Episode 1641 - The benefits of injury as a PT

Dr. Joe Hanisko // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete lead faculty Joe Hanisko discusses a recent encounter with low back pain in the gym, offering lessons learned on empathy, the benefits of early intervention, and finishing the drill by returning to regular fitness activities.

Take a listen to the episode or check out the show notes at www.ptonice.com/blog

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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JOE HANISKO Awesome. Good morning team. This is your PT on Ice daily show podcast. It is Friday, January 12th. So it is a fitness athlete Friday. My name is Joe Hanisko. I am one of the lead faculty of the clinical management and fitness athlete division here at Ice. Uh, today's topic we're going to get right into it is the benefits of being injured as a physical therapist. And I know upfront saying that a little strange, By no way, shape, or form do I mean that having an injury is a positive experience. We know that injuries can be quite mentally and physically disturbing, but I've recently had an injury and it brought so much back in terms of the value of the experience for me and how I can better shape my practice and reinforce some of my own beliefs about what we do as physical therapists and how we can really bring a good one-two punch to kind of help people who are dealing with injuries as well. So I want to get into the story quickly just to lay the ground. This is like a month ago now, five, six weeks ago. Doing a workout, it was progressively heavy power cleans and intermittently decreasing rep schemes of wall walks. So as you had high volume cleans with a lighter weight, you had high volume Wall walks and you progress down and reps up and weight and down in the wall walks So a lot of just back and forth and I got lazy somewhere in the middle decently heavy bar about 225 Not my max range but an upper level range and I was just trying to get through these reps and I caught it Essentially almost like in a muscle clean position where I didn't do a good job Redipping under the bar and absorbing load and I sort of just got jammed up like it felt like I kind of like Compressed my spine and in the moment as it happened. I was more or less like that didn't feel so hot I dropped the bar. I was doing singles. Anyways picked it up felt. Okay, I Third rep into that, felt a little tight. Only had to do four, I think. On that fourth rep, I was like, oh, something's happening here. My gamer in me, I just kept going, hit the wall walks, but by the time I got back to the barbell, now at 245, man, I was pretty seized up. So, this is sort of like live and learn. I had an opportunity there to maybe back down, but it was just me and my buddy Dakota sending this workout. Couldn't leave him hanging. I continued to go through, and we'll fast forward to the end of the workout, in which I felt like I had a steel rod in my back. Preface this with, I've never experienced a back injury personally myself. Somehow I've been lucky enough to train for 15 years and not have any major back injuries to really talk about. But this was rough. Bending over, taking the plates off. It was one of those within a matter of a minute or two I was in a pretty rough spot and I was like, where is this going? Wasn't too confident about it. So that night though I went home and started working on it myself, doing what we should. pick that the move it or use it option here and we went after moving it i was doing some bat banded cat cows some cat camels but the real story starts with what I feel like came in the next day or two afterwards.

MAKING DECISIONS EARLY IN REHAB And this is where I feel like us as physical therapists, what we know from our injury rehab experience, and when it happens to us, we're able to make great decisions early on. This is what really started to highlight to me the benefit of having this injury and reminded me all the things that I need to do when I have athletes and clients who come to me with these acute injuries or injuries of any kind. So what I wanted to do basically is lay out the top three we'll call them experiences or lessons learned from this.

LESSON #1 - EMPATHY The first one being empathy. Had I not known what I know about the human body, about physical therapy, about rehab, about movement and how it is truly medicine, had I not known that this injury would have been debilitating. Not only physically, I was, you know, having a hard time getting around, doing basic things, putting the shoes on, getting dressed. Not only physically was it debilitating, but mentally I would have felt wrecked. I love fitness. Every day I get to show up in the gym and spend time there just like a lot of our clients and members at the gym. and clients here in the clinic, I love it. And I did not feel like I was anywhere close to getting back into the gym. I was wrecked. And having that empathy as a physical therapist now for what clients feel like, especially when they don't necessarily know that there's light at the end of the tunnel, and hopefully sooner than later, that was a terrible experience. Again, my ability to change my psyche on that was helpful, knowing that I wasn't doomed, I was gonna get this taken care of. I wasn't dealing with, neurologic symptoms or things that were overly concerning. No red flags in my history. But again, taking this from the perspective of people who don't have that, the ability of the therapist to empathize with people and say, hey, I understand where you're coming from, man. That back tweak is no joke. It really makes you feel like you're doomed and that you got no bright future ahead of you. But let me tell you that you do. I've had this, I've experienced it, I've walked it on, right side next to you, knowing what this feels like, and we are gonna get this better, and you're in the right spot. That empathy and ability to kind of connect on that emotional level with them after experiencing something like this, I think is super powerful. It puts you right in their shoes, and you've lived it, you've learned it, and you know that it takes a little bit of strategy on our part to kind of convince and educate people that they're gonna be okay when they're feeling like they're hitting the frickin' rock bottom after an injury like that. So empathy or relatability, you can combine those two. But I felt like that was probably one of the most beneficial lessons learned from this whole process is being able to connect with the patient on that level. So it's scary, it sucks, but. we have the ability to control some of that with our education and our ability to empathize and to relate with our patients. So lesson number one, empathy.

LESSON #2 - POSITIVE BENEFITS OF EARLY INTERVENTION Lesson number two, the positive benefits of early intervention. You cannot sell this enough. Uh, my experience was great. I have a team, uh, onward Grand Rapids. My employees were fantastic. I was able to get in 36 hours after my injury because it was on a weekend. Get in, I got some needles, some cupping, a little bit of manipulation. And man, I was within 36 hours. When I walked in the door, I was in rough shape 36 hours after this injury. When I got off that table, I was 75% better in the moment. 75% better. Early intervention for me was nice because physically I was feeling better and your patients will feel better as well, but this is where it starts to go back to a little bit of empathy and the psychological component of it. The fact that I could bend over, touch my toes with minimal discomfort, 25% of what I was dealing with before, was so, so rewarding to me and reminded me that there is no greater tool than early intervention, especially with these acute injuries. So the early intervention process and It kind of rolls back into patient education, especially if you're incorporating yourself into gyms and fitness. If you get an opportunity, workshops, if you get an opportunity to talk