“The courage to find just one more provider. Just the fact, the simple fact was that courage to find it and to place their trust in someone like myself who does try to keep everything individualistic. It’s life changing.”
Welcome to the PT Rebels Podcast. This is the place to learn how you can become a PT rebel and take charge of your own health and wellness. We will help you find answers to your questions about pain, injury, and the path towards healing in the most efficient and effective way possible. I’m your host, Dr. Gina Fick.
Dr. Fick: So today I have on the podcast Danny Shapiro and Danny is owner and physical therapist at Project Physical Therapy in Manhattan. Danny, thanks for joining and tell us about yourself and your practice.
Danny: Sure. Happy to be here. So I myself, I used to be a professional ballroom dancer for 16 years, was a United States champion, competed all over the world from the ages of 10 to 20 years old. Started from about four years old, and I’ve always been a lover of movement and finding ways to maximize it and just to stay moving my entire life. I don’t look like much of a dancer now. I, I promise I was. You can do many YouTube videos right now. You know, it’s, uh, mostly bodybuilding, but I try to bring to my patients the feeling of freedom to move regardless of how long they’ve had pain for. I’ve had patients who’ve had pain for weeks, months, even 20, 30, 40 years, and we’ve always found a way to figure it out on how to hack the body to get it to move the way they want it to with the full freedom and love of whatever it is that they wanna do.
Dr. Fick: I love that, a cash based model. And why is that valuable and important to you?
Danny: So my practice is definitely a cash based model and a lot of people think, well, you know, why would you make that more inconvenient for the patient? But I think in fact, that it’s actually more inconvenient for the patient to go through an insurance-based model for sure, because the cash based model, it allows me to treat the patient how I deem it necessary to treat the patient, not how the insurance policies want me to treat them. That’s like, I, I don’t use any modalities. I, I do, everything that I do is specific to the patient and as needed for the patient. I also don’t have insurance policies telling me how, when, how often I can see them. If I think a patient needs 14 sessions, I can be clear and dictate that, and then we can make a personal decision from there. But I don’t have to fight with anybody to, for the patient to get the sessions. Exactly. I have the freedom to really, truly be there for them. Also see one patient at a time. That to me is, makes everything worth it. I’m not seeing 2, 3, 4 patients at the same time. I can spend one solid chunk of time with one patient, not walk away from their side whatsoever. And it’s just that, that feeling of, of camaraderie, the rapport, the progress that’s made. ’cause most of my patients have been to other insurance-based clinics. I had a girl who came to me after seeing 10 different people. 10 I was the 11th and final. Young girl. Young girl, 26 years old, professional ballet dancer. Nobody can figure out her problem, you know? So like this, this allows me to work on a much more personal and professional level.
Dr. Fick: Absolutely. You really have able to affect a lot of change and to be the 11th provider and have that level of success when you changed her life and Yeah, at a young age, really. I’ve seen the pitfalls as well with insurance-based physical therapy and that’s why our clinic is a hundred percent cash-based as well. Because I’ve been doing this now for almost 25 years as a physical therapist and to see the progress that our patients are able to make now in this cash pay model is leaps and bounds better and more successful than the other models that I’ve worked in before, so I really appreciate that. What are some of the most common injuries that you see in the clinic?
Danny: I’ve seen everything from simple ankle sprains to really bad chronic knee pain that they think is a result of arthritis, but is actually something else entirely. I’ve seen horrible, horrible disc herniations and even just symptoms way after disc herniations have happened. Tension headaches that people have been feeling and even experiencing partial blindness from. That’s how intense these headaches have been to taking those away entirely. For something that people have been medicating for a long time, just taking away those kinds of pains and issues. So I, I don’t even know if I could say common because I’ve seen such a wide variety, such a wide, wide variety, which is why I kind of term myself as a chronic pain specialist. Right. Because this is the kind of stuff that I see. Sure.
Dr. Fick: You know? I think as physical therapists, one of the things that I really like to do is just educate and communicate with our patients. And I think having that model of care that we both work in really enables us to be able to communicate and build buy-in, and trust, and really affect change. So what are some of the ways that you find most beneficial in communicating with your patients? Like what types of communication styles or approaches do you use in your practice?
Danny: I mean, within my practice I have something that’s called an open door policy. So aside from just like pure communication side and you know, being, making sure I’m there for them, not only as a provider, but also as a human being. You know, I’ve had so many people break down in my office just because of things that even though don’t even specifically relate to their pain, just life. Girl the other day she was just breaking down crying as we were doing the movements necessary to help her with her pain and issues. But she was just breaking down crying because she felt, first of all, she felt safe to do that. Right. She felt comfortable to do that and to know that I have her back. So in terms of communication, I like to keep it very open, very personable. It’s not provider to patient, it’s human to human. Sure. And you know, that’s how we deal with everything, whether it’s the pain or everything else. I’m, I’m there as a support system. That open door policy, you know, in between the sessions and appointments, they have full access to me. They can email me, they can call me if they want to, like set up a Zoom session, I’m there for them in the entirety of whether they’re in the office or not. But yeah, that, that’s really how I communicate with my patients and make sure that they know I got them right. I got their back.
Dr. Fick: I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I think that’s why we do what we do. We genuinely want the very best for our clients and patients. And that’s why we’ve adopted this model. Exactly. Because I’m sure you worked at insurance-based practices before and so have I. And this model of care just really allows us a lot of freedom, flexibility, to get patients to the level where we know that they can go and need to go. And a lot of times insurance companies create the roadblocks for the patient and for us to be able to have that success.
Danny: Exactly right.
Dr. Fick: What are some of the most common dance related injuries that you see and what types of treatment approaches do you think we can do with those clients?
Danny: So within the dancing world, and because I come from a ballroom world, like that’s when I, the dancers I do see are typically either ballroom or ballet. I see a lot of knee pain, a lot of hip and lower back pain, neck and shoulder pain. I see scoliosis related pain where like a lot of dancers actually do have scoliosis in ballroom, which is why in part they can actually be quite good ballroom dancers because the positions that you gotta be in, right, are usually twisted and shifted over to the side. However, that does come with consequences. And so with dancers, it’s really important to make sure that you understand how does a dancing body move, right? So if it’s the same with any sport, you know, if you’re a basketball player, PT, right? Like you have to understand how a basketball player moves, what they need to do to accomplish the sport and everything that it entails.
With that in mind, one of the first things I did when I became a physical therapist was I hit the dancing community hard. I tried to change the way dancers train. I’ve seen it for 16 years. I know how they train. Yeah. And it is shoddy. It’s, it doesn’t really like, you know, you work on the cardiovascular performance. Sure. You know, you do some kind of strengthening. Sure. But there’s a very big lack in stability. Both in just even just standing on one leg. There’s so many, like one of the biggest tests I do is just have dancers stand on one leg. Right. And see how long they hold it. They can hold it for people who kick in the air and jump and leap and everything like that. They can barely hold it.
Dr. Fick: Yeah, I’ve seen the same. Yeah.
Danny: And something so simple as a balancing exercise, they have trouble with so. I think that with dancers in particular, it is like very important to work on stability and balance stability through range of motion, especially extreme ranges of motion. And this takes care of a lot of those issues that I just outlined that they usually have. But you have to understand the sport Sure. And to really train around the sport, not just for the sport.
Dr. Fick: Yeah. I work in a facility that has Cheer Dance Athletics inside, so I’ve noticed the same thing. The dancers that we see, they do all types of dance. There’s deficits there that we see through the hips especially. Oh yeah. The single leg stability when they’re having to stay on the leg and turn. So we’ve really tried to work in some education and also some exercises that they can do on their own in order to help prevent some of these things. So a lot of those girls are there for several hours during the day, during the week, so they have a lot of loading in their bodies. Oftentimes aren’t really capable of handling that loading and things break down, like you said.
Danny: So unfortunately yes. And, and a lot of times that happens from a young age. Yeah. The amount of dancers I’ve seen who are like 12, 13, 14 years old, I mean like, just, just with horrible pain. Right. You know that that’s, that’s too early to be in pain and we, we gotta find ways to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
Dr. Fick: Absolutely. If there’s something that you could tell, you know. People out there who are wondering whether physical therapy is right for them, what should they look for in a physical therapist, and specifically how can, how do you feel like you can help them return to the sports and activities they love as quickly and safely as possible?
Danny: You know what, I’m gonna look to the camera for this one. Yeah. I think that is really important to find a provider who really has your best interest in mind, who will really listen to you as a patient and make sure that they do everything that is pertinent to you as the individual, not with, not to you as someone who has knee pain and then 20 others who have knee pain, but you in particular, you know David, who has knee pain, Michael, who has low back pain, Sally, who has shoulder pain. Making sure that they treat you and only you as the individual when you find providers like that? That, that you, you gotta hold on to ’em for the, for the forever. Exactly. So 95% of my patients have all seen other providers, whether it’s physical therapy, chiropractors, acupuncturists, you name it, they’ve seen them. And that the courage to find just one more provider, just the fact, the simple fact that courage to find it and to place their trust in someone like myself who does try to keep everything individualistic. It, it’s life changing. So you never know when the next provider that you choose is going to completely change your life for the better and give you back your freedom and your love to do whatever it is that you wanna do. Whether it’s dance, basketball, just going for a walk, whatever it may be. So never give up on finding the right provider for you ’cause you never know that tomorrow might be the day that’s gonna change the rest of your life.
Dr. Fick: Wow, that’s so powerful. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Danny: My pleasure.