Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #91 - Zack Atwood, TheFutbolDoc, founder of Primal Recovery PT and the ACL Institute

Transcript

I Hate Soccer #91 - Zack Atwood, TheFutbolDoc, founder of Primal Recovery PT and the ACL Institute · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This episode, I uh went out to the guys at Primal Recovery uh and talked to Zach Atwood, who actually Zach Atwood played at University of Detroit right after I coached there.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he played with some of the guys that were there while when I coached there as their goalkeeper trainer.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: They focus on a lot of recovery.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find that the injury prevention isn't really real, um, which I've kind of believed for quite some time, uh, because it's not 100%, nothing is actually 100% preventable.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I learned a ton about just the physio side of soccer and really all sports.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: We cover multiple sports, but for the most part, we cover we cover soccer, obviously.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're interested in injury air quote prevention or just what you can do to build strength and mobility, uh this is this is your episode.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're coming off of an ACL, I mean, he's actually called the football doc.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's and they they are most known for their uh ACL recovery.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So enjoy the episode.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Again, please like, subscribe, uh, and most importantly, share this to everyone you know that might get something out of it.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it helps the show.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And see you next time.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hate soccer.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But are you going to the exposition?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the plan is to.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you know if you're presenting?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Did you present last year?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: We did, yeah.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I um I definitely would like to as well because what we have cooking um lately is is pretty exciting stuff that I think is gonna be uh awesome to be able to have the opportunity to present on.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do you have cooking?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you have cooking lately?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Coming up if you can talk about it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean we're uh the whole are like so I'll I'll say like us being physical therapists, we're always looked at as like the the reactive sides of things.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like we you you get injured, you come see us, right?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're trying to be pushing more swords, pushing more swords, preventative and proactive.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I'll get into like the the preventative word, and I'm not a huge fan of it because you can't prevent everything.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, and at the end of the day, as long as you're playing a sport, you're you're at risk.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's just not there's no exercise, there's no like there's nothing you can do that's gonna 100% prevent you from getting hurt.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: However, you can reduce your risk of getting hurt by doing a lot of things.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of what my team and I are trying to push towards is as you can see, all the equipment in our facility, we use this stuff to um not just collect data, the whole point is to take the data, sift through it, what's meaningful, and how can we make you know decisions for these athletes?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're starting to go to some of the club teams uh around here and offer weekly testing so that we can actually get real information on them so that we can help inform the coaches on where their athletes are at.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Do they need to make adjustments for their plans throughout the week?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And hopefully, you know, if we look you know a year from now, hopefully we see that injury rate tick down, and that's that's really what we're trying to push now moving forward um with this type of stuff, which I think is incredibly valuable.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw yesterday you guys were posting the concussion stuff, yeah.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I all I know about concussion stuff is like baseline testing.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is there baseline testing for ACLs and and the rest of your body that you test all these players through?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we yes and no.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'll say, like the testing is not necessarily designed to say, are you going, is this person gonna get hurt?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's not what it's designed for.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: What it's really good for, though, is identifying maybe some areas that somebody could get better at, um, or if there is something that's very asymmetrical.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, for example, we have uh strength devices, we have force plates, which tell us pressure and and force right versus left leg.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing with like the strength devices, it'll tell us right versus left leg how strong you are.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you can get an idea of okay, is their right side 60% stronger than their left?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like that doesn't necessarily mean that that person's gonna go on and get hurt per se, but it opens the door and opens a conversation to say, is it because they just never have done this test before?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or are they just really weak on the one side and we should probably address this before it could potentially be a problem?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I would say it can be very, very helpful.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: But our goal and our intention behind this testing is not to go to a coach, test your team, and be like, listen, they're all red, they they can't play, like they they they all have to sit.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's not realistic, that doesn't make any sense.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so our goal is to take it, monitor, especially what we're using, is more so readiness and fatigue.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so we're we're testing uh the teams on Mondays and Tuesdays, and usually that's when they're coming off a weekend of games.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it gives us an idea of okay, where where are they at?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: Now it takes us about five weeks, I would say, of five weeks consistently testing these teams to get their baseline level because we can't just test them one time and be like, okay, that's their baseline, because you're gonna see fluctuations.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: So now that we've done this for a month, we can look at this data we've collected and say, okay, this is where your player over the past four weeks is averaging around.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is their baseline.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Now, every week moving forward, we can take our information and compare it to their baseline and see if it's actually a significant change.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, for example, like last week, uh, we had one one team where the there was a couple players who dropped 20% from their baseline.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they also just played three games in four days.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it makes sense.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so from that standpoint, the educational moment for the coach was hey, let's take it light, like these first couple days, you know, maybe ramp up midweek, but then taper.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and maybe that taper needs to be a little bit longer because we have another go-around of games this upcoming week.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the whole idea is to try to make actionable change for the coaches and discuss with them because we need their feedback as well of what is realistic, how can we develop training practices and drills, whatever it is, and that's like our long-term goal with this is to actually take what they're doing at the professional level and the collegiate level, and then implement it in the club level.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's kind of where we're going.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, how are coaches?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many old school coaches out there that are like push through, work harder, like no pain, no gain, like all that stuff.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like do you are you finding that the players, coaches that you work with are very in tune and trying to find out, like, okay, these players, it's very it's a very professional approach of how professional academies would be is that they're monitoring their bodies and be like, you're you're at a 75%.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to like, we're not maybe not gonna play you a ton of minutes because you're cashed, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Are the coaches welcoming this or are they kind of like pushing back, be like, we'll toughen up?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, it's I would say the ones, the ones we've we've started implementing this with a hundred like in my opinion, I feel like they've they've really been on board with it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and it's still in the infancy, really.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like this is just gonna keep getting better week by week, and and especially once the fall rolls around where we're really getting this going, because we're kind of like in a pilot right now.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: But the coaches we've met with, they've enjoyed it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: They've again, our goal is to how can you, as the coach, take this information, digest it, and make actionable steps.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why, like, we're not just printing off our raw data and sending you a spreadsheet.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like we're giving you a color-coded system, a traffic light, you know, red light, green light, yellow light with some little notes on the side of where each player is at.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so the ones we've met with so far and have been implementing this with has been positive.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now, we've also I've reached out to probably over 30 coaches at this point, and I've been ghosted by a lot, and some of them also met with, and like it just it's one of those things that the ones who have been more hesitant, it it falls like they've all fallen into the same reasoning of why, and it's um the biggest one is what like how do we what do we do with this information?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Or we've tried this in the past, like some clubs have told us like we've gotten the GPS units for their players, and they're like, We've tried it, we we didn't know what to do with the information, we didn't know how to read it, and so it's like clubs are getting information or getting technology or whatever, but then they don't have the person to to actually manage that, dissect it, and make true change.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: The second thing was it just takes a lot of time, and then the third would be you know, it's uh is it gonna change really what I'm already doing?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right, and we had a really good conversation with the coach about this lately.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, well, if I just look at the players, you know, I could just tell I need to make some adjustments.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's not I'm not saying that like your coach's eye is not important because your coach's eye is what got you to where you're at, and that's a super important part.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: The thing though that you may not see is that the stuff that's going on underneath, the internal aspect of it, and how the players are actually truly responding to this load and not putting on this mask, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, I was a player, it's like you don't want to show that you're tired, you want to show your coach that you're you're trying to give your best and you're not you're not hurting on the inside, you're not speaking up about maybe something that's bothering you, you know.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where a lot of this stuff we give them surveys to kind of see where are they at mood-wise, energy-wise, soreness-wise.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then at the end of the day, that the the data is going to tell us you can't lie.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: The data doesn't lie.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're if you're really fatigued, you may tell me you're not, but when I see you go and do your jumps and you're 20% down compared to you know the past four weeks, that tells me something and it opens up a conversation.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of what kind of wearables or is giving you this data or data?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because okay, I worked camp with one of Arsenal's uh former women's coach, um Pedro uh Losa, and he this is pre-game.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Heather O'Reilly was on the team at the time, and I think it was Heather, and basically they go through their warm-up and they're getting the data on the on the sideline, and they're like, Heather, you're at like a 90% chance of injury because of your your recovery or whatnot, and you're uh uh operating at 75%, you're not starting.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And she lost it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I'm ready, I'm ready.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then it turns out that she had like a little injury that they didn't even know about, and she didn't even really know about because it was just like a just a just the run in the mill, like, oh, this just like is a little tight.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of what kind of instruments can give you guys the data?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just the GPS stuff?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so the GPS is one thing that we have not implemented with teams yet, but that is the I would say the next step.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like that is what we as a company we want to take that next step in starting to implement GPS units with with the teams, if the teams, of course, are willing to invest in them.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, because there's so much information that you can gather from that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the hard part is and this is just the the tricky, I I always say that the youth athlete is probably the hardest to manage because they're involved in so many different things.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: You have you have school.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is brought to you by the North American Soccer Expo.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember last year when I had Alexi Lawless on, so many of you were blown away and kept on messaging me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you get Alexi Lawless to talk to you?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest with you, it was the North American Soccer Expo.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Expo has workshops and seminars and field presentations from top coaches and industry experts.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I will be there this year.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be set up on podcast row.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to the podcasts that I'm going to be filming there, I'm also going to have an open hour where any coach at the expo or anybody at the expo can come sit down at the chair and have a one-on-one, 15-minute chat with me, and you guys can just come and chat and talk about whatever you want.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: North American Saturday Expo, July 30th to August 1st, Novae, Michigan.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you there.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is brought to you by Salt Athletic.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: A couple weeks ago, I'm training one of my college players.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she plays at Kentucky.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed that she has uh one of these salt bags.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I see them on social media all the time, and I was wondering, I was like, okay, does this thing really work?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she opened up her bag and pulled her cleats out, and it was the worst smelling pair of cleats, maybe that I've ever smelled.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: While they were in the bag, I didn't smell anything.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing that it could tramp in all of the smell so that her bag doesn't stink, that her car doesn't stink.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I could not vouch for this product more.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: As a goalkeeper, I wish I had this 20 years ago to for my gloves, and they do have a glove bag.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Go to the link in the description for 10% off and get rid of all the smell, guys.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: You may have tutoring, you may have driver's ed, you may have your team's practice, then you might have a technical training practice, and then it's like there's no there's no time.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, if I'm just wearing GPS monitoring just for your team's practice, but then you're going and doing technical training without it, and then maybe you're doing strength and conditioning without it, I don't know what your actual load is for the for the youth athlete.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: When you go to college, you're wearing that GPS unit the entire time you're training.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's very it's it's almost like it's way easier to, I don't want to say easier, but it's easier to control load, I would say, when you're in those higher up settings, which makes sense.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: But the youth athletes challenge, it's it's very difficult, and that's where like that like what I just told you that schedule is probably 90% of the kids we're working with.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Is they got driver's training, strength and conditioning, PT, technical training, team training.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's it just it doesn't end, you know.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, there's not enough days in the week to fit it all in.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: What a college athlete can get done in four days, it takes a youth athlete seven.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because let's say two games on the weekend, if they're hawks, they may have three or four sessions, then they go to bird, then they're trying to get into you or another physical, you know, preparation and you know, the PT.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's like when do you rest?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: When is the off day?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Versus a pro environment or a college environment where they can double up, they could do strength and conditioning, and then they can train, or vice versa, and then they still have days off.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's so hard to balance to balance.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how okay.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so man this is something that I'm always so curious about because you nailed it, or well, I just always thought.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can't prevent injuries, certainly not a hundred percent.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I okay.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is from Beast Mode Soccer.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with him at all?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: David Copeland Smith?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he trains like he trained like Alex Morgan and like all the women's national teams, oh players.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think yeah.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he would start out his sessions with tennis ball juggling, mini ball juggling, and full-size juggling.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I would do a North Carolina test where it's like 14 surfaces, so it's laces, insides, outsides, both sides, tops of your shoulders, head and chest.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you had to get it all.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no order, but you had to get it all without the ball falling.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I noticed was the player's body, while trying to do that with a tennis ball, miniball, full size, is in so many natural, I guess, natural but unnatural positions that that's warming them up and that's properly activating their system.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I always chime in and say, this is the best warm-up for soccer players because knock on wood, like I have the players that I worked with the longest and the most frequently didn't have those catastrophic injuries.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that it's just because of the tennis ball, mini ball, and full-size juggling, but it's because I think it's because of the movement versus two lines warming up and doing open the gates and the FIFA, whatever it's called, and everybody's like, the studies show that if you do FIFA, what's it called?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: FIFA, the FIFA 11.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: FIFA, if you do the FIFA 11 and you do it all year, the study shows that it is 20 or like 90 percent preventative.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, will you shut up?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not, like, it's so fluky.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: A kid could come reckless into a challenge and then your ECL is gone.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna blame the strength and conditioning coach, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or the preparation.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, hey, so I don't know where the question is.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just had to get that off my chest.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you bring up a good point, and I I will say the the the FIFA 11, there's a lot of pushback on it too, because it's at the end of the day, it's hard to control.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard when you talk about actually doing a study on something, it's really hard to control all the variables at play.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, yes, I'm I'm like, don't get me wrong, we I've implemented FIFA 11 inspired coaches to do that, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the intent behind the warm-up and how the individuals are actually doing it because you can have them go through a warm-up or a FIFA 11 approach, and no offense, I've I've seen a lot of warmups over the days, and it's like just going through the motions, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas like the whole, and we can even get into this too, how most most the the misconception that an ACL injury is because they're fatigued and tired in their game, whereas most ACL injuries actually happen in the first half of a game.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And again, can't say that this is the the reason why, but one of the things that in my mind makes the most sense is it comes back to the nervous system and priming the nervous system and actually getting your your whole system, your body warmed up and ready to get into that game.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's the biggest thing for me when it comes to a warm-up, is you have to understand what's the what's the whole intent behind a warm-up is to get the blood flowing, your body warmed up, sweating, and your nervous system is primed.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: So going back to your juggling drills, that is a nervous system primer.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that is something that like I love.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like I love the implementation of brain games when it comes to a warm-up, just to get the brain active.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about decision-making, processing time, having to track things, like all those things will feed into the nervous system, getting more alert, which, in my opinion, would get the whole system ready to roll.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I love the idea of using you know, tennis balls or juggling or like having individuals have to track their, you know, their eyes and stuff like that, like where you're really getting things going.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, head turns, stuff that's just different.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: It looks different, but it also you have to keep in mind what the whole what we're trying to accomplish here, which is getting getting the whole nervous system ready to go.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And control your nervous system is your brain.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system is fire.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll also say, like, when you think about like I have talks about this with a lot of coaches too, of like you you always hear the coaches say, God, they're just starting so slow, right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like it just seems like it just takes them 20 minutes to get into a game, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that to me, again, is like, well, how did they prepare?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like how did they get warmed up?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: How like when you talk about like you can even do it yourself, like where if you go and do Some sort of brain activity, and then you go back and try to do you know the exercise, like you're going to be more efficient at it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're just firing all the things in the nervous system, the neurons, like everything is just starting to wire better.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: So when you go and challenge it, you may make mistakes while you're doing these brain act, which is fine.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's that's how your brain learns.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: But then you go back and you do the simple task now, and all of a sudden things just get more efficient.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where, like, for you, like going back to like your dribbles, like if you wanted to challenge them even more, maybe you throw in another variable.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you start to say, Hey, as you're juggling, I want you to look up real quick, scan, call out whatever number I'm flashing to you, or you know, a color, you know, stuff that it's like they may make a mistake now while they're juggling, but that's okay because then when they go back to just doing it normal, it's gonna be more efficient.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys use blaze pods or anything like that?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we we don't use blaze pods, we use it's it's called switched on app.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's a free app.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's super cool.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um again, no financial you know, affiliations.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: Not sponsored.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Not sponsored, but it is such a cool app to where you can do you can create your own drills, you can do colors, you can do numbers, you can do arrows.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: You can literally set it on a tripod in front of the entire group if they're doing their two lines and have that like flash like an arrow that they have to now cut that way, or you know, color they go that way, or they don't go if it's a red, you know, stuff like that, like a stop red, you know, go stop, you know, that type of stuff.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's the stuff that's gonna like again, they may make mistakes, and that's totally fine.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the moment they get into the game, this thing's going.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's reactionary.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I would say a lot of until you actually get into your small-sided games, um, you know, you know, in your warm-up prior to a game, the majority of the warmup is not reactionary.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's pre-planned.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: You need to get to where you're actually being reactionary because that's what's going to fire the nervous system.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: When it's pre-planned, it's just like your drive in.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like you probably didn't even think about it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: You're just it's just automatic, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Think about a kid who's gone through the same warm-up for the past 15 years.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's like going through the motions, you just go into the motions.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: There, it's just day to day, and half the time you just see them just slowly sweeping the ground, slowly doing a lunge, chit-chatting with their friend, which I'm all for, but you also have to you got to get things going.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I think when you start to throw in some of these variables and make it reactionary, and where they have to take in information and then make a decision quickly, that's what's going to get them prepped.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of coaches in Europe, youth coaches, that they're starting to scrap a warm-up, a game warm-up, and they're making it another training session.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that would fire your neurosystem in your brain because it might be a new drill or a new concept that the coach is trying to teach.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's brilliant just soccer-wise, because you get to work, you're basically adding another training session onto the week.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it also would fire the brain because they'd have to be paying attention.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas when you're just going through the motions of two lines or your dynamic warm-up, you're not, you're not checked in, you're not locked in.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think like when we look back to like I feel like most people are probably familiar with the fact that like we're we're shifting away from static stretching, you know, of course, and moving towards the dynamic.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: But then I would take it a step further and say, now we've gotten our dynamic, cool.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: But what about this?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: What we'll call it like neural priming.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: We could we call it something fancy, like that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I just think something to where again creating that environment to where you have to respond to someone.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where like um my colleague Spencer, he's does a great job.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: We just did it with one of the teams recently where it's this game called Fox Tales.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's basically each player puts a penny like in their short.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, they're all spread out into this, like, you know, small little, not small, but like a decent sized box, you know, within the 18.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole idea is last man standing.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they're running around, they're trying to grab basic penny.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's like tag, yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so what is that doing?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: It you when you walk when you actually like from an outsider looking in, like if you're a parent, you may be like, what is this?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: What the hell are they having to do?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the East DNL.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: What is this game, you know?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: And but when you actually look at it from a performance rehab lens, you look at what they're doing and all the movements they're getting exposed to, the cutting, the quick turns, the reacting to a player, having to grab somebody.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's so fascinating to watch.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like then you look at the players after they're like huffing and puffing, and it's like they they actually got that stimulus, and it's like that would be an excellent warm-up.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: And again, you may look a little goofy doing it, but it doesn't matter because your team, deep down, you know what the the goal of that that you know activity is, and it only takes, I mean, depending on how long you're gonna do it, but like less than two minutes, I would say, especially if you got a team of 16, you know, players.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's so funny because when I was coaching ODP back in the day, back when ODP mattered.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: I know, I remember those days.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know I was with Bob Becari and I think Todd Derby.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know those names.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Bakari was at Country Day, and I coached at Country Day for four years, and he never really did this at Country Day, but when Bob was doing ODP, he had the kids all in the 18th, and they made it and he made them play tag.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, this is this is ODP.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is at the time it was a high level.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had like Fataya Lache and like Caleb Stanko running around playing tag.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what are we doing?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm so embarrassed.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then, but then I'm like, and then I listened to his reasoning.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, this is a better warm-up than your two-line dynamic, isn't it?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, oh.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I would do it with a ball where everybody has a ball, and then we do it inside the 18, and then two people are it, and then if they steal your ball, they're trying to score a goal.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden we're working on finishing, but also we're working on the ball, and we get, and I never even thought of it as like injury prevention.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm not gonna use that word anymore.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um injury risk reduction.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a more brilliant way.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: When we do camps, we do our like juggling stuff, and then we one day we'll do a game, a huge camp-wide game of knockout, and we have like four pug goals, and then the younger, like if there's like five eight-year-olds, we have all the eight-year-olds start and they have to like go and win a ball and then knock it into one of the pugs.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like that is such a better warm-up than just the two-line dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-up.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And but go back, you said the common thought process is you got injured today, it's because of something that you did yesterday.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think that.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be really big on cool down, like, okay, let's cool down, let's get our get the bands out, you know, and make sure.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was always under the steps of that, like static stretching bad before exercise, but after a game, that's when you can do the static stretching.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go in more to that about that?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what you did yesterday necessarily.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it might be, but most of the time it's not.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: So the ideally, that's that's what I would say most should be shifting towards for sure.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the dynamic prior and then a static after.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um more so for yeah, the cooldown aspect and just kind of sinking into positions, especially after just did, you know, if you just played a full game, like that, your muscles are just gonna be pretty sore, whether it's foam rolling, bands, whatever.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Anything that just kind of makes you feel good type of thing.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got their own thing that makes them tick and makes them feel good.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Some people like doing saunas, some people like doing cold plunges.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: Compression boots at the end of the day, whatever there's no, there's no perfect.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's I usually will say, like, especially if it's like a higher level player who knows their body more than I do, um, I'm going to get their feedback and what what what do they feel works works best for them to get things you know kind of cooling down or or recovered.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but as far as to your point about the what you do before, can you can you elaborate on that part?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say a girl tears her ACL.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I always thought that it was mostly because of overuse and maybe not uh maybe it was something that happened yesterday in practice, or the earlier that week in practice, or in yesterday's game, and then it finally just gave on her.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I was under the assumption that like it never just happens fully that day.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought that there was a lead up to it.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's not true, or it's not in every case, every case is different.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: I would say every case is different because like you've already said, like, I'm sorry, but if you just have a player that comes in and blows your knee out, there what are you gonna do?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, right?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's that's a situation that it's unfortunate, it happens, but most of the most of the ACL injuries are in non-contact.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's kind of our I would say we are trying to push looking at the days before, looking at the weeks before, looking at trends, because I think that that can give us good information.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: Because if an individual is, you know, just starting to really drop well below their baseline, hopefully, you know, because we're giving them weekly reports, hopefully we can make that uh, you know, discuss or have a discussion with the coach, the parents, uh, and the player, as far as like what are some strategies that we need to do because we play on Saturday, if we test you on Monday or Tuesday, what are some strategies that we may need to take for the next three days to get you kind of back to your baseline so that you're going in fresh.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Now, taking all that out of it, if we didn't monitor this, that's where you may not know, and then maybe you're just ramping, ramping, ramping, and this person's already redlined.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, now we may be putting somebody at a risk for an injury, for the stuff leading up to it.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Or if they are dealing with another injury, it's very common that you will see actually concussions, one of them.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a concussion, there are there are studies that show that it you you may have a higher risk of tearing your ACL just because of the effects with the brain.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and again, it comes back to decision making and you know taking in information quickly, having to respond, all that stuff, but even an ankle sprain or a hamstring injury, like all the the body keeps score.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I will say that like if you are dealing with stuff prior to again, not trying to sit here and say that you you'll get hurt, that's not the case, but can we can we make adjustments before it becomes a bigger problem?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's what we're trying to push, I will say.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all linked.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And or something is wrong with their their you know, their right knee, and it's because something that's in their left hip.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And kid like how how do you know?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a guy in Buffalo, the guy uh we were talking about off-air, yeah, that he can.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if his science is perfect, but like if a girl comes in with an ankle issue, he doesn't work on that ankle, he works on like her hip or something like that.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is that real?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's real, yeah.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: I will say, like uh we we like to say, obviously, if you're coming in for a surgery, we we know we have to address an area, right?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: But even if you come in for an ACL injury with us, we're not gonna just hone in on just your knee.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to still address your ankles, we're gonna address your hips, we're also gonna address your upper body, we're also gonna address your heart and lungs because they still have to be trained.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: So you're gonna be doing conditioning still, even if you're in a brace and you're on crutches, we have ways that we can still train around your injury.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: But there is to the point of the link of like if you do come in, for example, with I see this all the time, where you'll see a person with an old ACL injury on their, let's say their right leg, and now they're coming in for me, uh, whether it's uh a left Achilles injury or if their their left hip is hurting.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you think about it from just a mechanical sense, if I never fully recovered or rehabbed my right side well, and I or maybe I did, and then I just stopped doing things, right?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's a pretty common thing, is they're like, oh sweet, I'm good with PT, I don't have to do it anymore.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: I can get back out there, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then they just stop training.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so now, if but let's say we didn't fully restore this side, which is a very common thing that we see just months down the road, which we can get into as well.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: But now when I go to do tasks that require my leg to work at high speeds, like for example, running, change of direction, sprinting, cutting, I'm going to compensate.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: And what you'll see is they will then, like you've already pointed to, like you will shift load elsewhere, and so that's where maybe now I'm getting off of my right leg quicker because I don't want to load this side as much.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: So now I'm overloading my left side, and we see that all the time, whether it's coming in with now left knee pain, left hip pain, but it all comes back to well, why are they having it?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: If I just focus now on their left side, I'm missing the actual problem, which is I need to restore their right side because this is what's leading to them to overloading this left side, which is why now the left side is starting to talk to us.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of times people will hone in just on why they're coming in.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you have left hip pain.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, let me massage you, let's do a couple exercises.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: Weeks and weeks go down and they're not getting better.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's because you didn't restore what the actual problem was, which comes back to why your evaluation process needs to be comprehensive.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: You need to look at the whole body.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: You can't just zone in on one spot because you're gonna miss a lot.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's one thing that when someone any you need to take a good history of did they have any prior injuries?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because that will tell you a lot of information.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Because if again, if it's an ACL, which we see a ton of, I'm already thinking, well, why does their other side hurt?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: I need to look at their their prior ACL side, right?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know throughout your uh throughout running your your business, do you get frustrated that you always get new clients when they're injured and that you don't get them when they're like healthy, so that you can build a base to make sure that these injuries don't happen.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I would get so frustrated because it's like, yeah, if you were just training with me.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's say you have a kid that you work with for like two years and then like, yeah, I don't need them anymore.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then a year later they like have an injury.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, if you just stayed with us, that maybe not have happened.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does that ever like cross your mind?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it I I I do uh I will say, like going back to what we were talking about being on the reactive sides of things, so being a PT business, we are always, I would say not always, but known for seeing people after they get hurt, obviously.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: But one thing I will push is that, especially in the state of Michigan, New York was different, but we are direct access providers, meaning that if you get hurt, you can see us first.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to go to the doctor, you can come straight to us, and then we can refer out if we need to.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: Beauty of that is, is if you do get hurt, let's say you get hurt in your game, it's an ankle sprain.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so instead of you going and spending money on a doctor's appointment, getting an x-ray, and getting medication, and then maybe at the end of the day they just write you a script for PT, you can skip all those steps and you can just go see the physical therapist directly, and they can decide, yeah, you just need PT.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: But now you've saved time, you save money, you saved unnecessary things, whether it's imaging, injections, medications, and you're just going straight to the source.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where I will say, like it's pretty nice to be, you know, in a state that supports that because you can save a lot of frustration.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: But to your point of like staying ahead of this, that's why we've we've created programs that are more for like long-term.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it is you did rehab with us all the way, and now then you're shifting more towards just continuing with you know, whether you call it prehab, performance, just maintain maintaining, right?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then on top of that, trying to get better.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, the goal would be to have clients who you know, you think about it like the dentist, right?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like you should you should go every two times a year, every six months you check in.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I feel like the PT should be in a similar boat to where it's like if you have things that come up, yeah, give give your PT a call.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Go in and and check with them because they're gonna be the most knowledgeable on your human body when it comes to movement limitations, dysfunctions.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not like I'm not saying like you need to see me for two times a year to create problems for you, you know, to say, oh, this is off, this is off, you know, if you're not having issues, but more so like if you are dealing with something that's bothering you, your first thought should be, let me go, let me call the let me call Zach.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Let me just go get checked in, you know, see see what's up, see if we can get a plan put together, and then you're on your way so that we're now being more proactive and thinking more so along the lines of let me get ahead of this before it starts to limit me from doing the things that I want to do, because that's that's really when people see us.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: And unfortunately it's it's a bigger hole to dig out of, um, you know, depending on obviously the case.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're working with teams, how does it work?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because is it just like using them one or twice as a baseline and then you don't see them again?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you working with them over again and put it in the level?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: So because we're still in the infancy of it, like I I will say, like, I can only speak for what we've done so far, but the the whole idea is if we look at the entire year of an ECNL or MLS next schedule, uh, we'll call it roughly, let's say, 10 months.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: The idea is that we are seeing them every single week for those 10 months and monitoring their players.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: Get and this is where now that we've gotten their baseline.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: So the first month was we just got to gather baseline.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Now moving forward, our goal is to give each player individual plans so that they can address some of the things that we are catching on their specific tests.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Some of it might be generalized because a lot of the players might be dealing with similar things.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: But like when we get a group and six girls have, you know, 40% asymmetries on their hamstrings, okay.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: We should have a plan for those four individuals so that hopefully A, we see their numbers tick up, their asymmetries go down, and they're just starting to feel better because as they're going throughout the process.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the goal with the teams is gather the baseline, give the coaches meaningful information for how can they make adjustments for their training sessions, and then for the individual players, giving them personalized plans so that they can then uh do this stuff throughout the week to to try to help again reduce our risk of getting something to come up.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And how okay.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk uh if you were part of a professional uh team or an environment or a college environment, you would you wouldn't be the strength and conditioning coach.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: You would be the what they call like the physio, more like more so.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you're working lockstep.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the issue that I have with strength and conditioning coaches is that it's almost they do the exact same workout for every single player, and you just do your circuit, right?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: You do the bench press, then you do squats, and then you do everything, and it's like, well, this girl might have an issue that you just you know you just spoke about.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the issues that I like let's say that they're in here and uh and they're working with you, but then they're also going to not to bash them or anything, but like let's say they're going to a CrossFit and they're doing a lot of Olympic lifts, and it's like you shouldn't be going there.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like how how is a player that a club doesn't bring you in, how does a a play a youth player just balance all of this and know like what they should be doing?
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because how much of this is strength based?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of these injuries could be like if you strengthen your quads or your hamstrings or whatever, you would have prevented that injury anyway, or not prevented, but yeah, yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Strength, strength is definitely, I would say, for the youth athlete is is very like it's just the foundation.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: I always say, like, every player that comes in when we test them, we can always say, and it's it's a very generalized reductionist way of saying things, but like you can always get stronger, especially when we're talking about like adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: When you start to get into like the college and you know, professional levels, that's when you start to have to look at you know, really sifting through the information of those players in most cases are are really, really strong, and you might have to now start to focus on other qualities.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: But so I would say, like going back to the individualized program, like let's say like they're not seeing us and how to balance how to the the balance and going back, the balancing part is the hardest part, I will say, uh, because of what we've already said, like with all the things that may be going on.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: But in in general, rule of thumb, like, yeah, you will have in college and pro, you will have a sports scientist, you will have a strength and conditioning coach, you'll have a physio, you'll have nutrition, you'll have athletic training, you'll have sports psychology, you'll have the skills coach, the physician coach.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: All those people are are coming together on a weekly basis to make these decisions.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: We obviously don't have all of those in our own company.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: But Spencer and I are going down the rabbit hole of of um sports science right now, and then we're also physios.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: So we're trying to answer those questions.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: But when we talk about mapping out a week, we talk about like periodization and and tapering and all that type of stuff.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_03: This this may sound weird, but you're or may sound crazy, but Monday, like if you're playing on a Sunday, Monday should actually be a pretty hard training day from a strength and conditioning standpoint.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: As you get into Wednesday, that's usually when you're going to be having a very high intensity training session.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then Thursday you start to taper, Friday you start to taper, you have games on Saturday.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that's if you're that's of course if you're playing Saturdays, Sundays.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: But you can train hard that day the same day, you can even train after the game, right?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: Or the day after should be a very hard because you're the whole idea, and this is why I say youth youth is uh very challenging, is because of the volumes and the intensities are all over the place throughout a week.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: But you can your whole goal is to give them mic like little microdoses of training.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: When you're in season, you're trying not to dip, so you have to maintain a level of intensity and an appropriate amount of volume so that you're not just burning them to the ground.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: But the misconception of like, oh, I'm in season, I shouldn't be training, that should not be the case.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can, and when you look at what the pros in the college schedules, it's usually that day after the game, they're hitting it pretty hard from a strength and conditioning standpoint.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: The people who may not have played as many minutes are getting their fitness in because you want to maintain a high level so that they're not dropping.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you have certain players that play 60 plus minutes every game, but then you have, you know, five players that are playing 30 below, you need to make sure that those people that are playing 30 and below are reaching what the the amount of volume that that person who's playing 60 plus is, so that when they get subbed in, they're already used to that intensity and that volume that they're not gonna put themselves at a risk for an injury.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's usually when we talk about like workload and acute and chronic, and when you see those massive spikes to where it's like 200 to 300 percent what that person's used to, that is going to put them at a pretty high risk.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because we need to do a better job of maintaining the the minutes as far as like players, you know, usually they get broken into two buckets, players who you know trained or played over 60 or below 60, they'll have like two separate training, different types of training sessions that next day.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's something that I feel like would be I would love to push for for clubs.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: But again, I don't know with the clubs if there's a certain like every player has to play a certain amount, but you know, that's where like I would say you wanna most teams will hit their peak though Wednesdays, you know.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: So Monday, Tuesdays, sometimes teams just do Mondays off.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally fine.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: Tuesdays though, you can go full send, like you can do you know, a hard strength and conditioning session, and then knowing that Wednesday is probably gonna be the most dense for a for your soccer training, and then Thursday we're starting to to taper down.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: You could hit upper body Fridays, you know, maybe you're doing walkthroughs, just keeping it light, doing some rondos, whatever it is, just nothing to where it's like the total sprinting and the the long distances, or keeping those um, you know, down.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: When when I was at Flash, when they were in the NWSL, the non the players that didn't play or the players that only played 30 minutes, we'd always do a training session right after.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was never I was never told that it was the sports science behind it all.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, well, they need to get you know a sweat on and they need to, you know, because they just did it because that's what pros pro teams do.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it was never really taught.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Also, okay, when I was in high school, football, they'd play Friday night and then they'd have a Saturday lift.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, man, that's so weird.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then what you just said, that's why.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: So football has been ahead of soccer all this time.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's so lost.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's so lost on a lot of coaches.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, in Brazil, they don't lift weights until they're 18.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, okay, sure, but by then their technique is probably off.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably causing an injury because they don't know what they're doing or whatnot.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's interesting.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you played at U of D.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: The days of Friday Sunday games.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: What was Saturdays like?
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't do anything.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: No, and though that schedule was brutal, I will say.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the because it's like I mean, yeah, you're talking about that quick turnaround, and and a lot of guys like were playing heavy minutes on on both, you know, Saturday or yeah, Friday, yeah.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: 99.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: We had a lot of guys that did that, you know.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, I played with Matt Yubara, who played full 90s.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously, Sarge played 90s.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a handful of guys that were playing tons and tons of time.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, so Saturday for them, you know, that that's not a hey, we're getting a lift in, you know, that's where you got to shut them down and try to get them as as recovered as possible.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, the biggest thing for them would be, like I said, doing whatever feels good for them.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: But then the biggest thing I would say that's gonna help with recovery is gonna be your sleep.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you're not sleeping, and and college is tricky, you know, and I would say most college kids, hopefully while they're in season, are not uh not drinking, but you know, it's like there there always, you know, are those handful, but um, you know, and obviously just knowing the effects of sleep and sleep quality, it's like if you are not sleeping, you're you're really leaving a lot on the table from a recovery standpoint, and then also uh your risk of injury goes up.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you and they c and they classify chronic sleep deprivation as less than six hours for more than three nights, that's chronic.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, just three nights less than six hours.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, three nights, yeah.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's there's been a study that showed that your risk of injury goes up by like 2.4 times when you chronically sleep deprived three days in a row.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know I know a lot of youth players that do not get that.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes, which is which is like again, you look at their schedules and these times and how late practice, and again, it's like you can't really change.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the thing, I can sit here and say, like, oh, I would change this, I would change this, but I can't.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: It it just from an organizational standpoint, scheduling times when they have you know time available for the field.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: You can't change those.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously, the high school kids they're training later, you know, 9 p.m., 10 p.m.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: They're getting out, and then they have to turn around and get back up for you know school the next day at six in the morning, and who knows?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: They may have gone home, they have an exam the next day, so they studied for another hour and a half, so now they're getting to bed at midnight, they're getting up at six, and then they rinse and repeat that, you know, and then it's like they're just like exhausted the whole day, and then they they redo the whole schedule.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: They're gone from 7 a.m.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: until 10 p.m.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: And they do that Monday through Friday.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's pretty it's pretty eye-opening.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like when I like sat down with one of my athletes, and like we were just I was just like, wait, so you you just don't go home between 7 and 9 p.m.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, no.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was like around Thanksgiving time.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was like the Wednesday or the Tuesday right before Thanksgiving.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And a girl that I trained all the time was just dead.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: I could just tell.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, when is your last day off?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: And she started thinking, she's a young player, she's like a 2013.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Halloween.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Halloween?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was like 24 days ago.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't had a day off in 24 days, and it's like, yeah.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what are you doing?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I train with you twice a week.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, eh, my bad.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then she has like her club, and then she does uh strength and conditioning, and then I think she sees another technical trainer, and it's like, oh my god, these kids, no wonder they there's a dropout rate and they're just quitting and uh all this stuff.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's crazy.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: How long has primal recovery been open?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: So we are in July, we're gonna be coming up on three years.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's it, yeah.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, can I ask you a personal question?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did you tear your ACL?
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did not.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: What made you want to do this?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because every single person never tears their ACL.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to do with Goo?
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you want to be?
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a PT.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because they all love their PTs.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, I always get asked that question, and no, I have not.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: And now some of my colleagues, like Mary, who now works with us, she has.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: Spencer did not, but you know, I personally that what drew me towards it was actually when I was in college, all my teammates, like there was a handful of teammates that were just going down with these injuries, and it was more so like watching them go through this long journey, this long process, and then like getting back and not feeling they're they're they're the same, or re-tearing again.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like there was a handful of guys that I played with that they got back, like within the first couple games, they retore, or they got back and they're like, Man, I just like I just I feel so off.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so like it was more so like it was this huge like curiosity of mine of like I always knew that I wanted to do something with the human body.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like I thought I was gonna be an orthopedic surgeon, and then I started shadowing PTs, and I'm like, man, I really like just being with this person along the journey, you know.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then ACL is obviously it's a longer journey, and so then you get to really know your athlete and see and start take them from their darkest moment, and and you're with them along the ride till they're till they're back, you know, on the on the pitch.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was like why I got so obsessed with it.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_03: But then I would say the biggest thing was why are people still why is this seemed to be the one injury, at least at this time and even to this day, that just seems to still be off when or the the results are so sporadic, depending on where you go, what you do, what surgeon you have, what PT you have, what strain coach you have.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: The results are all over the place.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what's so it is, it's so crazy.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what like made me like really want to just go very deep into learning as much as I could about this injury, studying under some of the best people in the world for this injury and trying to find answers.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's really what it came down to is like I was like, the results are not great, they're so all over the place, and these athletes are getting back, and they're either not getting back to their full competition, not get back to themselves, quitting, you know, and it's like how how can this this one injury be such a career-ending thing?
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: And and and there's a lot of other variables.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: There's you know, we have our physical bucket, but we also have to really respect the sports psychology side of this injury as well, and just how how just grueling it can be.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's a mentally draining, emotionally draining, and physically draining process, but that yeah, so not tearing my ACL, it's like I went down this weird, like just you know, obsession um of just trying to create better outcomes.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's what kind of led me to to where to where prime where primal is now as far as seeing so many, but it's not all we do.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_03: We we primarily, I will say, like 90, I'll say 99%.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: It we see lower body injuries, so hips, ankles, knees, but knees make up probably about 85% of that.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do you have a like a set minimum?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because everybody's different, every injury is different.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys have a set uh number of months coming off of an ACL is like because I've I've known players that their parents are like, this is I want a 10-month recovery.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want six months, which is standard, it seems, like I want 10.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's other girls that it seems like it's been two years, right?
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, and you touched on the psychology of it.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to get back to what you were, I think most injuries are a two-year thing where you're not gonna be that player.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when Clay Thompson did his uh his Achilles, yeah, he said that like he wasn't back, he played the next year, right?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't the same Klay Thompson until the year after he returned because yeah, it's so psychological and it's a lonely process, which uh everybody forgets because you know they can show up to training and they can show up to games, but it's still just a lonely process.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: But do you have a standard of what you put your athletes through?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what you just said was a perfect representation of what I said about the outcomes are all over the place.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because you said six months, you said 10 months, and then you said two years, and that's literally what you will see across the board.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, I will say, and this is my mind has been challenged and shifted a little bit recently just because of some new stuff that's coming out, but I'll I'll say the limitations of the study as well, because it was done on primarily male athletes who are high-level athletes, um, and so there's no females involved.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't want to like completely um, you know, skew my whole, you know, uh way of thinking about it yet.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: But the idea that I don't go off of, well, I will say I don't go off of time, I go off of criteria.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: So we've developed a very extensive criteria and like you know, you have to hit these milestones uh before we are comfortable with you running, before we're comfortable with you jumping, before you're comfortable with you jump or run or cutting, excuse me, sprinting, and then eventually sport.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: Return to sport then is not you just pass the test, go play.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's a continuum.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: So now you're gonna get into starting, obviously, you know, playing with playing on your your own with one person, with you know, a couple people, maybe you're getting into some passing patterns, there's no contact.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then eventually, just over the course of, and I'll say that continuum can be a three-month process in itself.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the idea is that you're building confidence in each face, and then you're getting into now you're a neutral player, and then now you're getting into maybe some some um controlled contact, and then you know, you're getting into you know, in practice, right?
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then we start talking about introducing games and game times and saying, okay, you're on minute restrictions, you're not allowed to play more than 10 minutes a half, okay, we'll do that for a couple weeks, and then now you're allowed to go no more than 15 minutes a half, and then you're just again building that up until the individual is fully competent.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_03: But so that part might take a while, but um, I will say going back to what recent studies have shown is that nine months is that like that milestone, that sweet spot.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the pay it's funny you say the sweet spot because the paper that I'm referencing said, is nine months the sweet spot?
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so it's kind of challenging it.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_03: But going back to the this paper though, was showing that if you wait nine months, your risk of reinjury goes down by about 50%, and then even more if you wait even longer.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's where everybody started pushing this nine month thing.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I will say that a lot of surgeons are still telling people four months, six months, seven months, and it's just it's crazy.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so I will say that nine months is kind of where most people will agree upon.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_03: However, my pushback on that, and it's kind of referenced in this paper, because this paper is saying it's not about when, it's about how the athlete returns.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's where using criteria, strength testing, force plate testing, actually running through your athlete through a battery of tests to see if they are ready for this is so important over the time itself.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason why I say this is because we've had so many athletes who have come to us for second opinions.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_03: They're at those sweet spots, they're at the eight month, they're at the nine months they're at 10, 11, 12 months post op.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, Why am I why am I not right?
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_03: Why do I still feel off?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_03: Why am I not ready?
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_03: Or I'm at nine months, can I play?
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my surgeon said I could.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like we put them through our testing battery and we show, like, listen, like at the end of the day, it is always your choice.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna give you my professional opinion, but you will always have the final say.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_03: And we have to say that because when you're at 10 months and you're frustrated as hell, I get it, but I also don't, I'm not passing you because from my end, you haven't met the criteria.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_03: And as long as I can really build a good rapport and ex and ex and show them, show them why, and not just tell them.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think that that really helps because I always tell my team, it's okay to be the bad guy.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_03: We're the bad guy in a lot of situations because we're getting so many referrals for second opinions, or we're getting referrals specifically for testing.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that comes with that responsibility where you have to be honest, you have to educate, you have to tell them where they're at and not sugarcoat it.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: But if I had to say, oh, you're just not ready yet, and not explain the why or where they're at or show them the video footage, the numbers, like then they're not gonna, they're gonna go leave and do their thing.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, but if you can explain it to them, maybe that gets them to buy into your plan so that you can help them achieve their goal.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_03: And now they're you know back to sport.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, nine months I would say is still pretty standard.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like between I always tell people between nine and twelve months.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it At the end of the day, I'll always follow it up with saying not everybody is ready at nine months.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it we go based off of our criteria and not strictly we're not hard on that time.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it more like more than which one is it more?
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would say that it's that's hard.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_03: I will say that we usually will get somebody who comes in who's frustrated.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're frustrated with their journey and their progress.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: That I would say is the majority of who we see.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um sometimes I will say we will get referrals from like other PTs in the area that that may not have like the resources or the equipment.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so we'll do their testing for them and then give them kind of an idea of where they're at.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: But majority of the people who are seeking us for a second opinion is they've done it, they've gone through rehab, and they're just not happy with their results.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're feeling the pressure now, and um that's starting to weigh in on them, and so they want to get answers of of where they're at and if we can help them.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what you said about surgeons just saying, okay, you're clear, and then they psychologically think, Oh, I can go.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, you cannot go.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, okay, I'm clear for contact.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm playing this weekend.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, you shouldn't.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: You I when I was at Flash, one of my favorite things to do was I would train the injured players back, you know, the ones that have missed time.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would just train them with the ball, like technical work.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then what I what we'd find out is that like you gotta train uh after an injury, you gotta train on the ball for at least two to three weeks, just on the ball before you can go into contact.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's another two weeks of contact before they even wanted to put you in a game at that level because they wanted to see it in they wanted you to stack up those practices.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna just say, oh, she's clear, one contact practice and then playing because that's what we see at the youth level, and it drives me nuts.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the psycho, we're not even talking about the psychological part of it, where if I if I'm working with a player that's coming off of ACL, and she has the thought of, am I ever gonna be the same?
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want that thought to happen in training and not in a game.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because then you're playing timid, you can you can go into a tackle half, you know.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know the old thing is like if this guy's going 100 and you're going 50, who's gonna get hurt?
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: So many players rush getting back on the field, and they're not physically ready, they're not mentally ready, they're not uh even close to ready.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: And but these surgeons, you're clear.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's more complicated than that.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: Drives me up the wall.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's one of the biggest challenges I would say that we run into because then then the and that's why we've developed a lot of good relationships with some of the surgeons, that we we can just text them back and forth, like, hey, you know, so-and-so's here, this is their their status, that they're aware so that when they go and do their follow-up appointment, they're not blindsided and then they're not gonna tell them something that we didn't agree upon, type of thing.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think that that's where if you have your PTs and your it's it's your team, right?
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_03: We can always go back to that interdisciplinary team and how important it is because of that.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_03: If you just put yourself in that situation where you're going to a PT, they're telling you you're not ready.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to your surgeon, they're telling you you're ready.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: What do you do?
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like that's such a uh so much misinformation, and then now you the athlete, you're stuck in this weird position.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I will say the hardest ones to talk that through with are the younger kids.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_03: Because when the moment they hear the go word, they're going.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like they like they want a full scent.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I will say, like, it's hard.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's really hard, you know.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas, you know, you get some of the older players, you know, college or wherever, they they'll they'll trust what you're saying and they'll they'll listen to you and they'll see it themselves.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, they'll see, they'll know they they feel it, they're more in tune with their body, whereas some of these 13, 14-year-olds just feel like they're you know superhuman sometimes, and and sometimes that's a risk in itself when they have no fear and uh and they're just going full full send.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it's uh I agree though, it's it's a challenge we run into all the time as far as um educating that.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_03: I've always thought that Achilles is important to be I would say they are from a timeline perspective, they are pretty equal, like as far as return of play.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say Achilles is probably even longer because the Achilles is such a the moment you lose that man, it's it's very challenging to restore the full capacity of your Achilles tendon because it's just such a powerful tendon.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_03: So your your spring, your elasticity, your quickness, it will it will be down.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can restore it, but it's not I still would say it's not gonna be fully back to where it was.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_03: You can play around it, you can compensate, but it's definitely it's definitely a very difficult injury to rehab as well.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um But I will say you're probably not gonna see that until you're working with people in college, later college, you know, professional for sure, just because it tends to be a little bit older age.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, your classic Achilles tear, honestly, is your 40-year-old who's going out and trying to play basketball again.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's like your that's like the most common person.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like literally, when I was working downtown, I would get guys on my schedule almost every single week.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_03: 40-year-old playing hoops, turn around.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_03: I thought somebody hit me with a bat, and it's like boom, it just went.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody looks back.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody looks bad.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody looks back, but they got kicked.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: So that's like your classic.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And even like when I was playing um soccer last year, one of my teammates, you know, he's in his mid-40s and he came down, he went up for a header and came down and popped it, and I did the squeeze test, and there was nothing there, and so he had to go get surgery.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so terrified of that because it's the number one injury amongst coaches.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're on our feet all day.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're we have to demo something.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're not, I'm not in the shape that I used to be.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that like, oh, I've done this a zillion times and I can get gone.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh my god.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that's a tough one.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_03: I will say now I will say that you don't have to get it surgically repaired.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Steve Arste, who you coached F.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Vardar.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: He still coaches uh MS Next, and his son is at uh Michigan State.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: He tore it, and I don't think he got surgery.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's not uncommon, I will say.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think who else was it?
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody else I know, they were recommended not to have surgery if you're over a certain age.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you're like 42 and older, they just say, because it just grows back.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_03: So it it will heal.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now the the timeline doesn't change though.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're still looking at easily at 12, 12 to 16 months for sure.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_03: It will it will heal.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna be the same, like you're still not gonna have the same elastic potential.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, and this is this is my whole two cents on any injury, is especially like look at what your look at what your goals are.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Look at what what are you trying to do?
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you're not if your intentions are not to go play sports or you know, jump or do anything crazy, then don't don't get the surgery.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like you have to understand that this is not an easy road.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_03: And like so many people tear their ACL, they get pushed right into surgery, and it's like a 55-year-old dad who just wants to weight lift, and it's like you you don't necessarily need an ACL to be able to do that, like you can just function as is, and it's like I wouldn't push you into that if you're not willing to put in the work after the surgery.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've had a lot of people who are usually it's the older population, like I should say older, I'm not trying, I shouldn't say older.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_03: People above people above like 45, where it's like they're still active, but they're you know, they're not trying to do sports or anything like that.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not even a weekend warrior.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, and I've and they've and they've had a surgery, they have an ACL surgery, and it's like and it's like they have kids, they have job, like they can't put in the work that you know a typical athlete's gonna put in.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like it's this huge, long process.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: And to be honest with you, they struggle, they struggle so much because they just can't restore the same, like as a younger kid can, and they also just don't have that same time commitment that an old, you know, and again, that's very case-dependent, context dependent.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I would say most people, you know, again, look at what your goals are.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you're not trying to get back to anything athletic, then I wouldn't really push you into a surgery, like it's just wouldn't.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like they always have knee problems for the rest of their life.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like I shouldn't have gotten the surgery.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, like ACL surgery in itself like puts you at a higher risk for developing arthritis.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not having an ACL also does.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, I mean, you can either get a surgery or not a surgery, but you're gonna end up in the same same spot.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on like how quickly you get surgery after the injury?
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a chief, I'm a Chiefs fan.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick tears his ACL.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he gets a second opinion, he goes down to the Dallas Cowboys and they and they operate the next day.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out the Chiefs did not want him to get it that next day, they wanted him to wait a week.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Mahomes is probably the most difficult person to work with.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, no, I'm going and I'm having it the next day.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and this is a hard uh conversation because people are gonna always see that and compare to that.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same thing with the whole Adrian Peterson thing of getting back in four to six months for his ACL, and then he has the best season of his.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where it's like, I would never recommend a kid getting his surgery the next day or the next week.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_03: I would say minimum for us is four to six weeks for doing adequate prehab.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody like Mahomes has around the clock care.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_03: He is the elite of the elite.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_03: He towards ACL, I guarantee you, he got his knee probably drained that day so that the swelling could get out immediately.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_03: He also has all the resources under the sun to where he doesn't have to worry about that.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_03: He also has a massive training age of experience of weight lifting and all that.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_03: So his baseline is here.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_03: When you have a 13-year-old kid who tears their ACL, their baseline is here.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_03: They may or may not have ever picked up a weight in their entire life.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_03: So trying to get them to rush into a surgery is very difficult.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because the problem is when they're swelling in the knee, it it literally inhibits your quad.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_03: So your quad can't squeeze as well.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And you have that after surgery too, where it gets to where you can't squeeze.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't have your full motion, range of motion, bending your knee, straightening your knee, going into surgery, it's gonna make it even harder to get that out of surgery.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of like our baseline is like we need to get your knee to calm down, we need to get you to norm to walk normal before going into a surgery.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_03: And usually that's about like a four to six week time frame.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_03: But studies also show, though, that the better you go in to your surgery, the better you're gonna come out of it.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you can restore all those things before you go into the surgery itself, your outcomes are gonna be better.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Mahomes has been training forever, and it's like he's he's also got you know PT probably three times a day.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like that's different, you know, and we can't, and that's where like from a parent education standpoint, we have to really split this and realize that yes, he did that, but your child is not Patrick Mahomes, he does not have the resources that Patrick Mahomes does have, and it's just a different situation.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he hasn't had the training.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you're if you cover, if you follow Bobby Stroop, who is one of uh his trainers since he was in middle school, and yeah, his Bobby Stroop, he has it listed on his website that I think there was 53 middle schoolers that he worked with in when they were in middle school that are now a pro.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're either in the NFL, the major leagues, or they're hockey players.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, who the hell is this guy?
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but then but then you see what he does, and it's all about like mobility and pliability and the TB12 method and and just just uh flexibility and being in weird positions, and you see, and I'm just gonna go off on my homes again, it's like my homes he'll get tackled, and any other guy that breaks their ankle, but he's just so pliable.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how much do you guys work on mobility?
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked that also because I follow you guys and you guys use slamp boards a lot.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if are you familiar with knees over toes guy?
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is that like okay, can you go into mobility and what you guys do with the athletes?
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so mobility is super important for a lot of different reasons because again, like when we look at like overall foundational movement, we want to have you know baseline flexibility, mobility, because that allows us to get into certain positions.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_03: And most most kids we're working with are super mobile and flexible.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like we're not gonna have a 14-year-old that's you know super tight, you know.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but obviously when you get into kids who are more of the adult, like the college kids we work with, the active adults we work with, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, yeah, their their mobility is probably gonna be one of their limiting factors, I will say.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's that could be a problem if they can't achieve certain positions or they can't achieve the desired outcome that you're trying to get them to do.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like if somebody doesn't have good ankle mobility or hip mobility, if I try to get them into a squat, they're probably gonna compensate somehow, and that may or may not lead to dysfunction.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm not gonna say it will, but it may, you know, and that's where we have to, again, coming back to our initial assessment, we're gonna run people through a full screen to see, and I always like to tell them like today is about we're gonna create a checklist of what are some things that we can improve on, you know, and that's where it's like we'll go through our flexibility, mobility, our strength, our more dynamic tests, whether it's jumping or sprinting or cutting, and and then we kind of will, you know, piece it all together and figure out what are the what's the lowest hanging fruit that we can immediately work on that I think will make a big change right away.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And mobility is usually one of those.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Usually, like when it comes to it, I will say that that's a big, big piece.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but to your point about the knees over toes, like we use a lot of slant boards for again specific reasons because it helps drive the knee a little bit more forward so we can get a little bit more quad.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_03: But then from a mobility restriction, so if you have tight ankles, putting yourself onto a wedge is going to allow you to get deeper into a squat because it's almost like a cheat, because it's starting you in more of this, like plant it's called planar flexion, where you're more upright.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't have to, it doesn't require as much ankle dorsiflexion, which is the opposite.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_03: So you can actually get all the way down into a squat be even with tight ankles when you put yourself up on wedges, which is one of the main reasons why I personally use it is because my ankles are really restricted.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I go onto a wedge, it allows me to get a full-range squat.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if I didn't, I'd be like really dumping forward because I just can't get into that.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's still your back and it just doesn't feel great for the back.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for me personally, you know, it's like it just changed, it just changes where the load is gonna end up and it changes what tissues are now getting stressed.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's all it does.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, I use it as a way to achieve a better position.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what like when it comes to the athlete, like again, using using, we want to make sure that we're we're we're keeping the main thing the main thing, and we're trying to focus on what it is we're trying to achieve with that.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like the wedges can be a great tool to use for various reasons, whether it's a mobility restriction or if we're actually trying to get more load into like their quad.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating about the knees over toes guy, because we were always taught don't go past your toe.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're doing like a some kind of I forget what stretch it was, but like if you put your knee uh further than your toe, that's a no-no, and then uh and we'll start wrapping this up, but career-ending injuries.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and I say that, and I've been saying this for probably 10 years.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen more careers end because of concussions than an ACL or an Achilles or something else like that, or a broken ankle or something like that.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Concussions are number one, and I saw that you guys are going heavy on concussion stuff.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, with uh is is that what Mary's focus is?
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Or so that's one of her strong interests, yeah.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so she doesn't just do concussion rehab, but she definitely has extensive experience with studying under some of the smartest people.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_03: And she went to the University of Pittsburgh, and there was a really uh really good clinic out there that she worked under, and so she's uh she's now bringing that back and helping us with that, I will say, because that's something that for me it's so common and it's so mismanaged.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_03: And to have somebody like her who has great experience with it is super helpful for us to learn from and also now be able to provide for for athletes because you know the whole idea of like oh you have a concussion, just just rest, do nothing, and it's like that's that's not the case.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You actually have to you have to challenge and push the brain a little bit and kind of like the warm-up that we talked about earlier, exactly, but it's not on iPads or it's not on iPhones and not watching Netflix, but it's it's like I saw like just following yeah what you're doing with your eyes and everything, and just go into that.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And like have you seen any any career's end?
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know of three former players and players I played with concussions, like no, you're done.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so personally, I I didn't play with anybody that that did, um, and not any of my current athletes that have, you know, I mean they've had a concussion, but nothing to where it's gotten to the point where they've had a career ending.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I did have a friend growing up, he played hockey.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, he had six, and he was he was just you know, he's gonna be on scholarship to play at Division I and he had to he had to retire in high school because the the doc just told him, like, listen, like you you're at a pretty high risk of just now, I mean, because again, you have to remember what a concussion is, a concussion's a brain injury, and you you start getting a lot of those, and you know, things can start to change.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's where it's like he basically had to hang him up after you know junior year of high school, and it's like that just ended his hockey career, and it's like it's not something he could control, you know.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_03: But it's it's just it's unfortunate.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously it's a little bit more prevalent with you know, football and hockey and more impact sports, rugby and stuff like that.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, I had a couple with soccer, yeah.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_03: Those balls got pumped up a little too hard.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I got ran over.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was goalie, so I I got ran over a couple times and it never never diagnosed when I was growing up.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was never, oh, you got your bell rung.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but what do you do you baseline all of your uh players that come through here now?
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a focus, or what do you guys do?
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so what what Mary will so there's two parts that you can do.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_03: You can have we obviously from our end, we can look at it from the like the symptoms-wise, like like like seeing what is essentially their triggers.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_03: But then there's uh the impact test that they can take where it gathers like their baseline information.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's something that we personally don't have, but we can we're trying to we're trying to link up essentially with uh Whether it's a you know a neuropsychologist or a doctor who specializes with concussions to where they can uh run athletes through these tests.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because the whole idea of the test, and I actually remember when I was on the Wolves, um, we took this test.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_03: We took it at the beginning of the season to get our baseline, and then and then if you did get concussed, you had to take it again.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_03: And essentially it's like it's a test to challenge your brain, challenge your memory, short-term thinking, long-term thinking, all those things to where you can get a good idea of like, is this athlete is has their brain recovered?
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the one thing I will say, and this is what Mary's talk, you know, we've talked about yesterday, is there's a lot of post-concussion symptoms that still linger, you know, whether it's dizziness, whether it's brain fog, whether it's like, you know, even just attention, like there's a lot of these different symptoms that people just they don't realize that it's treatable.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes they just think, oh, it's that's just because I've been concussed, but it's like it's something that you want to like you essentially want to poke the bear and go into those symptoms so that they start to desensitize and it's not as extreme.
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_03: But that's that's more of her wheelhouse, and you know, I I definitely have a strong interest in in learning more about it though, because it's something that I will say the rehab side of things for concussion has changed drastically as far as like going back to you just rest to now it's like we gotta like actually you know train this individual and train them, yeah.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's pretty cool stuff.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_00: How would you define brain fog?
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a good question.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_03: I would say like if like moments of or like or brain fart, yeah.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_03: I guess like moments of like you you just you forget, you forget things, um, or you just feel just kind of just feel that like overarching, like you just feel off, like almost like if you just didn't sleep for you know a night or two, and you just things just feel slower, they feel off, right?
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, or you're just forgetful.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um things, things like that, I would say.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're your week to week, you guys are Monday through Saturday in multiple locations.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh go into your partnership with Bird a little bit next level, or or what you guys are doing.
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are you guys working with the same athletes?
• 1:30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are they training maybe an hour with him and then they go to you, or what's going on with that?
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it my my relationship with him has been the pat, I mean he was a he was my coach back in there.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_03: He had a huge influence on my career, that's for sure.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then we we reconnected, you know, a few years ago and started uh he's like, Yeah, my shoulder hurts.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_03: You should stop on by.
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I started working on his shoulder, and then uh, you know, then it led to just discussing, like, hey, you know, he had a he had a little training room in there that with a couple of weights and stuff, and so there was a small spot, and that just led to the first pro off season that he had where I was kind of helping out some of the athletes who came back.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Just, you know, if they were dealing with any Knicks, like I'll I would I'd rehab them before they would jump on the field.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so that then fast forwarded to you know, actually like renting the space from him and and being inside that at the time it was more of a closet.
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then now uh this past year uh there was another um bigger space that kind of opened up that still connected to his his building.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_03: But so now we're we're inside of there.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um we do we do um share a lot of athletes.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's just very it's very convenient, obviously, when if a player is coming to train with him and they're also dealing with something, they can come see us first and then pop on the field with them.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um we're we're doing some smaller group trainings as well, where you know, if they're they come in again before their session, whether it's 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour, and then they they pop out on the field so that they don't have to drive to multiple spots.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then uh yeah, we're doing the pro off season working with a lot of those athletes as well.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then and then now coming up into the summer, um, going to be putting together like a summer program to where we can again, the whole idea and the whole idea of any of this stuff is is player availability.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like again, we don't like seeing players in our door hurt.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, that's what our job is, that's what we've pushed, but our ultimate goal is availability for these players.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so if they are dealing with stuff and we can get ahead of things, or if they, you know, they aren't dealing with anything and they just want to keep maintaining, like that's the whole goal so that they can stay on the field training.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like, our goal is not to take you out of your training if we don't have to, it's just modifying it if we need to.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the one thing I will say that we're trying to really push over there is because obviously being over there, we see 90, I'd say 99% soccer players.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, so that's kind of the the big things I would say that we we're doing with him.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, he's been a huge mentor of mine and just an amazing friend and and resource.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_03: And now I guess technically my captain slash coach, since I play on his uh next level over 30 team, we we tear it up every Sunday.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the rest of the practice, yeah, is it uh so is it mostly all soccer players?
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like what's the girl, uh what's the boy to girl ratio that you have in here?
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, are because everybody says that ACLs are more prevalent in the girl side.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like is that what you guys see on the day-to-day?
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I would say so.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_03: The overall practice is and part of it's because Spencer, Mary, and I are all former soccer players, so I think that we've drawn a lot of soccer our way.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_03: We've also got volleyball, we've also got some basketball and lacrosse, and then a couple of hockey as well.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_03: But it's definitely, I would say, I would give it 90% soccer, yeah, is is really what we're we're we're seeing.
• 1:34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, anything from hips, knees, ankles is you know, and then now concussions.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I will say the uh the female to male ratio, what's what's interesting when I looked at our prior year's data.
• 1:34:13
  SPEAKER_03: So last year we saw it was like just shy of 70 ACLs.
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it was interesting looking at the numbers specifically of like the age ranges, but then within those age ranges, who was predominant male or female?
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_03: And what we saw was the younger age groups between like 13 and like 17, it was predominantly female, and then when we got to our like 19 to like 25, it was predominantly male.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it seemed like in our in our cohort, the the college players, like the male college players were tearing their ACL more compared to the females, and then for our youth athletes, it was more female compared to the male, at least just like when we looked at our when I took a step back and just looked at our overall data from last year, that's where it it shifted towards, which I thought was very uh interesting.
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's any rhyme or reason to that?
• 1:35:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I we could sit here and kind of speculate, but I don't know.
• 1:35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think that especially with the female, like there's a lot of like there's a lot of thoughts about why, you know, whether it's hormones, hip angles, strength, you know, whatever it is.
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there's no right answer.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I think that you are you you tend to see at that age just less less training at that point from a like a physical training standpoint.
• 1:35:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I will also add though, less of it how do I want to put it?
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's not the norm.
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like a lot of that is also just the resources available and what we're pushing for these females because I mean, my and this is like crazy to me when you look back at like the I think it was like the 2025, no, 2024 NCAA uh basketball tournament.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_03: You saw I don't know if you saw that picture of like the women's weight room and then the males weight room, and like the women's weight room was like a stack of like dumbbells, and then the men's weight room was like all these like performance platforms like full on out, and it's just like 2024, and this is still going on, and I think that that still trickles down into the youth level to where the men are getting more of the resources, it's more of the norm, it's more talked about.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas like I think it's changing, I will say, but I think the females, it's still they're underserved when it comes to that area, and it's just also just not the norm from like getting into performance training at a young age and developing that.
• 1:36:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that's something that I think that you know, again, it's more of a speculation, but I just know and I see when we look at these discrepancies between male and female and how they are in the younger ages carrying on through college, because that that's one big one that stood out to me, and it's just crazy that that was uh the NCAA.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they got a lot of pushback for that, I will say, but yeah.
• 1:37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to uh kind of like your injury is because of what you did before.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_00: How many of the players you see is overuse being the reason?
• 1:37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is that real?
• 1:37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that just there's so many uh deciding factors on every injury?
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's always a lot of deciding factors, but I definitely think that like training load, like I mean, you can even look at the statistics of like the NFL, the MBA, the MLB, and you just see this like exponential curve of an increase in injuries across all of them.
• 1:37:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like Achilles injuries were at all-time high this year for the NFL, and it's like what when you look at like I do think overuse is a thing, and I do think that training load in general is a massive factor when it comes to these injuries, and that's why like I always say the youth athletes so hard to manage because there's so many, whether it's internal load or external load, and what I mean by that external load is going to be our physical load where it's like you're running, you're lifting, all that type of stuff.
• 1:38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Internal is stress, pressure, anxiety, like sleep quality, recovery, like all those things like are more of our internal load responses, which are massive for the youth athlete with school and colleges and showcases and all this pressure and this external pressure that it's just it keeps building and it's just getting bigger and bigger, and it's just it's a lot, like it's a lot on these kids, and we have to keep that in mind.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's where it's like when these kids are run down, it might be more of their internal load versus their external load, right?
• 1:38:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and you got you as the coach, and that's where it's like, I think that this stuff can really help tailor is trying to know when to push a player versus when do I need to pull back because at the end of the day, I don't want it to be like, oh, we just can't push our players anymore?
• 1:39:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's like no, we just I hope we can get to the point where we can really make better decisions of when we do it and tweak it.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like we're not gonna sit here and be like, yeah, we just gotta shut everybody down.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's like we got to be realistic, but can we really dissect that and and make better decisions?
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that we can.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So have clubs uh reached out to you to kind of like partner, or is it just really just team by team, maybe coach by coach?
• 1:39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like more clubs as they become more and more professional, right?
• 1:39:40
  SPEAKER_00: I see clubs, all these club directors that I'm talking to, they have executive directors, they have multiple directors of coaching, they have recruiting coordinators, and they're working on the mental health stuff.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Are you or do you have anything available for clubs where they can just come and partner yet, or is that something maybe down the line?
• 1:40:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's what I would say we're in the works with right now.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we've had a lot of great discussions with with a couple of the clubs around here, and and um that is the ultimate goal is to is to try to partner with with them and and really support them and essentially be their sports science, you know, part of their part of their team to take this information and actually make it usable, you know, because a lot of the coaches we met with, they're like, Yeah, we we know about it.
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we've had to, we went through the whatever licensing, whether it was the B license or A license, and it's like they know about GPS monitors, they know about internal, external load, they know about tapering and periodization, like they know all about it, but it's just how are we now being able to use it and implement it and also make it useful for for our athletes because that's again the biggest barrier.
• 1:40:52
  SPEAKER_03: So uh yeah, I mean, definitely right now we're we're in the works with with with a couple clubs, and I think that it's very exciting and promising for the future because the coaches we've met with have been phenomenal and very receptive.
• 1:41:04
  SPEAKER_03: And just again, it's a it's a two-way street.
• 1:41:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like our goal is not to just you know bark orders at a coach.
• 1:41:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, hey, for you is you as the coach, what information can we help you understand more?
• 1:41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Or what do you want?
• 1:41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what are you looking for?
• 1:41:19
  SPEAKER_03: What would be helpful so that you as a coach can make even better decisions?
• 1:41:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really it's a team effort, you know.
• 1:41:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I don't want us to come at this from like, oh, we we tell you what to do because that's not the case.
• 1:41:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's more so how can we work together and meet on a weekly basis so that we can discuss certain players um and and training schedules moving forward throughout the rest of the week.
• 1:41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you wish do you wish that you had you growing up?
• 1:41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever think about that?
• 1:41:46
  SPEAKER_03: I do all the time.
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_03: Me and Spencer talk about that all the time.
• 1:41:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's like and it's like, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that I just wish that wish that I had when I was, you know, growing up.
• 1:41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, you were at a big time club.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're at the wolf.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, and and what's crazy though is like the change, how rapid and I mean, I know I'm older now, I'm over 30 now, but like I just like it's crazy to think that like what 13 years ago I was playing for the wolves, and it's like within 13 years to see where it's gone, or it's it's just crazy to see the change.
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's just like strength and conditioning is the norm, uh, technical training is the norm.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all these other things are like the norm, and it's like, man, when I was playing, I I mean, we we did go.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_03: We I think we at one point we did have like a coach that came out and worked with us every once in a while, but it wasn't like a consistent thing, or like we weren't going out and seeking out that type of stuff.
• 1:42:42
  SPEAKER_03: I only trained, I think, like two days a week, maybe sometimes three, right?
• 1:42:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and it's just like whoa, it's it's different.
• 1:42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody that I know that he's in Florida now, but he is a physio, he was in Buffalo, and he references it as the 24-hour athlete, and that's what all these kids are now.
• 1:43:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like yeah, they're an athlete first, they're a soccer player first.
• 1:43:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I was ever a soccer player first.
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not uh back in my day, like I loved it, but like I don't know, it's just so crazy how it is these days, yeah.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_00: But man, how can everybody find you?
• 1:43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Website and then all of your socials.
• 1:43:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we're we're very active on social media, I will say.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um our our company page is primal recovery pt, um, and then personal page is the football doc.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we're posting pretty much every day.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um just trying to you know spread the word.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_03: Our goal is not to just blast a bunch of garbage, our goal is to try to hopefully educate and and and make a difference and um and really be you know a pioneer with some of this stuff.
• 1:43:55
  SPEAKER_03: So uh yeah, very active on social, so you can always reach us on there, and then uh website, you can also reach us there, but uh, and then by email, um you can always shoot us an email at info at primalrecoverypt.com.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then the website is uh primary or uh www.primalrecoverypt.com.
• 1:44:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:44:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, brother.
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:44:19
  SPEAKER_03: I learned that was fun.
• 1:44:20
  SPEAKER_03: That was fun.
• 1:44:21
  SPEAKER_00: If I learn a lot, I know that the listeners are gonna learn a lot.
• 1:44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I can.
• 1:44:25
  SPEAKER_03: That was awesome.
• 1:44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, brother.
• 1:44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 1:44:28
  SPEAKER_01: I hate soccer.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: How long does it take your players to send out an email to a college coach?
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_00: How long would it take to send out a hundred?
• 1:44:40
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• 1:44:43
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• 1:45:24
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