I’ve said several times on this podcast, if you are experiencing pain, if you are going to providers that aren’t able to provide real answers and solutions for you, don’t stop looking. Don’t let it negatively affect your life and turn into a downward spiral for months and years to come. Go ahead and spend the money necessary. Take the time necessary to find the answers and the solutions that you need. Don’t settle for less, and that’s the whole reason this PT Rebels podcast was started because you have choices and we want you to understand that we are here for you on your journey, and we’re here for long haul.

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.

Welcome to the podcast everyone. Today I just wanted to provide you some recent updates on our clinic and what’s going on. Some fun and new, exciting things happening at Vic PTM performance. Right now I’m live from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Had the privilege of traveling down her yesterday with our son, and we’ll be running in the great Southwest indoor track and field championship. Today, so had a little time to squeeze in a podcast, so I just wanted to give you some of the updates so that you can be the first to know what are the exciting things that are happening in the next few months at FI PTM performance. One of the most exciting things I can announce is that we have a new physical therapist starting with us on Monday. His name is Mason Perry Mason. Is from New York and graduated from Mars College School of Physical Therapy. He has a good deal of experience in orthopedic and sports medicine. He is dry kneeling, certified, and he also has experience as a collegiate soccer player. So. All you athletes out there, especially the soccer players, he’s going to be able to really relate to you and help you with your return to sport needs and any issues related to sports and injuries that you have going on. He is going to be our go-to guy, so just wanted to give you a heads up on that. Mason’s very excited to start with us. And he will be accepting new patients. Very soon you’ll be able to go online and book with him. Mason will also be involved with starting some new classes, so I wanted to give you guys some insight on that as well. So stay tuned for updates in regards to Mason and his schedule on the class offerings that. Have available. If you check our social media, if you check, uh, your email, you’ll be alerted of these updates. And I just encourage you to come on in. Meet Mason. He’s gonna be a really great asset to our team and we’re very privileged and honored to have him join us on Monday. So welcome Mason. Uh, we are very thrilled to have you a part of our team and can’t wait. For you to serve our clients very well. One of the things when we were hiring Mason that really stood out amongst the other candidates is Mason’s ability to communicate well. I think he’s going to be able to really form connections and relationships with our clients and build that trust factor, and that’s one of the most important things that we look at here at Vic PTM. Performance skills can always be learned, but some innate qualities of integrity. Passion, internal drive and communication skills can’t always be taught. So congratulations, Mason. We’re thrilled and honored to have you and can’t wait for you to meet our clients. And on the flip side, we can’t wait for you to come in and meet Mason and spend some time with him. He’ll be doing some shadowing at first, running some of his own classes. And also, as I said earlier, accepting new patients. That’s the biggest announcement that we have. We are also looking for a full-time admin and we’ll be looking for a full-time physical therapist in the next six months as well. So we’re going ahead and starting that hiring process now. If you have any friends, family that you know would be a great fit for us here at Fit PTM performance, please let them know we would love your referrals and to have them join our team. One of the things I really wanted to touch on today is that we are highlighting a few new classes that we’ll be starting, and as I alluded to earlier, Mason will be teaching those three main classes that we’re opening up. The first class I wanted to highlight is. End back pain once and for all. So if you are suffering from back pain and not sure where to start, this may be a really good place for you to start on your journey in ending back pain once and for all, and getting the help that you need to be able to return to the sports and activities that you love. Back pain is one of those things that plagues many people. It’s one of the top reasons why people seek out physical therapy, but they are often confused about where to start, what’s causing their back pain. Maybe they’ve seen several physicians who aren’t able to write answers for them and they’re just really looking for some help and pain relief and this. Back pain class that we’ll be offering is a six week class. Once a week, will give you the tools and exercises to work on your own during the week after that class, and you’ll come back with us and meet with us once a week again for a total of six weeks. I think one of the things that sets us apart in terms of this type of class is that it’s going to be run by a doctoral level trained physical therapist who will be able to interact with you, answer your questions, be able to. Spend time with you with corrective exercises, whether that be mobility, strength, you can communicate with Mason in regards to what your specific needs will be in terms of returning to the sports and activities that you love. And you’ll also have people in the small group class with you who are experiencing the same thing. So I think it’s going to be a really exciting way to pull in and draw in our community to be together, to meet Mason, to, um, build that. Trust and communication with him and also to get your needs served in terms of helping to figure out why your back’s hurting and how to end that back pain. If you are interested in that class, it will fill up quickly. It has a maximum size of 10 people. Please don’t delay. We already have a pe. Few people signed up. So you won’t wanna miss this class. Go ahead and email us, text us. The classes will be offered online as well, so you can go ahead and go online and sign up for that. I know I have a few people that have been waiting for us just to open this class, so stay tuned for the announcements of the opening day for that in your email inbox and on social media as well. The next really exciting class offering that I have to share is called Drive the Distance and how to Improve your golf swing and your Mechanics, and also eliminate any pain associated with your golf game. So there are so many things that we can do and address in terms of. Golf assessment. What’s limiting you and your power and your speed? Why might you be hurting in your thoracic or lumbar spine? In your shoulder? In your hips? So we have a ton of exciting information to share with you on that. Again, this will also be a six week class offering, one hour class once a week, and we are going to give you the tools that you need to help improve your golf game and help you stay on the golf course and not have to sit out and miss time with your friends this spring and summer. So again, if you’re interested in that, please let us know and that class size will also be a small group class. One thing we wanna do is make sure that we do proper analysis and testing prior to exercise prescription in the class. So we’ll be doing testing on each one of you who participate in this golf class. Then prescribe exercises for the group that we feel will be most helpful. You’ll be able to ask questions in a one-on-one setting before or after the class. And during the class you’ll be able to maybe bring some of your friends or family who have been struggling with the same thing. And you guys can have fun together and learn and really benefit from the tools necessary to make sure that you don’t have pain with golf, or make sure that you don’t have factors limiting your driving distance. And finally, the last class I wanna touch on that we’ll be offering. Is a run strong class. It is so imperative that you go ahead and start strengthening and working on your mobility now before you start a more formal outdoor running program Here in Colorado, many of our athletes train year round, but some people decide they wanna start running more outside March, april, may, and really start ramping up that running and training quickly. And sometimes aren’t equipped in terms of strength, mobility, tissue resilience in their tendons, and then they run into trouble with injuries such as quadricep tendonitis, patellar tendonitis, achilles tendonitis, sometimes hip pain, glute pain, you name it. We see, uh, plantar fasciitis, a variety of issues that result from just not being properly. Ready and trained for that running program that you may be doing. So we wanna make sure that you’re very successful in that. So now is the time to get started with that. We have the six week program called Run Strong and it’s a bulletproof your tendons and bulletproof your, um, musculoskeletal system so that you can get involved in a running program and be very successful in that without risk of injury. What that looks like is, again, we are going to do an assessment early on, so selective functional movement assessment where we’re testing you through certain ranges of motion and certain movements. We’ll also do a. Gait analysis on the treadmill and also force plate testing where we’re testing for any asymmetries. That will be day one. We’ll also be providing information in regards to nutrition, hydration, sleep recommendations. What happens if you do get some aches and pains? What do you do in addition to. How to improve your mobility and your strength in order to avoid these types of injuries. So this is a super valuable class for so many of our clients. We already have a waiting list for this class, so please don’t delay. If you’re interested, go ahead and shoot us an email or a text and we’ll get you locked into that class. So it’s a great bargain. It’s a great value that rounds out to be about $35 per class, and the class size is limited to 10 people. So. We highly recommend that you go ahead and jump in and get registered and started with us so that we can hit the ball running here and get you ready to run and ready to return to your sport training very soon. So those are the main highlights that I wanted to share with you all today, and I wanted to close with just a short story and experience of something that I’ve been experiencing over the last couple of weeks that’s given me new perspective on physical therapy and on the patient journey. As you all know, we just moved our clinic from a very small space to a very beautiful, large space just a couple of miles away from our old practice. We went from about 952 square feet inside of a performance gym and moved to our own location a couple of miles away into about 4,300 square foot facility. That was quite a big project. And so with those big projects come challenges in terms of trying to still make sure that patients are seen and also try to get proper rest and hydration and that sort of thing. As a business owner, I was sleeping very little and working my tail off to make sure that this was a huge success and that the moving process was smooth and smooth for our patients and our employees. So I didn’t get a lot of sleep and just. Hit the ball running, was just tried to grind it out and my body gave in and I got pretty sick a couple of days before Christmas. I was in bed all day during Christmas and still had to push through and power through because we needed to be out of our old space by December 31st, and we moved into our new space on January 2nd. Pushed through that. The new facility, as I, I’ve alluded to, is just beautiful. If you haven’t seen it, please stop by and just say hi, and, and come by to see it. I think you’re gonna love it. But we did it. We, we got moved, but my health did suffer, and for a couple of weeks after that, I st I kept having a lot of chest pain and sinus pain and just tried to keep ignoring it had various other issues and problems going on in my body just because I was just trying to push things to the limit. With that being said. Last week I started developing like some ear pain, tooth pain, jaw pain. I had no idea what was going on. I just wanted to share the story because I think it resonates with what a lot of our clients experience. So I cleared my schedule for the afternoon to go in and see the dentist, to try to figure out why in the world I had this horrible. Toothache and jaw pain and try to figure out what’s going on. And if you know me, I never cancel clients. I work probably 12 to 14 hours a day, um, most days, and I just press on. But this is something I couldn’t ignore. So I called, they got me in right away. Um, and I went in to see the dentist and it was not a dentist that I normally see was a newer dentist to the practice. He was very nice. But right off the bat, I could tell that I had been squeezed and, and it was a very rushed feeling and I just tried to work with it. And the dentist wasn’t very thorough in his examination. You could tell he was probably either overbooked or stressed or in a hurry. I think he was trying to take time to listen to me. He just didn’t have a lot of time and didn’t really do a very thorough examination. So what happened was, I feel like. Some things probably got missed. And at the end of the visit, he really didn’t have any answers. He said, I, this one stumps me. I, I don’t know why you’re hurting. And I thought, oh my goodness. I just spent three and a half hours of blocking my schedule, canceling patients, rescheduling patients, driving a half an hour away to go see this dentist and just for no answers. And I still don’t have answers. And why? I’m trying to avoid taking any Advil or Aleve. It, it hurts and I’m in pain, but I’m powering through it. And I think the reason I’m telling you this story is not to tell you, tell you a sob story. We’ll get to the bottom of it. But the reason is because anytime we as physical therapists actually go through pain or issues ourselves. It really makes us even more aware of what our clients are going through, especially when you go to see a physician or a dentist or a doctor, whoever, that can’t provide answers to why you’re in pain, and that leaves you very frustrated and not really even sure who to go see next. And so. On the patient journey. That’s really the story that we hear so many times in our practice. And I think that’s one reason that makes our practice successful is because we typically are able to provide answers and solutions for our patients. And if we can’t, we will not let our patients leave without a game plan of how we’re gonna find out those answers for them. So I think what was hard for me is I left and the dentist said, we’ll call you back in a week or two and just see how you’re feeling. And I thought, I’m close to needing like. Some narcotic pain medication and I never take that. And I thought, there’s no way I can wait two weeks. We have to figure out a solution. And I thought, okay, this is what a lot of our clients are experiencing. And so if that’s you, if you’re sitting out there and you’re sitting at home or you’re at work or you’re in the car listening to this, we understand what you’re going through. And even so more so right now, I can tell you that. We are compassionate. We are caring, and we’re also very skilled and smart and talented in that we can help differentially diagnose what’s going on for you. And if we can’t, I know the people to call and text. Who get back to me right away. I have physicians that I can text who literally get back to me within 30 seconds to a minute no matter what they’re doing. So we have those connections and a way to help you figure out answers and solutions to your pain and problems, even if you’ve been experiencing this for a long time. Because the last thing we want is for you to leave our office feeling like I felt the other day and it’s no knock on the physicians or the that I saw. It’s just that I. That feeling resonated with me, and I just wanted to share that quick story with you all and let you know that we have a firm commitment to you, our clients, to no matter what, help you find real answers and real solutions for your pain so that you can get back to enjoying the sports and activities you love for life. Without limitation, and so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me to call me to call our practice. We will work with you and get you in quickly within 24 hours to help you find real answers and real solutions to whatever you have going on. That’s why we’ve committed to hiring new staff. We’ve committed to opening up these new classes and offerings to be able to provide a level of care to meet you where you’re at no matter what. If you’re not ready for a. Big commitment in terms of a physical therapy program, but wanna try a class? We’re gonna have that for you. If you just need to come in for a free discovery visit and chat with me and try to figure out answers and solutions to your problem, we have that available for you. If you need a referral for imaging, x-ray, MRI, the diagnostic ultrasound, we have that option available for you. So we have so many resources to help you, so please take advantage of it. We truly wanna help you. And I think even more so after my experience this week as I’m talking right now, still having the pain. I don’t know why, but I know I will get to the bottom of it and I’ll find people who can. And I think that’s where I’ll leave it with you is I’ve said several times on this podcast, if you are experiencing pain, if you are going to providers that aren’t able to provide real answers and solutions for you, don’t stop looking. Don’t let it negatively affect your life and turn into a downward spiral for months and years to come. Go ahead and spend the money necessary. Take the time necessary to find the answers and the solutions that you need and don’t settle for less. And that’s the whole reason this PT Rebels podcast was started because you have choices and we want you to understand that we are here for you and we are here for you on your journey. And we’ll, we’re here for the long haul. So. We’re your resource for your physical therapy needs, so please reach out to us. We’re here for you. We care about you, and we want the very best for you for life.