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.

On this episode, we’re going to be talking with Taylor Whitfield and her journey with athletics, physical therapy, and how she’s persevered through injury in the process to get to the point where she is now.

Taylor, welcome to the podcast and can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from? Uh, your family, kind of your journey, uh, through track and field?

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, my name is Taylor Whitfield. I grew up in Highlands Ranch. I ran, uh, cross country in middle school and track and middle school. Um, and then I had the great privilege to run under Coach Copeland at Valor for four years, which was the best experience of my life. Um, and that’s where the dream kind of to run in college. Developed, um, and I was able to get recruited and run at the collegiate level. And I’m actually in the process of transferring to Concordia University of Irvine, um, where I will finish my collegiate career there this fall.

Taylor, when did you first know that you had a special gift or talent for track and field, and when did that first start to become a reality for you that. Um, you could be pretty successful as a track and field athlete.

Well, I didn’t know for a while. Um, I started out as a sprinter. Uh, did not go as planned. Tried long jump for a while as well, and I was not good at that either. Um, but Copeland saw me running one practice and told me that I would be, uh, better suited at the long distance stuff. So, tried out for cross country my freshman year, um, and wasn’t very good at it either to begin with. Um, but he. Pushed me. Um, and he believed in me when no one else did, when I didn’t believe in myself. And slowly by sophomore year, I started to figure out and I was like, wow, I could actually, um, you know, maybe run in college. And so that became the dream and, um, worked my tail off. Um, and yeah, God bless me with a great opportunity to run in college.

That’s awesome. And I’ve been blessed to be able to see Taylor’s journey as well. Um, so Taylor, what are some of the factors that you feel like have made you successful up to this point? Um, whether it be, you know, your family, your coaches, your what, what are some of the key things, um, that make you Taylor? What feel to make you feel like you make you successful? In life and also through athletics.

Yeah, my family is a big, a big piece of it. Um, they’re my biggest supporters, biggest encouragers. Um, my mom is, um, really into nutrition and good food, and so she makes sure everything on that side of things is, is well taken care of. Um, coaches have always been a huge part of it too. Um. I’ve had the privilege of having amazing coaches, um, throughout my career, and they’ve always pushed me, uh, to be better. Um, and then I would say PTs are, have been huge in my journey. Um, I’ve been seeing Gina for quite a few years now. Um, and she’s helped me with some tremendously, um, difficult injuries. I’ve had hip strains before, um, hip flexor strains. I had a grade, uh, three. Stress fracture in my femur this past fall. Um, and Gina’s always been there to, you know, quickly diagnose something and then have a plan moving forward. Um, and has always made me feel like I can overcome anything. Um, she and her staff are, are amazing here, so that’s been a huge, huge piece of my, of my story and my journey.

Thank you Taylor. I, I think that one of the things that makes you very successful is your resilience and perseverance. And no matter what life throws at you, I feel like you have the ability within your character to, um. Really manage the stress, manage those, um, challenges and persevere and move forward. And I’ve seen you time and time again tackle challenges and I know that you’re gonna be able to continue to do that, you know, throughout your life. Um, what are some of the thing, what are some of the tools that we have at FIT PT and performance that you feel like have been valuable for you? In your journey with physical therapy, um, and your rehabilitation process through this bone stress injury?

Yeah, absolutely. So the alter GI would say is the biggest tool, um, that has really benefited me. Um, it’s not very common to PT clinics. Um, and Vic PT has an amazing alter g Um, and so that’s helped me progress in terms of loading, um, my leg and then. I’m able to do workouts right now currently, um, which would not have been possible if I didn’t have the alter G. So that’s been huge in getting my training back to where it used to be. Um, and then, you know, different tools like shockwave laser, um, and then their, just their knowledge about strength training and how to, how to reload that, like, um, all those things have been really helpful.

I think the anti-gravity treadmill that we have is a really valuable tool, tool for runners dealing with bone stress injuries. Absolutely. Because we can progressively over, uh, progressively load, um, tissues and, um, including bone and bone stress injuries, and then we can see your response to that loading. And so then we are confident to know that you can handle particular loads without, um. Increasing your pain significantly without undue like bone stress so that you can progress appropriately. Absolutely. Um, in your journey.

So, Taylor, tell us about your schedule. What is, what is your training plan? What does your schedule look like and what are you looking to accomplish in within the next year?

Yeah, absolutely. So I have the best coaching and training staff around me currently. Um, because I’m in the transfer portal right now. I’ve got my old high school coach, coach Copeland, um, coach Kula, working on my strength and, um, distance running side of things. And then I got, um, Dr. Gina and Dr. Tony working and Dr. Edward working on my, um, PT side of things.
So I’ll give you just a quick rundown. Um, Monday I will run. Um, on land, I’m progressing that slowly. So this week I’m at a mile and a half right now. Um, and then I will go cross train at the gym for 45 minutes to an hour and then I will do my PT block one, um, which is a bunch of different single leg, um, strength training just to get that right leg where I had the stress fracture, um, back to being healthy. And then Tuesday I’ve got my tempo work on the alter G. So that’s what I’ll be doing this morning. Um, and then I’m lifting with Coach Kula. Um, and then Wednesday is another mile and a half run with some cross training PT block two. Um, Thursday is an easy day in the pool. And then Friday I do another, um, speed workout on the alter G and then some hit mobility afterwards. And then Saturdays in the pool again for a long run type of workout. Um, and then another strength day in the, in the gym. So, and then Sunday I have off. So it’s, it’s a. Big, pretty big, uh, schedule that I have. But, um, it’s been really helpful and I already feel a lot, a lot more fit than I was. So I’m excited.

Taylor, can you tell us, uh, how your bone stress injury has been different in terms of rehabilitation from some of your other injuries that you’ve had in the past?

Yeah, so my stress fracture started out, um, with just some pain in my adductor. Um, it kind of would radiate up into my hip, but it would move around a lot, um, which made it pretty difficult to diagnose. Uh, so I had. An undiagnosed stress fracture for a little bit. Um, and then after two months of having some pain in random areas of my leg, we finally got an MRI. Um, and that’s when it showed the stress fracture. So I was on crutches for eight weeks, um, so completely no weight bearing. Um, and then I was out for four months. I was allowed to do upper body, um, strength training. Um, I was able to bike a little bit towards the end of that, but I mean, I was completely off it for a really long time, um, which was not… I was used to other injuries. I’ve been able to just cross train. I never had to take that much time off, so that was pretty difficult mentally, um, and physically. But my family was, um, huge supporters through that. Um, and then after I was able to start cross training a little bit, it was just slowly progressing that. And then only recently have I been able to start running on land. Um, I had to go through a whole alter G progression, which is why alter GI highly, highly recommend with, um, bone stress injuries. Um. But yeah, it was a long, long process for sure. Mm-hmm.

Can you tell us some of the ways in which you’ve addressed the bone stress injury nutritionally? Are there supplements that you take mm-hmm. Or difference? Uh. Things that you do with, with your diet?

Yeah. Yeah. So I took a lot of vitamin D, especially when I first got the diagnosis. Um, and then I’ve just been taking a regular dose since then. Um, take a lot of calcium, magnesium, uh, zinc. I have a multivitamin, um, make sure I keeping up on my iron. And then, yeah, my mom’s making me eat a lot of food. Yeah. When you were going into your first collegiate experience, did you get a DEXA scan? Yes. Yeah, so I got a DEXA scan. Um, the DEXA are able to kind of break down your muscle mass. Um, your fat, your bone density. It’s able to test a lot of different things. It’s a really cool tool. Um, so yeah, they test, they test all the athletes to make sure that they’re not, um, there’s not any red flags or anything before they start training.

So, Taylor, what would you. Say to the high school or collegiate athlete who’s potentially dealing with a bone stress injury. In terms of recognizing signs and symptoms and seeking the proper care for that?

Yeah, so I think the first thing about bone injuries is they’re pretty hard to, to diagnose. Um, I know specifically for my femur injury, the pain moved around a lot. Um, so I always advise second opinions. Um, and yeah, making sure that your PT is, is awesome like Gina. Um. Yeah, they’re, they’re just really hard to, to recognize and they’re not something that you wanna mess with. I mean, the longer that you run on it, um, if you don’t know you have it, the longer you’re gonna be out. Um, take my, uh, my story, for example. Um, so making sure you get those second opinions. If, if you’re still having pain after, you know, a week or two. Um, and then, yeah, making sure that you’re, you’re at a place where they’re gonna take your recovery seriously. They’re not gonna push you, um, too fast too soon, because. Um, yeah, you don’t, you don’t wanna mess with stress fractures. So coming to a place like, um, Vic, PT and performance where they have tools like the Alter G where they have laser, they have shockwave, um, and they have the knowledge, um, to get you back to where you were is, is huge.

How have you seen effective communication between physical therapist and coaching staff, and can you help us understand the importance of that? In your rehab journey?

Yeah. So when the PTs and the coaches are on the same communication line, it is super, super helpful for the athlete. ’cause they’re not getting stuck in any knee awkward or weird situations. I’ve had, um, some experiences in my life where the communication is not so great. Um, and that was, uh. Um, that greatly impacted me in a negative way. Um, so the PTs here are awesome with communicating with coaches, and the coaches are really good at understanding and trusting what the PTs have to say. Um, and then that way the athlete feels very taken care of and the process is really smooth.

At, at here in our practice, we try to be very accessible to coaches. They have our cell phone numbers. They know that they can call us or text us at any time. We’ve developed, um, throughout the years, we’ve developed relationships and real trust with them, which I think is essential in helping athletes feel safe to come to talk to us because they know we’re gonna be advocates for them. Absolutely. And on the other side, the coaches trust our expertise and know that we’re gonna get the athletes back to participation as quickly and safely as possible. So tell us how do you feel better prepared after going through this process and being able to manage your injuries and accomplish your goals in the future? And what are your future plans?

Yeah, so my experience here has been that they communicate really well. Um, when I injure something like why it happened, um, and how to get back and what kind of exercises to do. Um, so I’ve had, you know, pain in similar areas from past injuries and I know exactly how to, how to handle it, um, and bounce back. So I feel like I’ve. Got a wealth of knowledge just from them. ’cause they actually communicate what they’re doing, why they’re doing it. Um, and so I, I’ve been able to prevent, I’d like to say, um, a couple injuries from getting worse just from the knowledge that they’ve given to me. Um, so I feel very confident in being able to run after college, whether that’s, um, you know, trying to go pro, we’ll see. Um, but I feel very confident in, um, being able to keep my body healthy. And if there’s anything that, you know, I come across, I don’t know, I know where to come and who to ask.