#PTonICE Podcast

Alan Fredendall // #TechniqueThursday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE COO Alan Fredendall discusses different ways to use band tension to make bench pressing easier for those dealing with pain, weakness, or stiffness, as well as techniques to add accommodating band resistance to improve bench press performance.

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 here on Instagram, here on YouTube. My name is Alan, happy to be your host today. Welcome to Technique Thursday. You may have seen this the last couple weeks. We had Paul on here and Ellie on here last week talking about some dry needling techniques. We're happy to bring techniques back. They used to be on Tuesdays, but now they're on Thursdays. So the goal of Technique Thursday is to show you some sort of manual therapy technique maybe a variation you've never seen before and likewise to maybe show you some tips and tricks with a certain exercise. The goal being something hands-on that maybe you could use in the clinic later today in front of your patients. So if you're joining us on the podcast and you're just listening to my voice, you're not going to get a lot out of this episode. So go on over to the Ice YouTube channel and find this episode so that you can watch the video. Before we get started today, it's Technique Thursday, which means it is Gut Check Thursday. This week's Gut Check Thursday, five rounds for time, a 400 meter run, 50 double unders, and 15 burpees. Much more cardio focused, body weight focused than last week. So last week we had an EMOM of calories on the bike and some bench press. So if strength and power is not really your thing, then maybe some lighter, long-duration cardio this week is your thing. You're thinking maybe 3-5 minutes around there, a relatively fast 400, ideally an unbroken set of double-unders or single-unders, and then a relatively fast pace on those burpees, trying to get that workout done, maybe somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes. Courses coming your way today, I wanna highlight our Extremity Management Division. The last three courses coming your way this year are coming up in November and December. So the weekend of November 11th and 12th, we're gonna have Mark Gallant, aka Mark Gallant, aka Mark Lanz. He'll be down in Woodstock, Georgia, the weekend of November 11th and 12th. And then the weekend of December 2nd and 3rd, you can catch Extremity's newest Lee faculty member, Cody Gingrich. He'll be out in Newark, California. That's gonna be in the San Francisco Bay Area. And then Lindsey Huey, the very next weekend, the weekend of December 9th and 10th, she will be out in Fort Collins, Colorado for the very last extremity management course of the year. So if you're looking to catch that course, check one of those three courses coming your way in November and December. 02:29 - BANDED BENCH PRESS TECHNIQUES Today's topic, we're going to talk about some banded bench press tips. So you might be thinking, Alan, this seems like a topic for Fitness Athlete Friday, and you could be correct. But I hope by the end of today's episode that I get you some buy in that bench press is really appropriate for almost all of our patients. And today we hope to explain why and show you how you can introduce this movement to everybody. So when we think about bench press, we mainly think people who are already active, who are in the gym, either bench pressing, recreationally because they like it, they like to have a big puffed up chest, maybe they're doing it competitively, maybe they're a powerlifter or a strongman type athlete, and bench press is one of their events. And bench press does show up occasionally in CrossFit, so we do, not as often as powerlifters or strongmen, we do bench press in CrossFit as well. What's really cool about bench press is it's one of the four primary movement patterns of our upper body. If we think about our shoulder and chest complex, our upper body in general, what movement patterns can it fundamentally do? It can move things vertically. We can vertically pull, right? That's our pull-ups, our muscle-ups, our toes-to-bar, that's getting out of the pool functionally, jumping over a fence or something like that, some sort of vertical pulling pattern. We can press things overhead as well. the turnover of a snatch, things like that, moving weight overhead in a vertical pressing pattern. But then probably the more neglected patterns across fitness, recreational or competitive, is horizontal movements. We have our horizontal pulling, things like bent over rows. And finally, we have our horizontal pressing, things like bench press, but also more functional movements like pushups and burpees, right? Getting off the ground. So we like to use bench press here a lot with our older adults. It's a great way to load the shoulder complex, especially somebody with a painful or stiff shoulder that maybe can't even begin to initiate vertical pressing, maybe not even prone with body weight on the table, maybe not even in a landmine press, they have a really hard time due to stiffness, due to pain, whatever, even lifting any sort of weight vertically overhead. We know there's some carryover from horizontal pressing to vertical pressing. We're working primarily the pecs with the bench press, but we are getting some delt as well, and we're able to lift in a horizontal press pattern to maybe 115 degrees. So this is a great way to reintroduce load to the shoulder complex, even if we can't vertically press. Now today, I want to show you some ways to make the bench press easier for folks, whether strength is limiting them, range of motion is limiting them, or pain is limiting them. 04:57 - MAKING THE BENCH PRESS EASIER So we're going to show you two techniques to make the bench press easier, and then we're going to show you a technique to make the bench press harder. So the easiest way to offload a bench press is a banded bench press like I have set up here in the rig. So I have two bands, half-hitched over the pull-up bar, the upright of the squat rack. onto the bench press in the center of the barbell so that I can still grab whatever grip width I want and now the bands are offloading that barbell for me. if I have pain maybe above a certain percentage I'm already bench pressing in the gym this can make bench press feel a little bit lighter so that it's more comfortable and tolerable and I can still get into the gym and maybe I can't bench at 75 or 80 or 90 percent of my max like my training has me doing but I can go in the gym at 60 percent with some bands on the bar and maybe I can move some weight at 60 percent so at the very least I'm maintaining or maybe a little bit incrementally increasing my strength as we calm pain down and build tissue resiliency back up. So pretty simple, half hitch the bands, put them over the barbell, lay back down in your normal bench press pattern, and then what you're going to feel is with no plates on the bar, you're going to feel almost like you have to pull the bench press down, and then the bands, if you have no weight on the bar, are really going to pull the bench back up for you. So you're able to really move through the movement pattern efficiently. So this can be great to train the bench press as well. And now we can put plates on there. What's great about this is we can get plates on the bar for maybe somebody who just the empty bar is challenging. By being able to put maybe even 10 pound plates on the bar, it helps them feel really successful, like they moved some weight around the gym. even if all they can normally lift without the bands is the empty barbell. So they get to go home and tell their spouse or their kids that they lifted a bench press today with the greens on or the yellows on, right? So it can help build success with that novice athlete. Folks who have pain or stiffness, we're now able to load at least in a partial range of motion of the shoulder, begin to strengthen within that range of motion that will hopefully now also allow us to transition to a vertical pressing pattern. If you don't have a way to set this up, another great tool is the slingshot. So this is from Mark Bell and colleagues. Anytime you've used a hip halo, maybe to do some monster walks, if you've used one of the official hip halos, that's also a Mark Bell product. If you have one of those, you probably recognize this looks very similar. So there's really no difference here and what I'm about to show you from what you get with the banded unloaded bench press, except now I don't need a squat rack with uprights to hang bands, but this is going to come up on my upper arm. I'm going to put both sides in. and now this is the slingshot. So now, as I sit down on this bench, there's going to be a tension that's created at the bottom of my bench press that's going to push me back out of the bench. So I'll lay back and show that to you all. If I were to pull a barbell back down, that band would stretch and help me out of the bottom. Now, what's great about the slingshot that you can't do with the barbell and the rig is I can translate this now and I can do push-ups or burpees with this on as well. What's really, really, really cool in the literature is how correlated maximal bench press strength is to push-up and burpee capacity. That is to say that the stronger your bench, it tends to track that you can do more push-ups. The reverse is also true. The more push-ups you can do, the likelihood is that you have a stronger bench press, and you can train one or the other to improve the other one. you can just do push-ups for a year and as long as you're progressing, how many push-ups you do, you're progressively overloading your push-ups, you will see an increase on your bench press and vice versa. So same thing, maybe somebody's not bench pressing at all but they come in and they have pain with push-ups or burpees, we can use the slingshot to offload that bottom position and make them feel more comfortable so they can continue to doing push-ups or burpees in their training program that we know that will translate down the road to bench press strength and vice versa. So two different ways to make the bench press a little bit easier, whether somebody's new, whether somebody needs to learn the range of motion, whether they have stiffness that prevents vertical pressing, or they just have a painful bench press and they currently can't lift as heavy as they would like. 07:53 - USING BANDS TO IMPROVE BENCH PRESS PERFORMANCE Now we can also transition, we can use bands to make lifts a little bit harder. So now, instead of these bands over the barbell offloading, We're going to put these down on the floor to this pair of dumbbells you see down on the ground. Key here, really heavy dumbbells. I've got 50s here. If you try to do a banded bench press with like 25s, the resistance of the bands is going to pull the dumbbells off the ground. So keep that in mind that you need some heavy dumbbells to anchor for you. Setting these up, don't overthink it. Loop it halfway through, underneath the handle of the dumbbell, and then loop it up and over the barbell, right? You can see this is even challenging the 50-pound dumbbell. If I had even 45s or 40s, it would be lifting this dumbbell off the ground. Same thing on this side. Half loop on each side. up and over the inside. There we go. So now, the resistance is going to be coming out of the bottom. Because it's an elastic band, it's going to give us the least tension in the bottom, and it's going to give us increasing tension as we drive out of that bench press. Now, there's some criticism of this, of the weakest point of the bench press is the bottom, so why am I doing a training method that makes the weakest part, the easiest part to train with a banded bench press. The answer is that when I have accommodating resistance out of that bench press, I need to activate more and more and more and more and more muscle fibers to drive out of that bottom. So yes, It will never improve the dead stop where the bar is touching my chest at the bottom. The only way to train that is to go through full range motion bench press more often. But the benefit I'm going to get is I'm going to activate more muscle fibers, which in the future is going to translate to being able to recruit those more easily when I bench press in the future. And also I have to continually increase my velocity out of the bottom of the bench press to overcome the steadily increasing resistance from the band. That band is going to get tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter as I get out of the bottom. I'm going to have to continually increase my velocity out of the bottom or I'm not going to be able to go anywhere. That's really helpful for anybody that's maybe stuck at a certain weight at their bench press. They can go to the bottom and they can drive out, but it's really slow and grindy and maybe they're stuck at a weight like 315 and they said, hey, I haven't added weight to my bench press in a year. This can be a great way to break some plateaus. It can also just be a way to overload the bench press. If my max bench press is 315, I can put 275 on here. Yes, the bottom is going to feel easier, but as I drive out, it's going to feel as hard as 315 maybe coming up. And now I can get more volume in, in a way that my speed is maintained, that's going to translate into having an overall stronger bench press down the road. So pretty simple, bands on the barbell, on racket. A lot of tension at the top, right? This is super tough even with no weight. As I come down, easier, easier, easier, and now I really have to focus on increasing speed continually to get out of the bottom of the bench press. With an empty barbell, that would be pretty difficult for maybe even a set of five. So don't knock it till you try it. There's a lot of criticism about bands and chains. Obviously the most important thing is the weight on the barbell over time, but this can be a great way to just change up variance in your bench press, to break through a plateau, and even to overload your bench press, to be able to lift a weight Maybe you use a bench block, you come down to maybe 80% of the range of motion and drive out, and now you're working at a weight that's maybe heavier than your one rep max bench press. Again, the goal, recruit more muscle fibers and kind of overload that bench press pattern. So banded bench press, why? Folks who maybe have a lack of range of motion or lack of strength overall in the chest and shoulder complex, who maybe not right now are able to show you any sort of vertical pressing pattern. It is a great way to offload a bench press for somebody that maybe is already training the bench press that has pain, and then we can flip the resistance. Now we can give resistance as we drive out of the bench press. Why? Accommodating resistance, help improve our barbell velocity, help break through plateaus, recruit more muscle fibers. So play around with banded bench presses. I hope this was helpful. Have a fantastic Thursday. If you're going to be on a live course this weekend, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for listening. Bye, everybody. 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 that the fountain of function is muscle mass and estrogen in the aging female. Christina breaks down these two areas for function, and what we have physical therapist can do to help encourage both muscle mass and estrogen preservation.

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 - 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 Modern Management of the Older Adult Division. In our division, we have three courses in our geriatric curriculum. We have our eight-week online Essential Foundations course. We have our eight-week online Advanced Concepts course. And we have our two-day live course. We have a couple of courses that are left in the remainder of the year. We have a course coming up in November in Chandler, North Carolina. We have another course coming up in South Carolina. And we have a course coming up in Texas in December. So if you are near those courses or you are looking to get in some content before the end of the year, I encourage you to check those courses out. and you'll be able to get in with some of our faculty before, you know, we ring in 2024. 01:18 - THE FOUNTAIN OF FUNCTION Today I'm going to talk about the fountain of function. And so this is a reframe that I think is really important. And we're going to talk about what those fountains of function are. You'll notice that I did not say fountain of youth. We have this idea in our society that youth is the goal, to not feel like we're getting older in any way, to not show signs of age on our faces. And don't get me wrong, I see my aging face, I was like, oh, my face doesn't look like I am 21 anymore, and I look at the wrinkles on my face, and I have those emotions. But the idea for my life is not to try and get younger. It's to try and optimize my reserve and try and live the way that I want to live with the most amount of function possible into my 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and hopefully all the way up to 100. Because at MMA and within ice in general, Aging is a privilege. It is something that I am very thankful for because the alternative is not that great. We're not gonna be able to reverse back time, but we can have a really successful aging process, especially when we put in the steps to live the way that we want to live, whatever that filter means for us. So I'm not looking for the fountain of youth. I am looking for the fountain of function. And so the two types, the two areas that are the fountain of function in aging women, so I'm going to talk about female anatomy, is muscle mass and estrogen. And these two things, especially when taken together and optimized to the best of our capacity, is going to allow us to have more function towards the end of our life. So let's talk about muscle mass. You have not been following the Institute of Clinical Excellence in any ways if you don't know that LODE is our love language across all of our division, across all of our faculty, and that is absolutely true in the geriatric curriculum as well. And I love it so much that I did an entire PhD on the influence of resistance training in an aging body. When we look at resistance training, we are accumulating a growth and a continuation, a plethora of education and research that looks at the impact of resistance training on health outcomes. And I just posted a paper that was a narrative review from Stu Phillips, who is one of my committee members on my PhD. 04:18 - THE COMING OF AGE OF RESISTANCE TRAINING And he talked about the coming of age of resistance training and how we are starting to see some accumulation of evidence that is mirroring and is just as strong as literature that we're seeing in aerobic training to prevent stave off different chronic diseases, including some cardiovascular diseases. And so there means that there, as of course, we're going to target the aerobic system. This is not to say to not do cardio in stead, just do resistance training, but it's showing that there is a continual and persistent growth of literature talking about the impact of resistance training on health outcomes. So what we see is that those who have more muscle mass tend to have lower all-cause mortality. They are less likely to develop cardiovascular conditions. They are better able to manage diabetes. They're less likely to get diabetes. We know that muscle mass is protective around things like osteoporosis, right? Tensile strength of the bone is important and we need impact, body weight movements, resistance training across the lifespan in order to optimize that. We see that individuals who are stronger or less likely to have sarcopenia, right? Sarcopenia is clinically relevant amounts of muscular weakness that are preventing a person from completing their day-to-day tasks. It's a totally important output of frailty. Fried's physical phenotype of frailty talks about physical reserve and physical capacity as an output of individuals seeing these constellations and signs and symptoms that lead to vulnerability to external stress. That external stress includes things like hospitalizations and being able to withstand different stressors with respect to immune system insults, including things like COVID-19, pneumonia, and the flu that allows individuals, while they are sick, to have that reserve and resiliency to lean back on in order for individuals to be able to get back to baseline or improve past baseline, post-hospitalization, or acute insult. All this to say, we know that individuals need to be trying optimize their muscle mass in their earlier life and then hold on to it for as long as possible. If you are in a setting where you are not working with individuals who have optimized their muscular mass, we also know that muscular mass can be developed and we can see improvements in physical function with resistance training at any age when we start including in our 90s. The mechanism at which strength develops is a little bit different. We're looking a lot more at neuromuscular efficiency. However, we can absolutely see that it can improve function. And so whether you are 30 or you are 85, muscle mass is a fountain of function and it allows us to withstand stress. 12:24 - ESTROGEN FUNCTION & MENOPAUSE Now let's kind of talk about this second piece, which is estrogen. I've done several podcasts on menopause, but I want to talk about the influence of estrogen around female physiology, because I think this is really important. So when we are going through the menopausal transition, on average, individuals will start menopause between 50 and 51. Definition of menopause is when you've gone a full calendar year, 12 months without a menstrual period. That is your menopausal transition. But individuals can be experiencing perimenopausal symptoms that are indicators of dwindling or are coming down of estrogen status for up to 10 years prior to the transition into menopause. And so individuals who are in their early 40s can start to see the influences of loss of estrogen on their body. And then that influence is persistent as individuals get older. When we're talking about menopause, we often are putting this into two camps. So we have vasomotor symptoms, which are these symptoms that occur because of an acute withdrawal of estrogen. These are things like night sweats and hot flashes. As individuals transition through menopause and we get into our later life, into our 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond, those symptoms tend to decline. So those vasomotor symptoms that occur as our body transitions to reductions in estrogen status they tend to go down as our body gets used to this new state of equilibrium that occurs without estrogen. In the opposite direction, the second kind of camp that we speak about when individuals are going through menopause is genitourinary syndrome of menopause or GSM. And that is signs and symptoms across the female physiology that are responding to losses in estrogen. and anywhere where there is an estrogen receptor within our body, they are going to experience changes when individuals transition through menopause. And we oftentimes will, in the pelvic health space, talk about changes to our reproductive anatomy, which are unbelievably relevant, but we have to also extrapolate that out and talk about different areas where estrogen is influencing female physiology and how, if you are working with an aging female, they are experiencing changes because of that change in estrogen status. And so within the reproductive track, we see that there is changes in ligamentous stability around the pelvis. And I hate that word stability, but it's a change in the turnover of the way that our ligaments are restructuring. So we have a little bit more ligamentous breakdown than buildup, right? That turnover rate is different. And so we have this shift between static support in the pelvis to the requirements or dynamic support around the pelvic floor. We see that individuals start to have vaginal atrophy. We see that the vaginal microbiome starts to change. We don't have the same cervical mucus secretion. And so things like chafing and redness can be more prevalent in a person who is postmenopausal. We can see fusing of the labia minora and majora. and this can lead to increased risks for pelvic floor dysfunction. So when we are in estrogen low states, rates for pelvic floor dysfunction go up. This includes anal incontinence, urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, dyspnea, or painful punitive intercourse, and other aspects of the reproductive tract. We also see, because of this change in the vulvar anatomy, that we have an increased risk for things like urinary tract infections, that increased risk for urinary tract infection also influences individual's physical function. We know that recurrent UTIs can be a cause of changes in cognitive status for our aging females. And so something that is extremely relevant for our aging women. Other things that we see is that as individuals go into an estrogen depleted state, increased risk of cardiovascular disease goes up. Individuals as they transition through menopause, we see that in general, men tend to be more impacted by cardiovascular disease. That is shifting for a lot of different reasons, but that risk profile increases when individuals are in an estrogen depleted state. We see a change in central adiposity where weight starts to increase. Adiposity accumulation can increase, especially visceral fat accumulation, which has a risk profile in and of itself for different chronic diseases. And then we see, for example, in our bone microarchitecture that the influence of estrogen allows for continual bone regeneration and that profile again starts to switch and there's an increased risk for things like osteoporosis in an estrogen deficient state. So there's a lot of things that get impacted, right? Our skin gets impacted, our breast tissue gets impacted, our urinary tract, all of our mucosal membranes, not just in our vulva, but across our entire body, and this has impacts. And so when we are thinking about working with these individuals, one of the things that is starting to become really recommended is topical estrogens. And there's a lot of debate about this because of a study that had been done a little while ago that looked at increased risk for sex-related cancers, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, cervical cancer, et cetera, with systemic estrogen. However, what we are starting to see now and many of our menopausal experts like Dr. Mary Claire and Dr. Rachel Rubin are really trying to have this public health approach to medicine saying that we are not doing our females a service when we are saying that there is a risk profile when subsequent studies have not been able to substantiate or replicate those findings. And so there's been a big shift in the last five years to the need for or the desire for many women who are really suffering with genital urinary syndrome of menopause to be able to take things like topical estrogens in order to really significantly reduce their symptom burden. And I'm not just talking about their pelvic floor, which is an extremely important part of their sexual health, also a vital sign of aging, but also, you know, all of these other physiological signs of estrogen deficiency that are impacting our outcomes, right? We see that individuals with that combination of muscular mass, we are seeing individuals with negative consequences of osteoporotic fracture. if we were able to be preventative in this approach where we are talking about estrogen supplementation when these symptoms start to arise, especially when they hit a threshold of bother, where there's going to be this spectrum, some individuals are very bothered and very impacted by the signs of vasomotor symptoms and genital urinary syndrome of menopause, and then some individuals are not, but for those individuals with bother, is this something that should be taken? Is this something that they can talk to their physician about? Is there this literature to support these topical estrogens? And we are starting to see this mounting of evidence that is starting to come up to help individuals in the aging process. So many of our aging adults are being told that this is just what they should be living with. This is because they're going through menopause. Deal. We saw this in the peripartum space where there's a lot of advocacy still happening with respect to not having this thought process that as soon as you have a baby that pelvic floor dysfunction is just something that you should live with. We're starting to see this rise up in our perimenopausal and postmenopausal population, where they are not accepting that this is what they should be doing. They're not being dismissed anymore for these symptoms, and it's super important. When we take this lifespan approach, this education becomes extremely relevant. Talking about the peripartum space, I truly believe that that is where we start to tell females that they are not resilient, that they are somehow fragile, that they need to be concerned for their organs falling out and all these different pelvic floor dysfunctions. And then they are not encouraged to be as resilient as they could be by taking part in heavy resistance training or impact activities or things at higher intensities. We start bringing that intensity down and the idea of, ooh, be careful or, oh, monitor this or, oh, if you have these symptoms, it's time for you to stop participating in those activities. We are seeing this shift and what this shift is going to do earlier in life is it's going to set up are aging individuals with this mindset that pelvic floor dysfunction one is not inevitable two that reserve is protective when it comes to muscular reserve and three they're going to be advocates for their own health and that includes their hormonal health and that includes not accepting that some of these symptoms of menopause are things that they just need to live with, but things that can be medically managed. Genital urinary syndrome of menopause is a syndrome condition. It is a medical diagnosis, and therefore it is something that we can be treating. As physical therapists, us being educators and conduits of that knowledge translation is extremely important. And then we are going to optimize function for these individuals. Last point that I'm going to make, because I ended up being a lot more long-winded than I thought I was going to be, is that we are now seeing this interaction between menopause, genital urinary syndromes, and long-term health outcomes. We are seeing that individuals with higher physical activity, combination, aerobic resistance, or both, are having a much lower GSM burden than those who are not. And so again, it comes back full circle, whether this health promotion is extremely important, that not only are we gonna optimize a person's muscular reserve, we're gonna make that fountain of function be extremely relevant, but we're also going to make the quality of that function a lot better because their quality of life is better because we are not allowing them to just live with these symptoms and be dismissed by our medical system, us included, that just expects this to be the way that it is. And so this advocacy piece is extremely important and it's something that we are going to be screaming from the rooftops. All right, everyone, I hope you have a wonderful week. I'm going to be diving a lot more onto my page and I'm going to be collaborating it with ICE and MMOA around hormone therapies for individuals with GSM. I am not a medical physician, so I encourage you to reach out to your urogynecologist and urologist in your area. Get that relationship with them so that you can start having these conversations and we can start talking about risk profiles. All right, have a wonderful week. If you are not on our MMOA digest, I encourage you to sign up for those newsletters. Otherwise, have a wonderful week and I will talk to you all again soon.

OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Dr. Mark Gallant // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Extremity Division Leader Mark Gallant emphasizes the importance of having a well-coached and appropriately dosed set of exercises for patients. He stresses that these exercises should be ones that the therapist is extremely familiar with and knows exactly how to prescribe. By having a clear understanding of these exercises, the therapist can confidently explain to the patient the objective criteria and expectations for progression.

Mark acknowledges that sometimes our egos can hinder us, leading us to believe that we can come up with a better plan for each individual patient based on the information we have at that moment. However, he argues that research has shown that the human brain is a sensitive instrument that responds quickly to changes. Therefore, having a preset plan of exercises allows for consistency and efficiency in treatment.

Additionally, Marj suggests that having a set of exercises that can be progressed by increasing work volume, range of motion, load, or speed, while keeping the exercises relatively similar, can be beneficial. This approach allows the patient to become more efficient with the exercises and increases their buy-in. It also reduces stress for the physical therapist and ensures that enough time is given for each intervention to make a meaningful impact.

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 - MARK GALLANT What's up PT on ice crew we got Instagram here YouTube over here. I'm Dr. Mark Lantz coming at you here on Clinical Tuesday, lead faculty in the ice extremity management division, alongside Lindsey Hughey, Eric Chaconas, and Cody Gingerich. Happy to be here this Tuesday. Before we get rolling, a couple of housekeeping things. We've got a few more courses for the extremity division coming up here for 2023. I'll be in Woodstock, Georgia, second weekend of November. and then Cody and Lindsey each have opportunities early December, so check that out on the ICE website. More importantly, if you've been looking to get a certification through ICE and the overall ICE cert seemed like a bit much to chew off right now at this stage of your career, we are happy to announce that we've launched the Ortho cert. If you take the two spine management courses, cervical management, lumbar management, the extremity management course and total spine thrust manipulation, take a short test at the end of whichever the last of those four that you take, you can become ortho certified. So that is officially launched and on the website. So definitely head over there and check that out and we hope to see you on the road soon. 01:39 - INDIVIDUALIZED CARE So today what I want to talk about is individualized care. your ego is killing our profession. And what I mean by that, or what we mean by that, is that when we go around the country and we mentor folks, or we help out and talk through cases with individuals, watch people treat, one thing that we're starting to see as a trend is that folks are jumping around quite a bit in their plan of care. So that patient comes in for one visit, they're given a certain set of manual therapy techniques, a certain grouping of exercises at a specific dosage, and then each subsequent visit that person comes in, the plan dramatically changes. They're given a new set of exercises, there's different manual therapy techniques done. They are getting a completely unique plan of care each visit. And what we're recommending is that there needs to be a plan, that for any given pathology, you have a plan of what this is typically gonna go like. With that individualized care of jumping around from place to place, visit to visit, what we believe is that it is a reaction to old school physical therapy, what we like to call physical therapy 1.0, where a person would walk into a clinic, they would be put on a new step or a bike for five to 10 minutes, the physical therapist would wave the ultrasound wand on wherever their area of pain is, and then they would be given an exercise sheet. And it would be very specific to, here is the foot and ankle exercise sheet. Doesn't matter what you have going on, here is your foot and ankle exercise sheet. Here's our shoulder sheet. And if you were lucky, you would have a tech that would take you through that. If you were not one of the lucky few, you would either be given that to go run through in the clinic on your own, or even worse, just sent home with this exercise sheet. 04:17 - INDIVIDUALIZED PLANS OF CARE So we swung the pendulum hard to everyone gets an individualized plan depending on what they show up with the clinic that day. So if their pain has changed, if what the exercise is looking has changed, then we ditch the entire plan and then we're going to go to this very individualized thing each visit. The problem with this is it's hard for the patient to buy in if everything changes each visit. They're not sure what the plan is. Humans love to have a target in a bullseye. So if that person knows like, ooh, here's the plan that we laid out during the first couple visits. And here's where I am along that plan. It allows them to be more bought in. They're going to comply with the plan more. They're going to be more adherent to the plan because they can see the target they're shooting for. And they can very clearly see where they currently sit on that plan. In addition to that, if we're jumping from thing to thing all the time, we're actually likely not giving any one intervention enough time to do its thing. So we know with exercise, the research is fairly clear now that exercise for musculoskeletal pain is the most bang for your buck intervention from a cost perspective and from a getting the job done perspective. It takes time. If we're jumping from thing to thing every visit, then we're likely not giving those interventions enough time to actually make changes. And in addition, it takes people time to get used to doing an exercise. So if we switch to exercise each visit, we're not allowing that person to become efficient with that exercise. And then finally for us, if we're seeing anywhere, depending on what type of setting you're in, between six and 20 individuals a day, creating six to 20 unique plans of care. Every single visit for every single person becomes wildly exhausting. I've lived it. Everything that I'm saying here, I have personally done for many years. That type of physical therapy becomes exhausting. And it's likely part of the reason why we have such a high burnout rate in our profession. If the expectation is a unique individualized plan of care for every individual, every day. That becomes a lot for any one given physical therapist. Whereas if you know, for X pathology, for my rotator cuff related shoulder pain folks, I know that I can modulate their pain, decrease their symptoms with these three to four manual therapy techniques. I know that my bread and butter early on exercises are gonna be these four to five exercises that I can coach extremely well, that I know exactly how I want to dose, and that I have an expectation of when the person can do these, what the next group of exercises that I'm gonna move on to, and I can clearly explain the objective criteria to the patient of what that's gonna be. Now, our egos often get in the way of this, because many of us, myself included, I'm speaking to myself more than anyone, believe that for any given person that comes in, that we're going to be able to give them a better plan based on the information that's coming that day than the preset plan before that may seem more cookie cutter that we're afraid of. What we know about the human brain, now having a lot of research over the years, it is a very sensitive instrument and it's going to respond quickly and rapidly to what's changing in the moment. So therefore your plan or what that person is coming in can be highly deviated by anything that's happened to you that morning or that day. If you had a stressful interaction with your boss, if the kids were having a hard time getting ready for school, if someone called you right before the patient came in and gave you some bad news, that is all going to very dramatically sway what happens in that session and how you go about what you're going to do in that session. Even more dramatically, our patients are in pain. which means that their nervous systems are gonna be all over the place. And so their drama and their brains are gonna be very sensitive and that is also gonna shape those interactions. So we're leaving a lot of interpretation to that interaction. Whereas if we have a plan that we know if this is looking like this, I'm gonna go this way, if this is looking like this, this is how I go based on the plan for this pathology, we are far less likely to succumb to the sways of any given day. When we look at other professions, professions that have higher stakes than physical therapy typically, we see that they use systems and plans to deviate from those in the moment sways. Pilots are the easiest example to talk about. When you have a pilot, it doesn't matter if that pilot is on his second day of the job or if they have 36 years of experience. That pilot has a checklist for almost everything that could possibly happen on a plane. If the weather looks like this, this is our checklist of what we're going to do. If the wind changes this way before we land, this is what we're going to do. And that pilot follows the checklist, not what they're feeling in the moment based on their experience. So much so to the point where there's a second person there, the co-pilot. whose primary job is literally to say, hey, why aren't you following the checklist? We got to go back to the checklist. We know this works. 99.9% of the time go to the checklist. 09:30 - RECIPE REPETITION For those of you who have been following ICE for a long time, our CEO, Jeff Moore, spent a lot of time working in restaurants and kitchens. And if you were lucky enough to take a class with Jeff or got to spend some time with Jeff, we used to always get all these stories about his time in the kitchen. And a lot of those things I still think about to this day, the stories he told as far as patient care. And one of the main ones that stuck with me was a chef that he worked with, who now has a Michelin star, by the way, told Jeff that for any given recipe, you need to cook this 1,000 times before you start to deviate from the plan. Doesn't matter if you're the greatest chef in the world, you don't add salt, you don't add fat, you don't add any flavor profiles until you have cooked that recipe 1,000 times. Because that 1,000 times is going to allow you to see how this thing really responds, what could possibly go wrong, what could happen, how you really get the full breath by committing that much. That's the same with our plan of care. There is no way that we can confidently say to the human in front of us, for most people what we see, if you follow this plan, this is where we get to. If we're changing the plan all the time, we never get to experience that to show the patient and to say confidently. So we want to have the plan for any given pathology that we're going to give most people. Another example, is the 12-step plan in recovery. I am not in recovery myself, so if I'm butchering this, I apologize to anyone who is in recovery. But with the 12-step program, it's 12 steps. You run the steps, and people who have addictions all over the country have been using this 12-step program to help deal with their said addiction. And when you look at that plan, it's a simple, not easy plan, and you follow those steps to a T. Again, same as the co-pilot, they have a mentor or a sponsor who helps them work those steps. If that person is struggling or deviating, what that mentor's job is to do is say, hey, make sure you go back and are following these steps and are not deviating. So lots of examples of really solid professions and organizations that use a plan to get the job done. 12:07 - STICK WITH THE PLAN: MODULATE PAIN, INTRODUCE MOVEMENT, PROGRESS MOVEMENT So what should the plan look like for us, for any given patient? When you have a pathology, rotator cuff related shoulder pain, plantar fasciitis, things that you need to know. Early on, what are the manual therapy techniques or exercises that you know can modulate pain and decrease symptoms for most people? Have a few of these that you know you can do effectively and work for most folks as part of your plan. Then have your bread and butter exercises. What are the exercises that are gonna be the main, let me back up for a second. Before you have your bread and butter exercises, what are the few exercises that you're gonna have that are for that irritable patient that you know before they can tolerate a lot of load that we're gonna give them? So your pain modulation techniques, your lower level exercises that are not gonna overstress the tissue while we're trying to calm this down. Part two, what are your bread and butter exercises? What are the handful of exercises that you know tend to work best for any given pathology that you can coach really well, that you can dose really well, that you can manage workload really well? And then finally, what is the criteria that that person needs to demonstrate to move on to their more advanced exercises? And then a final piece to have in your mind is what does this look like If the person does have a flare up or relapse, how do we coach them? What point in the program do they go back to if they are indeed not ready to progress? So again, what are the things that can modulate pain and that can calm symptoms down or exercises that are not going to require a lot of stress to the tissue while things are calming down? What are your bread and butter exercises for any given pathology? What are the most common things that you're going to give in most people's plans? And then finally, what are you going to have as your criteria to progress these people on and having a game plan if they do flare up or regress? What this is going to allow, it's going to allow the person to go, ooh, I know exactly where I am on Mark's plan of care at this time and where I need to go to take the steps to move forward. It's also going to allow you to not have to switch exercises so much. You're not going to have to get overly creative with your exercise prescription. And by doing this, what you're typically going to be changing is same exercises, but you're going to be increasing the work volume. You're going to be increasing the range of motion. You're going to increase the load on the exercise and you're going to increase the speed on the exercise while keeping the exercises relatively similar or the same so that the person can become more efficient with that exercise. It's going to allow the patient to buy in way more. It's going to take our stress way down as a physical therapist. And if there is that small percentage of folks who do indeed need a more nuanced program because they are actually not responding over time, or they're having a lot of trouble adhering to the plan, it's only a small percentage of the folks, which takes a lot off of the mental stress for us as physical therapists. Love to hear what you all think about this in the chat. Definitely hit us up. Love to see you on the road in Woodstock, Georgia next month. Cody and Lindsey have courses early December. Check out the ortho cert on the website. Have a great day in clinic today. Hope you all crush it. See you soon.

OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Dr. Alexis Morgan // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic lead faculty Alexis Morgan discusses the research & practical approach to helping runners return to running beginning at 4 weeks postpartum. She references research that about 50% of postpartum patients begin reintroducing running at approximately 4 weeks postpartum, with varying degrees of symptoms. Alexis emphasizes utilizing the symptom behavior model to monitor symptoms, educating & encouraging patients that about 85% of all individuals have some sort of symptom(s) with running, and that volume is an important variable to have a successful return to running.

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 - ALEXIS MORGAN Good morning, Instagram. Good morning, fellow ice people. Welcome to the PT on Ice Daily Show. Welcome to Monday. It is the start of another week. And we are so excited to be here. Really as we're wrapping up the end of this year, we still have a lot going on at the end of the year that I want to tell you all about this morning. And then we are really getting already very excited about 2024. And just want to talk to you all about some of the things that are going on. If you are in the ICE Students Facebook group, you've been to an ICE course or you were just recently added in because you just finished a course this weekend, welcome. You've seen some announcements in there as well a while back. And I just want to highlight a couple of things. So let's get started on that before we discuss four weeks returning to running, four weeks postpartum. So number one, we've still got three more chances for a live course, or you've got three more chances to hit us in the pelvic division at a live course. So this, not this weekend, but next weekend, if you're listening live, November 4th and 5th, we will be in Bozeman, Montana, and then a few weeks after that in Bexar, Delaware. And a few weeks after that in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. That is the first weekend in December, December 2nd and 3rd. So those are your three chances to get into seeing this Pelvic Live course, experiencing it, having fun with us, learning so much about pelvic floor health. not just for pregnancy and postpartum, but in general, across the lifespan, men and women, pregnancy, yes, but also all things pelvic health. So those are your three chances, Bozeman, Bexar, Delaware, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. So if you're on the fence, go ahead and pop onto those. Second, thing that we i want to share with you all is about the pelvic level one course so our name is changing as you all have heard us talking about and we're actually going to be taking a little break through the next few months and our new level one cohort is going to start in january so Be sure, we've already got people signed up for that, gearing up, ready to experience the new content. Very regularly, we are always reading the research on a weekly basis. And once enough of it stacks up, we've got to reframe the way that we're teaching, particularly in the space, because it changes so incredibly rapidly. And so with that, we are updating that material. So that is coming up on, that will be on the website soon. Actually, that is actually already on the website. So that is on there. So a lot of things coming up at the end of this year, the beginning of next year. We've got even more announcements, so stay tuned. And we're gonna be announcing a couple more exciting things in our ice pelvic newsletter. So if you're not already signed up for the pelvic newsletter, go ahead and sign up for that because we've got even more things to discuss and share with you all. 04:31 - RETURNING TO RUNNING 4 WEEKS POSTPARTUM So all of that aside, let's go ahead and discuss this four week return to running. This is a topic that a handful of years ago really was not discussed. No way are we going to be facilitating someone running one month after giving birth. That's what we thought a handful of years ago. But fast forward, we've got several examples of elite level athletes which then trickles down to our recreational level athletes, we've got several examples of people returning to running. And it's actually even showing up in our literature. And when we are starting to see this, it's kind of interesting in the pelvic world, like we have all of these thoughts and beliefs and oftentimes you're you're gonna run into some strong opinions surrounding those, and a deep connection here. We've gotta have that connection with our beliefs, but also be willing to let that go once the evidence and once the, even the anecdotal evidence that your clients show up to you with, once that narrative begins, and it's maybe opposite of yours, we need to be able to let that go and to explore and ask questions and be curious about, well, what are some other possibilities? And that's exactly what we're seeing in this four-week return to running. So what we've seen is people aren't running. Runners will run, as we always say, in pregnancy and then early postpartum. And what we know is that the longer someone runs in their pregnancy, the sooner they're going to run in that postpartum phase. And in Shefali Christopher's study looking at returning to running and risk factors associated with musculoskeletal pain, she actually saw that it was close to half of those individuals, 46%, reported returning to running at four weeks. And so we've got some information to kind of digest, right, as therapists. And what we know, and again, in her research, what we know is that when runners return to running, we're seeing that musculoskeletal injuries or musculoskeletal pain does occur. And so that's the number one thing that we want to be educating our runners on and we want to be looking out for. But rather than waiting until they've hit certain guidelines, what we are proposing and what we are doing, what I am doing clinically, what a lot of our faculty is doing clinically is we're educating our patients. And we urge you to educate your patients as well. Based on this evidence, this is what we're seeing. We're seeing that when we're returning to running, we're actually, many people are experiencing musculoskeletal pain, about 85% of people. Not just those that are returning at four weeks. The median time returning at 12 weeks. So that's significantly before and significantly afterwards. We educate them. So we can, Educate them. They know that okay. There's a risk of injury. There's a risk of musculoskeletal pain Of course, just like with everything and what we tell them is when you feel something You need to let me know That visit is so much easier to discuss that if it's already been planned. So you schedule your person a couple weeks out. Go ahead and return to running and see how that feels. We're gonna control for the volume. We're not gonna go out and run five miles for the first time in eight weeks. We're gonna control that volume. Build up slowly and see how they feel. If you're experiencing some mild knee pain or some hip pain, we are gonna address that. All the while, absolutely, we're doing our basic hip strengthening, right? I say basic, not just talking about a basic squat, but also your accessory movements like clamshells to work on that rotation. Or better yet, some single leg standing you know, the standing variation of the clamshell or the hip abduction with your foot on the wall. That way you're working both sides. We love that accessory work to decrease the risk of pain. But even while they're working on that strength, they're still, everyone is still at a risk. And so the best thing they can do is talk to you about it as soon as they experience that. And tell them, okay, let's back down on that volume right when they're when they experience that let's say they bumped it up to a two mile total volume of running maybe they were doing one minute of running 30 seconds of walking and they had just bumped all of that volume and those intervals up experience that bit of lateral knee pain let's bump that back down. What were they doing last week? Let's repeat last week's volume. Let's repeat last week's running workouts and let's calm that system down. That's how we'll address it from that pain aspect. And then of course, we're going to be continuing to build that accessory strength training and coaching their running, looking at their running form. We're not afraid of them experiencing that pain. In fact, we know more than likely they're going to experience that. Again, 85% of runners are experiencing some level of pain, typically in the lower extremities, not necessarily their pelvis or pelvic floor. So we know we're gonna bump into that. So we educate them on the factors, and then we schedule a visit to where we're gonna follow back up on that. That's already in their calendar, they already know. That way we can discuss those itty bitty issues that they have, and we can address them before they get bigger. That's exactly the same thing that we want to do with pelvic heaviness, symptoms of heaviness, really fatigue, we've talked a lot about that on the podcast here and of course in our courses, but pelvic floor heaviness or fatigue is another symptom that we're going to address in the exact same way. We're gonna decrease their volume. We're gonna educate them about it first and talk with them when they experience it, but they are going to decrease their volume when that occurs. We're gonna continue to be building that hip accessory work. All the while we're working pelvic floor strength, but pelvic floor and hip accessory movement, that's what builds up strength and endurance for the run. Just like how we expect them to experience pain, what we're realizing is that we expect them to bump into some symptoms of heaviness as well. We, as the rehab providers, are not scared of that. Just like we're not scared of them experiencing pain. We know they bump into that and we get them to back off immediately. We know they're not gonna have an issue there. We know they're gonna meet all of their goals and continue to run. We know this with the symptoms of pelvic floor heaviness as well. Heaviness, in most cases, many cases can come on with a lot of emotional concern. And honestly, in some cases, pain can do that as well. You've all experienced that with your patients. Very similar with pelvic floor heaviness. I see it very, we all see it very heightened in that emotional response. But if we can educate them on this first, if we can tell them, Hey, You're gonna bump into this. This is a symptom of fatigue. What you're gonna do when you bump into it is you're gonna back down. You're gonna back down in that volume. You're gonna wait to return to your next running workout until those symptoms have died down, because your body is telling you that that's too much. But you're gonna return, and we're gonna talk about it on our next visit, and you are absolutely gonna run that 5K at Thanksgiving. or you're absolutely gonna run that New Year's Day 5K, whatever that may be for them. So, educating them about symptoms, whether it's pain, whether it's heaviness, of course, leaking. I feel like we as pelvic floor PTs have educated people so, so much on leaking, but similar conversation here. you're probably going to have leaking with some point of return to running. Again, it's muscle fatigue that often precedes that return or that leaking. So we're going to probably experience it. If that athlete is running to a fatigue level, that's okay. We've gotta understand where their capacity is and where that lies and where that threshold is for leaking or for heaviness or for pain. We figure out where that threshold is, we go down from that. We build capacity and we bump that threshold up. That's the name of the game in all things that we do. That is the name of the game in pelvic floor health, in returning to running, even when they're returning early, like at four weeks. Realize runners are gonna run. Many of them are already going to run at four weeks. So go ahead and have that conversation at your two-week follow-up. Better yet, go ahead and have that conversation in their late pregnancy. Prepare them for what they're going to experience in that return to run. Prepare them for it to decrease fear and to improve education and awareness. Education goes such a long way in this area, but we've also gotta have that follow-up. We've gotta have that action item, okay? When they experience the pain or the heaviness, what you're going to do is X, Y, Z. Decrease that volume, right? Maybe return to some, diaphragmatic breathing and regulate your nervous system if it's someone who's has a heightened level of concern, right? We're going to repeat last week's workouts after symptoms have resolved. Give them several action items that way they feel empowered to make those decisions for themselves. All of that and then have that follow-up appointment with them already scheduled a couple weeks out. And that way, you can address all of these issues that are small, and we ensure that it does not continue to grow. So that's a very different way of guiding someone in this return to running, where someone is starting to run early, we don't have the time to go through all these strength and all of these assessments, but we just say, hey, let's use our symptoms as our guide. Let's start small, 15 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking. Let's start small and add that in and let's see how you do. That is an example of us coming alongside someone who's already going to be running. This is how we stay in their corner as opposed to, Hey, you're not ready to run. Person's like, I know I'm ready to run. I mentally am so ready to run. I'm not gonna go back to that person. I'm gonna go run. We lose people when we have this black and white yes and no and I am the boss. We gain people, we gain people's trust and confidence and their willingness to work with us if we come alongside them. So that's what we're advocating for this return to run. Absolutely, you're gonna work on strength, overall building capacity, calf. We're gonna work on coaching them and how do they look with running and running form and their cadence. And we're going to be addressing all of these factors. Let's do it by letting them run and coming alongside them. That's a bit different than what you might be doing. That's different than what we used to do several years ago. What do you think? Do you want to try it? Have you recently tried it? Or are you concerned? Think we might be missing something? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Have a wonderful Monday. Hope to see you on the road at one of our three courses at the end of this year. And we will talk soon. Thanks for being here, y'all. 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.

Alan Fredendall // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2019/12000/validity_and_reliability_of_the_rear_foot_elevated.9.aspx https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=9900&issue=00000&article=00300&type=Fulltext

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete lead faculty Alan Fredendall discusses the research, physics, clinical context, and patient input that goes into deciding if mechanics with lifting are "good" or "bad".

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 - ALAN FREDENDALL Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the PT on ICE Daily Show. Happy Friday morning. I hope your morning is off to a great start. My name is Alan. I'm happy to be your host today here on Fitness Athlete Friday, the best darn day of the week. I currently have the pleasure of serving as our Chief Operating Officer at Ice and a lead faculty member here in our Fitness Athlete Division. Fitness Athlete Friday, we talk all things CrossFit, power limping, Olympic weight lifting. recreational bodybuilding, running, rowing, biking, swimming, triathletes, marathoners, anybody who's out there getting after it on a regular basis, we address all things relevant to that population. Some courses coming your way really quick from the Fitness Athlete Division. Your last chance to catch us online for our eight-week online entry-level course, Clinical Management Fitness Athlete Level 1 Online will begin November 6th. So that's just two weeks away. That'll be our last cohort of the year. That class will take us right through the holidays. and then we'll take a little break. The next cohort after that will be available sometime in the spring. So if you've been hoping to join us for that class, November 6th is your last chance for the next couple months. Live courses coming your way between now and the end of the year as we get into the back half here of quarter four. You can catch Zach Long down in Birmingham, Alabama. That'll be the weekend of November 4th and 5th. That same weekend, Mitch Babcock will be in San Antonio, Texas. The weekend of November 18th and 19th, Mitch will be in Holmes Beach, Florida. Beautiful place, just actually took a vacation there a couple weeks ago. Wonderful place to get to, especially in mid-November if you're from the Northeast or the Midwest, Florida's a great spot that time of year. That class just has one seat left, so if you've been looking to get baby both to Florida and to fitness athlete, that is your chance. And then our very last live course of the year from the fitness athlete division will be December 9th and 10th. That will be out in Colorado Springs, Colorado. That course will also be with Mitch Babcock. So check us out online, check us out live. We'd love to have you here at the end of the year before we get into the holidays. 02:16 - DOES FORM MATTER? Today's topic, we're going to take a deep dive into form and mechanics. Does form matter? How much does it matter? We hear this question a lot in our courses as we're introducing movements, instructing the basics of how to perform some of the most basic movements, your squats, your deadlifts, your presses. This may be a question that you get from athletes or patients in the clinic and for a long time and even right now this is kind of a very dogmatic campy approach to this topic of yes form is the most important thing or no form has no application at all we've even heard things like Sheer force is an artificial construct created by physical therapists to scare people away from moving. Physics doesn't matter as much as we thought it did. That movement, however it happens, is normal, natural, and that's how the human chooses to move, and there is no right or wrong way to move. So, where's the magic lie? Where's the evidence lie? What actually works in practice in the gym with real human beings? And what are some pearls to take away from the discussion on form? So often we get questions of does it really matter if the low back rounds during a squat or a deadlift? Does it really matter if the back hyper extends with overhead lifting? Who cares if someone catches a snatch with a bent elbow or they never reach full extension of the elbow at the bottom of maybe a pull-up? If someone presses their jerks or snatches out, is it really that big of a deal? So today I want to approach this topic from a couple different directions. I want you to go back and watch last Thursday's episode or listen to it on evidence-based medicine about making sure we're addressing all of the facets of evidence-based medicine when we approach a really hot topic like this that also has a room for a lot of interpretation one way or the other. We need to look at what does the evidence say, we need to look at what does our friend physics say, what does our clinical experience say as far as What is our anecdotal experience with clinical pattern recognition with actual patients and athletes? And then what does the patient say? What matters to the patient? Patient expectation and input matters. So let's start from the top. 04:42 - WHAT DOES THE EVIDENCE SAY? What does the evidence say? As much as we don't want to hear this, we don't have a lot of strong evidence either way in this discussion about form. When we talk about what does the evidence say, we have nothing concrete or strong for or against poor mechanics and lifting. We have a ton of research out of the functional movement screen space that looks at movement quality and its association to injury. And time and time again, I have to declare my bias. I hate that test. I think that test is total garbage. I think the research supports that that test is total garbage. And when we look at does particularly unweighted movement transfer to predicting injury, we have stacks and stacks and stacks of research across a wide variety of populations, recreational athletes, tactical athletes, first responders, professional athletes, that shows the association between quality and injury prediction or injury risk reduction is simply not there. We do have some research that looks at the effects of lifting, and I'll put lifting in air quotes here for those of you listening on the podcast, that lifting with a rounded back does not seem to cause low back pain or make current low back pain worse with the caveat of when we look at that systematic review and meta-analysis from O'Sullivan and colleagues a couple years ago, that the papers they included did not have any patient lifting more than 25 reps across the span of a day at a weight heavier than 25 pounds. It's really hard to take research like that and extrapolate it to our population who might be deadlifting two or three times their body weight, cleaning or snatching their body weight, doing dozens or hundreds of things like pull-ups and handstand push-ups and double-unders, really getting a lot of load through their body, running, crossfit, lifting, whatever. That research really has no application. It's really hard to even call that lifting, right? Those are just kind of activities of daily living. We can't take research like that and extrapolate it to somebody dead lifting with a low back and say these are the same. They are just simply not. We also need to be mindful of the research that we do have. When you look at papers on deadlifts with low back pain, on the effects of lumbar reversal with lifting, what you'll find in those studies is that one of the variables that the research authors always control for is the lifting mechanics themselves. You'll often see, if you actually read the full paper, not to harp on that, but when you read the full paper, when you read the methodology, what you will find is that very often those folks are instructed how we would instruct a movement in the gym, which is to try to maintain a brace-neutral spine, modifying the load or modifying the range of motion to maintain that, to therefore reduce that as a variable in the research study. That if we cannot control mechanics, that's one more variable that maybe takes a little bit away from our conclusion when we look at the data. Of trying to standardize the mechanics as much as possible is how we can narrow down the focus of that research study on whatever the intervention is and whatever the outcome and feel really confident that the association there is direct and that other variables aren't at play. If we can't say deadlifts are safe, deadlifts increase low back strength, deadlifts improve low back pain, if we look at a study and there was no control on how the deadlift was performed or how the mechanics were performed through those deadlifts. One study does sumo deadlifts, another does conventional, one does trap bar, one allows back rounding, one does not. You'll see when you read those studies that controlling for those variables, controlling for those mechanics, is one of the ways that variables are reduced. And so it's hard to look at those studies as well and extrapolate to altered mechanics, what we might call a movement fault, and translate that to the population that we're working with. It's hard to take research and say, you know what? I'm gonna do everything this study did except change everything about it, right? That doesn't mean you're implementing that research and practice. You're taking the general idea and you're kind of going your own way with it. You no longer have that evidence base to stand on. From the research, we do know that symmetry can be objectively quantified, we can assess it, and we can intervene on it. Very often, physical therapists are very comfortable at calling out and identifying qualitative faults without really understanding what might be going on, how to assess it, how to measure it, how to track it, or how to change it. But if we look at some really nice research papers, a great one came out this year, I'm gonna butcher this name, I'm so sorry, Yuja Kovic and Sarah Bond came out this year, looking specifically at asymmetries and change of direction in basketball athletes and finding that there are ways that we can objectively quantify things like asymmetries, strength, speed, motion, quality, asymmetries, that we can also intervene on them. This study in particular sought to reduce the change of direction asymmetry by overloading the slower slash weaker limb with three times as much training volume compared to the stronger or faster side. That looking at an 11% or so difference in change of direction speed, able to reduce that down to just 4% simply by overloading the volume on the weaker, slower, basically problem area. In this case, it was the lower extremity. A very simple study, just using some lower extremity strengthening, three times as much volume as the contralateral limb. We know we don't need a biodex or some other form of fancy isokinetic testing or force plates in our clinic to have ways to objectively identify and assess maybe quality that is associated with asymmetry that is maybe the cause of pain, aggravating current pain, aggravating past pain and or limiting performance. Great study by Helm and colleagues 2019. wanted to validate the five rep max rear foot elevated split squat. Maybe you have heard of this as the Bulgarian split squat, but essentially kicking up that back leg, doing a five rep max on each leg. In this study, they used a barbell. In the clinic, you can use dumbbells as well, trying to find a five rep max per side, and then quantifying and objectifying the asymmetry side to side. Finding it's a very reliable, very valid way as compared to things like Biodex, and force plates to develop an idea of asymmetry from side to side. I would argue a paper like that we can extrapolate to the upper extremity, we can do something like a landmine press, we can do something with our lats or back with something like a bent over row and really start to think if we're seeing movement faults that we think are the cause of symptoms or some sort of performance issue to start getting more objective in how we assess, reassess, and intervene on these things. So that's what the evidence says. It doesn't say a lot. Besides that, we need to help people get stronger and we need to quantify where their strength is at as they're starting their rehab program and then reassess it as they're finishing in order to be sure that person actually got stronger and actually closed the gap on any sort of perceived or actual asymmetries that we found. 11:38 - WHAT DOES PHYSICS SAY? What does physics say? This is something that we tend to ignore a lot, that we exist as human beings on a planet with things like gravity, and that we are subject to certain physical characteristics that we can't avoid. Physics would say that the shortest route between two points is a straight line, and anything else, any other extraneous movement is a force leak. Any amount of force leak doesn't matter what your sport is. If you're an Olympic weightlifter, a powerlifter, a crossfitter, a gymnast, a swimmer, a runner, The more inefficient your mechanics, the more extraneous movement, the more your leg kicks out into circumduction in your run, the more your lower back rounds and extends back and forth as you go through deadlift reps, the more you bend your knees or bend your elbow in your pull-ups, it doesn't matter. The more extraneous movement you have, the more you're leaking force out of your system, the more you're limiting your top end performance. I have yet to this day see anybody break the deadlift world record by doing a Jefferson Curl. Yes, under extreme loads we might see a little bit of low back rounding, but we don't see people intentionally initiating a 1500-pound deadlift with a Jefferson curl mechanic. They tend to approach the barbell over and over again in a similar fashion, either setting up in a conventional or sumo deadlift and really doing everything they can, again, to minimize extraneous movement, put the maximum amount of weight through the ground to lift the highest load up in the air. That is performance, that is physics. We have to remember, unless we can invent some sort of technology or better understand physics, we can't get around that. So that's the evidence, that's the math. What does our personal experience say? Our clinical experience, maybe some of you would say this is anecdotal, but remember, part of evidence-based medicine is our clinical experience. 13:59 - WHAT DOES CLINICAL EXPERIENCE SAY? Our clinical experience would say that those folks in the gym that we see performing pull-ups, overhead movements with things like a constantly bent elbow, tend to be the people that we most often see over in the PT clinic for stuff like elbow pain. That the folks who rock up on their toes, catching their cleans, their snatches, because they lack ankle dorsiflexion, are the folks that we tend to see coming into the clinic with things like knee pain. That those folks who always quarter squats, no matter how much we try to help them get to a deeper range of motion, a greater range of motion, whether it's working on their mobility, elevating their heels, giving them a squat to target, whatever our coaching cues corrections are, those tend to be the folks in the clinic with things like knee pain and hip pain. And those folks who show up with lumbar rounding in the bottom of their deadlifts, as they're pulling the deadlift off the floor, the bottom of their squat, catching a clean, catching a snatch, those tend to be the people who come to see us for low back pain and hip pain in the clinic. 18:01 - WHAT DOES THE PATIENT SAY? And that connects really well to the third part of evidence based medicine of what matters to the patient. We have to understand these folks are often aware of their faults, especially the more they've been training, the less faults they tend to have, and they're more acutely aware of the ones they have left, and they also know the association between the faults they have and maybe aggravation of symptoms, re-aggravation of symptoms with maybe a previous injury. Understanding as well that we don't just always work with the lead athletes, that our goal is to introduce movement to everybody who comes into our clinic. How hard is it to introduce movements, even basic movements like the squat or deadlift, to patients who maybe never done this in their life before? Not even with a barbell. Maybe we just hand Doris a kettlebell for a goblet squat, or we have Frank just deadlifting a kettlebell off the ground. How tough is it for that person who is a complete novice to this If our instruction is, hey, Frank, you know what? Mechanics don't matter. Points of performance are arbitrary constructs created by rehab providers and fitness professionals to scare people like you into purchasing more care than you need. How helpful is that to teach movement to somebody new? What are they going to say? Uh, okay. So like, is there a way I should do this? Is there a best way? Well, Frank, it doesn't matter. All human movement is good and natural movement. Just do whatever feels good. That's not very helpful, right? And you would never do that in the clinic with a patient. You would never do that in the gym with an athlete. If you do actually do that, I challenge you to film that and send it to me because my gut tells me that nobody actually does that because you know how stupid you would sound and how likely it is for the patient to be successful if that's your approach to instructing movement. Likewise, if we do have that more experienced athlete, what good does it do to tell that person who has extreme low back pain, when their spine rounds in the bottom of the squat, there may be somebody who's filming their lifts to try to figure out why do my squats bother me? And our answer is, hey, there's no evidence to support that your spine flexing is a source of your pain. Same issue, right? Same outcome, entirely different patient population, but same outcome. Okay, that's not very helpful. I can see my tail tucking here, and I notice that when that happens, that's when I feel my extreme low back pain. That person has already associated that in their mind. What good does it do to tell them that there's no evidence to support that that's what's happening? They're experiencing it firsthand, right? We need to be mindful of the way that we instruct this, both with new and experienced athletes, patients in the gym and the clinic, that mechanics do seem to matter. People seem to have a natural awareness that at least some sort of standardization of performing a movement seems natural and that some sort of association exists between maybe symptoms and faults. We always acknowledge the resiliency of the human body, that yes, it can develop tolerance in different positions, such as lifting with a rounded back, but we can also still do stuff at the same time to limit pain with lifting. We can modify the range of motion. We can modify the load, the volume, whatever, to a more tolerable level. We need to get a lot more comfortable living in the gray area. Yes, we can recognize injuries multifactorial. Yes, the body's capacity can be temporarily reduced by things like sleep, stress, illness, nutrition, but we can also still manipulate movement to be more comfortable and enjoyable and also help that person work on strengthening in a manner that we know is very evidence supported that's going to reduce the likelihood of future injury. I have an athlete on my caseload right now, very, very impressive athlete, been doing CrossFit a long time. every time she's under an extreme amount of cardiovascular fatigue, or she's doing something like a 10 rep max with a back squat or a three rep max clean or something like that. Usually under a high amount of fatigue, she demonstrates some lumbar reversal associated with that lumbar reversal is always extreme low back pain. She is aware of that. She's somebody that films her lifts. She knows every time she rounds her low back in the bottom of her squat, that is what usually will kick up an episode of low back pain that could last short term, a couple of days, or could really set her back weeks or maybe months. So she's very aware of her spine rounding, the association of form with the development of symptoms, and aware of how bad those symptoms can get. So what are solutions with that in regards to does form matter or not? Well, the first thing we can always do is help reduce that pain acutely, right? Of that person is an extraordinary pain in our clinic, regardless of what we're going to do with them in the gym, regardless of how we're going to address their form, we have ways to reduce their acute pain. We can modify those squats, we can do things like belt squats, we can do lightweight, high tempo squats, tempo squats at maybe 30 or 40% of her max where she's maybe taking three, five, seven seconds to sit down to that squat to maintain or continue to build strength in a way that doesn't aggravate her symptoms. We can do alternate movements if a squat pattern is not tolerable at all, hip thrusts, deadlifts, et cetera, to train lower extremity general strengthening. Yes, we can build up general strength and endurance of the low back, the legs, the posterior chain as we're getting more comfortable, but we can also spend some time working with that athlete on their mechanics of what's going to probably help you the most is that under extreme fatigue, you know how to breathe embrace, you know when to call it for the day when you know you're extremely fatigued, so you don't find yourself in this position again and again. And yes, the final step there is probably to layer in some intentional lifting in that what we would say poor mechanical position, right? Let's also add in some rounded back lifting so that we expose ourselves to the movement so the only time we encounter it is not under a 10 rep max on the 10th rep where we tend to encounter our symptoms. So let's do things like sandbag cleans and sandbag squats and yes, Jefferson curls and other things like reverse hyper extensions. Let's do all the things. We don't have to focus just on form but also form matters. We need to train in that position so that when we get into that compromised form position, it is going to have a less likelihood to be symptomatic and set that athlete back. 21:09 - MECHANICS & PERFORMANCE And finally, we need to go beyond pain into performance. What does the evidence say? What does physics say? What do we say? What does the patient say? What does performance say? What can you possibly help an athlete with who comes into your clinic, who wants to pay you $150 an hour to improve their snatch, and you say there are no optimal mechanics to complete the snatch. We know that's not true, right? People who win gold medals in clean and jerks and snatches tend to lift a certain way. They tend to all show relatively the same mechanics. That tells us that mechanics seems to matter a lot in regards to high level performance. There's a reason those Olympic weightlifters tend to initiate their pull off the floor in the same fashion, going through their first pull, their second pull, their receiving position, the jerk overhead or the catching of the snatch. There's a reason that it looks pretty much textbook no matter who the athlete is, how tall or short or big or small they are or what their race or gender is. They all tend to show the same mechanics time and time again. It seems like it's physics at the end of the day. We don't see anybody breaking the snatch world record with a rounded back deadlift to a muscle snatch, do we? And I think that tells us a lot of now beginning to shift towards using mechanics to push performance. And again, as long as we can be objective about it, I think that is the way to go. 24:41 - SUMMARY So what does the evidence say? We have nothing strongly for or against poor mechanics and lifting. is it relates to people actually performing resistance training not just picking up pins off the floor with a rounded back. We need to be mindful that research studies tend to standardize points performance for lifts such that everyone is performing the same thing the same way every time. What does physics tell us? It will always tell us unless something miracle happens with a change in physics that the shortest route between two points is a straight line Mechanics matter in performance. Straight lines are strong lines. What does our clinical experience tell us? That people who tend to move like crap, especially under increasing amounts of load and or volume, whether it's due to poor mobility, going too heavy, going too fast, those tend to also be the people who need a lot of healthcare treatment, right? Those folks who tend to move quite well tend to have maybe one particular fault, that they're usually aware of, and that they're usually also aware of being associated with their symptoms, and we need to be mindful of that. And what do those patients say? People who are already active are usually aware of that fault, they're usually aware of when and how they demonstrate it, and they are usually aware of that it's associated with some sort of symptom, development of a new symptom, re-aggravation of a previous injury, that sort of thing. We know the group of people we probably need to help the most are inactive patients. The other 90% of the population, right? The majority of the people in our caseload. Inactive patients, people who are complete novices to movement, can't learn things in a structured manner that they're going to be able to repeat them on their own in the gym or at home in the garage or whatever. if our approach is that physics, points of performance, faults, are just artificial constructs that we create to scare them and somehow fleece the general public out of their money. And then also finally, something to remember is that you'll be stuck on a hamster wheel in your clinic forever just treating people in pain if you're not able to transition people to the lifelong fitness and performance side of what we can offer them. At a certain point, mechanics do matter as it relates to top end performance, as it relates to goal setting. And you're crazy if you think, quote unquote, normal people don't want to increase the amount of weight they can snatch, or how fast they can run their mile. We need to be mindful that with top end performance, when people want to see their 5K time come down, or their one rep max back squat go up, that mechanics really, really, really do matter. So mechanics, do they matter? It depends, but there's probably more to be said for mechanics mattering for a performance aspect, for instruction aspect, and for overall higher quality and the ability to perform more movement more often, which is the goal. If we are aware of mechanics, but also being mindful that sometimes they don't matter, especially if we're not being objective about assessing them, reassessing them, and what we're doing to intervene on maybe trying to improve mechanics. Tough discussion, but I think it's worth one having. I hope you all have a fantastic Friday. If you're gonna be at a live course this weekend, I hope you have a great time. We'll see you all next week. Bye, everybody. 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. Ellison Melrose // #TechniqueThursday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Dry Needling lead faculty Ellison Melrose discusses an alternate technique to dry needle the lumbar multifidus.

Take a listen to the podcast episode, watch the video, or read the full transcription below.

If you're looking to learn more about dry needling, especially dry needling with e-stim using the ITO ES-160 stim unit, take a look at our Upper Body Dry Needling course, our Lower Body Dry Needling course, or 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 - ELLISON MELROSE Good morning YouTube and good morning Instagram. This is PT on ice daily show. I am Dr. Ellison Melrose and I am currently lead faculty with the dry needling division of ICE. So we are going to go over a alternative approach for dry needling the lumbar multifidus today. Um, before we get into that, I want to go over our upcoming courses. So this, the remainder of 2023, we have, um, a handful of courses. This weekend, Paul's going to be out in Anchorage, Alaska, and I believe that is capped. After that, he will be down in Seattle, Washington on November 3rd through the 5th for the upper quarter. I will be out in Rochester, Minnesota for upper quarter dry needling on November 18th through the 19th. We will both be teaching the first weekend in December. So December 1st through the 3rd, Paul will be in Bellingham, Washington, and he will be hitting upper quarter then, and I will be out in Clearwater, Florida, so opposite sides of the states, doing lower quarter. So if you guys have a chance to find us out on the road, or want to join us for the remainder of 2023, those are the courses. We have one other one also in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the second weekend in December, where we'll be doing lower quarter. out there. So if you guys have any questions about those courses coming up, feel free to message us here or yeah, stay tuned for those courses. And then 2024 we'll be starting out pretty hot with some more courses and our advanced course as well. It will be, will be coming, um, in 2024. 02:10 - COMMON APPROACH TO DRY NEEDLING THE LUMBAR MULTIFIDUS So what I wanted to do today was to go over an alternative approach for, uh, dry needling the lumbar multifidus. So there, We are not gonna go over clinical reasons for needling the lumbar multifidus, but for those who have been taught how to needle the multifidus, there is one technique that is used fairly widespread across all educators, and that is the wrap-over technique. For demonstration purposes, I am going to be using my knuckle as the spinous process, and then we will be demonstrating it on a human body as well. For that wrap-over technique, so we have our spinous process here, Wrap over technique, we use two fingers to compress within a one centimeter gutter, just lateral to the spinous process. And we create a target window with our fingers and treating within that zone. In order to treat bilaterally, so both sides, you have to walk around the table to treat the contralateral side, which is fine, But when we're talking about clinical efficiency, it may be conducive to be able to treat or to needle staying on the same side of the patient. So we have an alternative approach for needling the multifidus where you are able to stay on the same side of the patient, and that will be your dominant side. So I am right-handed, so I'm going to be treating from the right side of the table treating the lumbar multifidus. I'll demonstrate first the wrap over technique and the alternative technique. 04:02 - ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO DRY NEEDLING THE LUMBAR MULTIFIDUS For that alternative technique, so instead of using that spinous process, our palpation hand, two finger, stepping over that spinous process and compressing into the gutter, what we are going to be doing is we are going to be using our palpation hand, index and middle finger to orient us to where that lateral border of the spinous process is. In the lumbar spine, we have about a one centimeter gutter where we can feel fairly confident that we're going to be directing our needle towards the lamina with a directly posterior to anterior approach. From there, if we go outside that one centimeter gutter, we need to angle the needle medially to ensure that we have contact with the lamina as we need that laminal contact to ensure that we are at the depth of the multifidus. We are going to stay within that one centimeter gutter for today's demonstration, but we will start with that wrap over technique and then the alternative approach. The alternative approach, instead of using that two finger digital compression, we are going to be using the spinous process and either our middle or index finger to find that lateral border. So, first we want to find the spinous process and take the mid pad of our palpation finger and palpate that lateral border of the spinous process. From there, we're going to take our middle finger or our index finger, depending on which side we are treating, and compress tissue down within that one centimeter guide. From there, we're going to create a treatment window between our two fingers and treating directly posterior to anterior. towards laminal contact. 07:19 - ALTERNATIVE TECHNIQUE DEMONSTRATED So it'll make more sense when we're demonstrating it on the patient. So let's go ahead and do that. I'm just going to angle this camera down towards my patient. So here we have an exposed lumbar spine. I'm going to just orient myself to where we are. I am standing on my dominant hand side. From there, We'll just go over palpation. So spine is processed, we can palpate the lateral borders with our thumbs here. For that wrap over technique, we're going to take our pads of our palpation hand, stepping off, compressing tissue down, treating within that one centimeter gutter, okay? So let's start with that technique and then I'll show you the alternative approach after. So, palpating that lateral border of the spinous process, two fingers stepping off, compressing down into that gutter, keeping that needle angle directly posterior to anterior, so vertically, tapping, advancing the needle towards laminal contact. So in order to treat the ipsilateral side now, I would have to walk around the table and straddle that needle to do the same compression and same technique that we did on this side. So what I will demonstrate is the alternative approach and then we'll do another segment down below of the alternative approach just to show you how efficient this tool can be. So, instead of using those two fingers to hug the lateral border, I'm going to be using my middle finger on my palpation hand to palpate the posterior aspect of that spinous process. From there, I'm going to take the middle aspect of my pad and hug that lateral border of the spinous process. My index finger is then compressing into that gutter creating a nice treatment window. Again, we want to be aware of where that one centimeter gutter is and treating within that zone, directly posterior to anterior. So vertical, vertical needle approach here. So compressing down towards laminal contact. So there we have the alternative approach on that ipsilateral side. From there, thinking clinical efficiency, if we were going to set up multiple different segments in the lumbar spine, if we started proximally or superiorly and worked inferiorly, kind of like you're reading a book, that is going to be the easiest way to avoid some awkward hand positions with the needles. So we will needle the segment just distal to the ones that have needles in. So from there, Instead of using my middle finger to contact that lateral border, I'm gonna be using my index finger. We are treating the contralateral side from where I am standing. So again, we can appreciate the lateral borders of the spinous process. Take the pad of our index finger and hug that lateral border of the spinous process. Compress my middle finger now and create a treatment zone between my two fingers. Again, appreciate that we have a one centimeter gutter. Now we want to be treating directly posterior anterior to contact lamina. From there, I'm going to do a firm guide to compression, firm tap, advance the needle to laminal contact. And then we can do the same thing on the ipsilateral side. so middle finger palpating the posterior aspect of the spinous process wrapping to that lateral kind of hugging that lateral where it starts to curve creating a one centimeter gutter with my index and middle finger treating within that zone directly posterior to anterior towards laminal contact. So there we have, we went over the wrap-over technique and the alternative approach and just looking at the clinical efficiency that being able to stay on that ipsilateral side of the patient can do. I have a very small treatment room, so it allows me to not have to kind of wiggle my treatment table back and forth, and allows us to get a handful of segments within a couple minutes, which I think when we're thinking about using dry needling in the clinic, we want to save as much time as we have for using our electrical stimulation, as the new research is showing how beneficial that can be for treating pain, neuromuscular priming, also, um, recovery or hemodynamics, improving hemodynamics. So we want to get the needles in as efficient as possible as to allow for some optimal treatment time with the Eastern. So we, again, just to review with this technique, we are going to be using our index and middle finger. And instead of hugging the lateral border of that spinous process, we are going to be treating, um, with those fingers just off the lateral border, creating a one centimeter gutter between those two fingers, treating directly posterior to anterior and maintaining laminal contact to ensure we are at the depth of the multifidus. Thank you guys so much for joining me this morning, going over the alternative approach for dry needling the multifidus. And I hope to see you out on the road sometime this year or next year.

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. Jeff Musgrave // #GeriOnICE // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Modern Management of the Older Adult lead faculty Jeff Musgrave discusses the significant issue regarding the lack of individualization and care for older adults with cognitive impairments. Jeff points out that many older adults on their caseloads are at different stages of cognitive impairment, but this often goes unnoticed until it progresses to advanced dementia. The problem lies in the one-size-fits-all approach to treating cognitive impairments, where individuals with mild impairments are grouped together with those with severe impairments, or they are treated the same as the general population without screening for cognitive impairments.

This lack of individualization and care for older adults with cognitive impairments is also evident in nursing homes. Jeff mentions a study from Germany that examined a population of nursing home residents. The residents were grouped based on their cognitive and physical impairments. However, the study found that there was a lack of personalized care, as a more diverse group was randomly assembled with varying levels of cognitive and physical function, and they all received the same basic intervention.

Jeff emphasizes the need to tailor care to the individual's cognitive capacity, just as their physical capacity is considered. He uses the analogy of coaching a peewee football league, where practice would not be taken to the local NFL team if the capacity is not appropriate. Similarly, individuals with cognitive impairments should not receive interventions that are beyond their cognitive abilities. However, in the current state of rehabilitation for those with cognitive impairments, interventions are often not matched to their cognitive abilities. This lack of individualization and care for older adults with cognitive impairments is a significant problem that needs to be addressed.

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 - JEFF MUSGRAVE Welcome to the PT on Ice Daily Show. Good morning, my name is Dr. Jeff Musgrave. Super excited to be with you this morning, talking about a topic that's really important to me, but also reviewing a research article eight days off the press, a new technique called clustering to give better care to those with dementia on our caseloads. But before we get into that, if you're looking to up your Geri game, we are available. We've got some extra seats in our New Jersey course in Matawan, New Jersey this weekend. If you want to hop on that train, we'd love to have you. We've got space for just a few more. Next weekend, if you want to join us for live, we'll be in Annapolis, Maryland or in Central South Carolina. Last cohort of Essential Foundations just kicked off. We've got our first live meetup, so sorry if you missed it. We will be up in full force in January 2024. There is still time to catch advanced concepts if you want to sign up for that. The last cohort is about to begin, so grab those seats. 02:42 - JEFF MUSGRAVE So team, man, I'm so excited to get to talk to you about this topic. There are so many older adults on our caseloads in various stages of cognitive impairment. And this oftentimes goes unrecognized until it becomes advanced dementia. when things are a bit harder to turn the tide, but also there's a severe lack of individualization and care for those that have cognitive impairments. A big problem in general practice is this one size fits all. In geriatrics in general, whether we're talking about physical impairments, but unfortunately we see the same problem when it comes to cognitive impairments. We see those with cognitive impairments get treated the same regardless of how advanced those symptoms are. So we see one of two big problems here. We either see those with very mild cognitive impairments grouped with those with very severe impairments, Or we just see them treated the same because no one's screened or picked up on the fact that there's a cognitive impairment on board and they're treated just like the general population which is also not appropriate. So neither of those are a good look. So this study out of Germany was looking at a population of residents in nursing homes and what they did is they clustered them based on their cognitive as well as their physical impairment. So they used a clustering approach to try to get homogeneous groups of people based on not only their physical function but their cognitive function. So all these residents were 65 and up. They had mild to moderate dementia and were living in a skilled nursing facility. The physical measures that they used were the six minute walk test, the timed up and go, 30 seconds sit to stand. But the biggest place where they saw variation that dictated their function was on their mini mental state exam. So their cognitive impairment did a lot to dictate their function. So what they found at the end of this was that those that had more advanced cognitive impairments were not able, even if they had the physical function, to participate in as high level balance training as those that had more severe cognitive impairments. So those with more mild cognitive impairment were not able to participate at the same level, in particular when it came to balance challenges. 04:56 - COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS & TRAINING The interventions for this study unfortunately the link did not go through that I could see all the details but what they what they were doing was some form of strength training either seated if there was lower physical function versus standing or dynamic movement in standing if they had higher physical function. So lower to higher physical function and then they gave also a cognitive layer to their interventions while they were doing balance or strength training. So that allowed them to scale the intervention to those who, to make it more appropriate. So they had a higher and lower physical function, higher and lower cognitive function group, and they scaled the cognitive load as well as the instructions So one big thing that's missing is the environment and the type of cues that we give typically in clinical practice for those with cognitive impairments also need to be scaled. They can't be as complex of cues with multiple sentences in the same duration of time. We've got to really scale that to the person in front of us and individualize that care based on their cognitive capacity, just like we would their physical capacity. The way I kind of think about this is if you were coaching a peewee football league and practice is going really well, you would not march them over to the local NFL team for practice. Their capacity is not appropriate. But we do the same thing with cognitive impairments where we've got someone who has more advanced cognitive impairments, getting a much higher level of training than what they should be and it's no surprise when the results aren't as good and that's also what was found in this study was the experimental group had the matched physical and cognitive and then there was a more heterogeneous group that was just kind of randomly put together with higher and lower cognitive and physical function, and they all got this lowest common denominator intervention, which we commonly see, especially because this was looking at group training in skilled nursing facilities. What typically happens is we've got this big group of people, and we find the person with the lowest cognitive and physical function, and we give everyone that. So the person that has the lowest physical and cognitive function gets an appropriate challenge. Everyone else has lots more ability that is not tapped into and is not being challenged. So it's no surprise once you hear that's what's happening, which unfortunately is the state of rehab for those that have cognitive impairments in general, is it's not being matched to their cognitive ability. So those that were not matched based on their cognitive and physical function showed decline in their mental function by the time the study was complete. So those with matched physical and cognitive challenge to their actual, their functional level, They did great. They were able to maintain their cognitive level in this skilled setting. And those that were not matched showed cognitive decline in even a short period of time. This is pretty wild. 08:09 - SCREENING FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS So some big takeaways here. Are we screening? Are we screening cognition in our older adults? The research says that the sooner we can screen people, the better chance we have to change their life and help them maintain their cognitive function and sometimes actually improve their cognitive function. There is a mountain of research that shows exercise is beneficial for cognition, especially if we're pushing into the fitness realm. and we're pushing people at high intensity and we're asking them to lift heavy things, we're asking them to learn new novel tasks. So we want to make sure we're doing that with older adults, not only for their physical function, but for their cognitive function. But we need to get a baseline of where they are to make sure that we're scaling these things appropriately. The tool that was used in this study was a mini mental state exam, which unfortunately is not great at screening for mild cognitive impairment, which is kind of that first phase before there is problems with activities of daily living, like once we get into more advanced forms of dementia. Tools like the MOCA, the Montreal Cognitive assessment may be more appropriate for catching signs of mild cognitive impairment. Also the SLUMS, the St. Louis University Mental State Exam. However, with that one, it's good to be aware that that can trigger automatically a local referral once it is complete. So you want to make sure that your patient, if there's any family members involved with care, that they're all aware that that will happen. And if this is like, man, I am not comfortable with this cognition stuff, this feels like way out of my depth, that's fine. You don't have to be the expert on everything, but you do need to be accountable to having resources in your area. Who is the SLPs, maybe outpatient, Or on your team if you are in a skilled environment that you can send for a cog referral. Or OTs, we have lots of OTs that are great at screening and intervening cognition and giving you an idea how many step commands, what type of environment, what type of cues are appropriate for this patient. but we have got to meet them where they are for cognition, just like we do for our physical interventions. So if you're not screening, start there. We've got to do more than alert and oriented times three. We've got to be getting these screening tools in use, or we've got to start making those referrals to people that are able to help get a baseline and make sure that our interventions are appropriate. So if you are screening, awesome, you are ahead of the curve. So now your job is to make sure that these interventions are appropriate, just like we're outlined in this study. 14:09 - SCALING UP OR DOWN BASED ON COGNITIVE PROCESSING DELAYS So what we want to make sure that we're doing is we want to know that there are things like cognitive processing delays, where it may take someone with more advanced dementia symptoms two minutes to process our commands. That was just five seconds of silence from me. If you can imagine two minutes of silence after your cues made this mistake so many times with this population. In two minutes, we've said a thousand things. and they're still processing the first thing that we said. So want to be mindful as we pick up on these symptoms. Cognitive processing delays can be up to two minutes. More mild forms, it could be five, 10, 15 seconds. It may feel a little more natural. Likely your skin's going to crawl, but it may be a very appropriate communication. It's going to look way different in this population. We want to make sure that the more advanced the cognitive impairment is, the more familiar the tools and the exercise interventions that we're using. We can't give a 40 point intervention and biomechanical explanation on a beautiful trap bar deadlift with an older adult. who has advanced dementia, we may be better off to use their purse and add some stuff to it, or add just grocery bags with food in it, and just ask them, pick this up. Once they do that, let's walk, walk 20 feet, or walk over to this area of the gym. No more cues, no more instruction, set it down. That may be a very skilled, very appropriate set of cues for an older adult with advanced dementia. So we want to keep in mind the tools. We also want to keep in mind the scenario. Can we control the environment? That is a skilled scaling tool. How loud is it? How busy is the environment? Is there lots of interaction? Are we at prime time in the clinic, out in a busy clinic where there's people throwing balls on a rebounder or the music's blaring? There's lots of laughter and fun. That may be a completely overstimulating environment for someone who has more advanced dementia. So the complexity… of the environment, the amount of noise, background noise, all those things are scaling options. So if we start in that quiet environment, we may eventually scale in to more advanced and complex environments where there are more distractions, where it is more like real life. But that's gotta be an intentional choice. That doesn't need to be an accident. We need to be very skilled with our interventions and that is part of it. How we choose to practice is also very important. Are we going to do random practice where we're jumping between tasks to task? That's going to be way less on the ability for someone with more advanced cognitive impairments. We may need to do block practice where we spend a big chunk of time, maybe 15 minutes, working just on a sit to stand. We may never get to a squat with a bar. That's fine. But if we can make it practical, we can meet people where we are, that may be where we need to stay. 15 minutes here, 15 minutes on the next thing, that may be our whole session. Or maybe it's something like a simple obstacle course. Pick this up, carry this, and follow me. That could be it. So I wanna keep these things in mind. If we are screening, we are getting a sense of what the cognitive ability level is of our clients, then our job is to scale it appropriately, and then you guessed it, then progress it as we're able. So we wanna use all those leveraging tools. So my advice to you, we're gonna switch gears, so that should be relevant to everyone. Now, if you are training in a group setting, kind of like this study outlines, where you're in a skilled facility, and you're doing group training, you can start with this lowest common denominator approach, but what you have to add in are easy scaling options. You've got to think about, we've kept everyone safe, but then for those that have the cognitive ability to do more advanced balance, or they're safe to do more advanced strength training, What can we do to scale it up for those individuals? So we've got everyone moving, everyone's safe. Now, how do we scale it up? Go heavier. Have heavier weight options available. Maybe instead of sitting, those people that have more advanced functional and cognitive impairments, they're going to be standing. Or maybe they're doing a dynamic movement. Maybe we're going to add some type of vestibular component where we're going to ask them to fixate and move their head side to side or up and down with the fixation point or maybe without a fixation point. Maybe we're having them close their eyes and head turn side to side or up and down. We can add that vestibular layer. We can add a cognitive component as well where we can ask preference questions like everyone, someone shout out, you can think to yourself or shout out loud some of your favorite foods. or name as many states as you can, or name things that are green. We can go very simple up to more complex counting tasks where maybe we're subtracting by 7 from 300 for someone that has a very mild cognitive impairment. Those things may still be on the docket. Those still may be very appropriate. But if we're doing group training, we can start with that lowest common denominator and then just offer scale up options. Another easy one that was even outlined in this study that they found to be beneficial was even just having a little piece of compliant foam for those that were already doing standing. Everyone in the group was mostly doing standing. They added the compliant foam in and that was a great option to scale up balance training. Everyone's getting instruction on the same movement, but there's not really a whole lot of extra instruction to change the surface. All right team, I got super fired up about this. Treated lots of people with cognitive impairments. If you're treating this population, I would love to hear any tips and tricks. Drop those in the comments. Thoughts? I will be dropping the article citation for you. The study was a new approach to individualized physical activity interventions for individuals with dementia. Cluster analysis based on physical and cognitive performance. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and we will catch you next time. 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. Zac Morgan // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Spine Division division leader Zac Morgan discusses the importance of working with patients to dispel negatives beliefs & fear concerning movement aggravating symptoms. Zac describes different strategies to discuss with patients how not moving after surgery or while in pain is probably the riskiest decision.

Take a listen or check out the episode transcription below.

If you're looking to learn more about our Lumbar Spine 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 - ZAC MORGAN

Good morning PT on Ice Daily Show crew. I'm Zac Morgan, so I'm lead faculty with the spine division. I teach lumbar and cervical spine management, so you can find me on the road doing those things. Shout out to that crew in Hartford, Connecticut or Waterford, Connecticut this last week. We had a good time learning about cervical spine over there in Waterford. Few more courses on that note coming up this year that if you're trying to jump into either cervical or lumbar, just wanted to point you in the direction of. So November 11th and 12th, we'll be back in that Northeast region up in Bridgewater, Massachusetts for cervical spine. December 2nd and 3rd, Hendersonville, Tennessee for cervical spine. And then if neither one of those work for you, the next chance will be at the turn of the year on February 3rd and 4th over in Wichita, Kansas. If you're looking for lumbar spine management, we've got three different courses this year that are all still have tickets available. Frederick, Maryland, that's next week or this upcoming weekend, October 21st and 22nd. Then we've got November 4th and 5th. That'll be over in Fort Worth, Texas. And then lastly, Charlotte, North Carolina on December 2nd and 3rd. So still several Good offerings if you're looking for cervical or lumbar spine management. We've already got quite a few booked for next year as well, so if this year the calendar doesn't work out or if the Con Ed budget resets at the beginning of the year, Take a look at the 2024 course offerings as well and more to book there. 01:36 - CATASTROPHIZING REST So team, this morning I wanted to talk to you all a little bit about rest and why I think we need to catastrophize rest. I think we need to make a bigger deal out of it when our clients come in and we find out that they've been resting. So let me talk a little bit about this. I've been chewing on this idea for a while and I think it's important for us to sort of understand that when someone's in pain, their risk meter is broken. Like they don't have the ability to conceptualize what's actually risky for them often when they're in pain. And so let me unpack what I mean with maybe a clinical scenario that we're all really familiar with. Let's think about something like a knee replacement. I think most of us in our career will interact with patients who have had a knee replacement. Usually we have interacted with those people on the days right after they have had a knee replacement or maybe you're the one that's getting them out of the bed in the hospital and you're the first person that's getting that person moving. I think we understand the risks to this person pretty well, and as a profession, we respond to them pretty well. We understand what this person's actual risk is when it comes to the knee replacement, and their risk would be being too sedentary or resting too much. And what would come alongside of that risk would be a lot of problems that we'll cover in a bit. You think about what that person's concerned about when you talk to that person in the subjective exam on day one, or maybe you just went into their hospital room and you're talking to them. That person's usually concerned about things that are unwarranted. They're worried that their knee is gonna pop out when you start to flex it. The first time you have that person do active range of motion, that person's like, oh my gosh, is my knee gonna fly out? Is the implement actually gonna pop out? They're worried about things like that, but we as PTs, we know that's not very common. We tend to mobilize knees really early and get them moving really, really rapidly and get as much range of motion as possible as quickly as possible in something like a knee replacement because we know that it's crucial that that happens at short term. So a large part of our job early on in managing this person who has just had a knee replacement is convincing them that their risk meter is off. Again, they're afraid to move. They walked through the door that day with a lot of blood in their amygdala. They were very concerned. They were worried, what if something's going wrong? I didn't know it was going to hurt this bad. I didn't think it was going to be quite like this. And they have typically not been moving as a response to all that pain. 03:22 - CONVINCING PATIENTS TO MOVE And our job is to help them understand that, hey, if you don't move, that's where the risk lives. The risk lives in being sedentary after a knee replacement. Like what's actually risky is if we don't move, the blood will pool, right? And we will wind up with things like a blood clot. Very risky. If a blood clot ends up dislodging and we end up with a pulmonary embolism, that's life-threatening. So that's real risk. That's something that we have to help those people understand is like, hey, if you're too still, we could wind up with something like a blood clot. And maybe we don't fear-monger that to patients, but we do help them understand that risk. You think about some of the other risks that that person has if they don't get moving. What about long-term mobility? If a knee replacement patient does not get their knee moving, you think about what that person's long-term mobility is gonna look like, and it's gonna be quite poor. That first 12 weeks after knee replacement is the most important time for us to restore full extension and get as close to full flexion as we can. We're really trying hard to push range of motion early because we know that person's long-term risk is having a stiff knee. and then not being able to participate in some of their ADLs because of the immobility in their knee. We get the risk so we help unfold that to the people in front of us. I mean the last big ones that happen if someone rests are things like atrophy or loss of cardiovascular endurance and we know this happens very very rapidly. when someone's on bed rest, when someone's immobilized, when somebody's truly sedentary or even sedated, things like that. We know the body responds and we see wasting of all those systems. The same thing's happening if someone doesn't move when they've had knee replacement. maybe not as rapidly as true rest, but we know that they're losing muscle mass, we know their muscle girth is going down, we know their endurance is getting worse. All of these things are truly risky for that person. And for that reason, I think we as PTs do a really good job of helping that person understand, hey, I know it hurts, but the risk of you moving through pain is much less than the risk of you not moving through pain. So I need you to move. And I think we do a really good job with patients like knee replacement patients or patients with a knee replacement. I think we do a really good job with those folks, getting them moving, even though it hurts, getting them back to their ADLs, getting them progressively loaded back to where they're out of sort of disability. I want to shift gears now. And I want to talk a little bit more about my expertise area, which is cervical spine and lumbar spine. So patients with neck pain and patients with back pain. That's typically who I'm seeing the most of in the clinic these days. And I think our response to these folks is a bit different than it is with the knee replacement patients, which is sort of understandable, because with a knee replacement, you understand exactly what happened to that person, where with back pain and neck pain, we never know what the tissue driving their symptom is. 06:57 - FEAR & OUTCOMES WITH BACK PAIN But I think we often respond with fear, and I think that influences the person's outcome. So let me unpack what I mean. So when someone acutely strains their back, they do something, they were lifting their kid and something happens and now their back is really strained and they're in high, high levels of pain and usually high levels of disability as well. Like a lot of patients will tell me, Zach, I can't even tie my shoes. I have to have my wife help me tie my shoes. I can't get my pants on. I can't get on and off the toilet. The activities of daily living are really influenced by these high pain levels. And a lot of these people, when you start to talk to them, they're terrified to move. Especially a forward bending, but really just to A lot of people in general with acute back pain, they're so scared to move their back around. And they're afraid that what will happen if they move their back around, is that they'll worsen their scenario. They're concerned that if they move too much, and maybe some of this is valid, but if they move too much, they'll worsen whatever's wrong with their back, and then they'll have long-term problems. But team, as you're hearing that unfold, you and I both know that's not the case, right? Like it's actually the people who choose not to move who usually wind up with worse recurrence of their back pain. It's why, I mean, you look at the Olivera study in 2018, where they compared all the lumbar clinical practice guidelines around the globe that they could get their hands on. And there's really only two things, all CPGs, not profession specific, um, not region specific, just all the CPGs that they looked at in that study, they agreed on two things. One of them, don't image. The second one, get moving, right? Don't rest, some sort of exercise. We know people with back pain need to get moving. It is clear, no one argues about that anymore. There's no studies, no big studies that have looked into, hey, rest is actually the successful recipe for back pain. It's not that. We gotta get them moving. But I think sometimes we let our fear of allowing that person to move hold them back. But we need to conceptualize those risk factors. Like you think about what it was like for your knee replacement patient. Maybe we don't have the same concern of like a blood clot or an infection, but think about this person's other risks. 06:57 - THE IMPORTANCE OF MOVEMENT Like, what about long-term mobility? If someone doesn't restore their ability to forward bend, they often end up with a loss of long-term lumbar flexion. And how does that usually wind up? Maybe sometimes they're fine and they're asymptomatic throughout the rest of their life, but often when I see recurrent back pain patients, They have had episodes throughout life and they've chosen to avoid a certain range of motion and part of our job is to do some graded exposure back to that to help them conceptualize the risk. To help them realize actually being still is where the risk is. We've got to get moving. You think about atrophy. You think about what happens to that person's muscular system. If they have severe back pain and they're not doing the things that they normally do, perhaps they're laying in bed a little bit more, sometimes they're laying on the couch a bit more, a lot of times their spouse is helping them out, their partner is helping them out with a lot of their ADLs. Team, when people have acute back pain, they often get very still because their fear level is really high, and part of our job is to help them understand that where their head is at, what they're concerned about, is actually much less risky than being still right now. Being still is where the risk lies. If we don't get back to movement, you're going to lose that long-term mobility. You're going to lose a lot of your muscular system. You're going to end up losing quite a bit of your cardiovascular endurance. That's where the risk lies. Because what do we all know about people who tend to lose muscle mass, who tend to lose cardiovascular endurance? Most of those people will struggle to get that back. And I think the longer they live, the more challenging that climb back to fitness is going to be. So our older adult clients are definitely in this boat. We've got to keep these people moving. We've got to get them afraid of resting. That's where the fear should be because what happens when you rest is the long-term stuff. That's what causes recurrent back pain. If a person hurts their back and they're now afraid to move in that range of motion and they don't restore capacity, whether that's cardiovascular capacity or the actual strength of the tissues because of fear, now that area is more fragile. It's more susceptible to injury. They're usually careful with that area and being careful with that area often is not a solution for getting rid of a recurrent back pain. As a matter of fact, we want to move more towards things like graded exposure, graded exercise, building that engine, building the tissues, how robust that underlying tissue is. That comes with movement. It doesn't come with rest. So team, I think just putting this whole thing into perspective, what I want to get across this morning is that when someone comes in to see you in pain, their brain is not in the right decision making area to understand risk. Their amygdala has all the blood in it. They're really concerned. they don't know if they're going to be okay. It is our job to use our prefrontal cortex because we can use that in that state because we're not anxious because we see this all the time. We use our prefrontal cortex to say, you know what, actually we need to develop a plan that gets you back to X, Y, and Z. And that's what we do with rehab. And that's how we try to bring down that recurrence, is we avoid all these catastrophes that happen when people sort of follow their natural instinct, which is to rest. So that's all I've got for you this morning. I want us all catastrophizing rest a lot more on our patients, helping them understand that that is not necessarily the safe choice. A lot of times people's risk meter is broken there and it's actually the unsafe choice. So let's catastrophize rest, get out there this Tuesday team, meet us on the road if you're looking for anything. Please feel free if you want to have a big conversation here, jot it into the thread and I'll be on here all day answering any questions. Thanks team. 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. Rachel Moore // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic faculty member Rachel Moore takes a deep dive into the Valsalva Maneuver from 3 different lenses: the scholarly research, the pregnancy & postpartum patient, and the strength & conditioning world.

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 TRANSCRIPTION00:00 - RACHEL MOORE Good morning PT on ice daily show. My name is dr. Rachel Moore. I am here with Representing the ice pelvic division. I'm on faculty with ice pelvic division. Whoo. Sorry. I need to drink my coffee um i just got back in last night super late night flying from a course this weekend our pelvic live course in um wisconsin it was so much fun we got to see some leaves change which is exciting for me because in houston we don't really have that happen um so really awesome super great weekend awesome and engaged group that we had. If you are looking to join us on the road to catch our live course, our live pelvic course, there are still so many opportunities this year. In that course, we are doing so many things. We are talking about pelvic floor considerations. We're talking about the internal assessment and actually going over and practicing it on your back and in standing. We're talking about pelvic girdle pain which is such a huge topic in the pregnancy and postpartum and just pelvic world in general and then day two we're diving into the actual fitness side of things where we're doing squats and we're learning how to brace and we're using weightlifting belts and we're getting up on the rig and doing gymnastics moves it is a blast every time I come home from a course I'm hyped and there are four more chances of in 2023 to catch this course on the road. So October 21st, we've got a course in Corvallis, Oregon. November 4th, we've got one coming up in Bozeman, Montana. November 18th, we've got one coming up in Bear, Delaware. And then December 2nd, we've got one in Nova Scotia, Canada. So tons of opportunities to catch this course live on the road. Our online course will pick up again in January. So if you're interested in joining us in the ice pelvic division, that's what we got coming up. 02:08 - THE HISTORY OF VALSALVA This morning we are here to talk about Valsalva. So the word Valsalva is kind of a term that nobody really knows what it means or everybody thinks they know what it means and they all have their own separate camps of what it could mean because it's described so many different ways in the literature. So what we're going to do this morning is clarify what the different definitions of this one word are, talk about the history of it a little bit more, where this term really even came from in the first place. So this topic is really near and dear to my heart. Recently, Christina Prevett and I recently just wrote a clinical commentary on Valsalva and on the nuances of Valsalva. and how as clinicians we can take this term and how we need to take this term and understand the lens, especially when we're looking at research, but when we're talking to patients about what this term even means and what we're actually looking for in our strength training fitness world when we say the word Valsalva. So let's kick it off with the history of Valsalva. The term Valsalva is actually named after a physician from the 18th century. So he was an otolaryngologist. Anyway, he worked in ears and throat, ear, nose and throat doctor. And he created this maneuver essentially as a way to push infection out of the ears. So, the maneuver that Dr. Valsalva described actually doesn't even look like the Valsalva that a lot of people talk about today. His maneuver was plugging your nose and blowing out, but not against a closed glottis. And when he created this maneuver, the purpose of it was to flush infection out of the ear by having that tympanic membrane push outwards to, in theory, push pus out of the ear. That is where this term was created. So when we look at Valsalva in the research lens, when we talk about diving into the specifics of research on this topic, if we're looking in the ENT world, autolaryngological world, we're thinking about this maneuver as a plugged nose, closed glottis, now push out in order to push that tympanic membrane out. When we're looking at this word in the urogynecologic world, it has a very different emphasis or purpose. So when we think about pelvic organ prolapse and the diagnosis of pelvic organ prolapse, that's where we see the Valsalva, quote unquote, being useful, I would say. So the Valsalva in a urogynecologic world is an intentional bear down and strain with a closed glottis. in order to measure the descent of the pelvic organs, particularly during that POPQ or that assessment for pelvic organ prolapse. So on the ENT side, we have the focus of plugging nose, blowing out, pushing tympanic membranes out. In the urogynecologic world, we've got this strain down through the pelvic floor in order to descend the pelvic organs and measure what that descent is. 06:04 - VALSALVA IN STRENGTH TRAINING In the strength and conditioning world, the term Valsalva means something completely different. In the strength and conditioning world, the Valsalva is a maneuver that is advantageous, particularly if you're a competing athlete in the strength training world, where we need a little bit extra spinal stiffness in order to hit a lift to PR. so in the strength training world this is an inhale into the belly and then a brace of those core muscles that anterior abdominal wall and all of those muscles within the core in general in order to increase that intra-abdominal pressure and spinal stiffness to be able to lift heavier. So when we do the Valsalva, we have a 10% increase in that spinal stiffness and that carries over or translates into pounds on the barbell. So when we're again thinking about our competitive athletes who are maybe trying to like edge somebody out, the Valsalva is an incredibly useful and productive maneuver. Even if we're not a competing athlete, if we're talking about just getting stronger and we're pushing ourselves to the capacity that we want to push ourselves to in order to make those strength gains, the Valsalva is likely utilized in order to increase that capacity to lift heavier. The confusion here comes from that one word having many different definitions. And when we look at the urogynecologic world versus the strength training world, they really are truly opposite. When we're thinking about straining and bearing down, we're pushing down with our abdominal wall muscles, we're pushing down with our pelvic floor, and we expect to see that descent. I 100% agree that we shouldn't put a heavy barbell on our back and then strain and push down through our pelvic floor. That is not beneficial and it is going to put a lot of strain through the pelvic floor. Absolutely. However, when we talk about Valsalva in a strength training capacity, that's not what the Valsalva is. The Valsalva in a strength and conditioning world is that intentional inhale into the belly and brace of that anterior abdominal wall muscles. When we do that brace of those anterior abdominal wall muscles, we don't want to see a descent of the pelvic floor. That would be an improper brace that would need training to improve that coordination. What we expect to see with a valsalva in the pelvic floor world is a matched degree of contraction for the demand that's placed on that system. So if we're thinking about somebody who's lifting a heavy lift, a one rep max, We expect that pelvic floor to kick on, but we're not necessarily volitionally thinking about lifting pelvic floor and doing that pelvic floor contraction. As that core canister is engaged and we engage that proper brace, the entire core canister should kick on to a relatively equal degree. So in the strength and conditioning world, that Valsalva is advantageous. In the urogynecologic world, if we're taking that concept and applying it to lifting, it is the opposite of advantageous. So when we're looking at recommendations for our strength training athletes and our patients, we need to understand the language that is being used and what the definition of that language is. So from the standpoint of our OBs who are telling our patients, don't ever do a Valsalva, in their mind, they're saying, don't ever strain and push your pelvic floor down when you're lifting. Totally. We agree. 100%. Don't do that. It's not going to be great. But the disconnect is that this one word has so many different definitions. So we really have to dive in and break down what was that recommendation specifically. So when we're with our patients, that looks like breaking down the definition for them. 09:01 - VALSALVA MANUVEUR IN THE LITERATURE But if we're looking in the research world and we're trying to read literature, read the newest evidence about what recommendations are for our pregnant and postpartum athletes, we need to go into the article itself and look at how they define Valsalva. Because we can easily read the abstract and the conclusion of an article that says Valsalva is not recommended, but if we're, looking at this article and it's actually meaning the bearing down, then we're not getting, we're not able to extrapolate that to the strength and conditioning side. So really with this term, it's one word named after a man who the original maneuver isn't even what we're talking about anymore anyway. Across the board, we have to either figure out different words or different ways to describe this, or it really falls on us as providers to break down what it is we're talking about. So rather than just telling your patients, do a Valsalva, maybe we don't use that language at all, and we just talk about bracing. When we do a brace, we can manipulate breath. If we're gonna take that intentional inhale and then brace, that is a Valsalva, But in order to eliminate the confusion across the board, we can just call it a brace. This makes a lot more sense to patients than being told by one person to never valsalva and then by another person to valsalva. And when we lay it all out and explain what all of these differences are and how it's all one term, but it has different meanings, and none of these meanings necessarily are the same. And in fact, in the urogynecologic world, in the strength and conditioning world, they're literally the opposite. It starts to click with patients, why it's okay that my physician told me not to do this Valsalva, but you're telling me that I can, because I understand that these are two very different physiologic mechanisms. Our clinical commentary over this that dives into all of this and so much more comes out in the spring. So keep an eye out. We'll be sending it out in the ice pelvic newsletter. So if you are not signed up for that newsletter, head to PT on ice.com, go to the resources tab, sign up for that newsletter, not only for our clinical commentary in the spring, but for all kinds of resources. in the pelvic floor world. Stay up to date on the newest evidence and also just check out some cool stuff that we find along the way. I hope you guys have an awesome Monday and I hope we see you on the road soon. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Dr. Zach Long // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete lead faculty Zach Long discusses hip shifting in the squat. Zach emphasizes the need to ensure first and foremost, pain is in the hip or elsewhere in the body is not the cause of the shift. Second, Zach urges listeners to determine if the shift occurs under increasing loads or not. Finally, Zach discusses that if the squat is pain-free and that the movement pattern does not change under load, hip or ankle mobility is the final culprit.

Take a listen to the episode or read the episode transcription below.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:00 - ZACH LONG Hey everybody, welcome to the PT on Ice daily show. It is the best day of the week here on the podcast, and that is Fitness Athlete Friday. I am your host today, Dr. Zach Long. I'm lead faculty inside of the clinical management of the fitness athlete curriculum, teaching in our live weekend seminar, as well as our advanced concepts course. And today we're going to be chatting about assessing the individual that has a hip shift when they squat. what are the questions you should be asking, and what are the things that you should be looking at and programming for them to help address that hip shift in the squat before we dive into that topic. Upcoming courses that we have in the Fitness Athlete Live arena here. November 4th and 5th, I'll be in Hoover, Alabama, and Mitch will be in San Antonio, Texas. November 18th and 19th, we'll be in Holmes Beach, Florida, and in December, Colorado Springs, Colorado. If you can't make it to any of those courses, we are already filling up the 2024 calendar as well. And we have Portland, Charlotte, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho, Renton, Washington, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Fenton, Michigan on the map. So check out all of those courses, as always, at PTOnIce.com. If you want to get registered, learn how to better assess, treat, and help fitness athletes do the movements that they love, as well as how do we get those people that are not already getting their daily dose of physical activity, how do we start to get them involved in that sort of stuff as part of their plan of care when they come to see us for pain? So PTONICE.com there. 02:32 - ASSESSING THE HIP SHIFT All right, today's topic, the hip shift in the squat. What I mean by that is you watch somebody squat, and instead of their weight staying even side to side, you see them shift some of their weight more towards one side than the other. Why does that happen? What are the questions you need to be asking? And then what are the things that you need to be doing as part of their treatment? So I think there are two big questions to ask subjectively when somebody comes to see you for a hip shift or you notice that when you're watching videos or watching somebody actually lift in the clinic. Question number one is, does that individual currently have pain in regions of the body that are impacted by the squat? Question number two is, does that change under load? When you ask and answer those two questions, you'll have a much better idea of what interventions you need to do to help improve that squat pattern. 3 Different Pieces to That 1. If someone is having pain, That's kind of the end of the discussion on the hip shift in the squat. So if somebody comes in and they're dealing with really nasty patellar tendinopathy or they're dealing with an ankle that was just sprained and is very, very sensitive as we dorsiflex the ankle. or someone has really irritable hip impingement. As they squat down and those tissues start to get loaded more as we go through range of motion, if those tissues are really sensitive, the body is understandably going to want to unload those tissues and try to avoid further aggravating them. So, when pain is on board and I notice a hip shift, I don't really worry too much about the hip shift right now in terms of trying to correct that. Instead, my main focus is on doing everything I can to calm down that irritability, because until we calm down that pain, we're probably not gonna make a whole lot of progress on the hip shift. So if pain's on board, take care of the pain. Now, there are definitely things that you can do that might assist this a little bit, but to me, those are secondary to the pain portion of this. So you could have somebody do box squats where they limit their depth to where they don't hip shift. or some other variations of lifts that maybe load that tissue a little bit less so that they demonstrate less of that hip shift. I think that's a fine intervention to do so that maybe that hip shift doesn't become, you know, as much of an ingrained movement pattern to them. But overall, when pain's on board, just take care of the pain and don't worry quite as much about the hip shift. 04:29 - HIP SHIFTING UNDER LOAD The second component to that, the second question was, does this change under load? And this is the big one that I see missed quite a bit. So I've had a couple of these show up in the last few months in the clinic, which is why I decided to do this podcast. And of those that I've seen lately, most of them, I was a second opinion. So they'd already seen another physical therapist or a chiropractor. And they had already had a lot of mobility drills that they were working on to try to improve the hip shift but they weren't noticing a change with the mobility drills. And what was missed by that previous practitioner was the fact that the hip shift worsened with load. And if we think about like the mobility demands of a squat, those demands don't change drastically when they go from an air squat to a 45-pound barbell squat up to a 400-pound squat. What does change is the demands that we're putting on the muscles. And actually, it's a little different than that. It's a little opposite. When you put load on a bar, if you're a little stiff, that load will often help you move a little bit better. It'll help push you through a little bit of that stiffness. So the key thing here is that if you notice the hip shift gets worse under fatigue or under load, then it is probably not a mobility issue. It is much more likely to be a tissue capacity issue, a strength issue. That's the big turning point here. So two examples of this that I've seen lately. Number one, super high level power lifter. He started noticing when he looked at videos of his squat that his bar would get uneven, but that wouldn't happen until he got to weight over 400 pounds. Prior to that, it didn't happen. And if you watch a set of him squatting over 400 pounds for say a set of five, what you notice is rep one was a little bad, rep two a little worse, rep three worse, rep five was really, really bad in terms of that bar being uneven. And what I noticed when I started analyzing that was that as he came out of the bottom of the hole, you would see his one side of his leg, if you're watching that Instagram, I have no idea why fireworks just popped up on my background, but You saw one of his legs really extend rapidly and the other one slowly extend. And what that's called is a good morning squat fault. If you've taken the Fitness Athlete Live course, you've heard us discuss that squat fault, but he was doing it only on one leg. And that leg had previously had an ACL reconstruction. And when we went and measured his limb circumference on that leg, he had a significant quad muscle mass difference on that side compared to the other side. So it was a strength deficit. And what we ended up doing with him was we loaded up his quads, doing a lot of unilateral work. We'll talk about a few drills for that in just a second. And what we noticed is the more we built up that unilateral quad strength, the less that hip shift was present. Another example I saw was recently in a… very high level CrossFit athlete, like top 200 in the world. When he deadlifted, he lost a major competition because his deadlift was relatively weak compared to his level of fitness. And when we watched his deadlift, he kind of did the same thing. So he starts pressing off the ground and the side that he had previously had an ACL reconstruction on about a year and a half prior to this, he hyper extended that knee as soon as he started pressing off the ground because he was still had a little bit of top end quad weakness relative to the other side. So he locked that knee out and he tried to, on that surgical side, make it almost a straight leg deadlift and rely on his posterior chain rather than his quads. So if it changes under load, it is a strength issue, not a mobility issue. 09:26 - ANKLE & HIP MOBILITY If it doesn't change under load, then you're gonna shift your thinking towards it possibly being more likely to be a mobility issue. And so from a mobility perspective, a few things that we like to look at, Number one, I'd say the most common are ankle and foot limitations. So lack of ankle dorsiflexion, lateral tibial glide, or the ability of the midfoot to move as somebody drops down into a squat. In our Fitness Athlete Live course, we talk you through a couple different tests that we think really help you screen out the foot and ankle, and if that's the impacting factor on somebody's squat technique. The second one to that is going to be somebody's hip mobility. And then the third to that is sometimes you'll see knee flexion limitations, but typically you don't see knee flexion limitations unless somebody's had some really significant trauma to that knee or a recent surgery. Outside of that, it's typically the ankle or the hip from a mobility perspective that will be impacting somebody's squat, causing them to have a hip shift in the squat. So once you answer that, you kind of know what to do. If it's pain, take care of the pain. If it's mobility, work on mobility. If it's strength, then let's do some unilateral strength loading of whatever tissue it is that you identified was a little weaker on one side versus the other. Take care of that. But I also think that it's worthwhile to spend a little bit of time working on some drills that might help reinforce a better movement pattern. So that as you build up maybe that unilateral strength or as you open up that ankle mobility, now you start teaching them a little bit more of where they want to go. And there are two drills that I really frequently use for that. My favorite to use is what's called a sit squat. So what I do there is I get an individual sitting on a box, a bench, a chair, a medicine ball, whatever the lowest surface they can perform this drill on, and they're sitting on it. We pull their feet back underneath them. We lean over. I get them positioned exactly how I think they should look in the bottom of the squat. And then they're sitting there, and I've got everything lined up so that it's symmetrical or as close to symmetrical as I feel like we're gonna get or we need to get. And then what I do is I tell them, imagine that there's a scale underneath your butt. Right now it says 100% of your weight. I want you to make it say 50% of your weight. So they just unload that medicine ball a little bit. Now I say, I want you to lift up one inch and only one inch. So they barely lift off the medicine ball or chair. They go back down to 50% weight and they just cycle up and down. And if you do a set of five to 10 reps of that, it is gonna actually burn really, really good because most people don't spend a whole lot of time under tension down the bottom of the squat. because there's no load on it. It's not going to be very fatiguing or really eating to their recovery a lot. So I use this a ton as a warmup drill, but that is deceptively hard and is really good for getting people to evenly drive and press into the ground and get an even lift off. And then when they sit back down, what they should feel if they're on something like a medicine ball is that they have the same amount of butt cheek touching the ball. Like if they sit down and it's only left butt on the medicine ball and right butt is floating off the side, then they're not squatting evenly. They're demonstrating that hip shift so they also get some tactile feedback in terms of their positioning. The other thing that I really like to do at times with individuals is get them to do some tempo box squats. So we squat down to a medicine ball, a bench, a low box, whatever it is, and we're basically doing the same thing there. We're going down nice and slow and we're making sure when we touch that surface that we're squatting to that we feel an even amount of weight on both butts. so that we, again, know if we're hip shifting or not. Those can be two good drills to drill in moving a little bit away from that hip shift. So, again, your two questions to ask when you see a hip shift. Are they having pain? Does it change under load? When you answer those two questions, you'll have a much better idea of what to go to to get rid of the squat hip shift a little bit faster. So, hope that helps. Look forward to being back on here again in a few weeks with you all. Hope you all have a great Friday and a great weekend, and we'll see you on the road.

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.