Fall Events 2020 - Live from Uphill Pursuits' Instagram and Facebook Pages
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
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Injury Prevention
Older Posts »By Tiffany Coletta
Consilience with John Onate Podcast - Nikki Kimball Part 2, Maintaining A Love For Running through Injury and Adversity
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
Please enjoy Consilience with John Onate’s Part 2 podcast with Nikki Kimball: Maintaining A Love For Running through Injury and Adversity.
Nikki uses a combination of humor, friendship, medical advice and compassion to overcome injury, aging and now the pandemic. As John Onate says, there is a lot to learn from Nikki Kimball. The Excel PT Team completely agrees!
Click here to listen: Episode 13: Nikki Kimball Maintaining A Love For Running Through Injury and Adversity
Nikki’s article on How to Survive the Pandemic for PodiumRunner
Nikki’s article on Aging for Ultrarunner Magazine
Nikki Kimball is one of the most competitive and successful Ultra-Endurance Athletes in the history of Road and Mountain-Trail-Ultramarathon racing:
- 2nd place, Hardrock 100, 2018
- 2nd place, HURT 100m, 2017
- 2nd place, Big Horn 100m, 2016
- 1st place, Marathon Des Sables, 2014
- Western States 100 Champion 2004, 2006, 2007
- Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc 108 Mile,Champion, 2007
- Member of United States 100K Team 2001-2006; 8th overall and 1st American at World Cup 2003, Tainan, Taiwan; 7th at World Cup 2005; scoring member of gold medal 100K team at World Cup 2005
- 50-Mile Trail National Champion 2003, 2004, 2005
- 50-Mile Road National Champion 2005
- 1st place, American River 50-Mile, 2003
- 2nd Place, National 100K Championships, 2001
Complimentary Injury Consults for Manhattan High School, Manhattan Christian High School & Three Forks High School Student Athletes
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
Free Student Athlete Injury Consultations for ALL Manhattan High School, Manhattan Christian High School and Three Forks High School student athletes
Complimentary injury consultation appointments available to determine the best injury treatment options and plan for the student athlete and his/her parents/guardians. This no-charge consult is with advanced-trained physical therapists, Megan Kemp, DPT, ATC, CSCS or Jackie Oliver, DPT, OCS and provided in your local Excel Physical Therapy Manhattan, Montana clinic.
Call us at Excel Physical Therapy Manhattan to schedule at 406-284-4262. Learn more about us at https://bit.ly/3jDl0K0
Outside Bozeman's "Push & Pull: Essential Ingredients for Running and Climbing" by AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
“Push & Pull…Essential ingredients for Running and Climbing” is AJ Sobrilsky’s latest article in the Outside Bozeman Summer issue.
Read the article here: https://bit.ly/2EUnvJ2
AJ is a physical therapist in Excel PT’s Bozeman clinic who uses specialized gait and the Excel PT Climbing Lab to help treat injury and provide skilled performance assessments.
#excelptmt
#excelclimbinglab
#excelrunningclinic
#montana
#bozeman
#physicaltherapy
#running
#climbing
#themountainathlete
AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS is a Physical Therapist and Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in our Bozeman clinic. AJ specializes in the rehabilitation and prevention of orthopedic sports related injuries with a specific interest in the management of those involving the upper and lower extremities. AJ received his Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree from Carroll University (Waukesha, WI). Following the completion of his DPT degree he participated in an Orthopedic Residency through Evidence in Motion at Bellin Health in Green Bay, WI providing him with advanced training in orthopedic manual therapy, clinical decision making, and patient centered treatment. Following completion of his residency AJ became an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) through the American Physical Therapy Board Association and received advanced training in dry needling for spine and extremities.
AJ has been a lifelong athlete, competing in cross-country and track through college and then racing competitively post collegiately. As a result of his personal experiences and passions, AJ has focused his continued education and clinical development around the athletic individual with an emphasis in: running, skiing, and climbing related injuries. AJ has had the opportunity to provide care for an array of athletic populations including youth sports teams, high school and collegiate athletes, and those competing at professional and Olympic levels.
AJ’s treatment philosophy emphasizes a collaborative patient centered approach. Structured around the patient, supported by current best evidence, and coupled with specialized exercise/techniques, AJ hopes to educate the patient on their current issue and provide them with the best course of treatment to return to their previous/desired level of activity.
When AJ isn’t working he is usually pursuing his next adventure: rock climbing, skiing, mountain biking, or running.
Effective June 22, Phase 2 COVID-19 policies • Face Coverings Required • In-clinic & Telehealth appointments available
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
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Spend Time Hanging and Start The Season Stronger - by Matt Heyliger, Excel PT Climbing Lab
By Matt Heyliger, DPT
matt@excelptmt.com
With the current state of things, many climbers who have not previously set up a hang board and/or training area at home are tackling these tools up at home and getting their hang on. Many others who had a routine of hanging at home prior to COVID-19 are back at it in full force. This is a great time to develop a more systematic approach to training.
Through this experience, trial and error has revealed some key points to consider when hanging at home. First and most important, how do you pull off a proper warm up without a climbing wall? I strongly believe your home warm up needs to be systematic to properly warm up while gauging how you’re feeling on a given day. It’s vital here to let go of your expectations (and ego) and to honestly assess your recovery from your previous bout of training. Sometimes you realize you’re feeling a lot better than you thought as you progress through your warm up. And sometimes you feel heavy and weak when you expected to feel great. Listen to your body and respect the process.
The first 20-25 minutes of your session should consist of a progression with light loading on larger holds trending toward the holds the given workout will emphasize. If you have the space and ingenuity to safely anchor a pulley set to offload some of your body weight (plenty of DIY info out there on this) this can be really helpful for warming up. For many this will enable you to train safely as your connective tissue in you fingers, hands and elbows adapt to this form of loading. You can also unweight your feet to progressively increase load keeping a little body weight on the floor, perhaps progressing to both or single tippy toe position.
Start with a set of 2-3 minutes with 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off hold times on a large 4-finger pocket edge or a jug on the top of the board. This should feel fairly easy; you should feel warmth in the forearms and hands but not enough strain to develop a pump. Take an equivalent timed rest period, 2-3 minutes. During this time you should perform active warm up drills for the upper body, perhaps a few push- ups or pull-ups, anything to get the blood flowing in the shoulders and arms. Repeat another warm up set, now 3 minutes in duration, still 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off but increasing the load or perhaps starting to decrease the hold size. Change one variable at a time and see how things feel. At the end of this set, you really want to feel the forearms working, working up to 60% effort to complete the set. Rest an additional 3-4 minute while performing continued dynamic upper extremity warm up drills.
For the last warm up set, I would recommend trending your on/off time to match the workout you are doing that day. A very common work out called repeaters involves 7 seconds on followed by a 3 second rest per rep. This set should be exclusively on the holds you are training on that day. I like to extend the rest time this set using 7 seconds on and 13 seconds off for the entire set to accommodate increased load. I find this fends off burning key energy needed for a successful workout while loading closer to the time and resistance for that given workout. This set should be 3 minutes and should be followed by a 5-minute rest prior to starting you workout for the day.
If you haven’t spent much time hanging recently you may surprise yourself and start the season stronger and more durable.
The Excel PT Climbing Lab exists to keep you climbing and improve your performance. We offer comprehensive injury management, video-based climbing analysis, and training plans.
Matt Heyliger, DPT, COMT of Excel Physical Therapy completed his Doctorate in Physical Therapy at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington and is a Certified Orthopedic Manual Therapist. He has a particular treatment focus in the relationship of cervical/thoracic spine mechanics and upper extremity conditions. Matt treats climbers through integrating video analysis and specialized biomechanical assessments in the Excel PT Climbing Lab in the Bozeman, Montana clinic. An avid rock climber, telemark/backcountry skier and mountain biker, Matt regularly practices yoga and enjoys frequent adventures in the mountains with his family.
Running Skills: A Talent Or Ability That Comes From Training And Practice - By AJ Sobrilsky & Jason Lunden
By AJ Sobrilsky
aj@excelptmt.com
Who’s ever picked up a golf club and tried to knock it stiff from 130 yards out? That’s a tough feat to accomplish; a skill one might say. In fact, I’d argue that consistently hitting a golf ball where you want it to go and how you want it to look is one of the most difficult skills to develop.
That’s probably why most professional golfers, and high caliber athletes across the sports world, spend more time practicing and developing the skills of their specific sport than they do truly competing and playing. In fact, in David Epstein’s book “The Sports Gene,” there is a lot of discussion about practice, talent, and the genetics surrounding athletic performance. This is a highly recommend read or listen to if you’re looking for a good new book and it might help us all understand a little better our true capabilities and athletic realities (He also has a lot of podcasts as well as a Ted talk. Click here to listen.
In the running world, there are those few individuals born with a unique physiological make up and a somewhat specific set of anatomical ingredients that lend them performance capabilities. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t specific contributors to performance and skill development that can’t be modified, practiced, and fine-tuned to become your own best version of yourself. Sure the best runners are the ones spending a lot of time running and logging a lot of miles. Which leads a lot of us to come to the conclusion that in order to be our own best we need to run a lot. While increasing volume will improve your economy and times to some degree, it’s ultimately not the best solution.
The old fallacy of more is better doesn’t hold true, at least not always. We can put time and effort into developing a bigger engine (cardio system, stronger muscles, more resilient mental game), but if we can’t control that engine and the forces it’s willing to produce, it’s useless. For instance, it’d be a bad idea to strap a jet engine onto a paper airplane or try to shoot a cannonball from a canoe. We need the right structure, skillset, and control to put these ingredients and tools to effective use.
What do the best athletes in the world have in common (beyond the best genes)? They train, refine, retool, and practice the skills required for their specific activity. Unlike a lot of other sports, running doesn’t have a whole lot of diverse movements like soccer or climbing. This ultimately confines our exposure to different movements and limits our breadth of exposure and adaptability to forces outside the confines of the running gait. On the other side it also means we have a pretty consistent recipe or set of instructions for developing the best gait pattern and running movement strategy (all relatively dependent on our own unique set of factors).
Jay Dicharry, a leading physical therapist and biomechanics researcher, delivers this message well when he says, “There are a lot of things that all runners of all abilities should be doing outside running to improve their running. If you want to run better, you need to move better”. Essentially that the winner isn’t always the one who stacks up the most Strava KOM/QOM’s but rather the ones who have put time into developing and practicing the essential movement skills; allowing them to avoid injuries and ultimately providing optimal consistency in training.
Running is essentially a fluid series of single leg jumps. The ability to produce enough force to drive your leg into the ground and propel yourself up and forward. To then coordinate the appropriate movements in the flight phase (while you’re going from step to step) in preparation for landing. And to then absorb 2-3 times your body’s weight through one leg, restoring that energy, and preparing to do it all over again in less than 0.4 seconds for each and every step throughout the duration of the run.
So yes, running is a skill. What can you do to move better and become a more skilled runner?
Before we dive into the specifics on the ingredients and tools required to address the skills of running, here are a few key essential components to practice during your next few runs:
- Don’t Overstride: A lot of runners make the mistake of overstriding: putting their foot out too far in front of their center of mass. When a runner overstrides or reach, they increase their braking impulse and essentially slow themselves down with each strike. This is an inefficient way to run and significantly increases the amount of impact your body has to absorb. Therefore, overstriding can often lead to injury. To avoid overstriding, avoid reaching your leg forward and try to strike just in front of your center of mass.
- Cadence: Cadence is the number of steps you take while running. A slower cadence (or taking fewer steps per run) can be indicative of overstriding. Therefore, working on your cadence can be one way to improve your efficiency and reduce overstriding. Every runner will have a different cadence, but in general efficient runners run with a cadence between 176-188 steps/min. To work on your cadence, use a metronome app or setting on your watch and try and time your foot strikes to the beat of a metronome for 2-3 minutes. Then relax into your run for 2-3 minutes. Repeat 3-5x throughout your run. Remember this is a drill to improve skill, so use it as a drill and don’t perform with every run or for your entire run.
- Try not to bounce: Much like overstriding, a bouncy gait is inefficient and can lead to injury. If you have a bouncy run, you are wasting energy pushing up rather than pushing forward. This also means your mass is landing from a higher height, increasing impact. To avoid a bouncy gait, drive your leg back pushing you forward and not up. Centering your gaze on a landmark ahead of you and as you run try and keep the landmark as still as possible .
- Drive from the hip and push from the ankle: The gluteus maximus is the biggest muscle in the human body. This is a big ingredient in the recipe to effectively and efficiently drive us forward with each step. Sometimes runners rely too much on their calves and quads to propel them. This typically leads to overstriding and the bouncy gait described earlier. Therefore maximize your running efficiency by driving from the hip using the gluteus maximus; making sure not to arch at the lower back. Practice striding by driving/pushing from the glutes while stabilizing through your core to avoid your back from arching.
Here at Excel PT, Our running physical therapist team works with runners every day in our Running Clinic. It’s like a specialized clinic within a clinic. We’re here to help you develop these strategies to help improve your running skills and performance as well as help you prevent injury.
AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS is a Physical Therapist and Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in our Bozeman clinic. AJ specializes in the rehabilitation and prevention of orthopedic sports related injuries with a specific interest in the management of those involving the upper and lower extremities. AJ has been a lifelong athlete, competing in cross-country and track through college and then racing competitively post collegiately. As a result of his personal experiences and passions, AJ has focused his continued education and clinical development around the athletic individual with an emphasis in: running, skiing, and climbing related injuries. AJ has had the opportunity to provide care for an array of athletic populations including youth sports teams, high school and collegiate athletes, and those competing at professional and Olympic levels.
Jason Lunden, DPT, SCS specializes in the rehabilitation and prevention of sports-related injuries, with a particular interest in the biomechanics of sporting activities – running, cycling, skiing, snowboarding and overhead athletics in our Bozeman clinic. Jason is a Specialist in Sports Physical Therapy and serves as a physical therapist for the US Snowboarding and US Freeskiing teams, along with the US Paralympic Nordic Ski Team, and is a local and national presenter on sports rehabilitation and injury prevention topics. Jason is a Certified Clinical BikeFit Pro Fitter and co-owner of Excel Physical Therapy.
Our COVID-19 policies • In-clinic & Telehealth appointments available
By Tiffany Coletta
tiffany@excelptmt.com
However you need us, we are here.
Our Bozeman and Manhattan clinic COVID-19 Precautions for us all to stay safe and healthy.Thank you for your patience and accommodation with these polices. We are:
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The Answer Is Load, What’s The Question? by AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS
By AJ Sobrilsky
aj@excelptmt.com
What unique times and circumstances we find ourselves in as climbers. The climbing gyms are closed, all the home gym products are sold out, and as a community we’ve put others best interest ahead of our passion and stayed local respecting the pleas to avoid traveling to popular climbing destinations. So it seems like no better time to take care of some essential preparation in our personal climbing dojos. What better time to begin or continue training, hone and establish an armor of strength, or finally address that “insert nagging climbing related ache here” you’ve had going on for months now. Whether you’re using a hangboard to strengthen those fingers, campusing to develop some power, or taking to the kettlebells and theraband to recover it all boils down to loading.
Loading simply is stress applied to a tissue or structure (muscle, tendon, bone) that results in some type of adaptation (stronger, stiffer, smarter). Load can be a good and a bad thing. Load in excess goes beyond the tissues capacity to remodel and adapt and could potentially result in a reactive response or injury. In fact there really is no injury; acute, chronic, or traumatic that simply doesn’t boil down to loading beyond capacity. But uniquely enough in this situation the problem or cause is also the answer and solution.
There are many types, strategies, and forms of loading depending on our desired response: rehabilitative loading, adaptive loading, stimulus loading, and reactive loading. While for the purpose of this specific post we’ll solely reference load as a physical stimulus we must remember that load stimuli is also psychological (more on that in a future post). So the answer to both improving your climbing performance, taking care of that nagging injury, and building up that armor of injury resilience is loading. Rest is not the best, and yes if you don’t use it you will lose it (however there is a caveat and exception for acute traumatic injuries: ACL repairs, grade III pulley ruptures, or Rotator cuff and SLAP repairs where we need to respect a typical tissue healing timeline). But if you’re still convinced rest is what you need here’s a simple guide to help you with that. https://www.climbing.com/skills/unsent-how-to-be-injured/
Loading isn’t always an exact science. A lot of factors and contingencies are at play when it comes to determining the amount, type, duration, and frequency of loading. For instance, your current training phase, training age, training history, injury history, and long term goals will influence how we’d load differently from one climber to another. Whether you’re 2-3wks into an acute injury or 3-4months of consistent aggravating complaints would also impact the loading program.
Hopefully, this post provided some insight to continue, progress, or adjust your current training. Or maybe it was just a quick break between burns on your home board that you’ve finally had time to finish (or start building). So with all that here is a final few tips, key concepts, and strategies to consider when loading:
- Gradually and slowly progress load – Probably the most important one!
- Variables to consider modifying with loading: volume, velocity, duration, loading positions (different grips)
- Vary the surface or position you’re loading in: tension block, flash board, hangboard, single rungs, different board systems or walls.
- Respect the recovery required to adapt from a specific training session and/or training cycle.
- Develop climbing specific skills: climbing is a unique sport with an ever changing set of parameters required to complete and thus ever changing and adapting set of skills required to be successful. It’s one thing to be strong but it’s another to know how to harness that strength to achieve desired goals.
Here at Excel Physical Therapy, we are ourselves climbers and patients as well as climbing research, training, and rehabilitation specialists. So we get it. We understand what you’re going through, and we can help you figure out how to take the steps towards those climbing goals. We’d love to have you in person in the Excel Climbing Lab for a climbing evaluation, evaluate and establish a plan for that nagging injury, or consult for injury/performance questions via an in-clinic or telehealth appointment. We’re here for you and we’d love to keep providing more and more information on all things climbing so please let us know if there is anything specific you’d like to hear and learn about.
AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS is a Physical Therapist and Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in our Bozeman clinic. AJ specializes in the rehabilitation and prevention of orthopedic sports related injuries with a specific interest in the management of those involving the upper and lower extremities. AJ received his Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree from Carroll University (Waukesha, WI). Following the completion of his DPT degree he participated in an Orthopedic Residency through Evidence in Motion at Bellin Health in Green Bay, WI providing him with advanced training in orthopedic manual therapy, clinical decision making, and patient centered treatment. Following completion of his residency AJ became an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) through the American Physical Therapy Board Association and received advanced training in dry needling for spine and extremities.
AJ has been a lifelong athlete, competing in cross-country and track through college and then racing competitively post collegiately. As a result of his personal experiences and passions, AJ has focused his continued education and clinical development around the athletic individual with an emphasis in: running, skiing, and climbing related injuries. AJ has had the opportunity to provide care for an array of athletic populations including youth sports teams, high school and collegiate athletes, and those competing at professional and Olympic levels.
AJ’s treatment philosophy emphasizes a collaborative patient centered approach. Structured around the patient, supported by current best evidence, and coupled with specialized exercise/techniques, AJ hopes to educate the patient on their current issue and provide them with the best course of treatment to return to their previous/desired level of activity.
When AJ isn’t working he is usually pursuing his next adventure: rock climbing, skiing, mountain biking, or running.
The Balancing Act of Avoiding Running Injuries by AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS
By AJ Sobrilsky
aj@excelptmt.com
While it’s become a common flex in the running community to log lots of mileage, vertical gain, or cherry picking all the local strava segments (I mean if you don’t post about it, did you actually run it?) it’s important to make sure we’re doing so responsibly.
Lifts are closed, the days growing longer and the weather improving, not to mention, most of us have more time to recreate on our hands due to a global pandemic. We at Excel PT, like most of the local community, have taken to putting in some time on the pavement and trails. However, despite all this new found time and psych, it’s essential we harness our urges and make sure we don’t push beyond our capacity landing ourselves in a needed/forced time off of running because of an injury. We’ll discuss some of that balance required in order to be smart about our training, and make sure we’re all ready for when we can once again gather as a community at a start line or beer tent (hopefully both) after a local race.
We’re all guilty of it. That common belief that running more will make us faster. While there is truth to some degree in that statement, there does become a point of diminishing return and a balance between running more and running better is required. Unfortunately in the even that we decide to just run more, and more, we’ll eventually exceed our tissues capacity to tolerate that amount of running. Capacity in this situation is reflected in our bodies ability to tolerate loading, more specifically: how much running can we perform before we have an injury?
Let’s start by pointing out that our bodies are incredibly smart and adaptable. Let’s also be sure that we all understand that running is a skill, and skills require practice. Practicing skills with poor form and technique will only reinforce those poor patterns. In the case of running, sometimes our lack of skill leads to a pattern that overloads a tissue. It is true that lack of skill can be adapted to, but at some point of the loading process, we exceed the capacity for adaptation and a painful reaction occurs = injury.
The trick in this whole equation is finding the balance between loading and our capacity. So what all goes into determining the amount of load: volume, duration, frequency, intensity, rate of change, lifestyle habits, etc.,? What determines our own unique individual levels of capacity: strength, control, mobility, skill performance, previous injury, training history, sleep, life stress, diet, etc.,? As you can see, there is A LOT to account for and when we stack up lots of load, we have a potential to exceed our own bodies physical limits of capacity: injuring tissues.
So how do we mitigate overloading these tissues and work towards preventing running injuries? We work to improve our own modifiable individual capacity factors while strategically and gradually loading. Here are some of our top tips to make sure you’re appropriately managing your running:
- Keep a log: this is a great place to write down distance, intensity/effort, vertical changes, who you went with, what the weather was like, and even if you started to feel a little pain or ache. This is also a great outlet for a runner to reflect and be mindful about their training. We are big on mindfulness here as a team.
- Vary your running pace/intensity: adding in tempo runs, intervals, or hill workouts is a great way to slightly add variance to the loading/demand on tissues. This will make sure their stress isn’t always constant and also make sure the tissues are ready for the demands of upcoming runs and races.
- Vary your terrain and routes: running the same loop everyday might be your thing but I know for me personally and my body, that if I’m providing it some different stimulus not only am I mentally relieved but again my body is prepped for variability in the future. If you’re primarily trail running, throw a few road miles in. If you’re a road running, throw a few single track miles in.
- Listen to your body: this is probably the most important one. Making sure your body gets the sleep, nutrients, and care it requires is essential to long term running and mental health. I continually need to remind patients (and myself a lot of times) that the only time we can actually adapt and recover is when we are resting. So to go out and chase the Strava records, while being at max effort everyday, you will only be left in a hole/deficit. You will be unable to tolerate the day to day stresses and your body won’t function at its highest level.
- Gradually load: strategically increase volume. Common rule of thumb is no more than 10%increase in volume from the week before and allowing for a “down” week following 2-3 weeks of increased volume. If you don’t feel you’re capable or able to do this there are a lot of great running coaches and physical therapists out there who can help build, guide, and modify for your individual needs.
- Improve your skill set: “Sharpen your sword”. There are a lot of modifiable factors that can be addressed to improve your capacity – stay tuned for upcoming posts with specifics on these!
If you were looking for the answer to the holy grail question of how to avoid getting a running related injury here it is: don’t run. But since you made it this far in this article, I doubt that’s an option for your nor do we at Excel PT want that to be the answer to your questions.
Unfortunately this singular article probably won’t answer all the questions about running injuries, form, and training that you have. At Excel Physical Therapy there are many physical therapists who are professionally and personally invested in understanding, managing, and treating running related injuries and we are here to help you with any question or concern. Please feel free to reach out for a running evaluation in our running lab, or discuss a running related complaint via an in-clinic or telehealth appointment.
Stay tuned for more blog posts to come. Leave a comment and let us know what topics you’d like to learn more about!
AJ Sobrilsky, DPT, OCS is a Physical Therapist and Orthopedic Clinical Specialist in our Bozeman clinic. AJ specializes in the rehabilitation and prevention of orthopedic sports related injuries with a specific interest in the management of those involving the upper and lower extremities. AJ received his Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree from Carroll University (Waukesha, WI). Following the completion of his DPT degree he participated in an Orthopedic Residency through Evidence in Motion at Bellin Health in Green Bay, WI providing him with advanced training in orthopedic manual therapy, clinical decision making, and patient centered treatment. Following completion of his residency AJ became an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) through the American Physical Therapy Board Association and received advanced training in dry needling for spine and extremities.
AJ has been a lifelong athlete, competing in cross-country and track through college and then racing competitively post collegiately. As a result of his personal experiences and passions, AJ has focused his continued education and clinical development around the athletic individual with an emphasis in: running, skiing, and climbing related injuries. AJ has had the opportunity to provide care for an array of athletic populations including youth sports teams, high school and collegiate athletes, and those competing at professional and Olympic levels.
AJ’s treatment philosophy emphasizes a collaborative patient centered approach. Structured around the patient, supported by current best evidence, and coupled with specialized exercise/techniques, AJ hopes to educate the patient on their current issue and provide them with the best course of treatment to return to their previous/desired level of activity.
When AJ isn’t working he is usually pursuing his next adventure: rock climbing, skiing, mountain biking, or running.
"Megan Kemp gave a lot of encouragement and stressed the importance of doing the exercise every day! After the 2 months I did the exercise twice a day. That helped me finish therapy in 4 months." -- R.L., Manhattan Client
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