HOT ROCK BASKETBALL CAMP; HOW TO PICK A PHYSICAL THERAPIST - Blog

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Mike shares some personal impact about the Hot Rock basketball camp he just returned from, that he’s coached at for 18 years now in Adrian, Michigan with his friend and mentor, Gary Gray, and his family. This camp is more than about basketball…it’s about life and serving and encouragement. Choosing a Physical Therapist isn’t the same as deciding which cornerstore to buy your flashlight batteries from. Mike offers some help to listeners who need some direction on how to pick a Physical Therapist to help their young athlete. Greg’s guest, Carli Lloyd, of the WNY Flash Women’s Professional Soccer and US National teams shares about her experiences, perspectives on youth athletics and development, approach to injuries and much more!

CHOOSING A PHYSICAL THERAPIST FOR YOUR YOUNG ATHLETE

…The Secret Behind Making a Good Choice

The Choice is Yours!

I wish there was just one secret tip I could give you that would be simple answer to this. The truth is that it’s not an easy decision.

You’re a parent and your son or daughter gets hurt. They don’t recover in a day or two and now you realize they need help getting back to normal. Do you go to the closest place near you? Do you just go to the biggest name in town? Do you go to the largest company? Do you Google it? Will you get the best care because they’re associated with your Doctor? What if they’re part of a regional or national brand name? What if they have commercials on the radio or TV, or are the “official team” providers for a local sports team or even for professionals?

There’s lots of skilled and caring PTs in all communities across town here in Rochester, and in NY State and the US for that matter, and even the world. The challenge is, as a parent, how do you improve the odds that you pick a good fit for your son or daughter, and have confidence that they’re seeing a PT who possesses the knowledge, skills, experience, training, and heart that can help your young athlete put this behind them. Have you thought about this before? Do you feel odd asking questions when your Doctor tells you they want you “just go here” for PT? What about if you’re handed a list with sea of clinic names on it?

But you do need to remember that choosing a Physical Therapist isn’t the same as deciding which corner store to go to for batteries to put in your flashlight. Physical Therapists are people. Professionals with unique skill sets and backgrounds. It’s not a thing. It’s not a place.

TIPS FOR MAKING A GOOD CHOICE…

WORD OF MOUTH:

Your friends and family, the people that know you best, are in a great position to offer you ideas that may fit well for your young athlete. Always remember to ask them about their experiences with a Physical Therapist. They can be a valuable asset when choosing a PT for your athlete.

ASK YOUR DOCTOR:

When it comes to musculoskeletal injuries, your physician – especially orthopedic speciaists, have a unique perspective. They see the results of different approaches and of the different skill sets Physical Therapists have. There may be cases where they feel your son or daughter would benefit from a certain PT or might offer several names that might work best. We’ve been really blessed to have many of our patients referred specifically to us because of our past successes and the problem solving biomechanical approach we take. Ask your doctor if there’s anyone they’d recommend specifically but also remember to ask why they are recommending them.

SPECIALTY CERTIFICATIONS:

Some PTs have gone beyond their academic training and taken unique continuing education courses for more specialized knowledge and skills. You can often go to a clinic’s website and find out further information about a particular PTs background there.

Still another level of training comes in Specialty Certifications. The American Physical Therapy Association website, www.apta.org, has links to find specialists in your area. Two of the Board Certified Specialist designations they offer include Sports Specialist and also Orthopedic Specialist. At Peak Performance PT, I obtained my SCS (Sports Certified Specialist) designation over 8 years ago and am the longest certified SCS in the Rochester area. Therapists obtaining these National Board Certifications must have a required minimum number of years in the specific field and minimum standard of hours of direct patient care in that area, and finally must pass a specialty exam that tests their knowledge and decision making in this area. Not all PTs who are skilled and experienced in a given area choose to go through the time, preparation, cost, and rigors of Specialist Certification but it remains one of the few ways of distinguishing those who have proven a level of knowledge in that area.

At PEAK PERFORMANCE PT our PT’s have unique training in the area of what we call Applied Functional Science, or in simpler terms – understanding the biomechanics of how our bodies function, both locally and together as a whole unit, so that we can better evaluate and design appropriate manual therapy and exercise plans for recovery. Michael Golisano and Mike Napierala both have FAFS, or Fellow of Applied Functional Science, designations following a 10 month training program. Karen Napierala is completing her CAFS, or Certification in Applied Functional Science, and has an extensive background in this area as well. We’re proud to be the only providers in the Rochester area that offer this type and level of specialty training.

MAKING THAT FIRST CALL…

Remember to ask how long your PT is scheduled to take for your evaluation…is it a 15min slot or 30 min or an hour? While it may or may not all be completely one-on-one time it’s important to know your PT will have enough time to ask you some important questions about your condition and history along with performing valuable objective testing. Another question you might ask is if you’ll be seeing the same PT all the time or wlll be moved between two or more providers.

WHAT ABOUT WHEN I GET THERE THE FIRST TIME?

It’s important you feel like an individual. You shouldn’t feel like a “number” or “just another knee pain” case that the PT is seeing that day. Your PT should be listening to your answers and asking further questions based on your answers as they attempt to truly understand what you’re feeling, when and how the symptoms bother you, and what you can and cannot do. You should feel the PT took time to be thorough and that your care plan was customized to those test findings and your condtion versus being handled with a protocol “one size fits all” approach given to all the other patients in the clinic with the same body part injury or same diagnosis. A good Physical Therapy program is never as simple, or at least shouldn’t be as simple…as saying “Here’s the program we use for …” [insert diagnosis name].

Every Low Back Pain, every ankle sprain or knee pain, or shoulder instability isn’t the same. They don’t all present the same. They don’t each have the same successs and challenges, in spite of all walking in with the same diagnostic name from a Doctor.

Your condition is not a “one size fits all” condition and your Physical Therapy program should be based on your present status, how and when your symptoms occur, the things you are successful at, and on the goals you have for yourself.

HOT ROCK…The Land of Parakletos

The Power of Encouragement

For being a Physical Therapist it’s sort of embarrassing and simultaneously perplexing and a bit odd…I am not a natural encourager. I’m a problem solver, an analyzer. Encouragement, parakletos, wasn’t my real middle name as I made my way through my teens and early choice to become a Physical Therapist.

Every summer for the past 18 years I’ve been making the 7 hour trek to Adrian, Michigan for Hot Rock Basketball Camp. I was invited by the mastermind behind this camp, Gary Gray, after attending one of his Chain Reaction continuing education courses when only a few years out of college. Gary has since become a friend and a mentor. And this camp has turned out to be so much more than about basketball.

When I first went to Hot Rock I wasn’t long from an ACL reconstruction and subsequent knee arthroscopy, excited to work my way back into my playing days I enjoyed in my early 20′s. Hot Rock seemed the perfect environment - hanging out with a PT/educator I admired and was amazed by, someone who was able to make sense of all the gaps I had in my mind from the traditional approaches taught in school but that just didn’t make sense in the real world…three full court glass backboard hoops in someone’s backyard (who couldn’t love that)…being around a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings mixed in with actual high school and college coaches who all loved the game of hoops and were sharing with 7th graders through seniors in high school how to get better… along with some competing ourselves – as if back in school.

Over the years I’ve come to see Hot Rock camp in a much different light. It’s literally been life changing – for both me and my family. This year both Jordan (our 20 yr old) and Kyle (18 yr old just graduated h.s.) joined me once again, but this time with Kyle as a first year coach rather than a participating player. Henry couldn’t make it this year but his smiling face and laugh were missed by all. What an awesome four days it was, playing H-O-R-S-E with my boys and a few of our old friends from camp each day out on the courts, watching them grow and mature as young men – teaching and encouraging the young athletes, having them be around a group of men – many only years or so beyond where they now are – who know how to have fun and laugh and bond with other men yet are able to remain fully committed to their faith and being servants and also able to be humble and let their guards down and reveal their own weaknesses and needs too.

I’d first thought Gary was “really doing well for himself” having the courts in his backyard like that. Early on I saw him as “successful” partly because he impacted so many lives of PTs and other professionals who felt that lightbulb go off when he shared these unique perspectives on function and the biomechanics of how our bones and muscles worked in real life – it was so different than the cadaver lying on a table perspective I’d been fed in school. I saw him as successful because he had a nice house, three basketball courts, a nice car, successful PT practices with multiple therapists. He had so many of those things I’d been told by the world were the signs of success.

But it wasn’t long into being at Hot Rock that Gary, his family, and all these coaches and young men from the community began changing my reality for why this was all so special. The courts….well, Gary didn’t use his earnings for himself or selfish desires…he used it to build the courts so his sons could have their friends over, so kids in the community would have a place to play even into the dark hours of the night, and that he could offer this FREE camp to kids in their area. And it didn’t just stop there. Hot Rock logo’d water bottles, t-shirts, hoodies, lanyards, and a DVD collection professionally put together by friends from the Christian school his boys attended….all FREE to the kids and coaches who came. He wanted all of them, all of US, to feel special. To feel cared for. To remember what we felt and learned at Hot Rock. To remember the laughs, the fun, the hard work, the competition, the learning, the caring, the hugs and high fives, and the support and encouragement from men to their young coutnerparts, and the reminder that we’re not in this world alone…and he and his family didn’t do this just because they were “good people” or had “caring hearts” but that they wanted to share the love they had for a God that first loved them.

Giving. Encouragement. Selflessness. Relationships. Love. Forgiveness.

Phys Ed coaches who possess an unimagineable sense of creativity and an ability to uplift and to motivate both the slower and uncoordinated young boy who doesn’t feel he’s an athlete in any way, shape, or form all the way to the serious competitor who is on his way to a college scholarship and was used to camps that were all business from start to finish, serious, pedal to the metal, leave it all on the court and no smiles allowed – who can take kids who are class clowns and those so introverted you can barely hear them speak and who sit by themselves and are at first overwhelmed by all that is going on …..and bring them all together somehow and orchestrate an incredible final act that has them all laughing, being kids, having fun together, encouraging eachother, sweating together in the hot sun, and just helping them all feel special and valued and important parts of the team.

It’s a place where traditional and unique basketball drills and skills are mixed in with Dork Drills, slip and slide, playing hoops out on grass courts with silly rules like you have to yell “Froggies” when you shoot or you can only score with your non-dominant hand, where they do passing drills with eggs, and play floor hockey on the grass field with a football, or have pairs of athletes arm in arm with one guiding the other to dribble the soccer ball toward a goal while his eyes are closed. It’s about Gary constantly uplifting all the coaches for what an awesome job they did loving on the kids, and him pouring words of encouragement into the campers as they did their drills or played games, it’s about bringing 190 young men together to pray and be thankful before eating lunch together. It’s about a young 3rd grader who wanted to stand up and say the closing prayer for the day in front of over 200 people. It’s a place where one of the “opportunity cells” (we don’t call them “stations” …too many connotations of a boring, monotonous, unengaging place to be) is called The Rock – where coaches share life lessons about how we all have a Creator, whether we know it or accept it or like it or not, who loves them and offers a gift that cannot be earned by any good deed or by following a set of rules, and who share ways these young men can continue to mature into givers and not takers, who can become encouragers and team builders.

One of the meanings of parakletos is to stand beside and be a comforter, an encourager. The basketball at Hot Rock, and the chance to help coach my favorite sport is really cool. But really the coolest thing about Hot Rock is learning more and more about how it’s not about me – it’s about them. It’s about YOU. It’s about how blessed I am and how I have gifts I need to share. It’s about me figuring out how I can be a blessing to others, how I can be a servant to others rather than a servant to myself. It’s about meeting your needs, not my own.

It’s sort of funny that this camp apparently exists for the sake of the kids…but in an odd, yet not so odd way – it really is just as much for us men, for us coaches. To keep us accountable. To encourage us all. To remind us of what being a “man” really should mean…not like in the movies or on TV – where we’re often told implicitly or explicitly that to be first, to leave others in your dust, to get ahead, that winning at all costs, that rudeness and fighting and drinking and cussing and doing whatever you want is fine and that there simply are no rules or standards you should adhere to or let yourself be judged by….but instead offers an inspiring alternative that though I fall short daily, gives me hope that I can instill in my own sons a reminder of how being a father and husband should mean being a servant, an encoucrager…a paraklete.

It’s not just coincidence I met Gary 20+ years ago. I was meant to be at Hot Rock. I needed to see those examples of strong men of faith pouring courage (“encouragement”) into those athletes and into eachother. I needed to know it wasn’t just a bunch of nice guys with kind hearts.

HOT ROCK is far more than just an awesome basketball camp. It’s a LIFE CAMP.

So that’s what I did last week. My wife, Karen, worked extra seeing my patients because she knows how powerful a week HOT ROCK is.

Hopefully I can be a little better at PARAKLETOS in the days and weeks and months to come as I take the lessons from Adrian, Michigan and those courts tucked away in Gary’s backyard to my family, friends, employees, and patients back home.

May God Bless you as richly as he has me and may you today find someone who needs and cherishes your WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT!