#PTonICE Podcast

The podcast discusses prioritizing physiology over physics in understanding the human body, emphasizing the adaptability and resilience of our systems. It explores the relationship between physics and clinical practice, highlighting the importance of physiological interventions for promoting change. The episode delves into patient psychology, misconceptions about the body, and the efficacy of exercise based on physiological understanding.

Dr. Christina Prevett // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic division leader Christina Prevett discusses female fertility, including what physical therapy interventions are not currently supported by research for use in assisting with conception but also offers some key ideas to come alongside this vulnerable population to assist them within the limits of our scope of practice. Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog. If you're looking to learn more about our live pregnancy and postpartum physical therapy courses or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. Are you looking for more information on how to keep lifting weights while pregnant? Check out the ICE Pelvic bi-weekly newsletter! EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION CHRISTINA PREVETTHello everyone and welcome to the PT on Ice daily show. I'm trying to get YouTube up and running. I don't know why it's telling me that this isn't available, but I am gonna give it another go. If you don't know me, my name is Christina Prevett. I am one of our division leads for our pelvic division as well as our geriatric division. And today I wanted to talk to you all a little bit about our role in fertility. So we are working on our level two, finishing up our level two course content. And one of the areas, our level two course is talking about how to create a fitness forward approach to pelvic health in a variety of different conditions. And so one of those conditions is around fertility, infertility, birth control, that type of space. And I have thought, an astronomical amount about where our role is in fertility, fertility management, and infertility. And so to kind of give context to this, like it really has been in the last five or ten years where we have started to advocate for ourselves as a member of the obstetrical team, right? So we really advocate in pelvic health, especially with rates of pelvic floor dysfunction and pelvic injury that happen around the pregnancy and postpartum period, that we have a role to play from a rehab perspective when it comes to female health and male health in the fertility space potentially. And so we have kind of made this jump where we are now very well known for being in the obstetrical space, helping with birth prep, helping with reducing perennial trauma, rehabbing from perennial or abdominal trauma as a consequence of a C-section or a vaginal delivery. And so we really have etched our role in a wonderful way in the obstetrical space. And so it doesn't really seem like that big of a leap for us to think about coming into the fertility space, right? Because it's all kind of centered around the pelvis. It's an area where there is a lot of misunderstanding. There's a lot of grief. There's a lot of trauma that happens. And so we are seeing more and more of our physical therapists and other allied health providers start advertising services in fertility. FERTILITY GONE WRONG And so Before I go into some of the research in this space and where we at ICE stand in this space, I want to tell you all a story about where this can go terribly wrong. So I owned a physiotherapy clinic and a gym up in Kingston, Ontario for five years. And I had a woman come in to see me and she was looking for a consult for the gym. Her husband was in the military. He had done multiple tours and they were having trouble conceiving. So they had done multiple rounds of IVF, neither of which had been successful. I think they had done two rounds and he was currently deployed and he was struggling with mental health stuff. He was struggling with PTSD. She was, as a consequence of the healing process, was also struggling with a lot of mental health and anxiety, trying to be that person for him. So it was a really complicated situation, their fertility journey. And so they were, she was coming in saying, you know, well, if I can get in better shape, then maybe it's going to help this next round of IVF. And so I was talking about her history with exercise, and then I was talking about her history with rehab, just trying to get to see if, you know, she would want to come into one of our programs and what that program may be. And she told me that she was seeing another provider and was getting adjusted three times a week for fertility. And so I kind of asked her the situations and circumstances around that. And she said that, you know, I am willing to try anything to get pregnant. It's what I want more than anything else. And so she's like, I went to this provider and they did a x-ray of my entire back. And I was starting to have low back pain, which like infertility, trauma, mental health, baby that they want that they cannot have. Like her pain was focusing around her pelvis and her low back. And provider x-rayed the entire spine and said, oh, here it is. Here's your infertility. It is at your neck and you have a issue at C5, C6, and there's an innervation right there, right to the uterus. You're going to get adjusted by me three times a week for six months. And I guarantee you the next time you have IVF, it's going to be successful. And I have never raged internally in a conversation so much in my entire life. It was a really tough spot for me to be because I was a person that she had never met before. Then she was asking about gym-based services, did not even know that I was a physical therapist because that was not the role that I was playing in this interaction. And she was in such a vulnerable space that if I came in super hot and was like, that is not true, then I would have potentially severed a line of hope for her that she had developed, but oh my goodness, how unethical is it for you to make promises that you cannot keep? And so I tell this story to give the frame of reference that I think about when I make statements about where we lie with respect to our role in rehab. FERTILITY: A VULNERABLE POPULATION So the first thing that we always have to think with this, and this is in any space where we are trying to kind of go into new markets, and I am not against being in new markets, but this population in particular is a very vulnerable population. This is a population where individuals are feeling like their body is failing, The emotional and mental load of fertility is high. The shame and guilt and spiraling and social context and people asking you if you're gonna be having babies soon even though it is something you want more than anything else in the world and it is not happening. The feeling of your body failing you at something that you quote unquote should be able to do. These are all things that make us need to think very clearly about the statements and promises that we make as we consider niching into this space. The second filter of this is from a manual therapy perspective. We have no evidence that our manual therapy increases chances of conceiving. So we cannot say that we are changing the orientation of the uterus to make for a more hospitable environment. We cannot say that. It is not ethical for us to say that. One, because we have no evidence that there's going to be any movement of really strong really anchored organs in our body where we are placing hands on people right like our evidence is that we are horrible at landmarking exactly what what muscle we are on we are not doing a hip flexor release and and changing trigger points in our muscles We are not able to really localize our manifs and we're really interacting with the nervous system. So if we can't even do that at the superficial musculoskeletal system, why do we think that our manual therapy is going to impact our organs? So we need to be very mindful about what we are doing. And so the first thing we have to filter is the ethics. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF MANUAL THERAPY TO IMPROVE FERTILITY The second thing we have to recognize is that we are currently going into a space that does not have evidence for our manual therapy techniques to change our fertility. That is number two. That is not to say that this evidence will not develop. It is a new area, but we cannot say, if you come to see me, you're more likely to get pregnant. We cannot say that. We can say that we are exploring different modalities and we can have lots of conversations about fertility. We are educated providers in the fertility space, but we need to be very clear with our communication about what we can promise to individuals because it is unethical for us to say that this is gonna happen. Three, there is a placebo effect of somebody taking care of you when you are in such a vulnerable space, right? There is one of the biggest and best things that we can do as rehab providers is that we are able to have space, have time to listen to our people and cater to and speak toward the emotional side of what they are going through. A lot of the interactions with our medical space when it comes to fertility are very much focused on the physiology of it, right? Because that is what they are trying to remove barriers for from a physiological perspective, whether it's on the male or female side, and allow fertilization to occur in successful implantation. But we need to be very, very mindful. So to finish off this episode, what can we do? Where do we have evidence around a potential role in rehab. Okay, so in order for conception to happen, right, we need to have, on the female side, we have to have an egg that is released on a monthly basis, right, so we have to be ovulating. That egg has to travel into the fallopian tube. Sex needs to occur with ejaculation so that the sperm is meeting the egg in the fallopian tube. And then the fertilized egg needs to travel through the fallopian tube and embed into the uterus and have the hormonal environment, have the enrichment of the uterine walls in order for that implantation to be successful and maintained. Okay. So the first piece in our fertility is the ovulation space. And if you've been following our pelvic crew for a long period of time, you know that one of the areas around ovulation, and we are not medical providers, so we are not looking at their hormone levels. We are not seeing if luteinizing hormone is creating a estrogen surge that allows ovulation to take place. But we are one of those providers that oftentimes can catch relative energy deficiency in sport. So We can have conversations that individuals are amenorrheic to be a resource dealer and a primary care provider to refer on if we think that something is going on with their menstrual cycle that has to do with their nutrition or that they are not ovulating as a consequence of low energy availability. So from that perspective, if they're not getting their period, like we may be that resource dealer to a registered dietitian or nutritionist that has a scope of practice that works with potential disordered eating, potential issues with fertility, and that has a more broad scope of practice to be able to speak to those levels, right? We could be referring to our obstetrician if individuals are thinking of conceiving in the next six months and they don't have their period, let's get them to get their doc to do blood work or let's like get earlier on that process and then send that letter and say, you know, I've been treating this person for musculoskeletal issues. Like I am a little bit worried about relative energy deficiency in sport and we can make that connection. We can also educate on the menstrual cycle and what is required for fertility to take place, right? We can be talking about when our fertility windows are, right? We are not reproductively positive or we're not able to have a fertilized egg at all parts of our cycle, right? Ovulation occurs between day 12 and day 14. So that window, usually between 11 and 15 days of your cycle is like your chance window of getting pregnant. So we can be educating on that. We have evidence for that. Medically, in our scope of practice, we can absolutely be talking about that physiology. We have a role in that space and we have the time to sit down with our people and talk about tracking your menstrual cycle and recognizing some of the signs that you might be ovulating, like changes in cervical mucus and body temperature and those types of things. The second piece where we have a role is that sex needs to be successful in that women are able to have penetrative intercourse and ejaculation needs to occur. And so I'm going to do an entire second episode on male fertility and male fertility factors and our role in male fertility, because fun fact, 30 to 50% of infertility cases are male factors. And yet all of our information is on female related fertility factors. And so in order for sex to be able to happen, individuals have to not have pain. and they need to be able to have penetrative intercourse. So here's another area where our role can be quite massive, right? In really extreme cases of pelvic pain or vaginismus or vulvodynia, there are circumstances where the pain is so severe that individuals do artificial insemination or other assisted reproductive technologies because they are unable, without significant severe pain, to be able to have penetrative intercourse in order for ovulation or fertilization rather to occur. So we have a role in that space as well. And this is where our evidence is, right? So if individuals are having pain with intercourse or on that guarded high nervous system response, right? Parasympathetic tone is a very important part of our arousal response. then we can be interacting with that nervous system and we can be working on pain-centered modalities in order to try and allow individuals to be able to participate in intercourse in order for individuals to be able to successfully, hopefully conceive. Where some individuals, and this is gonna be long, so I'm gonna try not to rant too much, where we're taking a bit too much of a stretch for where we are at in our opinion, is around the hypertonicity and what the hypertonicity of the pelvic floor is doing from a hospitable environment for fertility and saying, well, your body might not be ready. Let's talk about our vagina and our pelvic floor muscles and our cervix. Our pelvic floor muscles are here. Our cervix is here at the top. So once sperm has passed your cervix or has gotten through that, and you, I'm not saying that your penis goes past your cervix, but what I'm saying is when you are having that ejaculation, that the sperm is going to go up towards the cervix. Once you have passed that pelvic floor layer, the pelvic floor has nothing to do with our fertility, right? So that hypertonicity piece, likely has no impact outside of pain responses on successful fertilization of an egg, right? Because that sperm is gonna go up towards the cervix and sneak through to try and be able to ovulate that egg or to be able to fertilize that egg like really quickly and the muscles of the pelvic floor are not impeding sperm from getting there. So again, kind of coming full circle, like our role is in education and pain management from where our evidence stands right now. And if we are going into these areas of gray, we need to be mindful of our language. And then we need to really think critically about what do we truly think is going on? And is some of my manual therapy interacting with that nervous system, bringing that stress response down, getting us into more parasympathetic tone, or am I moving an organ? That's where we need to be critical and we need to be honest with our people. We talk about all the time with diastasis recti rehab that I cannot make any promises about what your belly looks like at rest because all of our interventions are when your belly is contracted. I can get you stronger. I'm going to be able to have more function. I'm going to be able to say this, this, and this, but I cannot promise you that your belly is going to look different or that it is going to look the way it did before pregnancy, nor would I really expect it to. I am very clear with that communication. We need to be mindful and do the same thing when we are thinking about our role in fertility. All right. That was a bit of a rant. I'm so sorry. I went a little bit long, but… This is really important. SUMMARY If you want to talk more about fertility, that is in our level two course, which means that you'll have to take our level one online course. Our next cohort, which sold out a couple of weeks ago, it starts today, which means that our next cohort is starting the week of April 30th. So if you are interested, let us know. Our next cohort of level two that's gonna dive into all this literature is in August. So take that level one, get into that level two, and I am so excited to be able to deep dive into these spaces a little bit more. All right, have a great week, everybody. Talk soon. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Learn about the strategy behind increasing training volume for athletes & patients, including why, when, and how to add extra volume. Discover the importance of purposeful training volume increase, smart approaches, and optimizing routines. Dive into real-life examples and tips for dedicated athletes looking to enhance performance and avoid overtraining.

Dr. Jeff Moore // #LeadershipThursday // www.ptonice.com In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Moore discusses the mindset behind how we respond to news & change: do we respond positively or negatively? Jeff challenges listeners to consider the many positive benefits to responding to change with a growth mindset, looking for the benefits to change rather than catastrophizing the downsides. Take a listen to the podcast episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog. If you're looking to learn more about courses designed to start your own practice, check out our Brick by Brick practice management course or our online physical therapy courses, check out our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION JEFF MOOREWhat's up, everybody? Welcome back to the PT on Ice Daily Show. I am Dr. Jeff Moore, currently serving as the CEO of Ice, and always thrilled to be here on Leadership Thursday, which is also a Gut Check Thursday. Remember, this is gonna be the last Gut Check Thursday that we have, because now the Open's gonna fire back up, so the workout for every week, of course, is going to be the Open. But if you wanna get in one more, it's relatively simple, starting from 500, 400 on the row, or it's just gonna be one time through for time. You're looking at 500-400 rower into 30 box jumps and 20 hang power cleans, 135-95. Then you're going to take down those reps across three rounds. So should be a relatively lighter load, pretty approachable. Good one to kind of keep moving as we get into some of the very challenging open workouts. I don't know about you all, I'm going to be doing mine today at 245, kind of right out of the gate. So mountain time, the announcement I think is noon. So I'm going to go right over to the gym at two o'clock. get warmed up and give it a go at 245. So I can't wait to see everybody's open adventures. Hopefully most of you got signed up and are going to see how you kind of stack up. Always important, right, to not run away when the measuring stick comes out. Get out there, do your best, see where you fall, and then look at over time if your consistency can't move you up in those rankings. So let us know, tag us, enjoy the journey. I will be starting mine here in a few short hours. ALTER YOUR REACTION TO NEW I have wanted to chat about this topic for months because of everything you can do in your growth and business interjectory. I think this one might be the most shockingly rapid as far as ensuring that your upward trajectory with whoever you're working for makes the steepest kind of hockey stick sort of climb. So let me explain. The episode is titled change this reflex and change your life. What it revolves around is altering your reaction to new. To new news specifically. altering the way that you compare to everybody else reacts to it. So I am in business, I am obsessed with asymmetry, okay? Where do you have it and where can you demonstrate it? The reason I'm obsessed with it is because it gets attention. And oftentimes, 90% of the battle is who can get somebody's attention. We are wired as creatures, we are wired to look for unexpected differences. That's what stops us in our tracks and makes us pay attention to something, right? I thought this was going to happen, but this happened. That generally speaking, is what gets a consumer's attention, it's what gets your boss's attention, it's what gets anybody's attention, because that's how human beings are wired. I thought this was going to happen, but this happened. Obviously, looking back evolutionarily, it's because that makes you safe, right? Things that aren't expected, things that are unusual, are usually worth paying attention to for survival. But for whatever, However, it came to be that can now be leveraged in the way that you move forward in both your career and your life What we're going to talk about specifically today is your response to change. YOUR RESPONSE TO CHANGE: GROWTH VS. SCARCITY So if you think about the importance of demonstrating asymmetry and you think about where you could demonstrate that that would matter, the number one spot that you could demonstrate asymmetry that would move the meter in the right direction would be your response to change. And the reason for that is because it's the one where it is so unusual to see a difference from a leadership perspective. Most people's response to change, and this is widely and universally known, right? Most, it's why they don't like it. Most people's response to change, the reflexive response is what am I losing? And that is deeply rooted in scarcity mindset, which most people have, which is why most people don't like change. It is relatively universally held that most people don't like change. And the reason for that is because their brains are rooted for scarcity. And so when something is changing, they always fear the worst. If you make an intentional habit to do the exact opposite, you will stand out in a way that I don't think that you could stand out more profoundly by making any other shift in your life or business. If you respond with what's the upside here. it will have massive downstream effects. THREE BENEFITS TO RESPONDING TO CHANGE POSITIVELY Let me just talk about the three biggest ones that will be immediate. If you can get your reflex response to change, to be positive, as opposed to, oh my gosh, what am I losing? Right off the bat, the first one is it will have a profound mental health uptick if you focus first on finding the positives, okay? Because, Wherever you start in anything, one of my favorite sayings in physical therapy is, wherever you start is where you wind up. Meaning, when you look at a lot of the big studies in PT, when people begin with a medical industrialized complex move, i.e. getting an MRI, getting higher level scans done, they tend to kind of stay stuck in the medical industrialized complex. But when they go to a provider that doesn't do those images, that doesn't offer those quote-unquote solutions, they tend to never go in that direction because they get moving and keep moving, things seem to resolve, and they stay in that lane. Because inertia drives so much about life. So wherever you start is where you tend to wind up. So why not start positive? Why not? I assure you, you'll figure out some of the downsides. Those won't escape anybody. We're wired to look for that. But why not start positive? Because now it's life's job to reveal enough to you to pull you away from that position. But it has work to do. So if every time a new thing or a change comes up, your reflex is, ooh, what's the upside here, right? What can I do with this? This could be really good. Now life needs to prove the opposite, to pull you away from that position, which is challenging because you've got momentum in that direction. Most people do the exact opposite, right? They start low, oh my gosh, oh no, what's gonna happen now? And now there has to be a lot of proof to pull them out of that negativity. If you start high, life has to prove to you that you should get pulled down, and oftentimes it can't. So right away, just by having a reflex where you're looking for the positive, the mental health trajectory is very real. Okay, number two, and probably now talking more about business, it will absolutely shock the person who's delivering the news in the best way. If your response, right, because leaders are always dreading sharing any news about change because most people being rooted in a scarcity mindset are going to begin peppering you about what they're losing or why things are going in the wrong before they've even thought it out. They're scared. They're nervous. Their reflex is negative. It's a lot of tough energy that comes at you when you're delivering change news to a group of people. If you're the person in that group that throws their hand up right away and says, Oh sweet. Does that mean that we can blank? If you don't think you've got the attention of that leader, you're crazy. First of all, you're the only person doing that. So already you are the asymmetry. And it's such a positive thing when the leader was expecting a negative response. And now you said, oh cool, does that open up this possibility? Or could we now do this? It will be as shocking as it is positive. So now you've got the attention of that leader and you've got them in an incredibly positive space. There is so much positive work that you can do from that position. And finally, third, and it usually builds off of number two, Looking for the positive reflexively and immediately places you in the best position to find it. With every single change comes new opportunity. Does not matter if it is at first perceived as a calamity, right? You think about big financial crashes. There are massive opportunities in every one of those calamities, right? But you have to be looking for it. If when things are moving and shaking and changing and the ground is shifting, if you're the person who's looking for in this new terrain, how can I now capitalize on variables that weren't present before? You have positioned yourself to find them first. Everyone's going to figure out the downside, but most people see the upside too late because they were consumed by the downside. So if you're the person who, when change is coming, you're looking for the upside, you're going to find it first. And now you've got the attention of leadership on you while you find the early opportunity and you are going to be on a trajectory that is so much quicker and faster than everybody else that when you telescope that out months or years, you obtain that position and thrive in it when other people are still figuring out why some of the change was good. Crew, things happen so fast in business and life. If you're the person who can gain positive attention from decision makers when change is happening, and you're the person that can see the opportunity that arises through change, and you put those two things together, you will move forward relative to your contemporaries at a staggering speed. Because the greatest asymmetry that you could ever demonstrate is being a person who has a reflexively positive response to change. When the entire world is rooted in scarcity mindset and thus has an immediately negative response to change. Enjoy better mental health and enjoy way more business success by making that one simple reflex change. SUMMARY PTOnIce.com, team. It's where all the courses live. Have an amazing Thursday. Enjoy the Open. I will certainly be reporting back on how it goes for me. It never goes overly well, but I will give it my absolute best. Enjoy, team. Have a great Thursday, great Friday, great weekend. Cheers. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Learn how to shift towards a fitness forward culture by showcasing progress, empowering patients, and mentoring colleagues. Explore the impact of aggressive messaging on relationships and discover strategies for creating a supportive fitness atmosphere. Find out how mentorship in healthcare can enhance patient care and performance through knowledge sharing and support.

In this podcast, Dr. Paul Killoren discusses the importance of palpation in dry needling, focusing on safety, accuracy, and effectiveness. He explores the role of palpation as a diagnostic criteria, emphasizes tissue control, and announces upcoming dry needling courses. Palpation is crucial for precise needle placement and distinguishes experienced practitioners.

Dr. Jessica Gingerich // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic faculty member Jess Gingerich discusses the sport-specific nature of gymnastics to the fitness athlete, introduces the strict pull-ups, considerations for when to modify, including the rack pull-up and box-assisted pull-up. Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog. If you're looking to learn more about our live pregnancy and postpartum physical therapy courses or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. Are you looking for more information on how to keep lifting weights while pregnant? Check out the ICE Pelvic bi-weekly newsletter! EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION JESSICA GINGERICH Good morning! Hello, my name is Dr. Jessica Gingrich. I am on faculty with the ice pelvic division here at ice. And today we are going to jump in to treating the pregnant athlete during gymnastics. So gymnastics is a broad term and it encompasses a lot of different movements that are utilized in a lot of different sports. So sports like gymnastics, kind of what we typically think of like with the beams and the floor routines and the uneven bars. That's what we typically think about. We also have cheerleading and we have yoga and trampoline, um, um, stuff, um, and CrossFit. So CrossFit is what we are going to focus on today. There are many movements in CrossFit that are under the term gymnastics. So we have pull-ups, we have handstands, we have toes-to-bar, we have muscle-ups, rope climbs, and even things like pistol squats are considered gymnastics. And of course these movements can be done either strict or kipping. The term gymnastics is defined as physical exercise used to develop and display strength, balance, and agility, especially those performed on or with an apparatus. You will see a lot of things on social media around the dangers of kipping movements within the sports of or in the movements of gymnastics. You may even think that yourself. And so what I want to do, I want to challenge you to reframe how you view kipping. So we're not going to talk about this today, the kipping, uh, any kipping movements. I'm going to talk about that next time I'm on the podcast, but I want you to start thinking about this because this is sports specific, right? So let that sit for a second. GYMNASTICS IS SPORTS-SPECIFIC FOR SOME PATIENTS We talk about sports specific as physical therapists all the time. So if you are talking to an athlete and you're talking about how dangerous and how funky it looks or whatever, it is part of their sport. And you see it in CrossFit and you also see it in gymnastics. We don't tell the baseball player or the baseball pitcher specifically to stop pitching, even though his arm goes through a really gnarly range of motion and kind of looks funky in those pictures once they're slowing down. What we do as physical therapists is we prepare them. We prepare them from a mobility perspective, a strength perspective. We talk about things like programming, sleep, nutrition, stress management, and we try to maximize their recovery so they can maximize their performance. So I wanted to mention this before we dive in to what we're going to talk about today, because I'm going to talk about it later. And then also during pregnancy, we also get that same language, right? We get the language around something being unsafe or dangerous, and it's simply just untrue. It's more about preparedness. So pregnancy does not mean that you have less of an athlete in front of you. So what does it mean for our pregnant athletes that want to come in and they want to continue doing gymnastics movements? THE STRICT PULL-UP So today we're gonna talk about specifically the pull-up, and even more specific, the strict pull-up. So first and foremost, we want to talk about points of performance. Whether your client listens to you or not with the points of performance, because you will run into that, that is something we should be teaching in our space. So the points of performance for a pull-up are your hands are just outside your shoulders, You have a full grip on the bar, so your thumb is wrapped, it's not here. And you start in a full hanging, full elbow extension position. And the movement is complete once you pull and your chin is over the bar. So, is pull-ups during pregnancy dangerous? No. Short answer and long answer, no. When coaching or modifying the pull-up, we want to consider those points of performance that I just talked about. We even want to consider having that athlete get into a hollow position, maintaining a hollow hang throughout the range of a pull-up. If your athlete just simply cannot do it, we modify. But if they can do it, and they are doing a strict pull-up, but they break the points of performance, then we also modify. Now, I know that a lot of you are thinking, what about coning? What about doming? What do we do when we see that? If your athlete is maintaining points of performance at any point or any modification, if you will, in a pull-up, so that is a strict pull-up, that's a band-assisted, that's a box-assisted, we're gonna talk about a couple of modifications. If they're breaking that point of performance in whatever modification they're using, then we further modify. CONSIDERING CONTINUING If they're maintaining their points of performance, but they're still coning, you may consider letting them continue. Now, all of you may be like, oh boy, that's not what we see. Right. However, that's where also when we program, when we talk about sleep and nutrition, all of this stuff comes together. So if you have someone who is, who is maintaining points of performance, but they're also coning, you're not going to necessarily say, Hey, go do a hundred pull-ups. That's where our skills and programming can also benefit these athletes. Remember that some of your athletes may have been able to do, these pregnant athletes may have been able to do a strict pull-up even one week ago during their pregnancy. So that can be incredibly frustrating when they come in and they're like, gosh, I could do this a week ago, what happened? Even five pounds of weight gain, if you've ever done a weighted pull-up, it's significantly harder. Now that weight gain is normal, but it's sometimes really difficult from a mental, physical, emotional perspective. But we want to still be able to give them the appropriate challenge. So their grip strength, their core strength is continued to, is able to continue to grow. So when we modify, we are encouraging movement. We are encouraging strength. we are encouraging that mental load, something where they can go to the gym and just like let the day go and not be even more frustrated by something they can't do. So now, before we go into the modifications, I will say I have had athletes that have maintained points of performance in strict pulling even well into their third trimester. So they keep going. We just let them go. We talk about symptoms to modify for, so if they're doing a pull-up and they're peeing in their pants on that pull, we wanna modify. If they're losing those points of performance, we wanna modify. Those who can't, when we modify, we really just wanna encourage the pull strength. When we talk about the strength, talk about grip and I've talked about core, I am lumping lats into core because I know some of you guys are thinking that. MODIFYING THE PULL-UP: THE RACK PULL-UP & BOX-ASSISTED PULL-UP So, two of my favorite pull modifications are the rack chin pull up in the box assisted pull up. So, where you're uh you got your feet assisted on the box. So, the rack chin pull up is going to be on a low bar or the child's pull-up bar. And so the athlete will stand and you want the bar just under their chin. Then they're going to hang from the bar and they're going to pull from that low bar, both feet on the ground. The box assisted pull-up is going to be the same setup, just with a box. Maybe they have to put a plate on top of the box and they'll stand up and their bar or their chin should be over the bar that they're doing their pull-up on. So the reason we love these is if you have a foot-assisted pull-up, you can use as much or as little assistance as you need in that moment. And if you haven't tried these, I'm gonna encourage you in your clinic or at the gym, try them. I've done these modifications for some shoulder stuff before, and they are hard. I am very sore after using these as a modification. And so this can be awesome. A really awesome, awesome modification. They're on the rig, they're feeling really good. With that box assisted, you can also use one foot instead of two. You can work on negative, so time under tension. They're really, really awesome. This will allow your athlete to continue pulling vertically instead of horizontally with a ring row at really any point in their pregnancy. They can use these as modifications in their workout. They can also use it as accessory work. They can do EMOMs, you can do anything with it. And so, as you go out this week, you've got your pregnant athlete, maybe you even have a postpartum athlete and they're wondering about pull-ups, try these modifications. They're hard, they're challenging. Do it with them so you can see what it feels like. Maintain those points of performance. Get that hollow position. and see how you do. SUMMARY So before I hop off, I'm gonna talk quickly about some of our upcoming courses. So our next online course is already sold out. So if you are wanting to hop on that course, head over to ptonice.com to sign up for our next one. It's gonna be April 29th is that start date. We are on the road this month. We'll be in Newark, California on March 2nd, and then Bismarck, North Dakota on March 9th. So we hope to see you out on the road. And like I said earlier, stay tuned for when I am on the podcast. Next, I'm going to talk about kidney and pull-ups during pregnancy. Have a great week. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

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