PT Elevated

Teresa Schuemann, PT, DPT, ATC, CSCS, SCS is an expert in treating female athletes. She works at her own private practice, serves as a member of the sports medicine team for the United States Olympic Committee and teaches with EIM as the program director for both the Sports Physical Therapy Certification and the Sports Physical Therapy Residency.

Teresa joins our hosts Kory Zimney and Paul Mintken to discuss treating female athletes and the nuances of treating this specific patient population. She offers her advice and how to get started, what screens to use and when to refer out.

Here are some of the highlights:

When you are getting started treating female athletes, familiarize yourself with the position statements, look back at the historical research to see how the view on female athletes has changes, then learn about the revisions that have been made to the research over the years.

The Female Triad in 2021 and how nutrition and rest plays into each area:

• Energy availability
• Bone Density
• Menstrual cycle/reproductive organs

Prescribed sleep and recovery is important for every athlete along with active rest that will build up supporting musculature and bone density.

Some common bone building exercises for female athletes:

• Step-ups
• Plyometrics
• Power training (squats, Russian dead lift, powerclean)

As a general orthopaedic physical therapist, you can use the Athletes' Coalition screen that has the norms and abnormalities lined out. Using this screen can help you dig deeper into eating behavior, bone density and menstrual cycles to see if the person needs to be referred out to a primary care provider, sports psychologist or Ob-gyn.

Use BMI with caution, avoiding talking about weight and focusing on fueling for optimal performance.

Pregnant athletes should not be viewed as fragile but should be given activities that will keep them strong and ready to come back postpartum.

Teresa Schuemann's clinical pearl on female athletes: Know the evidence and make it digestible for the patient. And self-reflect session by session to see what mistakes you made and how you can do better next time.

Links:

@TSchuemannPT

@ZimneyKJ

@PMintkenDPT

@EIMTeam

• Adding more members
• More diverse group of therapists
• Don't want to be aligned with a passive technique

• Musculoskeletal is still a narrow term
• Lose the hands-on specialized research and focus that comes with the narrow focus of manual therapy
• Lose the identity and brand of this subset of specialized therapists among the profession
• Further fractures among manual physical therapists with the possibility of new organizations popping up to fill this spot from influential members like Stanley Paris

Becca Jordre, DPT, GCS, an expert in aging athletes, joins this week's episode of PT Elevated alongside our hosts Kory Zimney and Paul Mintken. Jordre is an associate professor at the University of South Dakota in the Department of Physical Therapy. During her 13 year teaching career, her research has focused on healthy aging and she screens and analyzes athletes for the National Senior Games Association (NSGA).

Listen in to hear Jordre and our hosts discuss what peaked her interest to begin researching the aging population, how to screen and treat aging athletes differently than the general aging population, specific free screening tools for aging athletes, the big mistakes clinicians make when they are treating the aging population, and a lot more.

Here are some of the highlights:

Aging athletes are different than those who are sedentary. They start at a higher level of function and although they are still aging, they need to be treated differently.

PTs as a profession need to be more creative is creating programs to keep aging athletes strong and healthy to safely play their sport. As always, pay attention to what your aging patient does and does not want to do to achieve their fitness goals.

Aging athlete have the same weaknesses based on their sport as younger athletes, the deficiencies are just magnified. Create your plan based on what their sport is to properly serve their needs.

PTs sometimes underestimate aging athletes and assume they have everything they need but they are underserved athletes that are different from the aging population and should be treated as such.

Safety is a priority and aging athletes decline regardless of how active they are, so you should always listen to what they want and base your plan off their goals.

Becca Jordre's Research:

Fall History and Associated Physical Performance Measures in Competitive Senior Athletes

Five Times Sit to Stand Test in Senior Athletes

Keep Them in the Game CPTJ Published Ahead of Print

Hand Grip Strength in Senior Athletes: Normative Data and Community-Dwelling Comparisons - IJSPT article

Aging Athlete Screening Tools:

NSGA's Senior Athlete Fitness Exam (SAFE) Instructions

NSGA's Senior Athlete Fitness Exam (SAFE)

Becca Jordre's clinical pearl on aging athletes: Physical therapists are so well trained as movement specialists and PTs need to feel empowered to advocate for their patients with referring providers and push for their patients to get back to being active and educate other health care providers on what is possible with physical therapy.

Connect with us on socials:

Becca Jordre's LinkedIn

@ZimneyKJ

@PMintkenDPT

Join us on PT Elevated as JJ Thomas and Kory Zimney talk with Doug Adams, PT, DPT, SCS, OCS, CSCS, a running gait analysis expert, researcher and friend of JJ Thomas. Adams' career started with a background heavy in research from University of Delaware, learning alongside Irene Davis, Richard Willy and Lynn Snyder-Mackler.

Doug talks about his struggle with not getting the results that he wanted when he was in residency and at the beginning of his career. There was a moment where he had to realize that he needed guidance from his colleagues to grow as clinician. That pushed him to rely on a process of test-retest to get the best results.

Through that learning process, he came to the conclusion that having a systematic approach that is backed by research is more important than finding the perfect systematic approach. There's more than one way to get people better.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the conversation:

Studies that altered how you treat runners

• Ability of Sagittal Kinematic Variables to Estimate Ground Reaction Forces and Joint Kinetics in Running
• A compilation from Google Scholar of Rich Willy's research

Key Screens for Every Runner

• Focus on mobility and motor control
• Runner Readiness Assessment
• Unilateral Hip Bridge Endurance Test

Clinical Pearl: A great drill to help your runners not overstride is marching. Using research from Richard Souza's 2015 Article "An Evidence-Based Videotaped Running Biomechanics Analysis"

Ad Info: Continue your learning past what you hear today, EIM offers certifications that elevate your clinical decision making and help get you to the next level of patient care and expertise. Get 5% off by letting your program advisor know you're a PT Elevated Podcast listener. Check out your program options here.

More Links:

RunDNA YouTube Channel

RunDNA

Evidence In Motion's Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Residency

Doug Adams on LinkedIn

@primalphysicaltherapy on IG

@ZimneyKJ on Twitter

Welcome to PT Elevated! Our first guest is the esteemed Anthony (Tony) Delitto, PhD, PT PhD, the Dean of School of Health and Rehabilitation Science and Professor of Physical Therapy at University of Pittsburgh. Our hosts Kory Zimney, PT, DPT, PhD and Paul Mintken, PT, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT talk with Tony about all things low back pain. He talks his foundational research for Treatment-Based Classification, the Low Back Pain Clinical Practice Guideline and his new research on implementation.

Tony Delitto has been practicing and researching for over 40 years, and his expertise and wisdom combine for an episode packed with tips and takeaways for your clinic.

Here are some highlights from the episode:

What are Delitto's key takeaways from LBP research?

1. There is A LOT of it that you can work from.
2. Active approaches are the way to go.
3. Pay attention to the behavioral component and use psychologically-informed care in your practice.
4. Avoid passive approaches.

Here's his original CPG: Low Back Pain Clinical Practice Guideline

Delitto's research on Treatment-Based Classification came from organically joining up with other physical therapists. Listen in to see how the basis for Treatment-Based Classification came about with his colleagues Richard (Dick) Erhard and Richard (Rick) Bowling as well as Steve Rose.

Find the Treatment-Based Classification paper here: A Treatment-Based Classification Approach to Low Back Syndrome: Identifying and Staging Patients for Conservative Treatment

Delitto's research focus is now on implementing the research that has been done over the last 40 years, and he believes that will be the great challenge of the next generation. Hear him discuss two of his most recent papers that work to close the gap between research and creating processes to access low back pain patients.

Here are the two papers on implementation:

• Implementing stratified care for acute low back pain in primary care using the STarT Back instrument: a process evaluation within the context of a large pragmatic cluster randomized trial
• Stratified care to prevent chronic low back pain in high-risk patients: The TARGET trial. A multi-site pragmatic cluster randomized trial

Lastly, Tony Delitto's clinical pearl for all new clinicians: "The time you spend talking with your patients is more valuable than the time with your instruments."

Connect on Socials:

• @TonyDelitto
• @ZimneyKJ
• @PMintkenDPT
• @EIMteam

Welcome to PT Elevated Podcast, a clinically focused podcast for physical therapists and other rehab providers. We may occasionally talk about big ideas and nerd out on research, but our ultimate goal is to provide knowledge and tools that you can apply in the clinic right away. We want you to learn something that helps you elevate your practice and increase your confidence.

Meet our incredible hosts, Kory Zimney, JJ Thomas and Paul Mintken.

Kory Zimney, PhD, DPT is an Associate Professor at University of South Dakota and EIM faculty member, Kory understands how to take complex subjects and distill them into practical tips to use in your clinic.

JJ Thomas, MPT, CMPTP is a full-time clinician, clinic owner and EIM faculty member that will serve as another of our incredible hosts. As an owner of Primal Physical Therapy, her passion for movement and 20 years of practical experience to help guide her in the clinic and pass that information to you as the listener.

Paul Minken, DPT, MSPT, PT, FAAOMPT, OCS is a Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation-Physical Therapy Program at University of Colorado and an EIM faculty member. In his own words, "I teach because I love helping my students realize that they are stronger, smarter and more resilient than they ever thought possible."

Listen in to get to know our hosts better, then go ahead and listen to our episode with our first guest the esteemed Anthony Delitto.

Connect on Socials:

@ZimneyKJ

@PMintkenDPT

JJ Thomas on FaceBook

Dr. John Childs joins us for the final episode of Clinical Podcast and talks with Dr. Kory Zimney, the new host of PT Elevated. As Clinical Podcast comes to a close, John passes the reins to Kory as he introduces PT Elevated, an all-new podcast focused on you, the clinician. If you were a fan of Clinical Podcast, you are going to love PT Elevated and look forward to Wednesdays to see what new clinical nugget the hosts and guests have in store for you.