain has remained consistent over the years. It supports two basic aspects of physical therapy: to move your joints and to understand pain science. So why, early on in my career, was it so hard for me to successfully treat patients in pain? I guess moving without pain is harder than you might think. Just ask the old me that didn’t have access to a “zero-gravity” suspension exercise system.

When I was in high school, I read the book A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I can’t help but compare that story to my journey as a physical therapist. When I looked over my old cliff notes in preparation for writing today’s blog, Dickens came right out the gate in his first paragraph with the theme of duality...

In this podcast episode, Dr. Scott Curtis from the Princeton Spine and Joint Center interviewed me about suspension based physical therapy. We discussed the Redcord suspension system that I use on all of my clients. It comes from Norway and consists of ropes, slings and bungee cords. I enjoyed explaining how we use Redcord to deliver the neuromuscular activation (NEURAC) treatment approach...

While only a part of my life’s story, I had breast cancer in 2017. I am grateful to report I’ve been in remission since October of the same year. I was lucky enough to have already been accepted to PT school and knew the need to have PT to prepare for surgery, regain function and strength after my surgeries, and combat the horrid fatigue that was associated with chemotherapy. Prior to my double mastectomy, I was a very flexible yoga practitioner. After my double mastectomy, I could not lift my arm above my shoulder.

As a physical therapist, testing has been ingrained in me since PT school. I learned that the initial evaluation process should involve testing of specific parts of the body, such as the joints, muscles, and nerves. The results of these tests would then play a role in guiding my treatments. Basically it gave me a starting point.

Being injured all of the time is not normal. If you're an athlete, it doesn't necessarily mean you will be frequently injured or in pain. Yes, sports do increase your odds of getting hurt, but they don't guarantee it. In fact, I played basketball and baseball throughout my life and I remember less than a handful of injuries. Of course some of that was simply luck of the draw, but now (as a physical therapist) I realize there's so much more to it.

As a swimmer, this is my best kept secret. Swimming is a unique sport due to the environment in which you’re in. This makes rehabbing a swimmer fairly unique. When I work with athletes, their primary goals are to return to sport and enhance performance. But most sports are on land. Nothing can really replicate swimming out of the water; and so fully reconditioning a swimmer would often be challenging. To reproduce similar forces, leverage, and buoyancy that water applies to a joint has always been difficult. That’s until I discovered Redcord.

In the first article of this blog series, I talked about what I aim to accomplish during a client's first visit. I also described my education which enables me to practice physical therapy, with or without a prescription from a physician. I am now going to lay the groundwork to then build the rest of this blog series, detailing common treatment techniques I use and why.

Let me start right off by saying that I’m not one to call attention to myself, or to toot my own horn. In fact, I've been known to not even tell my co-workers that it’s my birthday. This should give you an idea of how difficult it is for me to write about one of the best kept secrets in professional sports.

The health and wellness industry has been receiving the attention and value it deserves over the last few decades. Whether we're talking about the hottest new workout, latest self-care trend, or coolest fitness gadget to add to our gym bag, the topic of health and wellness is on the forefront of everyone's minds. Therefore, it should come to no surprise that, as a physical therapist, I support an active lifestyle for myself and for my clients.