When you go to see a general physical therapist (orthopedic physical therapy), you may experience hands on manual therapy, dry needling, exercise and balance training that is designed to be therapeutic, and different modalities like heat and ice. Patients who generally do well in orthopedic physical therapy include patients who had a recent surgery (on a muscle, tendon, ligament, nerve, bone, or joint), patients who experienced traumatic injury with pain or non-traumatic pain without a specific cause, both that started more recently (up to 12 weeks = acute pain), and competitive athletes that need taping or dry needling so they can stay in the game, just to name a few.

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So why see me? I study and practice management of chronic pain (greater than 12 weeks). The main difference between acute and chronic pain is that after the 3ish month mark, your brain and spinal cord begin to store your experiences with painful movement. They do this to be gradually more prepared for when the pain comes back on and/or to find ways to compensate that aim to reduce pain.

 

At the 6ish month mark these messages become stored patterns central pattern generators are always looking for the path of least resistance in order to keep us upright, breathing, and see what's in front of us, regardless of how we compensate in these actions.This built in mechanism is so they can be more prepared for the next time your pain comes on and/or find ways to compensate that may reduce the pain by giving up movement somewhere else. 

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While I generally do perform gentle joint mobilizations to enhance the recovery process, my goal is to help guide the sense of your body to a position, sense, movement, 

 

Consider of a more common example of pain. A person sprains their ankle, they try to let it heal on its own, and a few weeks later their hip starts hurting. If p

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The main difference between my approach compared to your conventional physical therapy is that we focus on identifying what part(s) of your nervous system and skull are looking for what part of your nervous system may need more sense of support is not supported enough so that we can tune it up. The pain, limitations with movement, headaches, trouble sleeping, etc etc. can all be mitigated by identifying whether an individual needs more general sense of their body, better sense of support for their neck, feeling what it's like to shift their body weight between sides

and it's ability to sense your head, body, ground, etc., is not supported so we can tune it up 

 

My blend of physical therapy with personal training is designed to give your head and body the level of support they need so your everyday functions (breathing,  can gradually learn to sense a range of structures 

 

 

around meeting you where your sense of body structure and function are at. Tto help you position your body so that it can gradually moves and performs with less effort, less time needed to recover, and less likely for injuries to happen nor linger. For the past twenty-four years I have not only trained people to move more efficiently, I have studied my gluteus maximus off to help people over the past seven years to use movement as medicine. That's my secret really. My time spent learning human anatomy, biomechanics (human movement), but most importantly, neuromechanics (applied human neurology) has given me an understanding of how human movement works, or should work. One of the things I enjoy most about helping people move better is seeing their light bulb turn on when they feel the connections in their body that we previously discussed, and just like that, their pain is quiet. A difficult movement becomes easy and there is less perceived stress.

 

When approaching your goals we need to find leverage over your body. Until we can achieve both the sense and function of body parts working together, we cannot properly use the muscular system to move the skeleton. As I teach you proper movement techniques, we will add layers to the movement that not only reduce and prevent pain, but will make your ability to move seem lighter and more effortless. What's interesting about this process is that the people I work with find it most difficult to transfer each movement technique to their ability to walk. I really push concepts and techniques into walking because this is the activity that we perform the most. I stress to everyone I work with that if you perform a thirty minute workout and walk incorrectly after, you will diminish the returns you earned from that workout. 

 

If your body is reporting pain and discomfort throughout your day, it feels sluggish, or you are unhappy with how it looks and performs, my goal is to teach you proper movement function to quiet all that noise so that your body and mind are on the same page. Starting with lessons in diaphragmatic breathing for proper spinal decompression and core activation, we will take this strategy and progress your cores ability to manage your limbs through progressive techniques and exercises. As you develop this sense of the core driving your body, you will experience less compression, tension, pain, discomfort, and stress while starting to feel more endurance, strength, power, confidence, and balance overall.