#PTonICE Podcast

Dr. Rachel Selina discusses using curved treadmills for gait analysis, including differences in metabolic output. She talks about the pros and cons of curved treadmills, the importance of prior exposure, and the limitations of using them for gait analysis and retraining. Exploring the usefulness of curved treadmills for assessing running mechanics and the benefits of combining treadmill analysis with overground observations.

Alan Fredendall // #LeadershipThursday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE COO Alan Fredendall discusses being wrong about dogmatic approaches to physical therapy, the harmful influence of technology on daily life, and long-term changes to the American healthcare system. Take a listen to the podcast episode or read the full transcription below. 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 00:00 ALAN FREDENDALL Team, good morning. Welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. Happy Thursday morning. I hope your morning is off to a fantastic start. My name is Alan. I'm happy to be your host today. Currently have the pleasure of serving as the Chief Operating Officer here at the Institute of Clinical Excellence and a faculty member in our fitness athlete division. We're here on Leadership Thursday. We talk all things practice management, small business ownership. Leadership Thursday means it is Gut Check Thursday as well. This week's Gut Check Thursday is a little test, Cooper's test in fact. This was a test created way back in 1968 by an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Cooper. He was a doctor in the Air Force and he wanted to figure out how to start to objectively assess the aerobic fitness of our military personnel, the Army and the Air Force, way back in 1968. This test is great. It has been studied a lot. It has a lot of normative data behind it. Very kind of similar to the six minute walk test that we use in the clinic with a lot of our patients to assess aerobic capacity. This is a 12 minute max distance run. Basically how far can you run in 12 minutes? So set a timer. The idea behind this test is that you would run it on a track or you would otherwise just basically run 12 minutes in a straight line. You don't want to end up running maybe in the CrossFit parking lot or the neighborhood where you have to turn and stop a lot. You really want to be able to pick up speed and stay at speed as long as possible. So make sure you're on a track. Make sure you're doing maybe six minutes out, six minutes back, or maybe 12 minutes straight out and then come on back with a walk. And then if you're on a treadmill, make sure you have the grade at 1% to imitate kind of the uneven nature of outdoor pavement. And then that's it. Figure out how far you ran in either meters or miles. There's some equations in the Instagram post to calculate, predict your VO2 max based on how far you ran. And then we've posted some normative tables as well. So this is a great test for ourselves. This is a great test for our athletes or patients as well to see how we stack up. So figure out Cooper's test. Yes, you can row it. You can bike it. Just be mindful that those are unloaded assessments of aerobic fitness so they don't quite translate directly to running. But as long as you retest under the same parameters, have at it with a biker row as well. Courses coming your way related directly to Leadership Thursday. Brick by brick, our practice management startup course starts again September 12th. That course just has one seat left. That's taught by yours truly. We cover everything you'll need to know about starting your physical therapy practice literally from step one of all the legal paperwork you'll need to figure out and file to get started. And then we get a little bit more into what it actually looks like to open and begin your practice. So that starts September 12th, one seat left. And then live courses I want to focus today on total spine thrust manipulation taught by our instructors Justin Dunaway, Jesse Witherington and Britt Lotteman. We have a couple courses coming your way through the end of the year. September 9th and 10th you can join Jesse down in Clearwater, Florida. September 16th and 17th you can join Britt out in Chicago. September 23rd and 24th Jesse again will be on the road this time in St. Mary's, Georgia kind of down in the southeast corner of Georgia by Savannah. October 7th and 8th, two chances to catch total spine thrust either in Columbia, South Carolina with Jesse or in Hendersonville, Tennessee right outside of Nashville with Justin Dunaway. November 4th and 5th Jesse will be out on the west coast, Simi Valley, California. And then two chances again in November before the end of the year November 18th and 19th. Britt will be on the road in Santa Rosa, California this time Northern California and Jesse will be in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So total spine thrusts coming your way. Today let's talk about this topic. So I do have some research to share with you regarding this topic but I really want to talk about the top three things I think I've been wrong about so far in my career. So we're going to talk about what it looks like to treat a comprehensive plan of care with a patient. We're going to talk about technology and we're going to talk about long-term changes to the health care system. 04:08 BEING WRONG ABOUT DOGMATIC APPROACHES TO PATIENT CARE So I want to start with talking about the kind of back and forth dogmatic guru battles that we see all day long on social media of manual therapy sucks, it doesn't do anything, you shouldn't do any manual therapy, if you do manual therapy you're committing malpractice. And then the far other side of that same continuum of if that's exercise only then the belief that manual therapy is the only thing we do that matters that we can somehow cure or fix patients with our hands, with our dry needling, our cupping, our spinal manipulation, whatever stuff we do with our hands. So two different kind of camps fighting and barking at each other on social media and then talking about the research supporting one side or the other or both or neither. So what I've realized and keep in mind I'm coming from a point where I have sat in both of these camps at different points in my career of coming into school as a background as an exercise physiologist, of having no way and no knowledge of how to put my hands on people because I was an exercise physiologist so my intervention, the only intervention allowed to me was exercise. So coming into grad school with a belief that exercise is medicine as taught by the American College of Sports Medicine and that exercise is the way that creates the long-term fix and that manual therapy has no value. So I certainly sat in that camp in the beginning of my PT school career and then I've sat in the other side of the campus while getting into PT school learning more about manual therapy residencies and fellowships and diving really deep into the weeds especially behind spinal manipulation and dry needling and going to the other side of manual therapy is one of the most robust tools we can offer and a little bit of exercise maybe at the end for the patient to keep up their progress in between but being very heavily in the manual therapy camp and holding the the previous belief that maybe folks who are in the exercise only camp are there just because they're not that good at manual therapy so I certainly held that belief for a while. Now I would say I'm in in neither camp and maybe not even in the middle of coming to the belief of the unfortunate belief that we just can't talk or exercise patients into better lifestyle choices no matter how much we have the answer of some sort of combination of both maybe one more than the other is needed for our patients depending on who they are and where they're at in kind of their health and fitness journey and this can be maybe I think the most frustrating part of being a physical therapist and being a health care provider in general of knowing the answer right of knowing that exercise and a solid nutrition plan go a very long way into helping you become and stay a healthy fit individual but that from time to time some hands-on treatment is needed so knowing knowing the answer walking the path but really unfortunately not being able to just give that to another person especially maybe a patient that at the beginning of their plan of care has no formal relationship with us yet. I myself have an unshakable belief that I will continue to probably encounter some minor musculoskeletal injuries within lines of statistical norms due to the impossible ability to balance a lot of different things essentially balancing workload versus recovery of there's going to be days where I don't sleep enough there's going to be days where I don't eat enough there's going to be days where maybe my training volume is higher than I wanted to be my overall life volume is going to be higher than I wanted to and otherwise I put myself at a greater risk for an injury and sometimes we'll actually encounter an injury so I believe that is just part of the journey of health and fitness. I also have an equally unshakable belief that the current meat suit that my brain sits in has been evolving and adapting to stress for over two million years and that it's a naturally resilient structure that's capable of healing itself from most injuries maybe not a car accident or getting hit by a bus but certainly encountering some shoulder pain or knee pain in the gym or out on the run or something like that so that's what I believe but it is hard to transfer that to another person that my third unshakable belief is that it does not matter how much I trust my own body how much I believe that the body can heal itself I can't just take that belief from my brain and put it into somebody else's brain no matter how much I want that to happen no matter how much I talk to that patient in front of me we just can't talk people better we can't talk people into better lifestyle choices we kind of have to show them and that can come from a couple of different angles that can come from having them do some manual therapy techniques maybe even self-manual therapy techniques that helps alleviate your own symptoms to help connect that stress recovery adaptation cycle maybe some exercises or maybe both but otherwise we we do need to show people that this this thing that I've been wrong about is that seeing is believing and 99 percent of people can't be talked better the interesting thing is we have more and more research supporting this now we have some fantastic articles coming out of the pain neuroscience education space that support this that we cannot just talk people better we cannot talk people out of pain we cannot talk people into being healthier we have to show them both by our own example but also by them seeing the success as well and part of that comes from showing them some sort of change manual therapy exercise based doesn't matter whatever you think the patient needs so they begin to buy in to I'm not broken I'm resilient my body can fix itself I don't need surgery I don't need an MRI I don't need pills but that we can't just talk that person better really fantastic article if you have not read it yet by shala and colleagues 2021 the journal of manual and manipulative therapy saying that same thing literally the title of the paper is can we talk patients better and the conclusion is no we can't that we need to combine these things and that the most successful interventions for pain are multimodal they involve yes education discussion of sleep and diet but they do also involve manual therapy and they do also involve exercise it's everything together it's and not or most physical therapy studies if you read the methodology if you read the inclusion and exclusion criteria and if you read and find out in these papers why they initially studied a thousand people but only 760 people completed the study what happened to those other people well yes people get busy yes people get injured or whatever else they drop out of the study but in a lot of these studies folks drop out because they're not getting better they are maybe even going to get care somewhere else outside of the research study which you can imagine creates a lot of confounding variables that makes us need to exclude that person's data from the study there's a lot of really cool research now looking at that of that if we do not offer hands-on care there seems to be a sub-population of people who will leave our care and go get it somewhere else that if you try to talk somebody better and you say i am not going to do anything hands-on because i'm going to make you addicted to manual therapy there are people who will leave your clinic and immediately go get a massage or go see a chiropractor or maybe go see another physical therapist they will go get the care they think they need somewhere else sometimes immediately after your appointment and we need to to be cognizant of that likewise there are people who believe that if there's nothing hands-on as far as doing exercise of them being hands-on that the therapy has less value and likewise they will leave your clinic and go get extra care somewhere else so we need to be cognizant of that as well i think often of i get my hair cut every three weeks on thursday afternoon i see the same stylist i've seen her for years now she has had what i believe to be a pretty gnarly case of achilles tendonopathy from overdoing it increasing run volume i see her i've seen her progression of having a soft brace on to having a walking boot to now having a full cast on of chasing down what she thinks is going to help her in the health care system even though she talks to me for about an hour every three weeks and i try to talk about anything i can to get her to try literally anything else except pills and casting and surgery and imaging and she still won't come down to my clinic to see me even though i've offered to treat her for free of i cannot take the beliefs in my mind and put them in somebody else's mind they have to come unfortunately to that conclusion on their own so being wrong about being able to talk people better about being able to exercise people better and more understanding and recognition as my career has gone on that i need to recognize that every single person who comes into the clinic is different they have different beliefs and i need to recognize what those are and address them accordingly some people may need to start with a bunch of front-loaded physical therapy some people may not like to be touched at all they don't want to do any manual therapy they only want to do exercise and maybe some sort of blend for folks in between. 04:08 THE DANGERS OF TOO MUCH TECHNOLOGY The second thing I've been wrong about is technology if you know me you probably have the belief in your mind that i am the biggest nerd you've ever met and i'm okay with that i grew up playing world of warcraft you can find me in my limited spare time probably trying to sneak in a video game or two every now and again so i'm certainly a giant fan of technology but as my career has gone on as i've gotten older i now have the belief that i think technology creates more problems than it solves the previous point was a great example of we would probably not have these dogmatic arguments and be so fervent in these different camps if we did not have technology to use to yell at each other from across the planet that the computer the internet the mobile device the whatever you're using has revolutionized humanity maybe for the better but i think nowadays more bad than good that having access to all the combined knowledge of our species is amazing but also being a button push or click away from constant contact with friends family frenemies work whatever can be really bad for us especially our mental health of you maybe you're this person maybe you are the spouse of this person or a friend of this person of that person who says did you see what so and so just posted this person is is my wife in our relationship of getting really upset at what other people put on social media and kind of letting it ruin your day and i think that happens a lot in modern society i think back to a question that i was asked very very early on and again i used to have the belief that more technology was better that we could talk other practitioners into better practice habits if we just argued with them on social media if we yelled at them on twitter and about nine years ago jeff moore saw me in an argument on twitter and just sent me a simple message that said hey do you think this is the best use of your time to advance the profession of physical therapy and obviously probably most things in our our life if we ask ourselves that question is this the best use of my time the answer is probably no but definitely to that question the answer was no definitely not and so i often ask myself that question a lot and what i've found over the years is that question and that answer that question takes me further and further away from engaging a lot on social media if you follow my social media now you see pictures of my son in my workouts and that's pretty much it right if far by far and large disengaged from physical therapy social media as a whole i don't listen to any podcasts anymore i listen to the news in the car and music when i work out and that's pretty much it so i've pushed technology away as i've gone through my career as i've gone through my life and i think i'm the better for it and i think having access to all of the gadgets that come along with technology is really doing us a disservice as well of i used to be a big proponent of whoop if you've listened to us here before if you've come to our fitness athlete classes you've heard us talk about whoop and other devices like that and likewise i think those cause more harm and good that having a constant stream of data letting us know you're not moving enough hey you need to move you need to exercise you're not eating enough you're not eating right you're not eating enough you're not sleeping enough you're drinking too much you're overeating this specific type of food i think those constant technological inputs into our life really set us up for a lot of unhappiness of folks who look at a whoop and think what if my resting heart rate is high because i had a beer last night what if it's low because i underate what if my respiratory rate is high because i'm sick what if i have coven 19 what if i have cove 23 what if i put strawberries up my butt would my fart smell better like we can what if this stuff to death and we i think we are doing that with our technology that i do think there is a sub-population of people who have to see that data that have to see whoop say hey every time you report drinking two or more beers you have an 18 reduction in your sleep quality i do think there is a group of people who need to be smacked in the face with that realization of again they can't be told that by somebody else a friend or a family member they have to be showing that objective empirical data but i also think there's an equal sub-population of people who will go completely insane festering about that stuff of worrying themselves to death about what does this data mean i shouldn't exercise today uh maybe i ate so wrong my resting heart rate my hrv is messed up i'm just gonna fast today or i'm not gonna work out for a week and they literally what if themselves to death about this stuff until probably the end result is that most of those people just ditch the gadgets i no longer wear a whoop i haven't wore one for many many years i have a pretty neat cassio g-shock this is a solar powered watch its only thing it does is tell time and then i have a fitbit which tracks my steps i try to hit 25 000 steps a day and that's it right i have no access to any sort of heart rate data or sleep data and i think i'm all the better for it so i think technology is really doing a disservice and i think the more we can intentionally disconnect from some of these data streams and communication streams we will find that we're a lot happier for doing so. 20:07 LONG-TERM CHANGES TO THE AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM My third belief is maybe a little bit pessimistic that i think unless something considerable changes with the american health care system i think the way that our health care system currently works is not going to alter significantly at least in our lifetimes that when we step back and zoom out and look at how a lot of stuff in our life is run they're run by for-profit companies the power company is a for-profit company the internet company is a for-profit company the health care clinic company is a for-profit company the insurance company is a for-profit company so we need to ask ourselves are we just victims of people trying to maximize profit and that's why we can't really seem to get ahead in a lot of big system changes and i think the answer that question is yes that's 70 percent of all americans still get their health insurance through their employer so they receive health insurance insurance from a for-profit employer that's run by a for-profit agency the insurance company that uses that insurance at a for-profit health care company so it's no wonder that we are trying to keep margins really narrow high profit low expense and at the end result the person that suffers is usually the health care provider and the patient while the overarching organizations post record profit after record profit year after year after year that both the input and output sides of the system have a vested interest in minimizing costs and maximizing profit and at some point we need to acknowledge and recognize that we also need to recognize acknowledge that with some exception health care providers are really uninvolved or minimally involved with the ownership and management usually of the business that they work for insurance companies are led by led by corporate executives and large health care systems are also led by corporate executives and if we look who sits in the leadership positions of a lot of these companies they're not health care providers they are investment bankers venture capitalists that sort of thing they're interested in profit it really starts to explain and i hope that this doesn't come off as a conspiracy theorist of why our outcomes are so poor despite how expensive our health care system is and that we really need to see big system changes if we're really going to make a dent in the issues that we have which is 90 of humans are sedentary 70 of of americans have chronic pain and we seem to be going backwards despite how hard we get up and go to work ourselves individually every day what do those changes need to look like i don't know i'm not i'm not a big picture person i'm kind of a logistics person but i think that's kind of the frustration that we all experience day to day of yes our individual patients are getting better but why are we still seeing people who got a knee replacement two days after going to see a provider about knee pain why have they not tried physical therapy first why have they not tried literally anything else first except getting booked right into surgery we feel those frustrations we wonder where those are coming from and it's no surprise i think it comes from our giant for-profit health care system as a whole so three things i've been wrong about been wrong about being on one side of the fence or the other the belief that we can talk or fix somebody with our hands or just help them with exercise only that we can take the beliefs in our mind about our bodies and the proper plan of care at least in our mind and put that into somebody else's brain been wrong about leveraging maybe too much technology especially both in personal and professional life and been wrong about the belief of really creating long-term systemic change in the health care system so i'd love to hear what you've been wrong about i'd love to hear questions comments discussion about this topic as well i hope you all have a fantastic thursday have fun with with cooper's tests if you're going to be at a live course this weekend enjoy yourself other than that have a great thursday bye everybody. 21:41 OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning into 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 cus from home check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at pt on ice.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 pt on ice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up

The podcast discusses the Modern Management of the Older Adult Division and its mission to improve care for older adults. They highlight the issue of underserving older adults in rehabilitation and fitness, and emphasize the importance of a fitness-forward approach. They also discuss combating ageism and under dosage in geriatric care by creating a community of clinicians and emphasizing the importance of their certification.

Dr. Mark Gallant // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Extremity Division Leader Mark Gallant debunks common myths surrounding the IT band. Mark emphasizes the importance of exercise in enhancing function. He mentions two types of exercises: local tissue exercises and functional activities. Local tissue exercises are designed to respect the irritability and stress levels of the tissues. These exercises may include variations of hinge movements, knee bends, or squats that are unloaded enough for the individual to handle. They provide a healthy stimulus to the tissues and help build strength and capacity. Functional activities, such as step downs, squats, and deadlifts, are also incorporated into the treatment plan. Mark explains that coaching these functional movements is crucial in helping the individual return to their normal activities. By gradually increasing the training volume and appropriately dosing the force, they can both manage symptoms and provide a beneficial stimulus to the tissues. Take a listen or check out the episode transcription below. If you're looking to learn more about our Extremity Management course 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. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION 00:00 INTRODUCTION Alright, what is up PT on ice crew? Hope you're doing well on this Tuesday morning. I'm Dr. Mark Gallant coming at you here on clinical Tuesday. Lead faculty of the extremity management division alongside Lindsey Huey and Eric Chaconis. Want to talk to you today about IT band syndrome and some common myths. Before we get into that, we've got a few upcoming courses. So I'll be in Amarillo, Texas, September 9th and 10th. So a lot of tickets flying off the shelves for that one. So make sure if you're in Texas and want to check us out on for extremity management, that you get some seats to that. And then the following weekend, I'll be in Cincinnati, Ohio at Onward Cincinnati. So love to see you out there for that one as well. Again, for any of the ice courses, if you have not already signed up for the ice course that you want for the fall of 2023, the courses that are on the website are the only courses that are going to be added for this year. So make sure make sure you hop on there and sign up as soon as you can. 02:38 COMMON ITB BANDS So IT band myth. So IT band syndrome is one of those syndromes that we had a lot of ideas that came out of research from the 70s, 60s, even early 80s that for whatever reason or another have stood the test of time and stayed in our profession for over 50 years. And that's influenced a lot of the way that we treat a lot of the common manual therapy we see, the interventions we see. And we've got a lot better research that's come out in the last 10, 15 years to direct us how to treat these these IT band patients. And so we want to look at that. This is not to bash the researchers that have come before us. So Renee and Ober and those folks that did a lot of the research in the 1970s. We owe everything we know now to them. And I sincerely hope in five years, six years, a lot of you are looking back at these podcasts and go, man, like all all the stuff that Mark was saying or his colleagues at ICE, it seems kind of silly now. That's what we want to happen. We want you all to take everything we're we're looking at now and make it way better over the next five or six years. So so thanks to Ober. Thanks for Renee. And now we can stand on their shoulders and really move forward. So what were some of the common myths that came out of that research in the 70s? Well, the first one is that the IT band, the iliotibial band track starts at the proximal hip with the TFL and glute. And then it has a very simple unidimensional insertion point at Gertie's tubercle. So one single insertional point for that big, massive iliotibial band structure. What we now know is that the the iliotibial band insertion point is actually quite more complex than that. It attaches at the tibia. It attaches at the lateral femoral condyle. It attaches to the patella. And not only does it attach at multiple sites, these attachments are firm. So so that that distal IT band is not really moving very much at all. The second myth is that the IT band is tight. That that iliotibial band is going to get tight and it's going to limit that person's hip adduction. What we now know is that the structures that are most commonly going to limit someone's adduction are the glute medius, the glute men and the joint capsule. So the IT band is rarely going to be the primary driver of limited adduction. And the TFL, the glute max, the structures that it attaches to are also not typically going to be the primary driver of adduction. What we then see is the third big myth that that iliotibial band syndrome is a pain dominant syndrome being caused by a friction of that iliotibial band rubbing along the lateral structures of the knee because it has a unit dimensional insertion point. Because that thing is tight that it's starting to rub. And that makes a lot of sense going after those those old ideas. Right. If you've got a certain kind of problem, you can go to the doctor's office and you can get a prescription. If you've got a single insertion point and there's extra force causing that that to be tight and it starts to rub, certainly we can see tissues being irritated because we now know that it's got a complex insertion that's really firm, that the IT band is rarely tight. What we now know is that the typical pain presentation is often being caused by repeated force due to an increase in volume change in that person's activity and the lack of frontal plane control. So the most common thing you're going to see is someone really picks up their volume of running. They've got they've got poor control over the hip, knee and ankle. And that knee starts to ping in when you get that at a really, really high volume, the opportunity for the lateral structures structures of the knee to become sensitized gets significantly increased. Another one we see it in is as folks who do a lot of downhill running, they increase their trail running their downhill running by by high volume. So you're getting a ton more load into those those structures and you're getting that lack of frontal plane control and those tissues are going to get irritated. So what are we going to do about that tissue irritation? So so like any other pathology that we're going to treat, our first step is to calm things down. We want to put out that fire initially. 05:30 CALMING DOWN TISSUE IRRITATION So with IT band syndrome, the primary thing that you're going to do to put out their fire is you're going to you're going to get control of their volume. All right, Chris, you were running 10 miles a day, five days a week. We're going to cut that down to five miles a day for three days and see if we can calm that tissue down. So it's rarely full on abstinence. Where we like to start is can we find that sweet spot where your symptoms are starting to calm down and we're still keeping you involved in your functional activity? So whether it's running Olympic lifting, whatever the activity may be, can we control the amount of load, the volume of force that's going into that system and get those symptoms to calm down? In addition, using using our manual therapy techniques to modulate pain. So you're dry needling, your myofascial decompression, your soft tissue mobilization. You're going to base these off irritability. If that person's high on their irritability, then we're often going to needle massage and cup tissues that are a little more distal to where the pain is at that lateral knee. So looking a lot at the glutes, maybe lower down on the ankle. And then as symptoms calm down, we can get at the tissues more more close to that knee, that tibialis anterior, the distal vastus lateralis, the short head of the biceps and really try to modulate people's our patient symptoms and and get those tissues a little healthier. From there at the same time, so we're not waiting until the pain modulation comes down, we're going to start doing some therapeutic exercise to get those tissues to tolerate load better. So we've got to strike that balance of we're trying to lower their symptoms and we want some healthy, good force to go into their tissues. So oftentimes that can be open chain exercises. So they're going to have typically a little less load on the tissue because you're not dealing with so many structures. You're not dealing with ground reaction forces. So keeping that that low to improve the overall tissue health and then progressing them into more closed chain exercises that are going to stimulate those tissues in a little bit closer environment to their typical activity. So things like hip hikes, closed chain clamshells, your side steps, all those sort of things. Then we want to get into some functional exercise. Can we get compound movements that are going to be close to the activity that that person is typically doing with those compound movements for IT band? We're looking at things like step downs, single leg squats, all of those type of activities. Kickstand deadlifts are another good one. 08:25 PT 1.0 & MOVING FORWARD Now we're PT 1.0. A thing that we did in our profession that we would like to move on from now is we said, OK, we're going to do our local tissue stuff. And when you get good enough at the local tissue stuff, then we're going to graduate you into doing these functional components. What we what we know now is we want to get all of this involved as early as possible so that we can influence the nervous system better and make that person less fearful of doing these these more challenging activities. So you're going to hit your local tissue exercises, respecting their irritability, respecting the amount of stress that that tissue can handle. And you're going to start doing variations of functional activities that they can tolerate again with their pain level, their irritability and their stress. So finding a hinge variation that's unloaded enough that the person can perform, finding a knee bend variation or squat variation, single leg squat variation that's unloaded enough that that individual can handle. So that's two components, local tissue with three components, pain modulation with our manual therapy, local tissue exercises to get some healthy stimulus into those tissues. Looking at a functional activity, squats, deadlifts, all those sort of things. All these are happening relatively at the same time. And then the fourth piece is looking at the activity that caused the problem. Was it running? Can we get them on the treadmill and do do a run a run gate analysis? Shout out to Jason, Megan and Rachel in the in the injured runner division. Can we look at their their Olympic lifting? Are they getting IT band syndrome because they started doing split jerks all the time and that position of their knees a little bit irritating? You know, the whole CMFA crew, can you really look at and coach well through a video analysis what that person is doing on their their Olympic lifting and start moving them forward there? So we're going to modulate the pain by controlling their volume. We're going to modulate the pain by using some manual therapy to influence the central nervous system to calm those tissues down. We're going to start exercising, getting good healthy stimulus while respecting irritability into the tissues through open chain and closed chain local tissue exercises. We're going to get a big functional movement, step down, squat, deadlift to start building robustness and capacity overall. And we're going to coach them on the functional activity that may have been the aggravating, whether that's running, downhill running or or their Olympic weightlifting. Now, what this does that's really cool is it positions you as a wildly unique provider to this individual. We are the only profession or one of few professions that are able to control that entire experience for that person. We've got the education where we can control their training volume. We can say, hey, look, I looked at your programming. Looks like you had a huge jump here and all of a sudden you're doing like three times the volume. Let's see if we can cut that back a bit. You can poke them with some needles. You can do massage. You can do myofascial decompression. You can do joint manipulation to calm that lateral knee down. You're the expert in local tissue exercise. You know, if I put this amount of force into this tissue and dose it appropriately, we can both keep symptoms calm down and give a good healthy stimulus to that tissue. You got to know how to coach the step down, the squat, the deadlift to get them back to their functional movements. And we've got to start getting better at being able to do those run gate analysis, video analysis for the big lifts, the Olympic lift, the squat, all those that we can really coach those well. And that will uniquely put you in a position to take that person through a whole plan of care and get them back to the things they love. That will really position you as the best possible guide. So again, to recap, IT band syndrome, we no longer believe that this is a friction based component because we now know that the IT band is firmly anchored to that lateral knee at the tibia, the femur and the patella. We know it's more of a volume increase and a lack of frontal plane control that's really irritating the system. If we can get that frontal plane control by getting a better step down, a better squat, better functional movement, use our local exercise to get better healthy stimulus into that lateral knee so those tissues can tolerate increased stress and improving our efficiency with the movements that we want to do, our running, our Olympic lifting, those sort of movements. Hope this helps. Love to discuss this more in the chat bar. Can't wait to see you all on the road in a few weeks. Hope you have a great rest of your Tuesday. 13:01 OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the P.T. 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 CUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at P.T. on Ice dot 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 P.T. on Ice dot com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Dr. Christina Prevett // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic Division Leader Christina Prevett breaks down two recent studies, one that is VERY new to challenge beliefs on prolapse, the pelvic floor and strength training. Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes. 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 00:00 INTRO Hey everyone, Alan here. Before we get into today's episode, I'd like to take a moment to introduce our show sponsor Jane. If you don't know about Jane, Jane is an all-in-one practice management software with features like online booking, scheduling, documentation, and a PCI-compliant payment solution. The time that you spend with your patients and clients is very valuable, and filling out forms during their appointment time can quickly take away from the time that you all have together. That's why the team at Jane has designed online intake forms that your patients can complete from the comfort of their own homes. And to help them remember to fill out their forms, Jane has your back, with a friendly email reminder sent 24 hours before their appointment. This means they arrive ready to start their appointment, and you can arrive ready to help. Jane's online intake forms are fully customizable to ensure you're collecting everything you need ahead of time, whether that's getting a credit card on file, insurance billing details, or a signed consent form. You can build out your intake forms from scratch or use templates from Jane's template library and customize it further to meet your practice needs. If you're interested in learning more, head on over to jane.app slash guide. Use the code ICEPT1MO at signup to receive a one-month grace period on your new account. Thanks everyone. Enjoy today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show. 01:22 CHRISTINA PREVETT Hello everybody and welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. My name is Christina Prevett. I am one of the team within our pelvic health division. If you are interested in learning more about our pelvic health division, we have a online newsletter that goes out every two weeks that focuses on the research, which I'm going to talk about today, in pelvic health. One of the things that is so exciting, but maybe a little bit overwhelming about being in public health and being in this area of exercise and rehab in the pelvic health space is that it is constantly changing. The research is coming out at a very fast pace, fast being relative because research is very slow, but we try and focus in on getting that research to your inboxes every two weeks. You can go to PTonICE.com slash resources and sign up for that newsletter. I am writing it this week and it goes out on Thursday. Also all of our online content, our next online cohort, and all of our upcoming live courses, our two-day live course is in that email newsletter. I hope that you all sign up to get all that research straight to your inbox. 02:48 ACUTE EFFECTS OF RESISTANCE TRAINING Today I'm going to be talking about a new study that came out of Carrie Bowes' lab, talking about the acute effects of resistance training on the pelvic floor. And so before I do that, I kind of want to set the stage for you all around some of the thoughts in pelvic health around heavy strength training. Where we have started this journey was that one of the risk factors for pelvic organ prolapse or descent of one or more of the vaginal walls towards the vaginal opening is that occupational heavy lifting. So individuals who lift heavy weights for their job, consistently lifting heavy weights, were shown to be at risk for more objective descent of one or more of those walls compared to those that didn't. And that because we didn't have any research on resistance training was extrapolated and said, well, maybe we shouldn't do any strenuous heavy lifting as females in order to mitigate or prevent the risk of pelvic organ prolapse from occurring. That was kind of the thought. Since then, we have really pushed back against that narrative and said, well, that doesn't really make a lot of sense because it's very different to go in for eight hours a day doing lifting versus, you know, the 30 to 90 minutes that individuals are doing. In your job, you can't control if you're feeling bad or feeling weak and just take a rest day or modify the way that you're doing your exercise. So again, there isn't really that comparison. 04:24 ACUTE CHANGES TO THE PELVIC FLOOR And now we're starting to get more and more research come out that's talking about kind of this acute change to the pelvic floor that we're seeing with different amounts of strength training or different types of strength training. So Carrie Bo came out with a study and what she was doing was she was taking individuals who were resistance trained. So on average, these were individuals who had never had kids. They were Nellie Parris. And so I never had a delivery and were trained resistance trained athletes. So they had on average about two years of experience. They were then put into a crossover design. So what that means was they took half the individuals and got them to strength train first and then took half the individuals and got them to rest first and then kind of compared. So what they were trying to look at was after a high load resistance training session, what was the impact on the pelvic floor? The thoughts were one of two camps. There's two camps in this space. One is that individuals who strenuously lift are going to have bigger pelvic floor muscles, stronger pelvic floor muscles. And the other is that it may actually create damage over time that they're going to see a big change in symptoms or change in vaginal descent. So you kind of have individuals in both of these camps and we're trying to figure out which hypothesis is correct. And so they took, they did a one rep max or a perceived or rate of perceived exertion that was very high in the squat and the deadlift on one day. And then they got them to come back the next day. So after that one rep max test, they kind of flushed out, let the body recover, came back in. Half the group started with a rest window. So took pelvic floor muscle strength measures at the beginning pre, then half of them rested and did a post and then half of them did a four by four strength training session between 75 and 85% of their one rep max on the squat and the deadlift with reps in reserve between one and three and then did a post assessment and then they flipped, they flipped them. So what they saw was that there was no big differences, no statistically significant differences between the rest pre post, but then also the resistance training pre post. And I think that's really interesting because one of the things that we kind of explain around our, our thoughts around heaviness or prolapse are things like that it's a fatigue issue or so maybe it isn't fatigue or maybe it is, but doing a supine assessment, which is our traditional way of conceptualizing pelvic floor muscle strengthening, isn't sufficient to look at this type of, of fatigue, like to really evaluate this type of fatigue in individuals who are experiencing these symptoms. So that was really interesting. The other thing was that, you know, they did see some individuals who complained of urinary incontinence in this sample around 28%, I believe. And so those individuals, the study wasn't powered enough to be able to subgroup those that experienced incontinence versus those that didn't, but there, what it was not just on individuals who were symptom free. I think that's a pro to this study because we can say, well, of course there isn't any fatigue or any downstream effects of individuals who've never experienced pelvic floor dysfunction, but that's not the case in this study. There was a significant cohort of these individuals who did experience leaking with lifting and the study just wasn't powered enough to subgroup this out. So the first step was to kind of take a full circle approach and say, was there any differences? And then the next step is going to say, is there any differences for individuals who do experience pelvic floor dysfunction versus those that don't? And then the next step is those that are multiparous or multiparous, like multiparous, we kind of, tomato, tomato, those who have had vaginal deliveries before or have given birth before vaginally versus those that haven't. And so this is kind of setting up this conversation around the way that we message things. So another study was done in 2016 and I just found it because it was in the discussion section of this paper around vaginal descent. So Carrie said the Bowe study was looking at pelvic floor muscle strengthening, pelvic floor muscle strength and assessment. 09:23 VAGINAL DESCENT AND EXERCISE The next question is around vaginal descent and are you more likely to experience symptoms of prolapse or heaviness post resistance training? And so this study was done in 2016, I believe it was published out of Janet Shaw and Ingrid lab that was looking at CrossFit athletes, those who experience, sorry, those who participate in strenuous exercise. So they got CrossFitters and they got them to do pre-post on the pop cue versus those that participate in non-strenuous exercise. So let's kind of break this study down too, because I think it's important. So in this second, this, I guess it was the first study, what the group from Nygaard and Shaw's lab did was they took individuals who were CrossFitters, got to check their pelvic floor muscle strength and the pop cues. The pop cue is an objective assessment of prolapse that has good reliability that looks at the different segments of the different walls of the vagina. And then as they do a strain maneuver, they see what the range of motion or the amount of each segment of each component of the wall are, and then create a grade based on the most amount of movement in whichever section of the vaginal wall that may be. So they took individuals who were CrossFitters and then they took individuals who participated in non-strenuous, non-high impact exercise and got them to come into the lab. And then the strenuous group was, they did a pelvic floor muscle strength exam and then the pop cue and then in the non-strenuous group, they did the same thing. And then they got the CrossFit group, the strenuous group to do a 20 minute AMRAP of sit-ups, heavy deadlifts. There was an impact movement in there and kind of went for 20 minutes. And then they got the non-strenuous group to do 20 minutes of an exercise of their choice at a self-selected pace. And then they did the pop cue again. Here's something that's really interesting. So the strenuous group was participating in CrossFit for over two years. They had an extensive history of strenuous exercise versus the non-strenuous group. And they kind of conceptualized this based on looking at what they did for exercise and the amount of loading in their bones to try and get some sort of measure of impact, which I thought was kind of brilliant. And they compared them. Strenuous group had done a lot more loading of their bones and musculature and therefore loading of their pelvic floor compared to the other group. And what they saw was that before their pre-exercise, descent in pelvic floor muscle strength was not different. Was not different. So this created preliminary research that the strength, individuals who are participating in strength training for several years, so it was like on average 22 months plus or minus, and they had to have at least, I think, a year of doing CrossFit regularly, three to four times per week to be able to get into the study in the first place, that there was no difference in vaginal descent. They had, there was no differences between the two. So that kind of goes against this argument that resistance training is going to cause a prolapse, resistance training in general for individuals who haven't had a vaginal birth yet. So I think that's interesting. And then post-partum, or post-exercise rather, they did see differences in descent in both groups. So both groups saw a difference in descent immediately post-exercise, which again, I think is really interesting because this does not support that resistance training and high impact is going to lead to prolapse down the line. Now again, we have a lot of work to do within this space. This was one study. I'm not going to just start shouting from the rooftops that all of a sudden, you know, we know all of the things that we need to know. I'm not saying that, but the fear focused language that is coming into this space around resistance training and avoiding Valsalva and all these types of things isn't founded objectively. So the other interesting thing was that there was only one individual, even though there was a change in descent, right? There was some changes pre-post-exercise and they didn't re, they didn't kind of follow them further and further forward. I would have loved to see them do multiple time points to see how long it took before that changed or kind of returned to baseline. There wasn't anything that, that was looking at what, what that change of symptoms were. 12:57 RESISTANCE TRAINING & PROLAPSE And there was only one person with subjective symptoms of prolapse. So again, we're, we're seeing this disconnect between objective signs and subjective experiences, which I think again is really interesting because we are focusing a lot on the grade, like what grade do you have? What grade do you have? And the evidence isn't really supporting that we, that should be our focus. If you are thinking surgical routes, if it is coming past the level of the Hymen, absolutely, because then we're going to say, is this impacting your quality of life? Is there sufficient imaging data to see that a surgery, for example, would be warranted? For individuals in the conservative space, again, we're, we're, we're questioning, does the objective signs matter? And, you know, we can't answer that question, but it is an interesting thought experiment and we're starting to have more evidence accumulate that, you know, there is a big disconnect. And yes, our body is going to change and show signs of fatigue with things like impact, but what's the cost benefit? What is the risk of telling people that they shouldn't be getting strong for their 60-year-old self, for their 70-year-old self, for their 85-year-old self, when we know that strength is such a huge, huge component of independence in later life? So it is so exciting, kind of going through Carrie Bowes where she didn't see any change in pelvic floor muscle strength to some of the research coming out of the Nygaard and Shaw lab that are talking about changes in pelvic organ support with heavy lifting and long-term heavy lifting. I think we're starting to get more and more data that the fear-focused messages aren't warranted, that we're going to start treating the symptoms and that we can expect changes to the pelvic floor when the pelvic floor gets a workout. Again, I don't think for anybody in the ice fitness forward community that that is necessarily a surprising finding, but it is definitely pushing some of the narratives in pelvic health and I think pushing them in a really necessary direction to try and change this narrative around the fear-focused language of resistance training in the pelvic floor. If you are interested in those studies, I'll post their DOIs below in the comment section. I am so excited to be talking about this research. Again, if you are a research nerd like me and you want to see the new studies that are coming out in this space, which these two studies are going to be in our newsletter this next week, I encourage you to go to ptonice.com slash resources to look for the pelvic newsletter. I am really excited to see some of the changes happening within our course and I just can't wait to continue connecting with you all about research in the pelvic health space. All right. Have a great day, everyone, and I will talk to you soon.  16:40 OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning into 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 CUs 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.

Dr. April Dominick // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic faculty member April Dominick discusses three postpartum physical scars that are often invisible to rehab providers. She explores how these scars can impact exercise prescription for clients in the early postpartum period. Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes. 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. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION 00:00 INTRO What's up everybody, we are back with another episode of the PT on Ice Daily Show. Before we jump in, let's chat about Jane for a moment as they are our sure sponsor and they make this thing possible. The team at Jane understands that payment processing can be complex, so they built in an integrated payment solution called Jane Payments to help make things as simple as possible so you can get paid. If you're looking for an easy way to navigate payments, here's what we recommend. Head over to jane.app slash payments, book a one on one demo with a member of Jane support team. This can give you a better sense of how Jane Payments can integrate with your practice several other popular features that Jane Payments supports like memberships with the option to automatically invoice and process your membership payments online. If you know you're ready to get started, you can sign up for Jane and make sure when you do, you use the code ICEPT1MO as that gives you a one month grace period while you settle in. Once you're in your new Jane account, you can flip the switch for Jane Payments at any time. Let the Jane team know if you need a hand with anything, they offer unlimited support and are always happy to jump in. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy today's show. 01:27 APRIL DOMINICK   Welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. Dr. April Dominic here. I am your host representing the ICE Pelvic Division. Today we'll focus on three postpartum physical scars that are often invisible to the rehab provider. We'll talk about how these scars can affect exercise prescription when it comes to working with a client who is early postpartum. But before we dive into that, let's chat about all things, updates and course offerings for the ICE Pelvic Division. If you're looking for a virtual option to learn all things fitness, athlete, pregnancy Our next Level 1 online cohorts starts September 5th. Otherwise, you can catch us on the road. We've got tons of courses coming up for this fall. And our next one is September 23rd and 24th in Scottsdale, Arizona. This is going to be with the lovely Dr. Alexis Morgan and Dr. Rachel Moore. This course is chock full of literature outlining the ins and outs of pelvic floor basics, pelvic floor dysfunction, the assessment for the pregnant or postpartum fitness athlete that includes an external exam or an internal exam option. We also have a lot of super fun labs that are going to cover core and c-section management. We also have tons of labs on reintroducing or continuing to use the barbell, do rig work and endurance exercise. Please go hop on PTONICE.com. Get yourself in one of our courses. We would love to see you there virtually or in person. 03:23 PHYSICAL SCARS POSTPARTUM Today I wanted to hop on and shed some light on physical scars that a postpartum body endures early on. These scars aren't always visible or front of mind for the rehab provider. So think about it like this. You may have someone who is coming in very early postpartum due to some sort of orthopedic injury like for their hip, their shoulder, maybe their back, or they may be coming in for core and pelvic floor work. So it's important for all of us to be aware of these scars as they heal and the role that they play early postpartum with movement and exercise prescription. So when someone is pregnant, there is usually some sort of baby bump or something that is a visible reminder to others of their condition that they are pregnant. Enter the postpartum period. For many postpartum folks, those visible reminders of pregnancy fade and the physical impact the labor and delivery on the body are invisible to others. When someone is postpartum, there's no physical sign that they and their body have gone through this incredibly challenging feat. There's no cast for like when we have for a broken bone. There's no crutches for that ankle sprain. There's no sling to support the wounds. Unless maybe they have their newborn with them, there's really no obvious physical sign that someone is recovering postpartum. So three invisible scars that we'll chat about today are the uterine scar, the perineal scar, and the lower abdominal scar from a cesarean section. Let's circle back to wound care from school. Remember for our healing stages, our tissue healing goes through four major stages. Starting with the first couple, the hemostasis and inflammatory stages. This is going to be a period of local swelling. Next, the proliferative stage. And that's going to be the stage focusing on covering and filling the wound. And then the remodeling stage is characterized by scar tissue formation, which this can last for a year or two, if not. So let's unpack those three major postpartum scars. The first, the uterine scar. I feel like this is the most invisible. It's as the name indicates, a wound on the uterus. And in terms of time to heal, the uterus typically involutes or returns back to its pre-pregnancy size that's smaller by six weeks. And muscles that may be impacted by this scar, by this wound on the uterus, would be indirectly the pelvic floor and the abdominals. In terms of considerations to return to movement when we're thinking about uterine healing, if someone does some physical activity and there is an increase in vaginal bleeding, then that is going to be a sign for regression that the uterus and body may not be ready for that specific intensity level of physical activity or the duration of physical activity. 07:33 PERINEAL SCARRING Our second scar is the perineal scar. In terms of where it is, it is on the perineum. And the perineum is the tissue that's between the vaginal opening and the anal opening. A perineal scar or injury may occur due to a large stretch on the tissue at the vaginal canal as the baby exits through that vaginal canal. In terms of time to heal, a majority of the stitches are dissolved by about two to four weeks. So there are two ways to tear the perineum. And that's either naturally or via an episiotomy. And that's going to be when the provider actually makes a cut in that perineal tissue. In terms of levels of severity of the perineal tear, there are four. The first degree is the licevier. It's small, skin deep. The second degree is going to involve the muscles of the perineum. The third degree is going to be a tear of the external anal sphincter. And that is what we use to keep poo in or keep poop out, like allow for defecation. And then the fourth degree tear is going to be the most severe. And that's going to be a tear that likely involves the internal anal sphincter, the external anal sphincter, and the rectal mucosa. One time I was talking to a group of OBs and one of them said, you know, we were talking about perineal tears. And one of them said, you know, the vagina is just simply remarkable. It gets to heal in real quick and nobody F's with that vaginal tissue. So that is the one good thing about perineal tears is that the vagina takes care of business. So muscles that are impacted by the perineal tear, the pelvic floor. And then when we're thinking about return to movement with someone with a perineal scar, movements that are wide-legged, like maybe a sumo squat or lateral lunge or really deep squat, there may be some discomfort at that perineum due to that stretch on the tissue in those wide positions. 09:01 C-SECTION SCARRING And then we have our C-section scar. So where is it? I'll talk about the most common cut that is done is called the bikini cut. And then it's about four to five inches long and it's stretched across the lower abdominals. In terms of time to heal, that's going to depend on various factors. But some scars start to close at the skin level as early as two weeks. And then we know by six weeks, generally speaking, the scar is fully healed if there are no complications. And that's about the same timeline that someone is likely returning back to their provider. Some complications with scarring may be hypertrophic scarring or keloid scarring. And the keloid scar is going to be when the body over heals and the scar tissue extends beyond the original boundaries of the wound. So we want to make sure that we are referring them back to their provider if that is the case, if we happen to see that scar on the client. We know that around six weeks, abdominal tissue has only regained about 50 percent of its tensile strength. And by six to seven months, it's approximately in the 75 percent range of its tensile strength pre-incision. And muscles that are impacted by this scar, the C-section scar, are going to be our abdominal group. So the rectus abdominis, internal-external obliques, and the transverse abdominis. 14:01 CORE-CENTRIC MOVEMENTS & EXERCISE In terms of considerations for return back to exercise specifically for a C-section scar, we're thinking we got to watch for that core heavy work, any sort of rig or gymnastics-based movements, or any lifting that may involve some sort of contact at the lower abdomen. So those are the scars. Now let's talk about two movement categories more in depth that may be affected by those scars. We have the return to exercise and then return to intimacy, which we'll dive into. So in terms of movement early postpartum, when dosed appropriately, it can assist in so many areas of recovery. We're talking reduction in postpartum depression risk or reduction in risk of blood clot, promoting tissue healing, promoting getting better sleep. That's just to name a few of why movement is important early postpartum. But when it comes to exercise, variables such as sleep and fuel not only influence the risk of injury and recovery, but they also directly relate to the energy status needed to participate in exercise. So sleep, we should be getting nosy and ask about sleep status. Be realistic and recognize that you're talking to a person with a newborn. So their sleep is going to look a little different given the newborn schedule. But we do want to make sure that the client in front of us is optimizing their sleep. Are they creating the best environment? Is it a cool environment? Can they make everything dark? Can they talk with our partner and be like, hey, I need this chunk of time for sleeping. Can you handle the baby while I do this? And then maybe they switch. In terms of fueling, are they able to nourish themselves with nutrient dense packed meals that are full of protein, packed with plants, reduced processed sugars that have sufficient calories, especially caloric intake is important, especially if someone is breastfeeding. They'll need about 400 to 500 extra calories. Okay, let's talk about return to exercise. Generally speaking, when we're talking about return to exercise for someone who's early postpartum, it's a great idea to start somewhere close to where they left off at the end of pregnancy and then build tolerance from there. Early postpartum, that's a time to determine the body's capacity for tolerating exercise. As a provider, it's helpful to have a conversation with our clients about ways we can manipulate exercise dosage to meet their current needs of their current physical status. These modifications are temporary. This is something that we want to communicate with them. We want to educate them on signs for regression with, hey, they did a certain workout or did certain exercise and then, hey, they experienced some leakage of urine or fecal matter. They had some pain or increased abdominal discomfort or vaginal heaviness. So we want them to communicate this to us so that we can then show them how we can alter a workout if needed through load, through adding rest intervals, maybe modifying the intensity or changing the volume and duration. That way they can still continue exercise without symptoms. So now let's talk about scar types and different types of exercise such as core, impact, or lifting. So during the early days and weeks postpartum, walking, reconnection with the core, the pelvic floor, and breathing is a really great place to start. This is going to be when we are starting to add in a little bit more after the first early days or a couple weeks. So with core-centric movements, as we move towards adding more intensity or load, we want to ensure that that abdominal incision is healed to avoid dehiscence. We can begin to experiment with its tolerance, with the anterior abdominal core walls tolerance to stretch in all planes, specifically going into extension, flexion, side bending both ways, rotation, a combination of all those movements. We want to be mindful of tolerance to pressure on the scar, whether that's pressure from simply just the workout clothes, or maybe they are baby wearing while they work out and they have some irritation there at the abdomen. Or maybe it's increased pressure at the abdomen from a set of dumbbells when they're doing a hip thruster, or when they slam down onto the floor with a burpee, or the rig or barbell making contact with the abdomen during gymnastics movements or lifts. With return to impact exercise, such as walking, running, or jumping, we want to be mindful that someone with a vaginal delivery and significant perineal tearing could experience an increase in their pelvic floor symptoms. Remember symptoms reported may be heaviness, vaginal bleeding from the uterine scar, or irritation of their perineum. And someone with a C-section could also experience these as well, but we're thinking that it may be more common with someone with a vaginal delivery or more likely to happen. So with return to impact, we're going to find their guidepost in terms of how much impact their body can tolerate, whether it's starting with a walk around the block, then adding a few more blocks each day, or if it is explosive calf raises, single unders, or step ups. And then for return to lifting, maybe we start with a PVC pipe, or a light kettlebell, or a barbell only movement. This is going to allow the client to re-familiarize themselves with the movement pattern, say of a clean or any sort of overhead press, and then they will be simultaneously building tolerance and in ranges of motion and load at their perineum and abdomen, where some of their scars may be. So return to any exercise will be person dependent, but knowing their history, mode of delivery, current symptoms, and scar status can help you guide them. And bonus, maybe this is a time that they slow down and dial in on foundational pieces of complex lifts or impact training. 18:07 PAIN WITH INTERCOURSE Besides return to exercise, we also have a different return to movement, and that is return to intimacy, specifically penetrative intercourse. Once cleared by their providers, return to penetrative intercourse, the postpartum person may run into difficulty tolerating that vaginal penetration. This could be from a finger, a toy, or a partner student, Natalia. So it's estimated that 43% of women report pain with intercourse in that first six months early postpartum. And this is something major that we should be thinking about when someone is maybe sharing with us things that are going on with penetrative intercourse for them. A C-section or perineal tear can contribute to painful intercourse. There's a greater risk associated with pain with intercourse with an episiotomy versus a natural perineal tear. Just as we would practice scar desensitization in any other part of the body, we're going to do the same here at the vagina. And a pelvic PT is going to be really great in assisting and making recommendations for internal massage, stretching, or using a dilator set. So let's recap. Today we talked about three main scars that a postpartum person may have. A uterine scar, a perineal scar, or an abdominal scar from a C-section. Remember to respect these healing timelines. They will be unique to each person. The next time you have a client who's early postpartum on your schedule, encourage them to start small. Go slow for returning to exercise and intimacy. Educate them on progressive overload and how that may not be a straight line for them. Maybe a series of peaks and valleys that are impacted by external factors such as sleep, fuel their body's current physical capacity. Communicate with them. Get curious about their invisible physical scars as they may not feel comfortable telling you and offering you that information that, Oh, they have pain at their vagina at the bottom of a deep squat or their abdominal incision site is really bothering them when they're doing a hollow hold or hanging from the bar. So they will no doubt be thankful if their provider considers these scars, asks about them, and because they're not often discussed. So thanks for tuning in, everyone. I hope you gain some awareness of these physical invisible scars that a postpartum person may be dealing with. Next episode, I'll be discussing the emotional invisible scars in the postpartum period. Cheers y'all. 20:28 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 CU's 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.

Dr. Mitch Babcock // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete faculty member Mitch Babcock discusses that consistency in the gym, combined with attention to lifestyle factors, can lead to significant rewards in terms of fitness and overall health. By being present and dedicated to regular training, individuals can see improvements in strength, conditioning, and cognitive function. Additionally, by addressing lifestyle habits such as sleep, nutrition, and alcohol consumption, individuals can further enhance their fitness journey and ultimately live longer, healthier lives. Take a listen to the episode or read the episode transcription below. If you're looking to learn from our Clinical Management of the Fitness Athlete division, check out our live physical therapy courses 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 00:00 INTRO Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show. Before we get started with today's episode, I just want to take a moment and talk about our show's sponsor, Jane. If you don't know about Jane, Jane is an all-in-one practice management software that offers a fully integrated payment solution called Jane Payments. Although the world of payment processing can be complex, Jane Payments was built to help make things as simple as possible to help you get paid, and it's very easy to get started. Here's how you can get started. Go on over to jane.app slash payments and book a one-on-one demo with a member of Jane's support team. This can give you a better sense of how Jane Payments can integrate with your practice by seeing some popular features in action. Once you know you're ready to get started, you can sign up for Jane. If you're following on the podcast, you can use the code ICEPT1MO for a one-month grace period while you get settled with your new account. Once you're in your new Jane account, you can flip the switch for Jane Payments at any time. Ideally, as soon as you get started, you can take advantage of Jane's time and money saving features. It only takes a few minutes and you can start processing online payments right away. Jane's promise to you is transparent rates and unlimited support from a team that truly cares. Find out more at jane.app slash physical therapy. Thanks everybody. Enjoy today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show. 01:26 MITCH BABCOCK Hey, welcome everybody. Welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to Fitness Athlete Friday. I'll be your host today. Mitch Babcock, lead faculty in the fitness athlete division, all things online and live course. And it's been a minute since I've been on the podcast. So I'm excited to be back joining all of you this morning. So thank you. First of all, if you're downloading us, listening to us on your way to work, if you're on live with us on Instagram or YouTube, thanks so much for making this part of your morning or your evening, whatever it is for you. And thanks for downloading wherever you download your podcast from. We always appreciate it. Don't forget we're the only daily physical therapy show on the market. So thank you for subscribing and liking and signing up for those automatic downloads. It really means a lot to the whole team here at ICE. Before we jump into today's topic, which is post CrossFit Games for the rest of us. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about some of the courses that we have coming up for the live division. We have a very busy September in October and even leading into November and a couple courses in December. So looking at Q3, Q4, we've got quite a bit on the books. The fitness athlete team as a whole was a little quiet through the summer. As our team, many of us on the lead faculty, not us, but others on the lead faculty, welcomed some new additions to their family or kind of spending some time at home. So the summer months were a little quiet and we're excited to ramp up on the road here in Q3 and Q4. So you can find us all over. Zach's going to be out in the Bay Area here in September. The end of September you can find him out in California. I'm going to be out in Seattle, just north of Seattle in Linwood with Joe as well. We got a course in British Columbia coming up, Alabama, San Antonio, Florida, New Orleans, Colorado Springs. We're hitting some big cities and covering a large part of the map this fall. So if I just named off any cities, your cities or near you, please check those out on the PTA On Ice website. We'd love to see you at one of the live courses. 02:16 POST CROSSFIT GAMES All right, let's get into today's show, shall we? If you didn't tune in last week to Kelly Benfey's episode on her post CrossFit Games Reflections, you should definitely do that. CrossFit fan or not, whether you train this stuff or not, you need to understand the level at which Kelly is at in humbly speaking herself. She's not going to give as much credit as she deserves. Making it to the CrossFit Games is a feat 99.9% of people that participate in CrossFit will never achieve. You can be pretty good at CrossFit. You know, you could be pretty good at pickup basketball, but you're not going to make the squad and play with the Lakers. You know, like that's kind of the comparison of which we're dealing with now in the CrossFit sector. And so for us to have someone like Kelly, who's went there, who's done that, who's trained at the highest level, who's rubbed elbows with the best of the best in the game and to get some reflections from her, it's worth the 10 or 15 minutes about what it's like behind the scenes. So great episode, Kelly. But today I want to talk about after the games, what about the rest of us that just train this stuff because we like it? We want to stay healthy and fit. We enjoy getting stronger, but we also have nine to five jobs. We also have families, husbands, wives, kids. We got to shuttle kids off to soccer practice. Maybe I coach the soccer team, right? What is what does it look like setting and reframing goals after the CrossFit Games for the rest of us? Because we still want to be motivated. We still want to be inspired. We watch the games and we see what's out there and we see what people are capable of and and all of that is fun and it's all a great part of the sport. But when it's our time to take the floor, it's important to reframe those goals and context and the things that matter to us and are achievable to what we can set our sights for over the next six, nine or 12 months. And that's really what I want to focus today on. 04:35 SETTING & REFRAMING GOALS What can you reasonably achieve in the next six to nine months or even set your sights on before the next open rolls around? Because we know we're going to throw the hat in the ring and do the open. You know, what are some realistic goals, realistic goals that are going to turn into real change in your health and fitness and overall well-being? And that's ultimately what we're doing this for. We're not most of us aren't going to make the games. Hat tip to Kelly for putting in a ton of work over the last five to 10 years, probably to get to that point where she was able to make the games. But for the rest of us, we're looking to check that box. We're looking to do it safely and effectively and making sure that when we come out the other end, we come out unharmed and we come out healthier and a better person after doing the training than when we started. So here's some goals that I have for you today for post CrossFit Games goals for the rest of us. What part of your training really behooves you to spend time training? 06:30 INVESTING IN FOUNDATIONAL STRENGTH And what I mean by that is strength and monostructural conditioning work. It's really going to benefit you long term to invest hours weekly daily into getting stronger. So I want you to set a goal to try to put 30 pounds on your deadlift over the next year, to try to put 20 pounds on your back squat and to try to put five to 10 pounds on your strict overhead press. Those are realistic goals that are going to require you to train those movements consistently. And because you're training the foundational strength movements, the squat, the deadlift, all of your other movements will then reap a reward from having done so. Your clean and jerk, your front squat are going to benefit from your back squat being trained regularly. All your Olympic lifts and all your other movements are going to benefit from you training your deadlift frequently. Your shoulders are going to be healthier from having done more strict press. So set some realistic goals. I'm going to put 30 pounds on my deadlift, 20 on my back squat, 10 on my overhead press And that's going to require me to make sure that I'm hitting those boxes week in and week out over the next handful of weeks, months, and the better part of the next year. So it really is helpful that you spend time working on the foundational strength. The other thing that's going to benefit you for your gymnastics movements. So spend time benefiting or getting increased reps or getting your first rep of a strict pull up. Many of you in the CrossFit space are still gung ho about your kipping pull ups, your toes to bar technique, all these other things. I want to bar muscle up, but you haven't laid the foundation with the strict pull up yet. You need to stay there. Over the next six or nine months, can you add one or two reps on your max strict pull up? Can you get your first strict pull up by going through a beginning strict pull up progression and over the next six months, get your first strict pull up. Those are going to be big rewards for your long term health in fitness training. The same thing with your push ups. We in the CrossFit space, those of us that coach a bunch, boy, we're used to seeing a lot of crappy push ups, right? Poor midline stability, we can't hold a good plank position, we don't have a strong shoulder position to be able to press out of the end range of extension, and we have athletes wanting to bang out a lot of reps and not even one of them looks solid. So spend time mastering your strict pull up and your strict push up. You're going to be a better athlete and your fitness will reflect that if you do. Master a skill over the next six to nine months. Get better at double unders. Figure out how to climb a rope, right? Finally take some coaching advice from your team at your gym and figure out how to put down a new skill. There's a lot of reward that goes into the neural motor, the coordination, all of the things that come together to allow you to build and develop a new skill. And if there's one that you've been putting off, because let's face it, your ego is kind of getting in the way, you don't like to look like you can't do the thing so you just scale out of it a lot, spend time over the next six months and learn that skill. Just one, pick one. I want to get better at double unders, I want to be able to do 20 unbroken double unders. Cool. Over the next six months you're going to attack that and that's going to be a goal that's going to elevate your fitness long term. You're going to have that skill for a long time and you're going to be able to use that skill in a lot of workouts coming up. So spend a couple of weeks, a couple of months and develop a new skill. And then your model structural work. 10:06 LONG DURATION ZONE TWO WORK Add in one day a week where you're adding in some longer duration zone two, you know, longer duration stuff on the bike or the rower going out for a long paced run. Like we don't do enough of that. And every single expert in the space says from a longevity standpoint, it is so key from a health standpoint, from a fitness standpoint, it is so key that we get more long duration zone two work in. And now some of the research, some of the leading experts are saying 60 to 90 minutes, 120 minutes a week. Look just start easy with one day a week where you stretch it out more than 20 minutes. I mean low hanging fruit one day a week. I need to do a long duration piece that's more than 20 minutes. If we can check that, then we'll start talking about increasing the model structural workload and be able to increase that more. But that's a foundational component to your fitness. That's on the base of the CrossFit hierarchy pyramid that says, hey, we need to be really good at metabolic conditioning. And when we have a better aerobic base, everything else steps up above that. So build that aerobic base. Add in one day a week of model structural work zone two on a bike, on an erg, on a runner and stretch it out more than 20 minutes. So you're prioritizing strength. You're working on a skill. You're getting better at your foundational gymnastics movements and you're adding in some longer aerobic work. 20 minutes one day a week. 13:21 MORE CONSISTENCY IN THE GYM From a class perspective, I would just say it ain't volume. It's not loading that's going to make the difference for you. You don't need to be lifting heavier weights and metcons. You just need to be present more frequently. Just be more consistent. If you normally make it three days a week, try to make it four. If you normally make it four, can you make it five? Can you just add one more day a week making it to the gym? Can you slide in that little Saturday morning class that you typically skip out on? Because you're going to see big rewards coming by just simply the consistency in the gym. You don't have to do anything heroic. You're just more consistent. You're getting five sessions instead of four. And week after week, that aggregates into a lot more training sessions at the end of the year. So bump it one day a week. If you have other skills that are going to make you a much better athlete six, nine, 12 months from now, set a bedtime and actually stick to it. Get the water intake that you need and try to reduce the alcohol. Can we go 30 days with no alcohol and just see what that does for your overall health? See what it does for your sleep, your concentration, see what it does for your overall training, your fitness in the gym? How much sharper am I cognitively when I'm at work? Measure all those things after 30 days of no alcohol. If you make it 30, can you make it 60 days no alcohol? 60, can I go 90 days no alcohol? And just start aggregating these days of optimizing all the little details that you can. And you're going to see such big rewards on your fitness. They're little challenges. They're hard ones. They're not easy, but they're ones that we can bite off and actually stick to for a month, make one month into two months, make two months into three months. The majority of us don't need a new competitors program. We finished watching the CrossFit Games and everybody's selling their hard work pays off, their Matt Frazier program, the new Mayhem Rich Froning style stuff. And while all those are great programs, for most of us, that's not what we need. We don't need additional loading. We don't need more volume or longer duration workouts. What we really need is more consistency in the gym. We need to get stronger at the things that matter and we need a better conditioning, a better engine to be able to do more things. And then the lifestyle stuff comes along with that. We're going to be one hour in the gym and the 23 hours out of the gym. What are we doing with the 23 hours out of the gym? Can I set a bedtime? Can I get better sleep quality? Can I eat better? Can I reduce my alcohol consumption? All of those little details that will stack up and aggregate over a year or six months or nine months into a much fitter version of yourself. The stronger and healthier you get, the longer you're going to live. And ultimately that needs to be all of our game plan. Why are we doing this? The oldest, not the oldest member, the most tenured member of my gym, we call him the Godfather just for that reason, says all the time, I'm just trying to still be doing CrossFit when I'm 70. Like every decision he makes in the gym day by day, he keeps that greater focus. He's not coming into the gym saying this is the year I make it to the games. He's coming into the gym every day saying, I need to make a decision that's right today so that I can still be doing CrossFit when I'm 70. Because I know that if I'm still doing CrossFit when I'm 70, I can be doing all the things in my retirement that I want to be doing. So keep the long term vision in play. We're looking to be able to do this over a lifespan. Stretch out and increase your lifespan, the number of healthy, good years you're living. That's what ultimately this is all about for us. So here's some small actionable goals that people like you and me can really bite off and really set our sights on over the next six or 12 months. Throw our hat in the ring when the Open comes around next year and say, hey, you know what, because I put that work in starting in August, I'm really a much better version of myself now in February. Comment below if one of these, if you've got a goal that we listed off and you're like, look, I need to jump on that. Drop a comment below whether that's YouTube, whether that's Instagram, whether that's on a podcast format. Let us know. Reach out to us. And then as always, if you need help with any of these things, that's what we're here for. So talking about all things lifestyle related in our live course as well. Excited to see those of you that are going to make it for your first time out at one of those courses. We're hitting the road heavy this fall. So looking to see you guys out there. In the meantime, if you're training today, have a great session. Get some caffeine in you and ramp it up. I will see you guys out on the road very soon. Have a great day, everyone. 15:56 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 CUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at PT on Ice dot 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 PT on Ice dot com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Alan Fredendall // #LeadershipThursday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE COO Alan Fredendall discusses average arrival rates in physical therapy, what the research says about how to improve arrival rates, leveraging technology to improve arrival rates, and creating policies & systems that ensure your clinic still gets paid for missed appointments. Take a listen to the podcast episode or read the full transcription below. 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 00:00 ALAN FREDENDALL Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the PT on ICE daily show. Happy Thursday morning. Hope your morning is off to a great start. My name is Alan. I'm happy to be your host today. Currently have the pleasure of serving as the chief operating officer here at ICE and the faculty member on our fitness athlete division. We're here on Thursdays. We talk all things leadership Thursday, small business ownership, practice management, that sort of thing. Leadership Thursday also means it is gut check Thursday. This week we have a 17 minute AMRAP, as many rounds and reps as possible in 17 minutes of the following 21 plate ground to overhead. Our Rx weight there for guys 45 for ladies 25. So grabbing a bumper plate, hinging down, tapping one side of the plate between your feet and then up and over overhead, almost like a snatch. Moving into 15 cows on the rower for guys 12 for ladies and then finishing with a small dose nine burpees to plate. So looking for somewhere between three to five rounds of that great workout for home, the garage, the basement, the clinic. Just need a rower and a bumper plate. Great to maybe take out to the park as well and sub the row for some running or something like that. So that is gut check Thursday. Course is coming your way. We have so many about to enter a very, very busy season for ICE here as we get into the fall, get away from the summer, school starts back up, that sort of thing. We have a couple hundred courses coming your way between now and the end of the year. So if you're looking for live courses, head on over to p10ice.com, click on our courses and check out our map to see what's coming to your neck of the woods. Some online courses I want to highlight. Pretty much all of our entire catalog of eight week online courses are starting back up after Labor Day. So if you don't know about our online courses, they are eight weeks online. They are synchronous, which means that you meet with us every week. They are not completely self study, a mixture of lecture, of reading, of homework and of live meetups. They're meant to simulate the feeling of a two day live course, but stretched across eight weeks to make it a little bit more accessible, save you a little bit of money on travel. So online courses, pretty much like I said, all of them are starting after Labor Day. We have ICE Pelvic Online. That's our entry level online pregnancy and postpartum course. That's going to start September 4th. We have Fitness Athlete Essential Foundations taught by yours truly Mitch Babcock, Kelly Benfee and Guillermo Contreras. That's going to start September 11th. The very next day, September 12th, Brick by Brick is going to start very relevant course to this day of the week to Thursdays. We talk all things practice, startup and ownership and management in that course. Injured Runner Online also starts September 12th and then Virtual ICE will open back up September 26th for our next quarter of enrollment. So let's get into today's topic. Let's talk about how do we handle, how do we get better at when a patient reschedules, cancels or no shows. I want to talk today about three main topics. I'm going to talk about what are the average no show cancellation rates, what we would call an arrival rate across the country, across physical therapy, what's normal, what's abnormal. I want to talk about how to improve those arrival rates. And then I want to talk about how to get paid when somebody does not show up for those appointments. 05:46 ARRIVAL RATES IN PHYSICAL THERAPY So let's start at the beginning and let's talk about what is a normal rate. If you have been practicing physical therapy for a while, if you have been practicing in a traditional clinic, you may have heard that the common recommendation for the maximum arrival rate is about 93%. That is to say that 93% of your appointments show up for their appointment that day. That there's some margin of error. We recognize that 100% of people probably won't make it, but pretty typical. 93% is the standard that's set and sometimes enforced by the clinic that you work for. Maybe if you fall below that, maybe you get a warning, maybe you get a talking to, or maybe they actually dock your pay for visits underneath that 93%. What's awesome about this topic is that we actually have a lot of research, surprisingly, supporting the numbers that I'm about to tell you. So we have a great survey back from 2015 of about 7,000 outpatient physical therapists. This is from Bo Kinski and colleagues, sorry if I mispronounced this, of 7,000 outpatient PT's looking at a couple of different things. Looking at finding the average cancellation no-show rate, but also finding what things seem to help fix that. So across the country, we see an average no-show cancellation rate of actually about 10 to 14%. So thinking you may have been told 93% is the gold standard, in reality, somewhere between 85 to 90% is actually probably more realistic. If you had 10 patients scheduled for the day, you could expect maybe eight of them to show up for the appointment. You could expect maybe one to two appointments to be unfilled. I like this survey because it goes a couple levels deeper. It asks why. Now knowing that rate, knowing that 10 to 14% rate, why do people not show up for the appointment? What is the number one cause? The number one reason why patients do not attend their appointment is not that they can't afford it, not that they don't like you, it's that they forgot and that the clinic that they went to physical therapy to had no reminder system. So that's a huge error, that's a very easy fix. When we delineate outpatient physical therapy from hospital-based outpatient physical therapy, so private practice versus hospital-based, we see that hospital-based clinics actually the no-show cancellation rate of a private practice clinic. Why is that? I would imagine it's probably due to having a modern reminder system, but again, that number of 93% isn't the gold standard that we think it is. In private practice, we can expect maybe 85 to 90% arrival rate, a little bit lower in hospital-based, maybe 75 to 80% arrival rate. Now this survey looked at the concept of a multi-method reminder system. What does that mean? That means that the patient received multiple reminders across multiple communication methods. That they usually received some sort of automated phone call reminding them of their appointment. They received probably a text message and then maybe also an email message. So they received two to three different reminders ahead of their appointment across different modalities, basically reminding the patient as much as possible of their upcoming appointment. Now they found that those clinics that used a multi-method reminder system had a significant reduction in no-show cancellation rates, about a 50% reduction. So they cut their no-show cancellation rate in half just by having a reminder system. And we're going to talk about how to set that up at your clinic here in a minute. The second reason that clinics did better with no-show cancellation rate was those clinics who had a 24-hour appointment change policy. That is inside of 24 hours, you will be penalized if you cancel or reschedule or no-show your appointment versus if you give more than a 24-hour notice that you need to reschedule your appointment or otherwise cancel it. So those clinics which had a 24-hour policy and enforced that policy on their patients also had a reduction in their no-show cancellation rate. So that brings us to the question of if 10 to 14% is the mean of the average of no-show cancellation rates across the country, then how realistic is 7%? The answer is not very, right? Even if you are treating one-on-one for an hour and you maybe only have eight patients on your caseload for the day, it's probably unrealistic to expect 100% of those people to show up every day. That we have to recognize at some level that the reason we see so much overbooking in traditional physical therapy clinics is it's just that leadership strategy to limit the impact of those inevitable no-show cancellation rates. That if you see eight patients in a day and 10 to 15% don't make it, you may see five to seven patients. So kind of the aggressive leadership solution here is just to make you see more patients. That if you see twice as many patients and you still have that 10 to 15% no-show cancellation rate, then you'll still see more patients than originally intended and scheduled to and the clinic won't lose as much profit. But that being said, that is an aggressive way. That is a way that puts all of the burden of the work on the therapist and none of it on the ownership, none of it on the leadership and none of it kind of on the backend logistical side of the clinic. Instead of making you see more patients, why don't we just have a 24-hour policy that we enforce? And if we're not using a reminder system, why don't we start using one? Why don't we do some more conservative approaches to reduce that no-show cancellation rate, especially now knowing that we have research that supports, does those actually improve our no-show cancellation rates? So let's talk about that. 08:48 IMPROVING ARRIVAL RATES Let's talk about aside from having a reminder system, aside from strategies to remind patients to get to the clinic and aside from having a policy, how can we approve improve those arrival rates? You know us here at ICE, if you've been listening to us for a while, Jeff Moore, our CEO says it best. The first thing you can do to make patients show up to physical therapy more is make sure that you're focused on getting good and not getting busy. That when people see results, when they begin to associate value with their physical therapy appointment, they come to their appointment more often. I think this is so overlooked, especially in a higher volume clinic where a therapist may be expected to see multiple patients per hour. By providing lower quality care, patients aren't able to get results or they're not able to get results as fast as maybe they want to. They don't really associate physical therapy as a valuable use of their time and it makes sense that they find better stuff to do and that you get that message at 4.55 p.m. that your 5 p.m. patient is not going to make it in today. So really focus on getting good, not getting busy. We also need to recognize that people are not stupid. When they show up to PT and they see that you are working with three other people at the same time and you have forgotten about them in the corner at the TheraBand station or on the recumbent bike or the pulleys, again, that really begins to lower the value proposition that patients have with physical therapy and it's not surprising again that they begin to find better stuff to do with that hour of their time. The counter argument here is that you can get so good as a physical therapist, I'm good enough that I can see multiple patients at once or patients aren't as fragile as we think. We don't need to give them one-on-one care, but we need to recognize that at some level, patients are paying for it, especially if they're paying cash for a one-on-one visit. They are expecting one-on-one treatment. Even if you are an insurance-based clinic and using a patient's insurance, that insurance is still paying you based on one-on-one care. And not only that, but the patient expectation is that you are going to give them the care that they need. And I often relate this to other professions of you would lose your mind if you had a therapy appointment with a psychologist, a mental therapy appointment, if you showed up and there were three other people getting mental health therapy at the same time as you. No one would put up with that, but for some reason, it's just expected and normalized that that's the kind of care that we give in physical therapy. So then it's no wonder that patients, again, find something better to do with their time for the hour. So really focus on getting good and not getting busy, of taking really quality care of that patient that you have on your schedule for that hour. And you'll be surprised how much they come back to physical therapy when they see their range of motion improving, when they see their balance improving, when they feel stronger, when their pain is getting better, whatever their goals are, as they can see progress towards their goals, it's much more likely that they're going to come back to physical therapy. And I think that is often overlooked. My second point with improving arrival rates is to leverage technology, implement that multi-method reminder system. It's 2023. There is no reason why your clinic does not have automated reminders, text, email, phone, whatever. It's all built in to a modern EMR. If your EMR does not do this, you need to get an EMR that does this. If your front desk person is still calling people by hand to remind them of their appointment, you're a little bit behind the curve, right? to do the work for you so that you can focus on treating your patients while the technology sends out those reminders for you. We need to recognize that people are busy and that the more we can be prominent in front of mind with reminders, the more likely people are to attend their appointments. We have research that supports this, right? We can cut these no-show cancellation rates in half with a multi-method reminder system, but also it gives the patient a chance to reschedule if they know they already can't make it, right? That text reminder, when they get that phone call, when they get that email, it gives them multiple chances to reschedule. And if they don't, it also kind of builds the case for you against them that you gave them plenty of chances to reschedule and they still did not. And that makes it a little bit easier to charge them money, which we'll talk about in a few seconds here. So remember, we can cut that rate in half, that no-show cancellation rate in half with a multi-method reminder system. So if you're still using Google Drive as your EMR, if you're still using paper documentation and scanning it into a computer, consider getting a modern EMR. They're not that expensive. EMRs, we're big fans of Jane here, obviously, at ICE, other EMRs, Prompt, PT Everywhere, pretty much all the modern web-based EMRs are going to offer reminders and more often than not, they're free for you to use. So why not use them, right? It's one more push of a button when you're building out that patient chart for them to get reminders. In addition to reminders, leverage technology to create an online booking and waitlist system so that when you do send that reminder, it should come with a link where it says, hey, if you can't keep this appointment, please click here, right? So that your appointment comes off my schedule and that you get a little link to rebook at a time that works better for you. So we still keep that visit on the schedule, but we also open up that visit to maybe somebody else who can use it so that we don't have a missed slot on our schedule. Pretty much just like reminders, modern EMRs are very good at having automation with waitlists of where when a patient reschedules and a slot opens up, usually automatically or with the push of a button, you can pull people in from your waitlist and make sure that that slot stays filled without having that patient get charged for cancellation or no-show because they were able to go in on their own and reschedule their own appointment. So make sure we're leveraging technology whenever possible to do this work for us. My last point here on improving arrival rates is probably something that we don't consider very often of making sure in that initial evaluation that the patient actually has the time and or money to come to their physical therapy appointments. I feel like a lot of time patients feel beholden to maybe a referral they had from a doctor or what you tell them of some sort of verbal contract of the doctor said I have to come here three times a week for six weeks or maybe that's what you wrote on your documentation is the physical therapist and they feel like they have to come no matter what, even if they know they do not have the time or money. I feel like this is something that should be discussed as we're wrapping up our initial evaluations that just doesn't get done. As we're building the bike for that patient, we're explaining our findings, we're demonstrating that we can help that person reach their goals by showing them some improvement in that first visit and as we begin to discuss what that plan of care might look like, also making sure that the patient is on board, right, including the patient that conversation of hey, Diane, this seems to be a pretty irritable tendinopathy. You know, I think I would like to see you here in the clinic twice a week, probably for at least the next four weeks. And instead of stopping there, take it one step further. How do you feel about that? Right? What do you think about my plan for your care? And we don't necessarily have to ask, hey, can you afford this? Or do you have the time for this? But that's what we're hinting at of how do you feel about coming here twice a week for four weeks? How do you feel about coming here once a week for the next four weeks and getting the patient's input because that's a great time for them to say, that's going to be tough with my schedule. You know, I have 17 kids or I work 30 jobs. I won't be able to do that, right? That's a great time to make sure that person does not get put on your schedule for a bunch of visits that they're not going to attend. And then making sure we're following the law, right? No surprises act that was passed last year that were very transparent with how long we think the plan of care is going to take and what that's going to cost that patient. Whether you're charging cash, whether you're billing insurance, you need to provide that information upfront to the patient. I would argue you should be doing it even if it's not the law, just so you don't have people on your schedule who are not going to show up. But being very forthright and how long you think it's going to take and what's that going to cost and get that patient's input on it before we talk about scheduling out for their visits. 19:05 GETTING PAID FOR MISSED APPOINTMENTS My last point here of talking about what average arrival rates are, what improves arrival rates is how do we get paid when somebody does not show up to the clinic? This is another area where I think physical therapists are very uncomfortable with asking people for money to come to rather not come to their appointment. And it's an area where again, when we look at the research, what improves arrival rates, multi-method reminder system and having a rescheduled cancellation policy that is enforced. If you don't enforce it, you can't get paid for these missed visits. And if you try to enforce it like halfway through the plan of care, the patient is probably going to be upset versus if you're straightforward from the start in your intake paperwork and with your expectations before they begin physical therapy, it's not as jarring to that patient when you charge them for that canceled or rescheduled appointment. So remember, combination of a reminder system and a clearly stated 24-hour rescheduling policy that's enforced are the keys to reducing your no-show cancellation rate by as much as 50%. So first things first, create a policy. What do you want your policy to be? Make sure that policy is very clear, very transparent and that patients see it before they actually come to the clinic. So for us here at Health HQ, this is the first thing that patients see when they go through their intake paperwork. They see our cancellation no-show policy. They see our rates. They know what they're going to be charged. They know the maximum they can be expected to pay out of pocket if they do have insurance and they're going to see what they can be expected to be charged if they cancel or reschedule appointment within 24 hours. So ensure you have a policy, make sure it's actually written out, make sure that it gets in front of patients before they commit to a plan of care and then decide on what you want to charge that person. Decide on what your rate will be. I would argue it should be what you would want to get paid for that hour even if the patient had come. A lot of clinics will have what I would call a dinky, kind of a really lackluster enforcement policy where maybe if you don't show up to your appointment, you're charged $10 or $15. That's really not enough for people to have skin in the game. Being charged $10 or $15, especially if you don't actually enforce it, is really not going to set the expectations for your patients the way you want it. For us, we want to be sure the patient, sorry, the therapist gets paid as if they had seen that patient even if the patient no shows or cancels. So we charge $75 and we enforce it. Right? How do we enforce it? Well, you should probably start obtaining payment methods before the plan of care begins. So again, somewhere in your intake, transparent, clear, laid out should be what you charge for cancellation, a no show, a reschedule, the amount, and that you should take a payment method and have that payment method on file even before the initial evaluation happens so that even if they don't show up to the evaluation, your therapists are able to get paid for that hour. And then actually enforce it. You have to enforce it. You have to rip the bandaid off and actually do it. If you don't do it until somebody has done this to you 19 times, it's going to be difficult to actually start enforcing it because you've let them get away with it so many times. Maybe your personal policy in your mind is that everybody gets one freebie. Whatever that is, stick to that and then start actually enforcing it. What you'll find is that when you enforce it, guess what? The first time that patient gets charged that money, guess what they never miss again? Physical therapy. Or they reschedule so that they don't leave an empty spot on your calendar book. So recognize that we have to enforce this. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but the more you do it, the sooner you do it in the plan of care, the more you'll find patients will either adhere to it or they might decide therapy with you is not for them and that's okay too because the end result is we want people on our schedule who are actually going to come to physical therapy. We need to recognize that this is not unusual. Oftentimes we said, well, this isn't something physical therapists do. They don't charge people for not coming to appointments. Literally every other industry on the planet does this. When you make an appointment to get your haircut or whatever personal beauty grooming thing you do, they have a reschedule cancel no show policy where if you don't show up to your appointment for whatever reason, you're probably going to get charged a little bit of money. Massage therapists do this. Lawyers do this a lot. You have to pay money upfront to even talk to a lawyer, right? You have to have that retainer money on file. Dentists do this. Other healthcare providers do this. This is very, very common across a wide range of industries except for physical therapy. People often ask me, why do you think that is? I think it's because we spend a lot of time with our patients and we begin to almost view some of our patients maybe as friends or at least acquaintances, which makes it that much harder to begin to charge that person for missing a physical therapy appointment. So we need to recognize that yes, it is difficult, but again, every other business does this. Every other industry does this. The sooner and more comfortable you get with enforcing this, the less awkward it's going to feel. And remember, leverage technology to fill those missed appointment slots so that ideally the therapist still gets paid for that person not showing up, but maybe they can also fit another patient into that spot still. I love when I pull up our schedule and I see that somebody has canceled, they've been charged for it, and we've been able to pull another patient from the wait list to fill that same slot. That therapist went to work, came to work here that day thinking, I'm going to see seven people and they actually got paid as if they had seen nine. That's fantastic, right? That's way better than systems where you may be expected to clock out if a patient doesn't show up and not get paid at all for your time, or you may be expected to clean the toilets or something like that in that missed time versus actually getting paid for that time and either being able to use that time for whatever you want or trying to fit another patient into that slot. So remember, it's really important here. This is all an end, not or situation that there are different components to this that we need to implement. It's not just we need to charge people for not showing up. It's not just we need to have a reminder system that we need to understand that at some level, having 100% arrival rate is unlikely. People not showing up is unavoidable, whether kids, family emergencies, that sort of thing. But there are things that can be done to reduce those rates. They're not unavoidable that we can deliver great outcomes to patients so that they do not find other reasons and other things to do instead of coming to physical therapy. We absolutely have to get with the program and begin to leverage technology, begin to send these reminders out if we're not doing it already, begin to use technology to have a waitlist system so that we can fill empty slots quickly, create and actually enforce a policy, get credit cards on file, begin to actually charge people for not coming to those appointments, hold them accountable, hold their feet to the fire, but also recognize and have that conversation early on of what is realistic for that patient. Do they actually have the time and money to come to therapy two or three times a week? Or do we need to look at maybe, hey, I can see you once every other week, but you're going to have to be really judicious at home with your homework because you're not coming here as much. So having those conversations early and often in the plan of care so they don't come back to bite us later on and then utilize technology to get paid for those visits and fill those empty slots. So reschedules, cancels, no shows, not to the end of the world, things we can do better to get better at them, I should say. Leverage technology, enforce a policy. So I hope this was helpful. I hope you all have a fantastic Thursday. Have fun with Gut Check Thursday. If you're going to be on a live course this weekend, have a wonderful weekend with our faculty on the road. We'll see you all next time. Bye everybody. 24:17 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.

Dr. Christina Prevett // #GeriOnICE // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Modern Management of the Older Adult Division Leader Christina Prevett discusses the need for falls prevention initiatives to shift their focus towards early identification of individuals at risk for falls. By doing so, healthcare professionals can implement targeted interventions and reduce the occurrence of falls before they happen. Christina emphasizes that outcome measures should be used to guide interventions. She mentions the Mini-BEST as a specific outcome measure that assesses various aspects of balance and mobility. By administering this measure at the beginning of a session, the clinician can immediately identify areas of deficit and tailor their intervention accordingly. For example, if the person shows deficits in dynamic gait and reactive posture control, the clinician can focus on exercises and strategies to improve these specific areas. Overall, the episode highlights the importance of outcome measures in falls prevention and emphasizes that they should not be conducted for the sake of it. Instead, outcome measures should provide meaningful and actionable information that guides clinical reasoning and informs interventions. Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes. If you're looking to learn more about live courses designed to better serve older adults in physical therapy 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. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION 00:00 INTRO What's up everybody? Welcome back to the PT on ICE Daily Show. Before we jump into today's episode, let's chat about Jane, our show sponsor. Jane makes the Daily Show possible and is the practice management software that so many folks here at ICE utilize. The team at Jane knows how important it is for your patients to get the care they need. And with this in mind, they've made it really easy and convenient for patients to book online. One tip that has worked well for a lot of practices is to make the booking button on your website prominent so patients can't miss it. Once clicked, they get redirected to a beautifully branded online booking site. And from there, the entire booking process only takes around two minutes. After booking an appointment, patients get access to a secure portal where they can conveniently manage their appointments and payment details, add themselves to a waitlist, opt in to text and email reminders, and fill out their intake form. If you all are curious to learn more about online booking with Jane, head over to jane.app slash physical therapy. Book their one-on-one demo with a member of their team. And if you're ready to get started, make sure to use the code ICEPT1MO. When you sign up, that gives you a one-month grace period that gets applied to your new account. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy today's show. 01:33 CHRISTINA PREVETT Hello, everybody, and welcome to the PT on ICE Daily show. My name is Christina Prevett. I am one of the lead faculty within our modern management of the older adult division, part of our geriatrics team. Everyone, we are flying high this week because we got everybody from our MMOA division to descend on Lexington, Kentucky at Jeff and Dustin's Stronger Life facility, which was beautiful. And we got to show the world some of what we have been working on, which is some revamped material. So we got to really focus on dialing in live to be about lab. We were moving all weekend. It was so fun and so amazing. If you were thinking about joining MMOA live, we have a couple of opportunities coming up in the remainder of this month. So this weekend, Dustin and Jeff are going to be in Bedford, Texas, and Julie and Ellen are going to be in, oh my gosh, I'm blanking on where they are. They're in Minnesota. And then there I was like, I know this. And then the next weekend, Alex is going to be in California. And so if you are looking for where MMOA is going to be, we have a ton of courses into the end of 2023. We are not adding any more locations for MMOA live in 2023. So if you're kind of waiting for one to come closer to you for the end of this year, that isn't going to happen if it's not there now because we're kind of locked in. We have lots of offerings that's going to come up for 2024. So if you're looking to see that live material, that is where to go. 03:29 A FRAMEWORK FOR BALANCE INTERVENTION OK, so today I wanted to talk a little bit about a framework for balance intervention. When it comes to balance, I think it's a bit tougher for us to put this marker of effort or intensity on, maybe more so than other styles of fitness. What I mean by that is when we think about aerobic training, it's easy for us to conceptualize effort because we're seeing that perspiration, we're seeing that heart rate response. And that's correlating to our rates of perceived exertion. When it comes to resistance training, right, the amount of effort is either going to fatigue kind of in those higher rep ranges or our personal preference is getting to fatigue and effort through higher load. And again, it corresponds to changes in rates of perceived exertion. When we're trying to conceptualize intensity and then we're really trying to dial in our balance interventions, it's a bit tougher, right? We don't really have the same magnitude or the same outcome measures with respect to gauging intensity well. And so within MMOA, we really try and create this framework for individuals to help guide them through this kind of thought process and then create a kind of stepwise framework within our mind for how we implement this in clinical practice. The way that we do this is by first looking at the mechanism at which individuals are falling or where they are having near falls. This is important, right? 05:00 FALLS PREVENTION INITIATIVES Our falls prevention initiatives are only preventative if we are identifying individuals early rather than waiting for them to get hurt and then working in secondary tertiary prevention. We want to be able to identify those who are at risk for falls before that fall has happened, which unfortunately is not as common in our health care system as it stands right now. So we want to figure out the mechanism. We want to identify risk factors that are intrinsic to the individual and extrinsic around their environment. And then in order for us to put objective data on those things, we need to take that information from our subjective and use the appropriate outcome measure in order for us to have a good data point or multiple data points in order to guide our interventions. And then we want to make sure that those outcome measures that we are selecting are giving us tangible information, right? We don't want to be doing outcome measures for the sake of doing outcome measures. We want to do our outcome measures so that they can guide our clinical reasoning. And so let's kind of go through this very briefly and speak to the different aspects of this framework. So the first thing is mechanism, right? When we are asking about our person subjective, many times they're kind of cursory with their storytelling. A lot of individuals are when they're speaking about falls. Oh, well, I stubbed my toe and I fell over. What were you doing when you stepped your toe? What was your frame of mind? Were you really rushing to get from point A to point B? Were you really tired because it was late at night? Were you holding something in your hand when you tripped and that created an other barrier or other cognitive load in your mind that created more of a predisposition to not be able to keep your center of mass over your base of support and respond to that perturbation? Was it that there is a visual issue going on and you were having trouble with depth perception? We need to kind of dig really deep into some of these stories because that's really going to triage this risk factor profile in our brain. But you're probably thinking, well, Christina, a lot of my clients just can't do that or they don't remember or they are not able to give us some of that really tangible information. And I hear you. And so when we don't have that information, the next step is for us to go to the literature and look at what are common scenarios that lead to falls in different settings. Right. And how much do those mechanisms and that group of individuals that are being conceptualized in this research study relate to the people that are in front of you? An example is if you're an outpatient orthopedic therapist looking at some of the acute care mechanisms of falls may be relevant, but probably is less relevant to you. So you're going to be wanting to know, well, what is happening for our community dwelling older adults? What is their profile look like? What age group are individuals looking at in this study? And then how does this relate to my current caseload or people that I have that I am seeing right now? And so there is a recent study that came out in 2023 that was doing a prospective. So following older adults forward in Boston that was looking, for example, at mechanisms of falls in community dwelling older adults. So what they did was every month they sent older adults in this study. So they consented to this study. They were in their 70s or older. They sent a postcard to them and asked some questions. Did you have a fall in the last month? If yes, what was the mechanism? What were you doing at the time of the fall? And what was the cause of that fall with what you were doing? And I think this is interesting because they are two different things, right? 09:26 SLIP & TRIP TRAINING So the cause of the fall in our community dwelling older adults over 70, for example, more than half was a slip or a trip. The activity when they were having that slip or trip was walking forward. That gives us a lot of information in terms of where we start with our older adults. We're not going to start standing on one leg. We're going to start with slip and trip training. We're going to look at reactive stepping, volitional step training. Maybe we'll do that in standing first to see where a person's control is, but we want to see what happens when they start having perturbations. And so if that slip or trip is happening going forward, it also tells us that that perturbation is often backwards or lateral. People aren't falling forwards, right? It's that they're slipping and coming to the side or they're slipping and coming back. And that's a really important piece of information for us. And then it's going to guide where we go. So the next thing is now we're going to look at a person's risk factors, right? So extrinsic risk factors when individuals are having slips and trips was, was this in the wintertime and they're slipping on ice? Was this a step? Was this a rug that we know we're never going to get rid of, but we may ask about trying to tape down? These are things that we may be considering when we are looking at these mechanisms or are asking these questions. And so that's extrinsic. So we're taking this mechanism. We're looking at some extrinsic factors. And then the intrinsic people are going to be telling us in their narrative that they may feel like their balance isn't really great, or they're having trouble holding on to objects and navigating around their home or navigating outside. Or they recognize that the pain in their knee is making them not feel as strong or confident in their gait. And it's going to create them to have a hesitation to react when a perturbation happens because they've had times where their leg has given out. Or they they don't feel like they're strong enough to move their feet, right? They're they're telling us these things in their subjective. And so when we take that information, now it's going to guide us into our outcome measures. So if individuals are saying that they're having falls because of a strength deficit or a weakness issue in their lower extremity, we may want to make sure that we have a general mobility or a strength focused measure in our assessment to get a good idea of where our triage list is going to be. So we may use a five times it to stand or a 30 seconds to stand test, or we may go a bit more general and go to the short physical performance battery because the mechanism of their fall is showing us that potentially that being that capacity to move their feet is coming from a weakness issue. 11:54 REACTIVE POSTURAL CONTROL We are also going to want to in this example, look at their reactive postural control. We heavily leverage the mini best because there is a subsection of the mini best that looks at reactive postural control in each direction. So we're going to look at a person's capacity to react to a forward perturbation, backward perturbation and lateral perturbation. Right. If a person is having pain in the lower extremity, they're worried about it and we do a lateral perturbation, they may not move their feet out. They may want to cross because they're worried that that painful knee on that left hand side is not going to support their weight. So their reaction may be a step out to the right and a crossover to the right because of that painful knee. So now we've learned two things, right? We know that their pain is a contributing factor to their falls mechanism. It's an intrinsic risk factor that's creating troubles with clearance. It's impacting their gait, whether it's causing deviations in their gait or it's making them not lift their foot enough and now slips and trips are more common. And we recognize that their lateral posturing, the way that they are moving to the side is impaired. So now we've really dialed in our assessment, right? We've gotten a good idea about what's going on and we've picked the outcome measures that are going to give us that information. Because if we just focused, for example, on a burg. Because that is our go to balance assessment, not only are community dwelling older adults more likely to sealing that out, but it's not really getting to the two really big issues that they spoke to in their subjective assessment, right? They are probably going to be able to stand up once and do a pivot transfer. But that five time or 30 seconds to stand that's requiring a repeated chair stand is going to hit into maybe their pain thresholds that they're going to start having some compensatory mechanisms. And they're talking about having perturbations in a forward movement pattern. So the burg is in capturing backwards and lateral perturbations. So we have to be using those mechanisms and risk factors that they're discussing with us in their subjective and then leveraging the outcome measures that have strong reliability, validity, responsiveness, interpretability in order for us to have a good idea of what the next step is. But we're not going to do outcome measures for the sake of doing outcome measures. The next step is that we need to use those and leverage them in our interventions. One of the reasons why we also love the mini best is that oftentimes the way that we implement this is not day one. It's a little bit more of a longer intervention or sorry, it's a longer outcome measure. But we use it at the beginning of a session because it drives us into our intervention immediately. So if we have, for example, there's the anticipatory sub scales, sensory orientation, dynamic gate and reactive posture control. If we think that dynamic gate and reactive posture control are the two areas that based on a person's objective, they may struggle with more. We may use those, see where they're starting to have these deficits. It may be obstacle navigation, for example, with that still going with this example of having slips and trips because of a painful knee and seeing gate deviations where they're not clearing obstacles as readily as they used to when pain was a bit more managed. And they may have issues with reactive postural control backward and laterally. And we're going to see that it's coming to the left because it's their left knee that's painful. So now we have a lot of good information. We have a lot of good data. We use those outcome measures and we're directly going into intervention, right? Like I may use a clock yourself app and block out the forward stepping and I'm going to be focusing on reacting backwards. Or I may take out the right hand side of the clock and I want them to react to the left. And that is going to do at different cadences and then see, you know, what does the threshold look like? What does the step length look like? Does pain start to increase? What is that pain threshold like? How long does that pain take to come back down? And we're also intervening. We can also take, you know, some of these obstacle courses and put them into our interventions that day. Throw all of them together and put them into a round for time or an AMRAP where they're going back and forth between reactive stepping and obstacle courses. And now you're working on some strength because they're doing bigger clearances. We may put a step up in that obstacle course and then we're working on reactive control to the side that they're experiencing difficulties. So when we kind of take a step back, when we slot in what we see into this framework, it can be really helpful. So to bring this full circle, we want to think about balance intensity just like anything else. It's just like aerobic training. It's just like resistance training, but we cannot get good outcomes with bad data. So how do we do this? Our subjective, we need to dial in on mechanisms and risk factors. We need to be asking questions. If we do not have the answers to those questions, we're going to rely on the evidence of where older adults in different settings tend to fall. Then we're going to use outcome measures and we're going to select the outcome measures, if we can, based on our setting, that are going to give us the information we need to see where those thresholds are. From there, we're going to drive ourselves right into intervention based on where those deficits lie. And we're going to get to an intensity where individuals are either weary, we're pushing into potentially some low-grade pain, or they are self-reporting high amounts of fatigue or nervousness. 17:31 PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD & FEAR So we may be doing some graded exposure into fear. And that is a form of progressive overload, especially in the geriatric space where fear of falling is a big risk vector for future falls. So kind of bringing this full circle, here is the framework for you when you have a person coming in who is having falls or is worried about their balance. And it'll allow you to really dial in your interventions. Let me know if you have any other questions. What are your thoughts on this? I would love to have a dialogue. If you are interested in learning more about some of this research, we just put that 2023 paper into MMOA Digest. So every two weeks there is a research email that we send out that allows you to stay up to date with the evidence. We put all of our new courses on there, so definitely go to ptnice.com slash resources and sign up for Digest. If you are not on Hump Day Hustling, please make sure you do that too. That is all different types of research from all of our divisions. Have a wonderful Wednesday. Bye everyone. 18:34 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 are interested in getting plugged into more ICE content on a weekly basis while earning CU's from home, check out our virtual ICE Online Mentorship Program at ptonice.com. While you are there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top 5 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.

Dr. Kelly Benfey // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete faculty member Kelly Benfey discusses her experience competing at the 2023 CrossFit Games, the role of rehabilitation providers in competitive sport, and the capacity of the human body for exercise as it ages. Take a listen to the episode or read the episode transcription below. If you're looking to learn from our Clinical Management of the Fitness Athlete division, check out our live physical therapy courses 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 00:00 INTRO What's up everybody? Before we get rolling, I'd love to share a bit about Jane, the practice management software that we love and use here at ICE who are also our show sponsor. Jane knows that collecting new patient info, their consent and signatures can be a time consuming process, but with their automated forms, it does not have to be. With Jane, you can assign intake forms to specific treatments or practitioners, and Jane takes care of sending the correct form out to your patients. Save even more time by requesting a credit card on file through your intake forms with the help of Jane Payments, their integrated PCI compliant payment solution. Conveniently, Jane will actually prompt your patients to fill out their intake form 24 hours before their appointment if they have not done so already. If you're looking to streamline your intake form collection, head over to jane.app slash physical therapy, book a one-on-one demo with a member of the Jane team. They'll be able to show you the features I just mentioned and answer any other questions you may have. Don't forget, if you do sign up, use the code ICEPT1MO for a one month grace period applied to your new account. Thanks everybody, enjoy the show. 01:33 KELLY BENFEY Good morning and welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. It's Fitness Athlete Friday and my name is Kelly Benfey. I just wrapped up an amazing CrossFit season where I got to compete at the CrossFit Games. And so what we're going to get to talk about this Fitness Athlete Friday is going to be a couple takeaways from the CrossFit Games that I think are relevant in the rehab space. Before we jump into that, though, within our Fitness Athlete crew, we have a couple of online courses coming up that I just want to bring to your attention. So we just wrapped up an awesome cohort with our clinical management of the Fitness Athlete Essential Foundations course online. And so our next course is going to be kicking off in a few weeks on September 11th. That course always fills up. So if you're thinking about it, please jump in with us, grab your spot right now. And then if you've already taken that and you're looking to continue developing your skill set, our Advanced Concepts course that's only offered two times a year is also starting September 17th. So rarer opportunity to hop in on that one. So if you've been looking to take this course, that's going to get started quite soon. And then we have a handful of live courses for the remainder of the year. So all of that information is going to be on PTice.com, PTonice.com. So we hope to catch you live on the road. I'd love to see you all. So we'll be getting back on the road for the remainder of this year to finish strong. So let's get into our topic. Of course, I could talk about this stuff all day if you know me. So we're talking CrossFit Games takeaways. A couple of things that I experienced and found were relevant in the rehab space. This is Fitness Athlete Friday, so we get to geek out on all things, CrossFit Games, CrossFit competition, all that good stuff. So number one, I have five different things that we'll kind of work through. 03:35 HUMAN CAPABILITY So number one, I always leave the CrossFit Games feeling absolutely motivated and inspired by what the human is actually capable of doing. So I really it was it was just such an honor to be on the same field as some of these amazing, amazing athletes, be behind the scenes and all that good stuff. So a couple highlights that I saw now just to I competed in the team division. So it actually didn't allow me to watch as much as the individual competition. I'm still working through catching up on that all the live the live coverage that they had. But I got to be within the team division. So one of the athletes in the team division, she clean and jerked 250 pounds and then a couple hours later ran a 5K, 4.5 ish K, 5K in under 20 minutes. So it just always impresses me that people can excel in things that I also excel in the strength events, yet also push their aerobic capacity and monostructural skills to an insane level as well. So it was just absolutely mind blowing to see athletes also just I know how hard we worked on my team and just having other athletes really push the boundaries. I find to be super inspiring as a competitive athlete. And then moving moving towards almost even debatably more inspiring. 04:11 OLDER ADULTS PUSHING BOUNDARIES  The age group divisions are always just such a blast to watch. I wish they had a little bit more coverage because arguably that's more these are more the athletes that are relatable and even more inspiring. For example, the 60 plus division, I believe the 60 60 to 64 division, both men and women had bar muscle ups in their last event. So these are our older adults crushing it, doing high skill level at a very high competitive level. Just absolutely amazing. And like I had the opportunity, my mom came and watch. She's going to watch me and have a blast, obviously, but she's not necessarily going to see like watch me and think, oh, wow, that's something I can do. She's going to see something in her age division and then become inspired of, hey, maybe I'm going to start my barbell class in my gym, for example. So I just think the human capabilities, even in our older adult divisions, is just as important as what the individual and team athletes are doing. The professional athletes, if you will. And then we also have the adaptive visions that are starting to grow and the upper extremity adaptive athletes were performing rope climbs. Rope climbs are hard enough when you have two upper extremities to grip onto the rope with. They were doing it with one and we're also sealing our lower adaptive lower extremity adaptive divisions, doing things like box jumps and maxing out their clean and jerk and snatch and really just taking no opportunity to have an excuse to not push their fitness forward and continue to be athletic and competitive in their sport. So I absolutely love seeing those. I wish I got to see a little bit more of it. I wish we got to view a little bit more of it on the broadcast, so hopefully we'll be able to continue pushing that forward. I just saw a couple posts of highlighting those athletes, so keep keep those in the forefront of your mind. That's what's really inspiring to more people, I think, in this world, in our country. OK, so the next three points that I want to kind of work through all kind of build off of each other. 09:20 INJURY RATES & PROGRAMMING So one thing that I thought was really relevant this year at the Games was the programming. And like I said, I have paid attention a lot to a lot more detail of our team division programming, but I just wanted to bring your attention as a rehab professional, as a movement specialist that's working with athletes all the time. I think it was important to note this. So just a couple examples. So in our competition, we had four days of competition. On day one, we had overhead squats at 135 pounds and 95 pounds. Then day two, we had a one rep, one rep max snatch. And then on day three, we had more snatches at 185 pounds and 135 pounds with running. So that's back to back days that we're seeing a barbell shoulder stability type exercise that is very demanding on the shoulders. In general programming, we would probably look to spread the frequency out of when we're doing things like overhead squat and snatching. Being able to do those back to back days can challenge the shoulder and challenges your ability to recover and perform repeatedly. Another thing that I noticed as on our day two, we had a strict ring muscle up to a front support hold. So going through that pole to deep press and hold at the top of the unstable rings is really challenging for the shoulders. And then right into day three, we had 30 synchro ring muscle ups on the long straps, which are tough. And then 63 more parallet bar dips. So that's a lot of vertical pressing for the shoulder to get through back to back days. And so I've personally experienced issues with pressing with shoulder pain. I've worked with a handful of athletes that recently have been that's a common theme in our clinic that I'm working with. So that is I remember if I was in the middle of having a flare up of that shoulder pain presentation, it would be really hard to be able to do that back to back days because you can always push through one workout. Adrenaline is a really strong drug, I would say that helps you get through it. But the next day when you wake up and things are a little bit inflamed, it's really hard to be able to repeat those motions. So that was just one thing I noticed that was not necessarily what I would have expected in programming, just how frequently the same movement is tested. And it's one thing to test the fitness of it, but it's also one thing to test the tissue capacity. So those are things that the my rehab mind was kind of evaluating while I was going through it, which brings me kind of into that next point I want to bring up was injury rates this year. I'm not sure if I just noticed more injuries and pain happening. A lot of KT tape being thrown on our limbs because I was in the background. But there did seem to be a lot of withdrawals from individual and team, excuse me, team athletes this year. We know the injury rates in CrossFit, the highest injury rates that we're seeing are in the shoulder joint. And based on that programming, it kind of makes sense. It makes sense that we're seeing a lot of shoulder issues. And so just from an athlete's perspective, it's absolutely devastating. It's so upsetting to have to withdraw from an injury, whether it's yourself, whether it's a teammate. We put so much time, money, effort and dedication to an entire long season. This started in February. So working day in and day out, making decisions based on that this specific weekend. It's just an absolute shame to see an athlete have to pull out of competition because of shoulder pain or whatever issue they may have. So I know I got to talk to a couple of the teams that had to withdraw. And the common theme that they were telling me was like, oh, yeah, I had this lingering issue for a while. I just retweaked it about two weeks ago. So they weren't necessarily the Roman Krenikov situation where they just, unfortunately, came down and rolled an ankle and had a new injury. This was a couple of these things were like lingering elbow issues that are really tested in the moment of competition with all the stress on board. Exposing to really deep positions of that dip position. If we have lingering shoulder stuff going on when you're pushing to 150 percent of your capacity, it's not likely that you're going to come out OK sometimes. So as soon as some of the workouts were announced, these athletes were like, well, I'm not feeling too great about this. So I take it's just such a shame because I think as rehab professionals, we need to have the skill set to be able to address these issues that our competitive athletes are experiencing and make sure that we're not just getting them back to be able to do a ring muscle up and take an ibuprofen. That's a whole other issue. We don't want our athletes to be doing that, obviously, but we want to be able to get them back to baseline and then beyond baseline because that originally that shoulder with that skill set got injured. So it's definitely up to us to be able to have the resources and provide rehab for these athletes that they find valuable. Not every single one of these athletes has a team of physical therapists that are top notch, that are traveling with them, that are on like on them 100 percent of the time. And so it is very likely that you may come across a CrossFit Games team athlete that's going to need to go through four days of competition with repetitively dips and butterfly pull ups and pulling, pulling whatever it may be. All these really challenging things for our shoulder girl to be able to tolerate. So that just I walked away being thankful that I came out unscathed, essentially, because if you followed any of my CrossFit career, I've had issues with my shoulder before. And strength always is super protective against injury. And I feel really lucky, essentially, to have all the knowledge that I have to put myself in the best scenario. Even within my teammates, we had a shoulder issue that we had to train around a little bit where we couldn't our best choice wasn't to continuing to do 30 muscle ups the week before, for example. But we rehab the crap out of it and put ourselves in the best situation possible to be able to come away without withdrawing by any means and putting up a pretty good performance over the course of the weekend. So that just brings me to want to plug our courses just one more time. So I mentioned the beginning, we have a couple of online courses coming up. I would say 75% of the clinical decision, clinical decisions I'm making on a daily basis are all things that I learned from these courses. The other 25% is probably all the other stuff I learned from my ice courses. So I know I'm biased, but I promise I'm not lying. If you at any point would feel nervous, nervous if I came into your clinic saying I can't do ring muscle ups, help. Please hop in one of our courses. It's really a fun, fun way to spend your eight weeks online. And so the last point I wanted to make kind of along the same theme was the importance of stress and recovery. So if you are an ice in the ice world, I'm sure you have heard us talk about the importance of stress and stress that the body takes on and how it helps us or doesn't help us recover well. 11:04 COMPETITIVE ATHLETES & REHAB And competing in the CrossFit Games this past weekend really made this become like full picture for me. I prioritize sleep, I prioritize what I'm putting in my body, and I prioritize managing stress as well as I can with all of the training that we were doing. But at the CrossFit Games, I will say I was probably at a peak stress level in my life. I don't live there on a daily basis, but the couple of weeks leading up to it, highly stressed and enduring also highly stressed. For example, day one, the volume wasn't really high. We were coming off of two sessions a day, up to two hours per session. So training heaps, I would say. And day one, all I did was three leg assault climbs, 30 overhead squats and then four laps on the bike track, which was aerobically really challenging, but not high impact. And the next day when I woke up, my fitness tracker is showing me my heart, HRV is plummeting. I felt like I did probably triple that amount of volume at minimum. And I was really surprised because volume wise wasn't crazy, wasn't out of my realm. But I felt the I think what I was feeling was the high level of stress that competition brought on. So and just to circle back a little bit, if you're having lingering shoulder pain, it's probably not going to get better with how much we're ramping up as far as volume in the eight weeks leading up to the CrossFit Games. 15:10 HIGH STRESS IN COMPETITION And then in the high, high stress environment, it's also going to be asking a lot to be able to recover and repeat these highly demanding movements like snatching, overhead squatting into ring muscle ups, to fatigue into dips where we're highly fatigued and moving at 150 percent of our capacity, essentially. So it just really is that's another way that I think bringing like stress and managing our recovery is just too important to ignore as the physical therapist, because we all know that person that's chronically stressed, chronically in that sympathetic state that maybe they are going into the gym and adding more weight. More stress onto their body. It's I absolutely can understand how they probably don't feel well at the end of the day, day in and day out. And so you have the ability as their rehab pro to help change their foundation of what they feel on a daily basis, too. So don't forget those things when you're dealing with any type of person that comes into your clinic. Stress management can really hit hard on so many levels and prevent maybe just set them up to rehab even better with all the good rehab skills you're doing with them in the clinic. And then lastly, I just wanted to share a couple of highlights because I feel like I had so many so much amazing support from our ice community. So just a quick couple personal highlights. Having been a spectator of the CrossFit Games for the five or six years or so has been in Madison. It was just such a cool opportunity to be able to push the Bob to do ring muscle ups with the long, long straps on the Zeus rig to use that four person axle bar for the deadlift. Those are things that you just never would see in a norm or any other CrossFit competition that's really only going to be at the CrossFit Games. So I remember pushing the Bob to the finish line and just reflecting on North Park, like, how cool is this? I've always wondered how it felt. So that was a really cool personal highlight that was really motivating throughout the weekend. Another personal highlight was our one rep max snatch. I have had some issues with shoulder pain and snatching and tweaked my elbow before from kind of poor movement patterns. So all season I was in a bit of a snatch funk. I'm sure you can relate if you are an athlete that tries to snatch frequently. It's sometimes good, it's sometimes not good. And so just about two or three weeks before the CrossFit Games, everything kind of clicked and I was able to hit a PR and perform really well on stage. So as an athlete, it just felt really special to be able to showcase the hard work that I put into that movement all season. And then lastly, I just had the best time with so many friends and family that were there to support at the CrossFit Games. I had my gym community from Milwaukee, my gym community from Chicago when I lived there, my ice community was there, our onward community. We had such a large cheering section, essentially. And trust me, that helped us get through that whole weekend. So thank you so much for everybody that was there, that sent messages, that supported us. It was such an honor to be able to represent this crew and we had a blast doing it. So thank you, thank you, thank you. So those are my takeaways from the CrossFit Games. I would like, like I said, this is stuff I can talk about all day, every day. So if you have any thoughts on programming, injury rates, anything you noticed from your spectating view, I would love to chat about it. So feel free to comment and tag me on this post, send me a message. Other than that, have a wonderful weekend and we will see you next or on Monday with our PT on Ice Daily Show. Have a great weekend. 19:06 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 CU's from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at PT on Ice.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 PT on Ice dot com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.