EP178: "Transitioning Athletes To Wellness Programs"

[00:00:05] Are you a motivated healthcare or fitness professional? Are you looking to work with more athletes, become a sports specialist, or even get a job in a sports setting so you can finally enjoy the career that you've always dreamed of? If so, you're in the right place. My name is Chris Garcia, physical therapist, business owner, entrepreneur, and residency training sports specialist. I've been fortunate to work in professional sports and travel around the world working with elite athletes throughout my career, and I've learned a lot of lessons along the way. I created this podcast to share my experiences and give you everything you need to know to help you.

[00:00:35] You've become a sports expert. Welcome to the SportsPT Academy. Welcome to all those who have heard my content in the past and welcome all new listeners. Today we're going to be talking about wellness programs. We're talking about getting athletes and keeping them on your schedule so you can really get them back to sport. Before I do that, what is the latest and greatest in life?

[00:00:59] I have been a pleasure, always. I have been a pleasure. I have been a pleasure. I have been a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be here. I hope you're in a doctor and welcome to be here.

[00:01:28] inches of snow so that was good just seeing my my in-laws for those who don't know my father-in-law was sick last year around this time and nearly died and um it was good to just kind of spend time with them and my my wife's grandfather from her mom's side is is ill and terminally ill and so we got a chance to really spend some time with them and take some things away and you know

[00:01:58] i asked him i said you know what's the if you can uh share with me what's one thing as a professional that you would do and enhance your quality of life and with your family and personally like what would you do and um the phrase he gave me was was pretty it was perfect for my timing and i'll explain that later but um he said you know small is beautiful and what he meant by that is

[00:02:21] um you know don't don't don't overextend yourself um whether you're trying to get more certifications uh you're trying to have a family you want to go from one to four kids or one to three kids so you want to buy a house and you can't afford it if you want to um you know whatever it is personally that you're trying to do don't overextend yourself and he says small is beautiful small family a small company small things small things are beautiful and um it's low pressure and i can take that away

[00:02:49] and um i'll come off of announcement i think on the next podcast probably but i have some personal things in the works um that i'm really excited to just share it's a it's a personal goal of mine to achieve in life uh and right now is the right time and it made sense with small is beautiful so stay tuned for that next announcement otherwise it's back it's back to everything um i have my company annual planning meeting this is where i spend eight hours i i close down for a day and i

[00:03:19] get my entire team on board for what the goals are for the new year and then we meet quarterly after this but it's ultimately a full day of what's not going right with our company uh what do we want to accomplish and then just what needs to happen from a team culture perspective to goals to um everything in between so i'm excited for that so a lot of moving parts but ultimate life is fantastic i just

[00:03:44] started my sports pt kickstarter eight week online mentorship course uh i have uh people from all over the country we have uh definitely a lot from california we have some arizona we have texas we have new jersey welcome new jersey we have six people in from new jersey uh we have florida we have ohio and one from colorado so uh excited to have you guys in there and one from washington um so excited to have everyone in there um but yeah so um all right let's talk about this this uh episode all right so why is

[00:04:10] it so important so all right so i've mentioned on previous podcasts and if you're new to this um i am pro sports pt i i am i love everything about it i am also pro out of network um you know i'm i majority of 99.9 of my career has been um cash or out of network i don't know a ton about insurance um i went a different route than a lot of people i went pro sports and in pro sports there's not really

[00:04:38] an insurance barrier you get to do whatever you want and then um i was a concierge physical therapist traveling around the world so i didn't have any um oversight with that and then i opened a cash-based company 10 years ago uh now with three locations and 15 staff so um transitioning wellness transitioning athletes to wellness programs is a different perspective that i have but i i've heard over mentoring um thousands of sports pts that they struggle with this and i just recently came off

[00:05:05] a call that i had with a one-on-one with a pt um from uh florida that you know they want to be able to offer that service but they find themselves stuck you know it's like you know they said you i i offer it and then they don't just take it and there's a lot of layers to this but ultimately maybe you have a a patient who has been in network with you and maybe um they're running out of visits 6 10 12

[00:05:31] visits whatever that is or you're now at a network provider a cash provider and um you know they need it you know they really want it um but you just don't know there's a gap there in like they just don't see the value uh for some reason maybe it's your programming there's just a lot of layers and so i'm going to outline what it takes really to transition an athlete or an active individual your patient whether they're in network or out of network there's a lot of layers to get to this but i want to help you transition them because i truly believe that wellness programs or strength

[00:06:00] programs whatever you want to call them are critical to our success as a provider and more importantly the patients need it because what you offer in three to four sessions is not enough it's good to get them out of pain but it doesn't help their fitness it doesn't help them lose weight doesn't help them get to the next level doesn't have to get back to sport doesn't help them stay in sport there's several layers and so i'll help you outline that so you can transition your

[00:06:25] personal patients over to this and ultimately so you don't get stuck with orthopedic unmotivated people who don't even really want to be there and so if you want to keep your schedule full with patients who literally want are excited and passionate to be with you in your clinic and they just want to know what the next exercise is they want to know what the next program is you can continue seeing them elevate this podcast is going to be perfect for them all right so

[00:06:52] um here's what i've heard in the past right so uh um you have an athlete maybe a knee pain patella femoral syndrome and right around the 10 or 12 session where their insurance going to run out you start talking to them and like hey listen your knee is strong but it's not strong enough to be able to play in the tournaments that you have coming up in a month or a couple weeks and ideally what we would do is we would build you a strength program we would have

[00:07:21] you work with us for six weeks two times a week for six weeks to keep you in in our gym and we'll supervise all your therax we'll get your program going and maybe run you with an aid or or yourself or whatever it is and you're like i can show you through you know whether you have uh force plates or anything else to show you that you're making improvements in strength which will then help you uh with a better foundation of strength help you with be able to do force production plow metrics

[00:07:48] and speed and everything else that you need and the problem is is that that first of all you offer it really close to their discharge and that's a problem that's one layer another problem is the way you communicate and then the other one is the mediums in which you communicate so there's three layers to this that i'll share um so i'm gonna build this out from an ideal perspective uh and worst case scenario okay worst case scenario is this is probably most people probably like you

[00:08:15] um you wait till the 12th visit and then you present this beautiful program that you built for them this is the patella femoral um bulletproof program right and so you have you've built out this great beautiful program includes you know an hour exercise three times a week strength training lower body push pull sequence core activation linear acceleration the transitioning into any sport soccer whatever it

[00:08:41] is and you know it's going to work you've put in that time and effort you've ran people through it and you just put this you put johnny this 16 year old soccer player on that or you put the 25 year old collegiate intermural player on there or the 35 year old crossfitter through your strength program you've done that all and then you waited to that time you show them the program and they're like um no not right now let me think about that not right now maybe next time perfect so there's there's

[00:09:09] a couple things that went wrong that's worst case scenario that you put it at that 12th visit right because that's discharge so now you present everything else um well you probably didn't have like a handout or anything like that actually supports it a landing page website or anything else like that and you probably introduced it that one time at the very end you put all the eggs in basket and then you presented it once you then only had um you know just the document or the paper they have more information so they can read upon it so there's a couple different layers the first one you want to

[00:09:38] do anytime you have uh strength or wellness programs maybe it's an injury prevention program maybe it's gosh a bone density program with your older patients who play pickleball whatever that is one of the first things you have to understand is uh people including yourself don't make decisions very quickly and especially with today's you know uh tech savvy or information saturation uh community you know that you're just overwhelmed with data and and things all the time whether that's youtube or

[00:10:07] instagram or facebook whatever that is you're just getting things all the time and so it's overwhelming and so you don't know how to decipher what's good and what's bad and so because of that people take a longer time now to make decisions than ever so if you were going to go buy a new car i mean think about the websites and all these new apps and things that you would have to look through to figure out what's the best deal so if somebody said hey i got a great deal that's going to end tomorrow you would say well gosh i have to look through all these other apps and everything else to confirm that this is the best

[00:10:36] deal so you have to have time on your hands and that's how patients think when you present uh you know program or something that they can do if you waited all the way to the last minute and you present that program they didn't have any time to digest so even if it's the best deal uh they didn't know that and so they want to gather information so one of the best things you can do is um offer early and that's probably on that first visit for sure on that second visit so even if they're there for

[00:11:02] knee pain or post-op um one of the the things that you can do is tell them what that journey looks like so you would introduce them like hey don't worry we're going to get you out of pain we're going to start you by uh you know with general exercise flexibility range of motion activation whatever fancy words you want to inundate them with so you're going to do that but then also say listen that's the first stage of what we're going to do and then the second stage is we create more resilience so it

[00:11:28] doesn't happen again with the strength program and we'll talk about that later i'll give you more information on your second visit so on that second visit that's where you're going to create the handout give them something they can tangibly look at and review so the first thing you have to do is offer early you got to do this whether you're in network or out of network it really doesn't matter the problem is still the same in that you didn't offer early enough that's the first part

[00:11:53] the second part is you have to offer regularly or consistently so say for instance johnny or beth or whoever it is the 25 year old 45 year old whatever it is you decide to help you're gonna get them out of pain but at that second visit you're going to mention again or give them their handout and then every visit that you see them what you're going to do is remind them listen i love your progress knees getting better we're one step closer to making sure you're strong this is going to get

[00:12:22] you and in the way i present this and i think there's this two three podcasts ago everyone if if everyone in communities kind of sits at this equilibrium point okay and this is like general health and when you have pain or something that interferes with your quality of life surgery you're no longer in equilibrium you're below equilibrium right so you're you're now interfering with your normal day life they can't function they can't go up and down stairs right so physical therapists help

[00:12:48] patients get back to equilibrium and then in order to go beyond equilibrium into like functional activities back to sport and those type of things that's not covered under insurance so if you're an insurance based pt and you're trying to get help an athlete get beyond into a wellness program a strength program at first your phase one is to get them from below homeostasis back to equilibrium

[00:13:13] and that's when insurance will say hey you're done that's fantastic in order for people to see the value in going from equilibrium to an enhanced quality of life with fitness with wellness whatever it is that's typically paid out of network so if you're an in-network provider you gotta understand this is part of your role if you're really wanting to help people to get back to sport to do the right things um so that they don't go out just weak uh and poor flexibility poor balance and sets them up

[00:13:40] for future injury you literally care about these patients and so in order to do that just caring is not enough because these people are well informed and they need to make better decisions for themselves so time needs to be on their hand so you're going to do it early the second part you're going to do is you're going to do it often so every single session that you're telling them just like tell them the truth to be passionate about it be genuine in that listen i'm excited for you we're almost out of pain i as we go on to that next phase here's what that's going to look like and i'm always telling

[00:14:09] them what that looks like so when we get to visit six the same thing i'm mentioning that that same goal of like this is we're going to bring you back to equilibrium but we're also going to get you that next stage so when you're if you have 12 visits you know every session or every other session you're just doing it often so you have to have time on your hands that's number one you introduce early the second part is you do it consistently that helps that patient understand like gosh let me think about that you know does this make sense do i like this guy or girl does that make sense like

[00:14:38] does their philosophy jive with it and i have to look at financially does that make sense for me and is this goal that important and once they leave your pt clinic you have to understand like life is happening to them so they don't think about you anymore so you know once they leave your pt clinic they're thinking well great what's for dinner i got to run these errands i gotta do all these other things and most people are most pts think that the patient's like you know obsessing about what they just went over no they're like a human they're just going to go and do their thing so

[00:15:03] if you're not doing it early or often they'll forget or they don't even know that it was an option so that's the first part you got to do it early the second one is you got to do it often the third part is you have to do this through multiple mediums it's got to be through maybe a flyer maybe an email maybe verbally maybe a text maybe a website in all of those mediums

[00:15:29] people receive things differently i'm an audio person an audio and video right so when i watch something or hear it man that thing gets lodged in my brain it does not go away for a very long time if i read it it's like i kind of remember that so like when i read a book i know for a fact i have to read it multiple times for me to gain that same information whereas if i watch a movie i can tell you what the person was wearing at what time point what the background looks like i can just do that

[00:15:57] so for me if i want that information to soak in my head but i'm an audio visual guy you might have another person who's a um you know a written person and that's how they receive information that's why i think you have to do it through multiple mediums because this is not about you this is about the patient and how they receive information so they can make a better decision for themselves now if you've done it early and you've done it often and you've done it through multiple mediums now the patient can determine if there's going to be value in their life and i think that's what's

[00:16:27] going wrong in your current like approach the way you treat athletes is that you're so excited you're so obsessed about the you know the the impairments and the therax and all these other things you get them to discharge and like hey you know if you want to take it to the next level and bridge the gap between between rehab and performance let's get you on this you know improve your performance plan and they're like uh i didn't know about that let me think about it and and rightfully so i think you

[00:16:56] would do the same but the problem is you don't see yourselves in their in their feet you're like but this is so good for you i've worked i have all the initials and i take you know i took five different courses on this it's the best for you yeah those are all words they don't mean anything to me so i i need to know well in advance so i can take this information in so if you're stuck if you're a cash or out of network it's still the same problem the only difference is you're going to introduce this early on a telephone call on an email and you're going to explain what your journey looks like to

[00:17:26] to work with you so that they can actually accelerate the rehab and and be able to go back to performance now the patient just wants to be able to be successful and be able to enjoy the quality of life that they want they don't know what a physical therapist does and most importantly they you they probably shouldn't because physical therapy has a negative connotation to it think about this um if you asked your mom asked this right ask your mom or your dad or any sibling or friend

[00:17:56] or roommate whatever that is ask them how would you define what physical therapy is what does that mean to you just ask them that and what you're going to see is the only time you see a physical therapist is if you're hurt sometimes physical therapists stretch you and hurt you sometimes they give you exercises those are going to probably be your top three qualities which means that you only have to go to therapists when you're hurt now you can say well the apta in my local state legislature has been

[00:18:24] fighting for um direct access well that's not educating the the the consumer on just sports therapy it's physical therapy as a whole right it's geriatrics and pediatrics so that's why the message is very global it's very widespread it's not specific to athletes and sports pts so you have to educate people so you'd rather people come in with a blank slate never heard of physical therapy this way tell me what it is that's your opportunity imagine the patient didn't even have access never knew

[00:18:54] what a sports physical therapist was and that's where you get the best start let me walk you through what the normal process is here we're gonna get you out of pain in these visits you're gonna do therax we're gonna do normal muscular control we're gonna get muscular endurance and then phase two is we're gonna get you strong we're gonna build some power and then we're gonna work on injury prevention so that in season you are actually crushing it that tells them what that looks like and the problem is you don't even know how to outline that but you've got to do that early you got to do it consistently and

[00:19:23] you have to do it through multiple mediums start there before you start working on every one of your programs and that's the problem most physical therapists they start on the program and don't know how to offer it whereas the opposite is how about you offer it early often and through multiple mediums and then you get to showcase all the fancy exercises that you've been studying all the initials you've been studying for but other than that if you can't clean that up you have no chance of keeping

[00:19:51] athletes in your wellness programs or transitioning them and that's most people's problems so if you're like me and you love working with athletes this is the step in the right direction to keep them in your wheelhouse and really ultimately get them to that next level so if you're stuck if you don't know how to do this in network out of network work or cash and you want to be able to do this at every single stage with every single athlete because you don't want to work with unmotivated people you're tired of

[00:20:20] that schedule uh being filled with people who don't want to be there so if you're looking to fill your schedule with more athletes uh be seen as that expert without taking more ceu courses without taking uh you know more credentials and taking these uh you know courses that help you design the program but not how to offer them i created something called my cash bt clinical elevation course now it is for a network out of networking cash based providers it's ultimately a step-by-step process on how to program

[00:20:50] how to offer it at multiple stages with your respective clinic it allows you an opportunity to work with more athletes but more importantly how to offer it when to offer it and without feeling bad about it without feeling salesy because that's the the problem with sports pt i just want to work with athletes but i don't want to learn how to offer it deliver it and then keep them on my schedule but i just want to treat i had that problem too and it took me years to figure that out so i've

[00:21:17] consolidated 10 years of working in cash-based physical therapy uh helping in network out of network and cash-based physical therapists all over the world uh for the last 10 years and i consolidated that into my eight-week program so it's online uh it is two hours a week and it is eight weeks and it gives you an opportunity to digest the material to go over it and allow yourself week-by-week progress so if you're interested in that head over to dr chrisgarcia.com forward slash elevation and i'd love to see you inside the course if i don't see

[00:21:46] you inside the course i will see you on the next episode take care thanks for tuning in to the sports pt academy podcast it means the absolute world to me if you enjoy my content subscribe to the podcast so you know exactly when new episodes come out next help me help others by giving me a five-star review on apple podcast i personally read all the reviews and i appreciate your support this gives me an opportunity to provide healthcare professionals and fitness professionals just like you with great information to become sports experts if you have any questions reach out to my team at

[00:22:15] dr chris at dr chrisgarcia.com and tell us exactly what you're looking for do you want more head over to my website dr chrisgarcia.com and sign up for my vip email list to stay in touch with my latest updates on courses and mentorship programs if you know someone who would benefit from my content please share this episode with them until next time have an incredible day