35: The Business of Movement (w/ Dr. Jan Schorpion)

All right, Jan Scorpion, first off, what a badass name. Thank you. I mean, it’s awesome. So we were connected through our mutual friend, Dan Master Donato, AKA Dan Dan, your payroll man, as everybody knows him here in St. Pete in the Florida area.

So I always take, you know, connections quite seriously. I’m glad he put us in touch and thanks for taking the time to come on here really quickly. Wanted to set you up and then we’re going to obviously dive in, but you know, he obviously, Dan Dan knows how to bring people together.

So first off, shout out to you, Dan Dan, I appreciate you. When you and I connected, I did a little digging and I realized that you’re not just any normal physical therapist from, from what I gathered and I think we’re going to dive into that. You’re doing something pretty different here in St. Pete.

You’re the founder of St. Pete Physical Therapy and you specialize in sports specific rehab. And again, from what I gathered and you can clarify, but it seems like you’re bridging the gap between where traditional therapy ends and real performance begins. And I love that because I feel like you’re bringing a lot more to what this thing is, what this realm is.

You’re also a dad, a husband, a multiple times Ironman athlete, a self described movement nerd. Am I correct on that? That’s correct. Yeah.

I love that movement nerd. And yeah, I’m excited to dive in and sometimes I don’t know where to start, but you’re originally from Belgium and now you’re here in Florida, so that’s awesome. I’d love to walk you to walk us through growing up in Belgium and how you ended up here and then if somehow physical therapy was a reason for that or not, or we can dive into why physical therapy after that.

But. So take us back to Belgium. Sure.

Well, thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure being here and thank you very much for that. Yeah, I grew up in Belgium.

My whole family is from Belgium. And my mother traced it back once to the, I think the 1700s. And everybody was from the low lying countries, mainly Belgium, where what’s now also the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

So it used to be all one territory. So grew up there and then it was mainly for my dad’s work that we moved around. So my dad worked at Johnson Johnson when I was five and I’m 40 now.

So when I was five, I lived in New Jersey for a year, then back to Belgium When I was 10, I lived in just outside of Oxford in England. For three years, and then back to Belgium, and then finally, when I was 17, back to New Jersey again. And that was our.
So this is August of 2001. Now it’s August 12, 2001, exactly one month before 911 happened that we moved to New Jersey again for my dad’s work. So that was the summer before my senior year in high school.

Did my senior year in high school in New Jersey, and then went off to college at Rutgers University. Right. You know, very close to where we lived.

And then after I graduated there, went to grad school at University of Miami, and that’s what brought me to Florida. And that’s 2006. Okay.

Okay. So 2006, you land in Florida. Yeah.

And through your studies, did you always know you wanted to do physical therapy? Were you doing, like, exercise science or want to be a doctor or. No, no. As transpire.

As a kid in Belgium, the two main sports are soccer and cycling. So as a. As a kid, as a young boy growing up, I always played soccer.

My dad wanted me to be a cyclist so bad, but, you know, as a kid, soccer was just easier to get to. And all your friends play soccer. So soccer was always my main sport growing up.

And then my dream as I was growing up was to be a radio commentator for soccer games. You’re getting closer right now. Yeah.

So I still. Till today, I prefer listening to sports games on the radio than watching them on tv. Really.

It’s just. It’s something. I can visualize it on the radio, and I just enjoy listening to it.

So weekly I listen to soccer games on the radio, I listen to sounds boring as can be, but I listen to cycling on the radio. That is during football season, I enjoy turning on the bucks on the radio and listening to the game on the radio much more than I watch it on tv. So my dream growing up was always to be a sports commentator for radio and then specifically soccer, but never really pursued it.

As I grew up, you know, different things, but was always very much into sports, always sports, sports, sports. Played soccer, did swimming, did judo for a while, played some basketball, wasn’t very good at that, but soccer was the main sport. And then as I. As I went to undergrad, didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew one thing I knew I didn’t want to sit behind a desk and do what my dad does, and always in meetings and emails and on the phone.

And I just wanted to be able to move around just the energy that I had and whatnot. Just wanted to move around and one day, freshman year in, in chemistry class, I overheard somebody talking about that they were a student athletic trainer for the Rutgers football team. And I did not know the guy who said that, but I recognized him.

I knew he lived on the same floor as me in one of our dorms. I knew he was a freshman as well. So I just approached him, I was like, hey, I heard you talk about this.

What do you do? And he just gave me the information. And two weeks later I was working for the football team. Oh, really? Became a student athletic trainer and did that for the rest of my freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, and then senior year, did the same thing, but worked a little more with soccer rather than football.

And that kind of by doing that. So every day in the training room working with Division 1 high level athletes and wasn’t necessarily doing the treatments, but you’re helping out with weights, you’re helping out with some treatments, things you can do. And just being around that environment, it naturally exposed me to other professions in the rehab services and I got exposed to physical therapy as well, and specifically to sports physical therapy.

And I really enjoyed that. It was a different environment. It, you’re in your own environment, you’re not necessarily in the athlete’s clinic, you’re in your clinic and people are coming towards you and you’re seeing a greater variety of conditions, greater variety of people.

It’s not just your high level athletes, but you’re also seeing those people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, you name it, 70s, who are still staying active and doing stuff. And it’s all at their own level. And whether that’s every day, they’re going to the gym or they’re still swimming or they’re still running, or they enjoy kayaking.

But you know, as an athlete, as you stay active, things happen, injuries occur or little aches and pains happen. And I just enjoyed that environment a lot. And so then I decided I’m going to pursue physical therapy.

And that’s what took me to graduate school to get my doctorate in physical therapy. And then, yeah, along the way, always been in orthopedics and sports medicine and eventually carved my way or carved my path to opening my clinic in 2023. April of 2023.

So we just turned two years old a couple weeks ago. And that’s. Thank you.

And that’s St. Pete Physical Therapy and loving every minute of it. Wow. Yeah.

So it was all leading up to that. Yeah. So it’s really the coincidence of hearing that one guy talk in the chemistry class about being a Student, athletic trainer.

And that opened my eyes to that, because I wasn’t aware of that profession whatsoever, didn’t know what it all entailed and that I was like, I could see myself doing this. And, you know, 16 years later, I’m still doing it, and I love it. That’s kind of all it takes, isn’t it? Is that one first domino effect.

Whatever it is, what plants the seed. You know, for me, getting involved in the world’s largest computer graphics organization called Siggraph, you know, Pixar’s there, Autodesk, Sony, you know, DreamWorks, you name it. Going to a student chapter meeting, that one of my professors who’s now a best friend of mine, shout out to you, Zeb Wood.

He changed my life. That one decision to go to that one meeting changed everything. Yeah.

It allowed me to travel the world. My career. I mean, we met my wife through it.

It’s. It’s amazing. It’s amazing how that can happen.

And we often deal with high school athletes right now or people who are in college, and especially as freshmen or sophomores. Hey, what are you studying? What are you majoring? It’s like, yeah, there’s so. It’s very unspecific, and it’s.

It’s hard nowadays. There’s so many careers you can have and paths you can go and. Okay, if I want to.

You want to enter the audio world, like, doing this? Podcasting and audio, like, what do you do in school? How do you measure that? How do you find your way into that and join a band? Yeah, I guess. But sometimes it’s one connection or it’s a lucky meeting here or there, or it’s knocking on a door. Hey, can I come see what you guys are doing? Can I. Can I just observe you in your environment and sometimes it clicks and off you go.

And it’s so often just about the connections that you make. Not so much. Of course, sometimes you need a degree, too, for it, but it’s.

Even with that, you still need connections and get your foot in the door somewhere or exposure to that. That’s a thing. Yeah, exactly.

You know that. Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know I could do X. I just needed to hear it, and that’s an option.

And now I can. I think early on in education, we need to do better about exposing children to the potential of what the real world is and trying find their talents or their groove or what they’re passionate about and let them run with that. We’re very focused on, like, okay, you got to go, you need to know all these things and it’s good to be well rounded, but to an extent, it can be debilitating, I think.

Absolutely. I think, you know, especially as technology keeps on progressing and there’s just so many different careers out there and you’ve so many people working from home and going into an office now, you don’t know what people are doing anymore and find it fascinating, you know, because I deal with patients on a daily basis. Just find it fascinating to learn what people are doing and kind of what we’re talking about right now.

How’d you get into that? Like, where did you learn this stuff? Where did you learn all these, Your trade, what you do? And I find it so, so interesting. That’s what I love about this and like my business in general because we work with all sorts of businesses and I gotta understand, why do you do what you do? What do you do? And then, okay, now we can help you market it. But it’s.

It’s always fascinating, like popping into these different worlds. Um, first off, should I be calling you Dr. Scorpion? Nope, I go by. You don’t like that? No, no, no.

All my patients make at our office. And I think most physical therapists are like that. We go on a first name basis.

Okay. It’s. I’m just a regular guy who happens to do physical therapy.

Yeah. I may have a doctorate degree, but don’t call me doctor. I’m.

I’m just. I’m here to help you. We’re on a first name basis.

It’s. We see patients on, you know, sometimes two, three times a week, sometimes it’s once a week. So we develop relationships and.

Yeah, yeah. Where I’m just a guy here trying to help you. I’m no different than you.

You could help me possibly with what you know best. Right. In your job and stuff.

And I’m not gonna have you call me master, I promise. Yeah, so no, just Jan is. That’s weird for me.

Oh, Jan. Oh, my gosh. But do you go by Jan? Just do people.

Some people call me that and I’ll answer to it, but. Okay. Jan is how we say it.

It’s so polite to me. This. This whole time she’s waiting for the right time to bring it up.

This is perfect. Okay. Yan, honestly, Yon Scorpion is even a cooler name.

But yeah, I mean, also that’s. I. I was just talking to you about, like, a lot of the guests that we’ve had on this show I’ve known for a while and now recently, I’M breaking into, like, hey, this person’s doing really cool stuff. I don’t know them deeply, but I want to talk to them.

And so here you are. So that’s like, there’s proof right there. Yeah.

So I apologize, but I’m. No worries. No worries.

Oh, my gosh. First off, are your kids as passionate about, like, exercise and physical realm? You know, because for us, we’re doing as good as we can about, like, making screens. Not a thing.

My daughter loves books and loves being outside, so I didn’t know how you’re kind of balancing that with your children. Yeah, especially my oldest son. He’s.

He’s almost nine. Um, he. Ever since he was a baby, he.

He had a. Had a passion for a ball. Right.

So even as a baby, he was, like, playing with a ball. And then he started doing soccer shots, which I think is a great program for these young kids to. To be exposed to soccer, but in a very playful week, in a very playful way.

So we did that when. I think we started when he was two or two and a half. So he.

And he loves sports. So he recently, a few months ago, decided that soccer was not his thing anymore. And it’s all about baseball right now.

So we’re playing baseball almost every day and throwing, hitting, and he just loves it. He loves sports. Playing catch with your son, that’s like a classic thing.

It is so classic, but, you know, being able to do it. And sometimes in the moment, it’s just like, it’s hot outside, don’t really want to do it, but then you’re done. You think about it at night when they’re sleeping, like, that was fantastic.

That was awesome. Forget about the pain that I have in my shoulder right now. It was fantastic.

Oh, yeah. My youngest son is active, but he’s. He’s not so much into ball sports.

He loves gymnastics, so he does gymnastics. He loves being in the pool. He can.

He can be in the pool forever. So he. You know, my kids are very active.

Yeah, I would have expected little. We tried to limit screen time as well. We still do, but as they get older, they just get more and more exposed to it.

You know, after school, they go to a rec center and they play video games there. So they’re just exposed to it more. Can’t fully keep it away from them, especially nowadays.

But it’s. We limit them, but we make sure that every day that there’s playtime, that we go outside, that they run around and that they’re. That they’re being active and My oldest son, who is very much into baseball, he plays Little League right now, and Little League is ending in two, three weeks, I think it is.

And he knows that over the summer he’s got to play a different sport, that we can do the same sport yet year round he’s gotta, he’s gotta expose himself to other sports. He can kind of choose what sport that is. So I think he wants to do basketball over the summer.

But you know, as kids, it’s so important they develop these motor skills in so many different sports. We don’t need to be specializing at that early age. Expose yourself to a variety of sports and as they get older, you know, then they can specialize more and figure out they really want.

So he knows that. Exactly. We can still play catch at home and stuff, but he’s got to be involved in, in a different sport if that’s.

If he wants to do a sport. And it’s also really important that they experience different ways and levels of engagement with a team and teamwork within basketball or the different dynamic that it is in baseball or soccer, those are very different team dynamics. But ultimately working with a team, so that’s important as well.

Yeah. Like a developing child, first time he was on a team, he had a hard time learning about that and that the coach could make the rules on the field and stuff. And there’s no longer mom and dad rules right.

On the field. And I think most kids have a hard time with that. It’s like, why do I have to follow his coach? You’re not my teacher, you’re not my mom, you’re not my dad.

But that changes as he matures. He’s learning that the coaches, they have the rules and at practice you do what they’re asking you to do. And if at home we do something somewhere, but on the field it’s different because the coaches ask you to do it.

That’s part of learning. Right? That’s. As you grow up, you’re gonna have a boss, you’re gonna have to respond with co workers and this, and you have to be able to adjust.

And from that point of view, I think team sports are a great way of learning. And almost to what you said earlier about the education, just exposing them to a real world situation because it’s. You have to learn how to handle teammates.

And even at that young age, you gotta learn how to cooperate and communicate with one another 100%. Yeah. So speaking of children, what’s the age cut off of people, customers? You serve the youngest that we have right now is an 8 year old.

She plays lacrosse, so it’s an 8 year old. So I’d say that is probably the youngest we have. One of our therapists, name is Jen.

Her training was a lot at Miami Children’s Hospital. So in that pediatric sports world. So she is great with younger kids like that.

But much younger like that is too difficult for us because you. A lot of it has to be play as well and we don’t necessarily have the equipment to make it play time in there. And we also don’t want to mix the really young ones with older people or so older athletes and stuff.

And then, you know, you tell an older athlete to go squat, but then the younger athletes just need a little more attention. So yeah, 8 is probably the youngest. Ideally, I would say, you know, 11, 12 and up.

That’s our ideal age group. And higher. Yeah.

What’s your, what, who’s your oldest? Our oldest is probably a guy in his 80s, 81, I think he’s still running marathons, he’s still training. He. Now we have people who don’t do sports, but that’s what I was just about to say.

I think that’s our oldest person. He’s still running. It’s not the same as he was 50 or 40 anymore, but he’s still out there.

He’s running. His goal is still to qualify for Boston every year. So he loves it.

So two things. Number one, you definitely don’t have to be an athlete to go to your practice and get your help. Correct.

Great. Okay. Number two is do people come to you when they don’t have a problem? Yes.

Okay. Can you explain, you know, then what you do? Because I imagine that no matter what you do, it’s good for your body and movement is good. Yeah.

So the. To go back to your first question, you don’t need to be an athlete to be in our facility. We don’t, we don’t discriminate against you if you’re not an athlete or so.

Right. But, but where we focus and specialize in sports medicine, by that we mean a lot that we focus very much on movement based physical therapy. So there’s a lot of movement.

Right. You. And I’m not talking bad about any other practice, but there’s other physical therapy offices where there’s, there’s.

They use more passive modalities. Right. You may be getting hot packs, ice packs, ultrasound or so, and that’s all fine.

We just choose not to do that. If you come to us and you pay us for your time to Be in there, then let’s use our services, let’s use our skills to help you get better, right? And that’s helping you with movement patterns, helping you lift things, helping you feel better with what you can do. Not necessarily laying on a hot pack or cold pack.

It’s something that you can do at home. Part of physical therapy is coming to the clinic and spending time with us, whether that’s once, two, three times a week and, and being accountable for that time. But that’s a, if you look at the big picture in a whole week, that’s a really little amount of time, right? In the big picture of an entire week.

So part of what physical therapy is also staying engaged at home and doing not necessarily the exact same things that we do in the clinic, but. And it doesn’t have to be every single day, but just like I don’t know exactly what the recommendations are for physical activity, but, but you should be engaged multiple times a week in physical activity. And in the end, movement is good for you, it’s good for you, it’s good for me, it’s good for everybody.

Movement doesn’t necessarily feel good for everybody, or what they do may not feel good, but that not feeling good, that does not necessarily mean there’s harm being done. You can modify how you move, you can modify things, but everybody should find a way to move. And especially as we get older, whether you’re an athlete or not, as we get older, we have natural, natural aging processes that sit in, right? We lose muscle mass, we lose bone density, we lose coordination, we lose some of our fast
twitch fibers.

So we don’t act as quick ends anymore. Our balance starts declining. But that all happens naturally, but via exercise.

Whether that’s your walking, swimming, biking, lifting weights, yoga, Pilates, you know, the list can go on and on and on. You start to slow down that process and that process doesn’t happen as fast in everybody. And it’s different from individual to individual.

But you start slowing it down and you can start reversing that process. You can stay strong, right? And a 60 year old who’s strong, that may not be the same strength as when they were 30. It’s all age appropriate.

And lifting heavy is good if you’re 30, but it’s also good if you’re 30 or 60 years old or 70 years old. But that heavy is not relative to what you can do, right? You and I, we can both be lifting heavy, but there’s, let’s say there’s a hundred pound difference in what we can Squat doesn’t matter how much that is. If it’s heavy for you and it’s heavy for me, then we’re doing our bodies a favor.

And it doesn’t always have to be heavy. I’m just giving an example here. Well, there’s no comparison.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not because you can squat, let’s say 200 pounds and I can only squat 100 pounds. Right.

That, yes, pound for pound you are stronger than. But it doesn’t mean that that hundred pounds is. Does.

Means that I’m weak. Right. If we start looking at what is that £100 compared to your body weight or your frame or what’s your background or how long have you been doing it? There are so many different factors that play into it.

So no, you don’t need to be an athlete. We have plenty of patients too who come in there who have had low back pain for a while or just people who work at a desk and have shoulder pain now or kind of radiates into their neck or had a surgery. But we’re not necessarily involved in sports or.

So they all need rehab. But we take it from a very movement based approach. So there’s a lot of moving parts there.

It’s like a full gym in there. There’s a lot of. Picture it like that.

There’s a lot of weights that are being lifted. There’s a lot of weights that are being carried around. You’re up on the floor or you’re down on the floor moving around.

You may be standing up, you’re standing, stepping up on things. It’s, you know, not everybody, but a lot of people work out there. It feels like a workout.

I was just thinking that. Do you work out there? Is that. Not anymore.

It’s too busy there, right? Yeah, but that’s a good thing. I used to work out there when it wasn’t quite as busy. Yeah.

And then to answer your second question, you don’t need to have a problem to come to go see a physical therapist. So Florida and I think almost every other state now, there’s something called direct access. And what direct access means, in the end that only means something to us as a physical therapist.

What that means is that you, Josh, if you say, hey, I want to go see a physical therapist, you don’t need a doctor’s referral anymore. So back in the day, let’s say 15, 20 years ago, to go see a physical therapist, you needed a doctor’s referral. You had to go see a primary care physician or so or so and they had to write a script says physical therapy for low back pain or physical therapy for sciatica or physical therapy for an ankle sprain.

You have to take that to your physical therapist and now they could see you. That’s no longer the case. So you can come directly to us and that doesn’t matter.

Whether you use insurance or not has nothing to do with that. So you can come directly to us. Insurance will cover it.

But after 30 days, of 30 calendar days. So let’s today is April 22nd. If you came to us today, if you need to continue physical therapy beyond May 22nd.

So 30 calendar days roughly. Now we would need a doctor’s referral on file. But the process becomes so easier.

You have the access in the meantime, if you go see a doctor, great, ask him for a referral. Or what we can do is we can send them a document, they sign, it counts as the referral. So the access to physical therapy has greatly improved from for that.

Now a lot of people don’t utilize our services for that. They I have a problem. Why would I see a physical therapist? They don’t think of us as a movement specialist to just to help prevent injuries, to strengthen conditioning.

They just think of us as, oh, I have shoulder pain now I should go see a primary care physician and then I should go see a physical therapist. We’re full on orthopedic doctors. You’re experts, Orthopedic doctors of physical therapy.

We’re not medical doctors. We’re doctors of physical therapy. But we can do full on orthopedic examination.

We can figure the same things out as you go to your primary care physician or your orthopedic doctor and we can get treatment started right away. We also don’t need to wait for an MRI or an X ray or so because what we don’t do is we don’t treat your mri, we don’t treat your X ray. Obviously, if there’s a broken bone, chances that you’re going to come see us are very small.

You’re going to be in too much pain, or if you have an acute tear of a muscle or a tear, say you in, you were playing soccer last night, you tore your acl. Chances are that you come see us the next day are very small because it just doesn’t feel right. You’re going to see a doctor, but you’re dealing with shoulder pain.

It’s been going on for two months or so. Right. We don’t need to see an MRI to get started.

We treat your symptoms we treat what you’re telling us, and that’s not going to do any harm to that shoulder. For most of the time you’ve been protecting that shoulder, you’ve been. They can radiate into your neck, it can radiate that pain, can radiate your arm.

You’ve been protecting that shoulder. You haven’t been moving as well. Let’s just get it moving.

Doesn’t mean that we’re lifting weights right away. Let’s get some blood flow in there. Let’s get these muscles moving a little bit.

Let’s get that muscle to start relaxing a little bit. And that goes down to the central nervous system, the brain, just to start relaxing that area a little bit so it’s not so tense. And that by itself, over a period of time, can start decreasing pain.

In the meantime, if you get that MRI or that X ray, whatever is necessary, go. Great. Gives us more information, but we don’t necessarily need it to get started.

And then a lot of times, people who’ve worked with us in the past, they’ve known us, they’ve built that relationship, they now trust us. Sometimes at the smallest thing, they feel, oh, you know, I went running last night. The front of my knee hurts a little bit.

Can you check it out? Sure, come on in. Right. Let’s take a look at it.

And they start using us for those reasons. But most of the time, when people do that, they have worked with us in the past or another physical therapist or so, and there’s a certain relationship in place already. And that’s when people start using us.

And of course, that. That’s what we want to spread the word to everybody out there. Right.

And we want to educate everybody on. That’s what we do. We’re movement specialists, even with no problems.

Just like you go to the dentist. You don’t just go to the dentist when you have a toothache. You go once, twice, I don’t know what your insurance last three times a year to just get your teeth checked out.

Right. I literally got my teeth clean this morning. There you go.

Right. And you have. How good does it feel when you walk out? It’s like, yes, no cavities.

I did good again. Totally. Well, let’s use a physical therapist and a sports physical therapist, for that matter.

Once, twice a year. Okay, let’s do a full body check. Let’s see how you’re moving.

Let’s take strength measurements. Right. And we have specialized equipment.

We have forcetechs, which are force plates. We have dynamometers that exactly Measure your strength. Let’s see how strong you are.

And let’s compare it to last year. Hey, that your shoulder muscles, your rotator cuff, your quadriceps, throwing a number 10% weaker than last year. What did you do? Like, oh, I haven’t been to the gym in like six months.

Well, here’s the result because of that. Right. You’re not getting younger.

This keeps on going and going. It’s going to get much harder to get that strength back. Let’s get back in the gym or let’s work with this a little bit.

We’ll get you started again. Now you go to the gym. So from that point of view, almost like a physical, we can certainly help you with that.

And it’s, it’s being ahead of the curve. It’s, it’s being proactive. It’s not waiting till something happens.

Because that’s the thing about health. Yeah, that’s, I, I feel like is so missed. I mean, it doesn’t have to be that hard if you stay ahead of it.

Like I say I put on a little baby weight because my two kids and like, I just feel like I’m playing catch up. But I know that I’m gonna get back to it and then just maintain my health. And that’s so much easier than letting it get bad and then having to climb this huge mountain.

It’s interesting that health, like your checkups like you do on your teeth. Yeah. You go to your primary care physician to make sure your heart’s okay and stuff like that, but your physicality of your muscles or how things are going, that seems like it should almost be part of a normal repertoire.

It should be, but we were all brought up in this, I don’t know, just with this mindset that we take that for granted. We take our muscles, our bones, our ligaments, our tendons, we take it for granted and we just assume that it can just tolerate all this and it can just tolerate all daily activities. And if we make it a little more specific to, if we go into a gym or playing, you know, softball, slow pitch softball, or you’re still running off and like you have to put strength back in.

Walking, running, cycling, kayaking, you name it, rock climbing. You utilize your strength, right. You’re utilizing your body, your muscles to move yourself forward.

You’re not building strength. Sure. Do you lose weight and can you look more toned from that? Sure.

You’re burning calories like you’re, you’re, you’re toning yourself. But, but that looking more defined doesn’t Mean that you’ve built strength. You have to put strength back into your body.

And if you don’t do that over, not saying it will happen, but the chances are significantly increased that if you don’t strengthen those areas, that the stress going through those areas at some point starts catching up. Now you start dealing with a little ache, a little ache in the elbow or so, or a little ache in the hip and outside, let’s take runners, for example. Little ache in the outside of the hip.

Before you know it, that starts going into your low back. Now you start changing your running pattern. The way you run, you start changing your movement patterns a little bit.

Now the knee starts aching a little bit. And all of a sudden, that half marathon that you have scheduled, you know, 40 days from now, it’s like, oh, I got to take a week off from running. Because it doesn’t feel.

Because every time I run, I set myself back two days that, you know, taking a week off, okay, I feel good for a few days again because I took some time off, but now it’s back and it’s just a little bit worse. What do I do? And all of a sudden that marathon or the half marathon is getting closer and closer and closer and like, hey, I’m not as trained as I should be. What do I do? I’m not physi.

I’m not feeling physically as fit. I don’t have the confidence. What do I do? And, you know, doesn’t mean that strength training, that.

That prevents that from happening, but you increase your chances of that not happening. It’s not a bulletproof system. Yeah, sure.

When you do sports, when you’re athletic, when you move a lot, when you. When you do things. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be sports, could also be that you have a physically demanding job right here.

You’re doing manual labor and stuff. When you. We’re creatures of habit.

If we do the same thing over and over and over and over again, the chances that the body will start aching at some point, significant increases. And body is smart. The body will change its way because of pain will kind of move around it, but the stress is there.

It’s going to put stress in a different area of the body that’s just not as accustomed to that stress. Before you know it, that area starts aching a little bit and it keeps shifting. And before.

And all of a sudden it’s like, I can’t do what I love to do anymore. I have a hard time at work. Or every time I get home from work, my back Hurts.

Okay, let’s be ahead of that curve. Right. Let’s try to be preventative.

Proactive. Proactive. And that just.

So we. Going back to your initial question, we just, we’re growing up, we grew up in. With this mindset like our body, our bones and our tendons, our ligaments, our muscles, we just take it for granted and just keep on doing the same thing.

Right. But we don’t do that with anything else in our body. We don’t.

Right. We get checkups for our skin, for our teeth, for our eyes, for our intestines, for our heart. At some, not all as a kid, but as you get older, you do all these things.

But who checks your bones, who checks your muscles? Right. Those are physical therapists come into place. Yes.

It’s living tissue. Yeah, exactly. It’s moving.

Absolutely. It’s all just atoms that. Just a different density or a different kind of atom.

But it’s all dynamic and changing over time. Absolutely. So that’s our big message out there.

And not just St. Pete Physical Therapy. I think the American Physical Therapy association, like, you know, all the physical therapists out there, they’re really advocating for what we do on a daily basis. That’s what we do.

And I think we’re all out there trying to educate the general public to know exactly what a physical therapist does. Yeah, it’s clear. I think there needs to be more of that because if people are more aware, I don’t know, it doesn’t have to be so hard on them in the future.

You don’t let that evolve into an issue. You just stay ahead of it, you’re gonna feel better. You know, I want to go back to your, you know, strengthening your body.

And I also think that part of exercise is strengthening your mind. Like for me, okay, I’m gonna go five miles and I’m not gonna go four, I’m gonna go five. Because I dedicated and said I’m gonna do that and I’m gonna follow through with it.

And so for my mindset, that’s healthy because I set out a goal, I accomplished it. And not only do I feel good in my body, I feel good in my mind because I did what I said I was gonna do and accomplish something. So there’s so many repercussions to that.

Plus you’re getting oxygen to your brain more than just sitting here like we’re doing now. And now I’m thinking clearer too. So this domino effect of all of this, positive repercussions from doing a 30 minute activity potentially or an Hour run.

Yeah, it’s huge. Yeah. It’s the endorphins that get released, and there are just so many positive benefits.

And nobody’s ever complained for being strong or being able to move very well. Right. People complain for not being strong enough or not being able to move well.

But, yeah, you got to start somewhere. And sometimes getting started is the hardest part. It doesn’t feel good.

Your body’s talking back here. You’re breaking up that equilibrium of the body. The body likes to take the path of least resistance.

And that’s what I was wondering. Not moving or that. That’s.

That’s a change in movement pattern. Something that’s biomechanically what the body thinks is easier but just not as efficient in moving. And, you know, sometimes it’s working harder, not smarter.

Just, like, know, with anything else, it’s. You got to start somewhere, and it’s. It’s mentioned.

It’s so important that you. That you just keep on doing it. Right.

Entropy is a real thing. Yeah. Yeah.

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Now, back to the conversation. I guess you kind of already answered the question, because I’m wondering, what are the biggest blockages that you notice for people listening? Who? Man, I just can’t get off the couch or I can’t get motivated. I know I need to do it in my heart and my mind, and my body is telling me I need to go for a run.

Or swim or walk or do something. What. Why do people not do it? I think comfort.

Right. And a lot of people have a difficult time stepping outside of their comfort zone. And that’s just not just with exercise, but that’s with many different things in general, we keep it specific to exercise.

It’s stepping outside that comfort zone. Fear of a failure, I think, too. Right.

Like you mentioned, hey, I’m going to run five miles. Um, if you’ve been training. Yeah.

Then you can run five miles. But if you haven’t been training or you only been training to run a mile or so, five miles is, is, is a big task. Right.

And you have to slowly build up to that. And a lot of people also don’t know how to build up. Like, yeah, I was a runner 10 years ago, but I haven’t really ran in the, in the last 10 years.

You know, I could run, you know, back then, I could run a half marathon, no problem. Running five miles right now is not like running five miles back then. Sure.

Your body, it’s not. Your body’s completely forgotten how to do it, but your muscles, your joints, nothing is accustomed to that loading pattern anymore. Your body is, has learned to not load up that way.

And it’s used to other things now. So you have to, you have to slowly build back up. And a lot of people don’t know how to build that up.

It’s like, oh, I took three weeks and I was back to five miles. Great. You maybe feel good now, but you keep doing that.

The work you put in now shows up four, five, six weeks from now. Right. And that’s, that’s, that goes back to basic biology where we have all our cells turnover was every 30 days.

We have a few trillion cells that turn over. Right. And every time a cell turns over, it leaves an exact replica of itself.

And, and now that new cell is in place. But if that new cell can be a little bit healthier than the previous cell, we get better. If that cell, if that replica is a little bit worse than the, than the last time, it turned over because there’s overload.

It just doesn’t have the recovery, can’t repair itself. Slowly you start declining. And that’s why it takes four or five weeks for results to show up.

Because that turnover, that happens and it’s a, it’s a continuous thing. And then people. I think the other thing is, is going along with that is we live in this world where we want instant results.

Yeah. If I do something now, I want to see results tomorrow. Totally and unfortunately with the body, that’s not the case.

If you’re dealing with, let’s say, tennis elbow. Right. Pain on the outside of the elbow and it bothers you.

If I give you ibuprofen and it takes the pain away in the next hour, you’re going to be happy guy. Right. So this is great.

If you go to therapy, that’s going to take you a few weeks before that feels better. Right. There’s some research shows that tennis cell where it can take more than six months before that’s fully healed.

Nobody wants to, nobody wants to think about that. Like, six months of doing this. Six months of like dealing with this.

Okay. We also can’t keep living on ibuprofen. Yeah.

It’s long term. So we want these instant results. Yeah.

And, and with the body, to repair the body in a natural way, that just doesn’t happen. Right. To, to build strength or to improve mobility or to, to move better or improve flexibility or so.

Or decrease pain from. With what we do that. That doesn’t happen instantly.

Yeah. But people want instant results. So I think that’s another thing to the daunting task of like, oh my God.

Yeah. I have to wait sometimes months for this, for this to happen. Yeah.

I just want to. Sometimes we have people who just choose for surgery that, that may not be necessary without the realization and, and it could be the right move to surgery, but without the realization that after surgery now you’re going to need months of therapy as well. The surgery kind of just puts something back together.

It’s so something back together or connect something again, kind of glues it back together or replaces something like a joint replacement. But you need months of therapy after you get everything moving again. It’s not just the pain is gone.

I don’t have surgery. Pain is never gone. There’s always more pain.

Right. But it’s, it’s that initial pain that you had that or that’s different pain. Now it’s more surgery pain.

But everything else has to still start moving again. And if you don’t take care of that, you know the reason why I had surgery, it’s very likely to all come back. Yeah.

I mean, you nailed it. But the, the thing is, it’s a mindset for that preconceived notion of psyching yourself out to not doing it. Because there are ways of instant gratification in the moment.

Like we talked about earlier. Wow. I just feel better.

Like after a run, I’m like, I feel great. Yeah. My, my, my belly fat Is still not, it’s not flat.

Yeah. But I feel better and I know that I’m getting better. Yeah, I’m.

My brain is fueled with more oxygen. You know, I’m thinking clearer in the moment. Maybe if I go outside now, I’ve spent an hour in nature.

There are instantaneous things. But you know, it’s looking at that whole big picture. The long term is more of a daunting.

And that’s of course what we try to create as well with mentioned earlier with the endorphins that get released with exercise and movement. And again, let’s go back to the tennis elbow. We, we may do soft tissue work on there, right.

That hurts in a moment. But afterwards we got some blood moving, we got some of that, those toxins out of there. It does feel better.

Dry needling can be super helpful in what’s dry needling? Dry needling is very similar to acupuncture. Except as physical therapists we can’t claim that we do acupuncture. So it’s dry needling and there’s crossover with acupuncture, but it’s not the same as acupuncture.

Sometimes we will use acupressure points to stick needles in. Sometimes we go directly into muscle to help release trigger points or stiffness in the muscle. And in the end it’s to improve energy in the body, it’s to improve blood flow.

So dry needling is specific for orthopedic conditions. Let’s say for your tennis elbow. Outside of the elbow, there’s muscles.

What it is really is the forearm muscles, the extensors of your wrist, they all attach there and there’s an overload in the tendon. Where the tendon attaches to the bone, the area gets irritated. So we stick needles directly into that muscle, we stimulate that muscle.

There’s the pain modulating effect going on. There’s physiologically we’re creating changes in that muscle. There’s blood flow improvement.

And when you bring in new blood flow, that brings in healing factors and the healing factors of the blood flow, the growth factors, they start repair the cells at the cellular level. Now we go back to that cell turnover. When we can start improving that turnover, the cells, healthier cell and that starts the healing.

But back to instantaneous results like dry kneeling. So from that point of view it’s helpful but also if we can help reassure, sure your elbow hurts, but we can do this and this and this exercise stuff you didn’t think was good for because it hurts and you’re worried it’s going to hurt you more. Hey, I feel good.

I did some of these exercises and I can actually tolerate it. And gradually you do a little bit more and you start changing the perception of the brain, how the brain is perceiving that area. It’s like, you know what these rows I was doing or this lift that I was doing, it hurts me 50% less than two weeks ago.

I can do this now. I can start doing a little bit more. Before you know it, you’re.

You’re doing things again that you were afraid of doing. And why, why most people afraid? It’s because it hurts. And we shy away from pain.

And there’s good pain and bad pain. I’m not saying push through the pain. I’m not claiming that it’s not.

No pain, no game. No. No pain, no gain is not necessarily applicable.

But pain is not always harmful. Pain is sometimes just our bodies telling us, hey, this is going on, and we can modify what we do so you can still do things. And very often just that assurance makes people feel better already.

It’s like, okay, I don’t need to stop doing this and this and this and also not doing anything. And it just, you know, my elbow just hurts. What do I do now? There’s things we can do.

Yeah, things you can absolutely do. And that’s part of, you know, so the psychology behind it is part of what we do. But also just reassure people that it’s okay to feel something.

It doesn’t have to be completely pain free, but we have to. Within reason, of course. Yeah.

I’m thinking about my yoga practice and like, you can get into a stretch and once you start to hit a particular amount of pain. Okay. You should, like, chill out there.

Sure. But it’s. Oh, there’s a healthy amount where it’s like you’re getting a good stretch and now you’re increasing the blood flow after a yoga session.

Feel like a new person. No, you feel great. Unbelievable.

If someone, if people underestimate yoga or have a, like a preconceived notion in their mind about what yoga is, go and do it. It is. I mean, I’m like the biggest fan of it.

Yeah, I’m a big fan of it. I don’t do much of it myself. I’ve done it in the past, but I don’t do it consistently.

But I’m a big fan of it. It’s great. And it’s hard.

It’s. There’s nothing easy about it. Have you ever done hot yoga? My wife loves it and she does it every single week.

Okay. She’s in shape then. Yeah.

And she loves it. And she comes home and she is like drenched. Yeah.

It is a workout. Oh, man. It’s not just standing there and holding a stretch and opposes.

It’s. It’s a workout. It’s not intense.

Oh, yeah. I used to train for hockey. Hot yoga is by far the hardest exercise I’ve ever done.

I thought the, the first couple times I thought I was going to die. Yeah. It was like a 90 minute session.

I just had to go into child’s pose because they’re like, look, it’s going to be intense for this first couple times. But then after two times, I didn’t have to go into child’s pose. I didn’t have to take it like a drink of water, although I think I sipped on it.

But it’s like I could just get through 90 minutes in a frigging sauna doing a hard yoga flow. And that was empowering. Again, it’s all about, over time, empowering yourself.

There’s so much to it. It is. And what you mentioned there is so correct.

Our bodies can adapt to so many things. Yep. We can.

Our bodies, it’s an incredible machine. Have you heard of Wim hof? Oh, yeah. The breathing method.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh.

That guy can like run a marathon in shorts in Antarctica without shoes, climb Everest or whatever. And part of that, of course, is the mental training and that comfort zone that we talked about. But just gradually overloading your body, within reason and then allowing it to recover.

Because that’s so important. Right. Again, when it comes to rehab or strength training or sports, the recovery is so, so important.

This is the reason why your top athletes, you know, LeBron James, Tom Brady, back in the day, you name all these top guys. Why they spent probably millions of dollars on recovery services outside of their practice in the team facility. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a million dollars laying around to.

Not yet to do that. Right. But in the end, our bodies function the same as his body.

Right? Right. He’s got qualities that I don’t have. Right.

Genetics and strength and everything. And he’s gifted at what he does. But in the end, he has the same muscles that I do.

He’s the same bones that you do. Right. We have the same organs with the same brain.

Like it functions in the same way, it just functions in a different capacity. That’s why he, he’s who he is talking about, like Braun James or so sure, but they spend so much money in recovery services because we have to overload our body, we have to expose it and then the recovery happens. And that’s nutrition, that is sleep, that is, you know, yoga or stretching, massage, physical therapy, cold immersion, saunas, red light therapy.

I mean again, there’s so many services out there that can be used to help improve blood flow and help stimulate the growth of those cells and the muscles and the response to the body. And you do that in the right way with building, building, building and recovery, building, building, building, recovery. And it’s amazing what the body can, can become.

But that takes time. You gotta have, certainly you have to be able to look, you know, it’s like building a business. You can’t build a business about to go there, looking in with a short term vision.

You have to be able to have a long term vision. Right. You gotta be able to see 10 years ahead.

Because if you don’t, sure, you need short term goals as well. But if you can only see the short term goals, I mean, you’re gonna fail. Exactly.

Because it’s, you don’t see the changes that you want to see. I don’t see my bank ain’t growing enough in the short term. I hope in the, in the long term it will, but it just, that that’s, that’s the same thing with your body.

You got to bank it and you got to improve it. I think that the analogy of the business, you beat me to the punch there. Because also you can think about it like in like drugs or something like that where you know you’re shooting yourself up with steroids and maybe in regards to a business, oh, like I shoot it up with something for this short boost, but then is that sustainable for the long term? And actually I’m not getting as much out of it.

Maybe steroids is, is okay or whatever, I don’t know. But that’s my analogy for now. But you get my, my point is that what is sustainable long term, that’s going to keep you going, what’s going to grow and what you can work with on a long term basis.

Yeah. And, and that’s, it’s so individualized as well. Right.

That could be different for you than it is for me. And it’s a bit of trial and error. And it doesn’t mean because it works for you that it should work for me as well or vice versa.

It’s, it’s, you got a little bit find your own path with that as well. But there’s something out there that will Work for, you know. Yeah, that will work for you.

It’s just a matter of, you know, what is it? And finding and not being afraid of. Of, of looking for that and, and seeing what it is. Totally just like children, like exploring what they want to do.

Exactly. Kind of rounding out our conversation. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you clearly know your stuff. I’m going to challenge you a little more, but these are going to be easy, hard questions. At the same time, this is a point in our format, in our episode called the Rapid Fire that was extended.

So I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I ask most of the guests and to see the common threads and, and the differences. Okay.

And you, you know, keep it short, but if you want to elaborate. All good. You just lose points.

Yeah. Okay. All right, we’re going to start.

What is your biggest source of inspiration? Podcasts. Oh, yeah, I listen to a lot of podcast. What’s your favorite podcast? I listen.

They’re. They’re physical therapy specific podcasts. So you nerd out.

I nerd out on it. I, I love the. And I know he told me not to expand too much, but I love the business side of it and the customer service side of it and just seeing the, the involvement in, in this industry, particularly, you know, 10 years ago to now, how things have changed and, and then what’s necessary and how we view it and.

Yeah, I just love the business side of it. Yeah. I mean, we were so wrapped up in the, the actual work that we didn’t get to expose the, the business side a little.

But customer service, I mean, the customer. And you’re, you’re like physically there and touching them or working with them, that is like everything with your particular industry for, for us. Okay.

We can work on your website remotely. I never actually have to shake your hand. I always do or go there.

But for the most part, we don’t have to touch anybody. You’re in physical proximity. So that adds such an interesting dynamic to the business, but also probably keeps it really exciting because you see them and you’re interacting with them on a daily basis.

Yeah. And it’s about the experience that people have right from the minute that they call us the first time till they walk into our office the first time. And if you ever come to our office, it’s a new building, It’s a very modern building.

Lots of daylight in there. You’ll meet Stacy at the front desk. She’s the one that you most likely talk to on the phone as well.

So, you know, she knows your name. Right away when she comes in. Right.

It’s a wide open, there’s no sliding windows or so there’s, it’s a, it’s an open environment in there. And part of it is okay for, for a lot of people, let’s say you’re in pain to come to physical therapy. It’s not the most fun experience.

Like, sure, you’re going to be a little uncomfortable, you have to do stuff. And with the hopes that in the long run that, that does make you feel better. So let’s make that experience that they’re 45 minutes, hour, hour and 15 minutes that you’re in there.

That it, that it, that you get everything out of it that you want. Right? Sure. I think all four therapists that work there, plus Stacy at the front office there, we all know you, we, most of us know you on a personal level because we see you so often.

We know about your kids, we know about your dogs, we know about your husband or wife. We know what you do. Right.

And we know whose team that you’re rooting for. We do weekly challenges in there where a lot of our patients participate in a challenge. And that we do.

And there’s always a prize. Last week, it was Easter last week, so we did an Easter egg hunt. There’s 24 eggs hitting around the clinic and the person that found the number 24 egg won a big prize, like, things like that.

But it keeps people engaged and it’s more than just, okay, I’m going to go there, I’m going to do some exercise and I’m going to go home. No, there’s, it’s a, it’s a bigger experience. That’s.

So that’s, that’s what it’s about. I think most people walk out of there like feeling happy, feeling this was pleasant, this was, this was a good experience. And you know, that’s, that shows up too, in the amount of patients that keep coming back and the word of mouth referrals and stuff.

Because it’s more than just physical therapy. It’s, it’s, it’s the whole experience that’s in there that’s essential no matter what the business is. But ascent, especially with someone who, I mean, you had, you kind of explained it.

A lot of people are going through a rough time. Like, I just had surgery on my shoulder and that sucks. I didn’t want that.

But now, and now I have to get better. But you can make it a better experience throughout that journey. That’s huge.

That’s what we tried to do. It’s empowering for them. That’s.

That’s got to feel good for you. It feels good for us and, you know, especially when we see the progress and stuff. But in the end, we do it with a passion to get the injured person back to doing what they.

They want to do. And, you know, that’s. Our job is not complete until you are doing, until you’ve reached your goals.

And your goals are not just, do I want to be able to move my arm again? No, there’s always a, I want to be able to play baseball again or be able to throw a ball with my son or, you know, we were talking about it before, like catching. Playing catch with my son or daughter or so, or I’ll be able to go swim again or I need to lift equipment overhead for work or whatever it may be that it’s our job is not done until you’re doing those things. Until you feel like, you know, I can do.

I can live my life normal again. I can do the things I want to do again. And that goes, that goes to what you started the conversation with.

Like, we’re bridging that gap between traditional physical therapy and performance, and that’s exactly where we fit in. It’s. It’s relatively.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s relatively easy. Just like with a lot of things to gain, your first 80%. Right.

You can get there pretty quick with work, and some takes a little longer. Not. But the last 20% is often the hardest.

It takes more and more work to get one extra percentage point of improvement. And that’s exactly where I see us as sports and performance physical therapists fitting in in that last 20%. A lot of times when you’ve been cut off or it’s been like, okay, you’re fine now.

No, not now. Work with us. Let’s get you back to what you’re doing, where you want to go.

Because that is. That is sometimes the hardest or very often actually the hardest part of the rehab. And that’s the, that’s the most difficult part of rehab too, because it’s.

You’re better, but, you know, you can’t do the things you want to do yet. And it’s frustrating to you as the patient. Right.

And it’s, it’s again, it’s. It’s getting that reassurance that you’ll get there and finding different ways of doing it and progressively overloading it and the recovery. Yeah, that last 20% is huge.

In general, I think in life, like committing to Something, Whether it be the work that we do, you know, or setting a goal, it’s usually the case that that last 20, even 10% is really tough. And to get through it. That’s what I defines people as average or above average, in my opinion.

That’s where. That’s where all the change is made and the distinguishing happens. And that’s.

That’s just where, you know, there’s a. There’s a need in phys. In our world, in physical therapy, for that.

There’s. There’s a. It’s a big gap that’s just not being bridged.

Oftentimes people run out of insurance benefits and stuff as well at that point. So be like, oh, my insurance doesn’t cover anymore. It doesn’t mean you can’t do physical therapy.

You just can’t use your insurance for that. Which is just a discount plan for physical therapy. Right.

It’s not that it covers you in case of an emergency with physical therapy. Just you’re getting a discount for a certain time. Doesn’t mean that there’s no access.

We see plenty of 40% of patients probably pay out of pocket. So we don’t take. Okay.

We work with a lot of people who don’t use their insurance because of that reason. It’s because that there’s so much need for that last 20%. Like you mentioned, in so many things in life, that is the hardest, right? Yeah.

You get from 80 to 90, from 90 to 100. That’s even harder than the 80 to 90. It takes more and more work and.

Oh, yeah, it’s just easier. Whether you’re talking about business or health or building a house or you name it. Like, it’s just easier if there’s guidance with that and somebody who is skilled in that and knows what they’re doing, they know how to put the finishing touches on that.

Totally. So that’s my fault with the rapid fire. No, let’s go on.

That’s my fault. But it’s all good. No, that was really important because there’s stuff that we touched on that I wanted to in this, so.

All right. Do you have a favorite book? Don’t read a whole lot. You listen a whole lot.

I listen a lot. No, I’m gonna say no. Okay.

I don’t. Nothing that comes to mind right away. To mind.

Okay, well, let me know. And I can always pop it back in the show notes. Okay.

This might be easier or harder. You can listen to one musical artist or album for the rest of your life. What’s.

What’s playing. Oh, man, now you’re catching me off guard here. That’s kind of the point.

Those are hard. Cause I. It sounds terrible. It sounds boring.

But I don’t listen to a whole lot of music. Really? No. I’m in the car most of the time.

I’m listening to podcasts or soaking it Again, like I mentioned earlier, I love just listening to sports games on the radio. I find it very, very relaxing in the car. I often just.

I can turn on a baseball game and listen to on the radio and I find it very relaxing. Okay, favorite artist. Man, I’ll have to come back to that.

I can’t think of one right now. And there’s no wrong answers, by the way, in rapid fire. I’ve stumped the guest here.

And that’s good. That’s all good. Okay, this one might be easier.

You can spend the day, one day with someone, anyone, dead or alive. Who’s that person? I’m gonna say my wife. Okay.

How nice. And really short. The reason why is for anybody who’s got kids, you know, like under the age of 10, like multiple kids, life is just so busy.

Right. You’re always involved. She works full time, I work full time.

When we get home, the kids are there. It’s nothing against my kids, but be great to spend the day, you know, just. Just like we had before we had kids and, and everything.

That’d be fantastic, I think. I love that answer. Last night, my wife and I were on the couch and just finally got to sit down.

We just looked at each other and we were like, it’s just non stop. Our eyes are open. It’s 100 miles per hour until the eyes are closed or that moment on the couch.

But usually my kids are a couple years older than yours, but it still feels like that. Sometimes it’s just like, oh, my gosh, after school, they got sports, sports practices and you take them there and you run around and then somewhere they gotta eat, they have homework to do. Clean their lunchbox room today and get them ready again for tomorrow.

And be nice to do something for yourself too. No kidding. No kidding.

Yeah. My wife. Awesome shout out to your wife.

Hopefully she listens to this. I’ll make her listen to it. Okay.

All right, last one. How do you define success? I think success for me at this point in my life is when my, my team at my work is happy, when, when I see that they’re thriving and when I can come home and I can spend. I could just mention, spend that time with my wife and My kids.

Turn off business. Turn off business. Because I know that the team is.

Is thriving. They’re happy. They’re.

They’re not necessarily looking at it. It is a job they’re not just looking at as just a job because they love what they do. Right.

And the customers are happy, and I can go home and spend that time with them. And, you know, even if it’s for an hour, just like, turn off work knowing that everything will be okay at this point in my life, that’s success for me. I love that.

I feel the same. Yeah. Great.

You made it through Rapid fire. Good job. Fantastic.

Although I look forward to, like, an email like, oh, I forgot about this book. And I listened to this artist on the way home. And I’ll pop it in the show notes, even if it’s a month down the road.

Sounds good. It’ll hit you in the shower somewhere random when you’re working out. All right, well, this has been awesome.

I. I like to close it out. Number one, I want to know where St. Pete Physical Therapy is in the next five, 10 years. What’s your plan? Where do you see yourself? Team growing more locations.

I think right now the. The goal with St. Pete Physical Therapy is to keep it at one location. Um, more is not always better.

Um, I. Like I said in during the rapid fire, success at this moment is making sure my team is thriving and opening another location and more therapists and keeping everybody happy and maintaining that same culture. I don’t know if I. If that’s in my plans right now. You know, if I’ll just look at the financials and stuff, that’d be great.

But again, that doesn’t define at all. It’s. It.

It. There’s a lot that comes along with run the business as you know, and. And the finances and just keeping everything in order.

My hands are pretty full. I am looking on expanding in our current location that we are. I would love to add in, like, a strength and conditioning facility in there.

So. Cool. Cool.

Yeah. Really? For strength and conditioning, like, to keep the physical therapy and the strength, because we train a lot of athletes just who have no injuries, just strength and conditioning for sports teams and stuff. We do that quite a bit to keep those separate and have a dedicated space for that.

So if I look in the long run, that’s what I see happening and not necessarily a second location. Love that. I agree with you.

I’m very big on scaling appropriately and doing what’s right for, like, our goals. I don’t want to be a Google or Apple size at all, you know, or even medium size, you know, because medium size, like small businesses up to, I think, like a hundred employees or something. That’s not small.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, I agree with you. A good example is this morning patient, she was done and she pulled me aside real quick, and it was very busy in the clinic this morning.

And she’s like, Jan, don’t forget about your mission and your vision statement. She’s like, the reason you opened the clinic is to. Is to provide better care to people and to really help people, not to see more people in here.

And it. Yeah. And a customer said that of you.

Yeah, yeah. And then she said it in a. In a constructive way.

It was just busy in there. Right. And she’s like.

And it was just. It was really good, actually. Like, in the moment I was like, it’s great.

It’s busy in here and stuff, and. And everything went well, but in the moment I was like, okay, you know, you’re right. I got.

I gotta keep my eye on what I set out to do and not get carried away with, you know, more and more and more and more. Certainly. Yeah.

Yeah. As I get older, I learn more and more. You know, more is not better.

Sometimes less is more. And. And I get more.

More joy out of that. I couldn’t agree with you more. I love that.

That’s cool that you got that Direct reminder. Yeah. Someone, what’s.

What is your mission statement? Our mission statement is to. Is to be the. Be the premier sports physical therapy provider here in St. Pete.

Right. And just help the people in our community, like, touch as many people in our community as possible and help them live just a healthier life and healthier. I’m not talking about, you know, we’re preventing heart attacks and stuff.

Like, I’m talking about that people can move better. That people. When people are going.

Doing something with their grandkids or they’re asked to go on a bike ride or they’re going on a cruise or a vacation, that they can be free and do the things they want to do over there that they’re not. Oh, we’re going hiking in the mountains. I can’t go because my back is hurting too much.

My knee is hurting too much. I can’t do it. That.

That’s what we want to. That’s where we want to empower people to have the tools and feel better. And that’s our mission statement is just have a healthier community.

And St. Pete is love. That is a. Is a great community.

There’s so many active people. Right. You go to downtown St. Pete, the amount of people you see running along the water there, exercising, and every gym that you see, it’s packed.

And these workout facilities are all packed. There’s so many active people in here. Yeah.

But there’s also a lot of people who are afraid of that and are not doing that. And let’s get you to whatever degrees that you can do it. Right.

I’m not saying that you have to be out there and being a crazy athlete, but let’s get you moving again. And that’s our mission statement. I love that.

Very cool. So last thing and then I’ll let you say how people connect with you. Maybe this advice can be more catered towards.

Long term advice on like staying active and pain free long term. But overall it doesn’t have to be that. It could be business or life advice.

Anybody who’s listening, young or old, in pain, not in pain, in shape, out of shape. What’s your biggest piece of advice you want to leave people with? Start moving. Yeah.

Move. It’s just motion is lotion. You know, it’s a.

Oh, that’s great. It’s an old saying and it’s been, it’s been abused. That saying.

I’ve never heard that. It is motion is lotion. It’s good for you.

If you’re aching somewhere, don’t protect it. Maybe in the beginning, Right. Let’s say I fall on your shoulder and it hurts.

Sure. Let the body do its natural process, but don’t hold it still for the next seven days. Start moving it.

And there’s ways you can move it in very appropriate ways that will help reduce some of the pain. That doesn’t mean you have to start lifting weights right away. That’s just moving it.

But start moving. If you’re dealing with stiffness, start moving. Start doing mobility work.

Mobility is very different than stretching. If you need help with it, give us a call. I can explain further to you.

But yes, movement is key to. If you’re young or old, movement is just key. There’s so many health benefits that come along with it.

And then movement come in such a variety of forms. Right. It just.

There’s just so many ways of movement. But just start moving. Love it.

That’s great. Hopefully people feel pumped up and inspired or are even listening to this on their run or walk or hike or whatever they’re doing. I know, I like to listen to podcasts while I’m running.

Well, you had mentioned. Okay, just call you. So what is the best way for people to connect with you, even if they’re out of state.

Maybe they just want to stay in touch and be inspired by what you’re doing. Best way to connect with us is via our website. It’s saint petept.com on there.

There’s a. You can very easy to find a form. Just put in your information, we’ll get it and we will call you right back.

Other ways are you can call us on our number directly or we’re on Facebook, Instagram, we’re on all the social media networks as well. But the easiest way is via our website. It’s just set up to make it very easy for you to quickly put in your name number, contact us.

That’s the easiest way. Awesome. And I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes so that people can easily click on that.

Jan, thank you so much for your time. I got that right? Yeah. Yes, you did.

Thank you very much for having me. This was, this was awesome. Love it.

So much appreciated. Yeah. Thank you.

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