Social Media Impact on my PT Practice

with Mike Reinold!

with Lenny Macrina!

I love social media.  If you've been following the news lately, you probably know that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, has been testifying in front of Congress regarding improper use of data and basically explaining how the internet works.  Through social media, it is possible to interact with millions of people, watch silly cat videos, become a viral sensation, or watch my nephew on the ski slopes and my niece at her dance recital all the way across the country.

One thing I really like about social media is that I have the opportunity to interact with famous people.  For example, I wished Justin Timberlake a Happy Birthday.  He probably didn't see it because he has 49.4 Million Instagram followers, but I was able to do it.  There's a slight chance that he noticed my comment out of the 38,391 comments there. I recently read an article (but now can't remember where) that outlined the impact of the various ways you could interact on social media platforms.  A high percentage of followers may see a post, less will "like" it, but only a small fraction will comment on it, and even a smaller percentage will somehow directly connect, separating from the herd.

Slightly less famous than Justin Timberlake, (38 Million Facebook followers), are Mike Reinold (106,918 Facebook followers) and Lenny Macrina (1,788 followers on Facebook), co-owners of Champion PT and Performance (50,000 followers for the company) in Boston.  They're also the hosts of "The Ask Mike Reinold Show" podcast, and if you've read any of my previous work, they're major influences on how I practice physical therapy.  The connection here is that these guys do a lot of research, treat a lot of patients/clients, and own a business while regularly using various social medial platforms to spread their knowledge and have been able to impact me in this way.

Last week I attended Lenny's "Evaluation and Treatment Algorithm for Medial Elbow Pain" course at the Pacific Northwest Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Symposium in Portland, Oregon.  Because I've previously interacted with Lenny directly via Facebook and indirectly through their podcast,  he recognized me when he walked into the room.

SOAP BOX: To ALL student physical therapists and new grad physical therapists (and PTAs, and any other rehab/sports professionals), you need to follow this crew. NEED!  If you're interested in gymnastics at all - follow Dave Tilley.  If you're interested in Crossfit, follow Dan Pope.  If you're interested in golf - follow Mike Scaduto.  If you like UConn Basketball or want online personal training guidance, follow Kiefer Lammi, their Director of Fitness.  If you work with baseball players, they've developed Elite Baseball Performance. If you treat shoulders and knees - these guys are for you. And if you're a parent of a youth athlete, they're an awesome resource for that also. 

Moving on... I've previously written about how important it was for me to get a new mentor in this post.  But mentors don't necessarily need to be people you know or spend time with in real life.  They don't even need to be your teachers or coworkers.  I have mentors I can call or email at any time who filled those roles, but then there's Mike and Lenny - who really don't know me beyond the brief moments photographed above, but who I respect in the field of physical therapy and whose work I try to read consistently to improve my practice.

In addition to Lenny's Elbow class last week, I've taken the time to go through their podcast episodes - which are really great - and have had two of my questions answered in them: Episode #107 and Episode #109 so you can check them out.  The episodes are short and formatted as three questions and their answers.  I also just completed Mike's Shoulder Seminar. I happened to be attending Lenny's Elbow course while I was finishing the seminar and the two paralleled each other nicely.  Both have had an immediate impact on my treatments.  Following all the recent learning I've had from this crew, here are the four changes I've recently made in how I practice PT.  (Keep in mind - the two courses I took were intended for the upper extremity).

First - side-lying external rotation and prone row exercises were previously absent from my treatment sessions and home exercise programs.  Not any more! The Shoulder Seminar included the research supporting their use such including EMG studies on the muscles being used.  This paralleled with Lenny's course showing how he implements these exercises into his routines.

Second - rhythmic stabilizations and PNF patterns have often been in my treatment sessions in the past, but I've ramped up their volume considerably.  Where before I may have done 2-3 rounds of 30 seconds of rhythmic stabilizations and a set of 10 reps of resisted PNF D2 at occasional visits, I've now started doing the stabilizations in A LOT more positions with more total time spent on dynamic stability.  I'm not just doing this because Mike and Lenny said to... at Lenny's course we had lab sessions doing these treatments to each other so (thanks to my partner and fellow Seattle PT Bruk Ballenger) I felt the impact of doing these on my own shoulder.  These are really fatiguing!

Third - upper extremity weight bearing progressions.  I've never had someone standing at their treatment table with their hands on the surface with low loads of weight bearing in that position.  I like it for a gentle joint compression or co-contracting activity without the shoulder flexion in a quadruped or standing with the arm against the wall closed kinetic chain activity.

Fourth - I've been working with some coworkers at Seattle Children's Hospital on a return to sport testing protocol for patients following rehab for upper extremity injuries.  We've had numerous discussions about the components to include, but The Champion crew uses a hand-held dynamometer (HHD) for measurable strength testing.  Fortunately, I studied under HHD guru Dr. Richard Bohannon at UConn and Seattle Children's already uses it in our lower extremity testing.  Manual Muscle testing just isn't sufficient enough to identify the subtle but potentially significant differences in strength.

So, I've learned a lot from this crew, and I found them via Facebook and other social media means.  I'm looking forward to getting started on Mike and Lenny's knee seminar in the next few weeks, and if any of the Champion PT and Performance Crew comes across this post, please know how grateful I am for all that you do.