#70 - Accelerating Recovery and Performance: Insights into Elite Athlete Care, Part 1

Hi, guys, Welcome to the final episode of Factor podcast of twenty twenty three. It's hard to believe that we're only two days away from the new year. I feel like we've all collectively been in a perpetual state of hangover since twenty twenty Am I the only one anyway? In honor of our final episode of the year, we decided to shake things up a bit and take a short departure from our typical training format. I recently had the privilege of sitting down to chat with doctor Todd Reddle and Roger Fleming, who both returned from traveling with the USA Gymnastics team to Europe for the twenty twenty three World Championships. Many of you are familiar with Todd. He's our director of Education for Factor, a certified chiropractic sports practitioner, registered kinesiotherapist, and si fied strength and conditioning coach. He also happens to be my husband. But did you know that he had a career in sports performance working with professional and Olympic athletes way before he went to chiropractic school. We'll talk more about that in this interview. My other guest for this episode is Roger Fleming. Roger is a certified athletic trainer and licensed massage therapist who has worked with professional basketball baseball, celebrities in the entertainment industry and national teams such as a USA Track and Field, USA Racquetball, and now USA Gymnastics. Outside of his travel with these teams, Roger owns and operates a private practice in Macon, Georgia where he treats athletes and active individuals of all ages. Topics featured in today's episode include the crucial role of trust and collaboration between sports medicine staff, coaches, and athletes in decision making concerning health and performance. We also talk about the symbiotic relationship that should always exists between athletic training and strength and conditioning staff, and some of the team dynamics related to the overlapping scope of practice and the importance of athletes at all levels having access to acute care on the field of play. If you've ever aspired to become a sports medicine provider, then this is definitely a series you'll want a bookmark and come back to more than once. Let's cue the intro music and get started. All righty guys, welcome today. We are so excited to have two special guests on The Factor podcast today, as many of you know that have listened to us for quite a while. Typically a lot of our episodes are clinical or business focused trainings, and today we're breaking from our traditional format and we actually have an interview, and it's an interview with two different healthcare practitioners. So I'm very excited today to have on our podcast Roger Fleming as well as doctor Todd Riddle, and we're going to be talking today through how they both have evolved throughout their journeys as healthcare providers to now treating some of the elite level athletes on USA Gymnastics Team, USA Racketball and others. And we're going to find out a little bit more about what that journey looks like, a little bit taking a peek behind the curtain, if you will. So that being said, welcome guys, thank you so much for being here. I'll give each of you a chance to kind of just tell our listeners who you are, where you currently practice, and just a little bit about yourself. Roger, would you mind going first for us? Certainly, first of all, thank you for having me on here. It's an honor to be here. So my name is Roger Fleming. I'm a certified athletic trainer and licensed massage therapist. I practice out of Making, Georgia, and I am a private owner. I own my own practice. Wonderful. Thank you Roger and doctor Todd. For those of our listeners that may not be familiar with you, if you don't mind telling us a little bit about yourself, of course, thanks for having me on. It's good to be back. My name is Todd Riddle. I'm a certified sports chiropractor. I'm based out of Seabrook, Texas, which is a small suburb of southeast Houston. We're down near the Gulf of Mexico. Great little place to live and be a sports chiropractor. I'm also a certified strengthy Conditioning specialist, registered canesio therapist, which we can get into a little bit later on. And yeah, i have a private practice in Seabrook, Texas where we see a lot of athletes, work with a lot of different sports, but probably really consider us more of a family practice because we see folks that just trying to stay active and trying to feel better. But a little bit everything. Wonderful. Thank you, so Roger, you were saying that you are both a certified athletic trainer and a licensed massage therapist. So tell me a little bit about that. Did you kind of know from early on that you wanted to go into healthcare and that was always kind of your goal or did having both of those professions evolve over time for you. So when I was in high school, I really wanted to be I was loving the sports, and my football coach was like, Roger, there's this new and up and coming profession athletic training. I think you would be amazing at. I don't really think you have a college football career ahead of you. So I started digging deeper into that and he was right, and I fell in love with that. And I was an athletic trainer first. So that's in the early mid nineties, early nineties, and then only until later in my career did my philosophical approach transition into more of the massage therapy aspect, the hands on aspects. So it was athletic training first and then massage therapy. Now, you mentioned that when your coach kind of approached you about this idea of becoming an athletic trainer, that that wasn't something at the time that was very well known or something that maybe in your area there were a lot of ATC's. So when you first heard about this thing called an athletic trainer, what did you think that was? Did you have kind of a it pique an interest in a question of what is this trainer? Is this a personal trainer? Like did you have some misconceptions in the beginning about figuring out what that was. My coach was very I mean, he was very clear he understood what an athletic trainer was at that time. And when I looking back, I equate it to an ankle taper and putting ice on it. That's really what equated to being an athletic trainer was. And the healthcare aspect, you don't really see that behind the scenes until you're fully engulfed in it and then you understand, like, well, there's more to it than just putting an ice bag on someone or taping an ankle. And that's where I evolved with that. Yeah. Absolutely, And we've worked with athletic trainers for several years, like education side, and they really are an incredible representation of what can be done with acute care helping athletes not only at the time of injury, but then also there's so much that they do from a rehab standpoint as well that I think a lot of people in the general public, at least, like you said, they don't always see that aspect of care. They see them running out when an athlete is injured on the field, they see the taping, they see the acute type of care such as icing and things like that, but there's so much more behind the scenes there as well. What was attractive about that for you when you really started digging into what an ATC was probably initially was just being able to continue to be around athletics. And if I could not be an athlete in that sense, then I could help someone else achieve their goals. And that's really what has kind of been what I've learned about myself is my I feel like my calling, if you will, is to help help others and to help people. And now we can get into this a little bit later on, but my position is whenever someone walks through my doors, they're an athlete, whether they're thirteen years old or eighty seven years old. Absolutely, and I think that's so true. Nike has a famous saying everybody is an athlete, and I think many healthcare providers, especially those that do treat sports and athletics or do things from an active lifestyle standpoint, would agree with that that they have patients that are well into their last I don't want to say last, but they're higher phases of life. They're kind of in their golden years so to speak, that are still very active and they still want to continue to be active. And at the same time, as you mentioned, you have kids, and you have youth athletes that also are just starting that journey. But there's a lot of things that as healthcare providers you can do to help support them in that. So you decided you wanted to be an athletic trainer. How did you end up in college in the frozen tundra of Toledo, Ohio. Coming from Alabama that had to have been a shock to the system. And what was it about Toledo that was so attractive for you when it came to making that decision of where to go to school. Well, first, I had I had family in Toledo, So I wasn't going to an area that was just unknown, It wasn't uncharted territory. I didn't know about the University of Toledo to the extent, but I knew that it existed, and I knew my father lives outside of Toledo. But I knew that if I stayed in Alabama, I was not going to achieve my goals. I wasn't going to grow. I was going to be a small town guy. And I took the leap of faith and just said, I'm doing this to try to better myself. And I went in there with totally I guess, unclothed if you will, and just said let it be. And that's really how I went from Alabama to Toledo, Ohio. But it was by far the greatest decision I've ever made as far as my professional career goes. That's phenomenal. There's so many times where I feel like we speak to people who have had great achievements, or they've accomplished something, or they've really grown in some way professionally, and there was always a place in their history, a place in their journey where they had to make that leap, they had to make a decision and say, Okay, I'm doing this, And sometimes for some peoples a scary prospect because maybe it's a complete shift in professions, or it's a shift into stepping outside of the known into the unknown. But oftentimes when that happens, there's a lot of great reward that comes from that, for sure. So you enrolled in school at Toledo and at one point you were a student athletic trainer for the football department, which is how you met doctor Todd here. So, guys, tell me a little bit about how you both came together and met so many years ago at Toledo. Go ahead, Todd, Oh, this is an easy one for me. As an athlete, you get very particular about who you let work with you. Roger was kind of an instant attraction for me because he carried himself well. He was also i think two years ahead of me, Roger, Yes, yes, yeah, So Roger was already kind of established in the athletic training department as a student at and it was instant because again, he carried himself a little bit better. And and sometimes you end up with somebody out of necessity when everybody's trying to get their treatment in or trying to get taped up before a game or before practice, you just kind of end up with somebody. But after a couple of times with the Roger, I realized really fast that he was the guy that I wanted working with me. He is also and Roger and I love to share this story. He's also the reason I can't grow any hair on my ankles is he taped high enough over the pre wrap that we pulled all the hair out of my legs trying to take the tape off. So but now, Roger instantly was one of my favorite people in the athletic training room, and I'm grateful for the fact that I got that kind of care at Toledo. That's awesome now, I know for you, obviously being from Ohio, there was not quite as much of a move or a shift when you went to college at Toledo. But you primarily went there due to a football scholarship. Is that correct? So sports, I know has been a huge piece of your life for since you were a child. Onward, tell our listeners a little bit about how you came to be at Toledo and give us a little bit of the backstory about your time in athletics growing up as a child. My parents were really great about letting my brother and I, who was two years behind me, and also ended up at Toledo. They let us play just about anything we could we could get to. So growing up I played about one season of soccer and realized very quickly that I was not going to be a rinaldo or a messy just soccer was not my thing. So played some football, played some baseball, golf, tennis, you name it, we were probably trying to do it. It just so happened that working through sports, football and baseball kind of became the sports that I gravitated to and had an affinity for in high school. I ended up with an injury my junior of high school that more or less paralyzed my left arm for lack of better terms, for the better part of about a year. That made ME have to make a decision going into my senior year what sports I wanted to play because I lost some time during the football season but also all through baseball that I was going to have to try to make up and try to post some numbers if I was going to go to college on a scholarship. So I chose football. But I do want to go backwards a minute, because you guys were talking a little bit about athletic trainers being more than just acute care and ankle tapers. My rehabilitation process for my shoulder injury was done entirely by the athletic trainer who was on staff both for the regional hospital system but also for the school I went to wallsh Jesuit. So that's a big props to the athletic training profession because she took me from not being able to move my arm. I'll never forget a named terry. She took me through not being able to move my arm back to functionality and then eventually into college sports. But yeah, so I had to make a decision at that point which sport I wanted to focus on. So I focused on football, made again amble and it paid off. I had several opportunities at several different places, all of them were in the frozen tundra of the North, So it just happened that Toledo was the best option, and I'm thankful for that because now I have an enduring and long standing friendship with Raj. Today's training is brought to you by Southeast Professional Education Group. Are you a healthcare provider interested in teaching? Have you developed content or a curriculum but have no idea how to get started in continuing education. Maybe you sit on the board for an association or group that wants to offer a virtual summit or live conference, but the logistics, planning, and marketing are just too much for your volunteer led group. If these statements have you shaking your head yes, then it sounds like you could use our help. For almost a decade now, Southeast Professional Education Group also known as Southeast Sports Seminars, has helped individual instructors, membership organizations, higher ed institutions, and groups of all sizes create memorable virtual and live events in the healthcare continuing education space. We have the experience, the know how, and the infrastructure to help you bring your event or course offering to life. For more information, visit the link in our show notes to schedule a call with a member of our team. We can't wait to speak with you. That's amazing and it's so funny for people listening that we have listeners all over the world. But we jokingly refer to it as the frozen tundra of the North because I'm from South Carolina, so I don't do cold weather if I can help it. I've only been to Ohio in the true winter once, and I've never been so cold in my entire life. So those of you that have played sports in the outdoors in those winter months, I have a great amount of respect for people that can do that. I would just be a popsicle and unable and unwilling to move, I feel like. So it's interesting, though, what you guys were both saying about athletic training and the impact that it can have on young athletes. How important do you think it is for high school programs and even Little League teams and things like that to have access to care, whether it's an athletic trainer, whether it's someone else that does rehab services such as a sports chiropractor, a physical therapist, a massage therapist that does a lot of work with athletes and help from a soft tissue standpoint. How important do you feel that is when youth athletes are coming up? And what do you wish parents knew a little bit more about the role that these healthcare providers can play. For me, it's extremely important that the youth have access to healthcare providers. There's infinite numbers that show that so many of these kids are just being pushed to the wayside, but yet their volume of workload is increasing the younger they are, and the physical maturity is getting to be a little too much for these athletes, I think, and I may not be saying that just perfectly, or I may be getting kind of sidetracked because the athletes are being asked at an earlier age to do much more, but they don't get an opportunity to be kids. And if they're not going to be having opportunities to be kids and just play, then we need to put the value of the healthcare providers so that we can help them bridge that gap. I think dc PT a t where I think in some ways, where in my opinion is we're we may be on the brink of maybe failing the kids a little bit by not providing them without health care, but we'll spend thousands of dollars on travel activities and to get their kids in front and being noticed. But on the back end, they don't have the care to keep up to keep their bodies going with the workload. And I may have gone down a rabbit hole that maybe we weren't prepared to go down. Sorry about that. I think that's a great point. I do think it's important to parse out the different responsibilities that these healthcare providers would have. I can't tell you the value of having an athletic trainer, a sports chiropractor, a trained sports physical THERAPI, someone that understands acute care pitch side, court side, whatever the field of play is. So many times we've seen athletes go down on the field and had someone there to respond to it. But there are millions of athletes out there that don't receive that same field of play care when they go down with an acute injury. Sometimes those acute injuries, they can kind of hobble off the field. Sometimes they have to be metavacked off the field. So there's a wide variety of injuries that these athletes experience, and many athletes do get that acute critical care, but many athletes do not. And I think that's where Roger makes a good point. We're failing athletes is they don't get that on court field of play care. And then beyond that, I think it's important that they have access to qualified sports care. One, because you want a healthcare practitioner that understands the trials and the tribulations of an athlete that they don't necessarily have to have played the sport but they understand what an athlete goes through. I oftentimes tell the students that I teach at Texas Chiropractic College that I feel like some of the best practitioners are the ones that have played sports and been injured, because then you have a level of empathy for that athlete that maybe someone that didn't play a sport necessarily has. And again that's not to put down people that didn't play sports, but I think it does give or lend a sense of perspective to the injured athlete and improve our ability to provide a different level of care. But yeah, I think it's dramatically important that these athletes have access to a good qualified sports practitioner. And again, because we're talking about athletic training, specifically athletic training on the field of play, having watched them work firsthand, I know exactly what a value it is to have them out there in your clinical practice. What have you guys seen in terms of having athletes come in and this may be an adult that has injuries that never healed properly when they were young and they didn't have access to the care or even your youth athletes that come in that as you mentioned, Roger. Sometimes they're playing multiple sports at a time, or they're playing year round sports, traveling with several teams. What are you seeing in clinical practice in terms of the short term and the long term impact of athletes just not having access to care when they have that acute injury. It's a it's a physical and emotional, a mental health response that they feel like they're letting themselves down, they're letting their teammates down. They and they don't they don't have the emotional maturity to balance those and they struggle with healing and and then on the flip side of that, there's the ones that are the ones that will look at you and go, is it broke? No, then I'm playing And it's all about educating them. That's what I'm seeing is that education is coming in to play much more than just doing a rehab and doing a particular tape job. You're trying to educate them and so that they can, in my perspective, of making them more aware of what's going on with their body because they don't know. I think those are some good points. Roger. I like to talk about the bios psychosocial component of injuries. Clearly, there's the biological part, and a lot of times that's the reason they're seeking out care in the first place. There's something hurting, perhaps there's a soft tissue injury, maybe a joint injury, a bonent is something along those lines that they're seeking out care for, and they need to be educated about what that is. But then there's the two components that Roger was touching on, the psychological part that is oftentimes overlooked. There's a mental health component to their injury. Are they wondering if they're ever going to be able to play again, when are they going to be able to play again? Is this going to affect their spot on the team? How is this going to affect my performance? So there's a lot of psychology that goes into this, and we'll get into this a little bit later, but it's really nice to see now working with USA Gymnastics, they have absolutely prioritized the psychological health of their athletes by providing mental health practitioners at events and training camps. But then there's the social side. We talked a bit moment ago about access to care. Sometimes athletes aren't getting the access to care that they require, and even if they do have access to care. Sometimes they may not be able to afford it. So in my practice, we're seeing a little bit of all of that, and then it's all confounded by the confusion created by parents who like to go to Google to look up injuries, and then coaches who are giving their own feedback about what they think athletes need. I can't tell you the number of times I've had an athlete committments and my coach says I need an MRI. Okay, And I appreciate the fact that your coach is weighing in on that because that reinforces that you do need to have this looked at. But let's work through what's going on with you before we make any determinations about extra testing or labs or extra imaging. So the athletes really are in a very different place right now. Things have changed dramatically from when I was playing, when Roger was playing. There's a lot more technology, there's a lot more athleticism, there's a lot more competitive there's a lot more access to sports, but there isn't necessarily the proper access to the information that these athletes need to thrive in such an environment. You've made a good point there, I think, and I've heard this from several healthcare providers that it's not just about treating the athlete. It's not just about that one on one relationship between being the provider and the patient. You have an entire team of other people that also weigh in on it give their opinions. As you mentioned, they go to doctor Google and type in searches and get scared when they go on and see all the different possibilities of what it could be. How do you, as a healthcare provider communicate first with the parents, the coaches, the non healthcare providers that are associated with this athlete. But then the second component of that, and the second piece that I'd love to hear more about, is how do you communicate with the other health healthcare providers in that team. And this is primarily focused on in your clinical practice, because I do want to talk later about how you do that with USA Gymnastics and other sports teams that you guys work with, But i'd love to hear in clinical practice what does that look like both incorporating and communicating effectively with the parents, the coaches. Maybe they even have a specific skills training or a trainer that they're going to for baseball skills or football skills or whatnot. And then secondly, how do you then communicate with the other healthcare providers who may be also treating that athlete. In my practice, I first and foremost establish with the athlete, and I don't care if the athlete is eight years old or eighty years old. I established with the athlete that I am their advocate so that they feel like they have a partner or a teammate if you will, within their healthcare. So I think that's one of the most important parts. But because I see a lot of adolescent athletes, I really want to establish to them that they're in a place where they can say anything they like, that anything that they want to say about their sport or their injury is not going to be held against them. And I make it clear to the parent or the guardian that's with them that this is the space where they have to be able to tell whatever their truth is. And sometimes athletes are hurt because they got hurt. They're competing, they're playing hard things you would expect an athlete to do. Sometimes we have athletes that come in that are a little bit afraid of their sport or don't want to play their sport anymore. So now they're becoming i'll say, quote unquote injured more because they're really just not into it. Their heart isn't into it anymore. So first and foremost, I try to establish myself as an advocate for them so that they feel comfortable enough to share information with me. Usually there's a parent in the room for that. Legally they have to be if it's a minor, but if it's an adult athlete, again, still establish myself as is one of their healthcare partners. But then it becomes more about education. Okay, the second part of that is education letting either the minor or the adult athlete know really what's going on. They love coming in while I got on Google, and I'll usually interrupt him and saying that's about the worst place you can go for advice because there's so many things you can interpret from what you see on Google. But again that also is a place where I can establish myself as an information resource for them. But to your point, the second question, how do I communicate with other providers? Well, one, I have to make sure that the athlete wants me to communicate with other providers, have to have their permission to do so, and I know a lot of team coaches or even team sports med staff want to be in on the conversation. But if that athlete doesn't want that information included, then I'm not legally allowed to provide it. So I have to have their permission first, and once I have that permission, then it's phone calls, it's emails, it's text messages. I've got a couple of orthos that I work with here that we communicate openly back and forth with because the athlete wants us all speaking together to one expedite their care because usually athletes want to get back on on the field to play as quickly as possible, and open communication between providers helps to do that in a variety of different ways. So that's kind of what I see in my office. I'm sure Roger has his own take on that, So Todd, I'm in a lot of an agreement with you on this is advocacy, advocating for the athlete. And one of the things I like to say is I treat the person in front of me, so whether they're injured or because they're athlete, they're playing hard, or they're injured because their heart's not into it and a lot of times I'll see parents more parents or coaches will be more because the potential of that person in that sport and they're trying to maybe live by curiously through them, or they just think that the kid isn't tough, the athlete isn't or something. And I'll tell you one of the things that I see and I don't always feel the most comfortable with, but at the same time, because I value in treating the person, I see a lot of the ones that have gone through the different channels and they're like, so and so just didn't do and it or that didn't help me. I tried this that didn't work. That didn't work, this or that didn't work, and they're they're coming to me and I'm like having to skim through, Well, what is it didn't work? Was it a personality conflict? Was it actually a modality conflict? The modality just wasn't the right modality or that particular athlete, or what was the athlete looking for? What was a parent looking for? And I tell them all the time that we need collaborative care, that I want to be part of the solution, to work with everyone else so that everyone can be on the same page. And I get that a lot where the athletes will come in and their athletic trainer doesn't know or maybe just didn't do something for them or whatever the HCP healthcare provider is, they just didn't do something for them, and they're looking to me for some answers and trying to just get the open lines of communication for me. Absolutely, And I think it's interesting. And I can't imagine that there's many providers in private practice that haven't encountered patients that sometimes hop from healthcare provider to healthcare provider trying to seek out something. Do you find that more common with your athletes and their parents than you do with your general population that is coming in for just for care. They're not necessarily playing a sport or trying to improve their performance of some kind. Oh for sure. And I think Roger would agree with us too, because both of our practices are cash based, that our proof of concept needs to be expedited, it needs to be faster. We don't have the luxury of taking weeks to get results. We have days to get some kind of result because these people are spending their own hard earned money on us and not relying on a third party payer to offset that cost. So yeah, for sure on my side again, because of that unique situation, folks do tend to come and go unless I can provide some sort of quick benefit to them, which really presents a challenge for me, like staying up to date on the newest research on treatment protocols or treatment guidelines, staying up to date on the newest treatment techniques. Roger mentioned modeala. Yeah, sometimes athletes don't respond well to modality, so I have to figure out very quickly what they respond well to and what they don't respond well to. Dry needling is a perfect example. I got folks that come in asking for it, and I got folks that absolutely hate it, So I have to get that established very quickly so that I don't drive them off for information that I didn't have. But yeah, I hate to say it like that, but yeah, certainly folks are shopping around for their best opportunity. A lot of times that's monetary. They're looking for the low price leader in sports medicine care, and I don't agree with that aspect because when you're searching for the lowest price, you usually get the lowest value. So that, yes, I certainly see that a lot Roger. Are you seeing that as well with your youth athletes? Are you seeing that also with your again your general population, maybe they're active adults that are just looking to come in and have something specific that they have you help them with. How are you seeing that reflected in your practice? So I see it more. I feel like more in the athletic population of what I would define is like the ones that are actively on a team or in an individual sports program. The general public, they are more especially with it, like Todd said, the cash base practice, they are the ones that are wanting to avoid surgery or I've gone to this professional and they're six weeks in or three weeks in and they're I'm not They're still doing X, Y and Z and I'm not seeing any any improvement, and they're wanting the results. Where we are definitely a results driven practice, but the athletes, they will certainly jump around absolutely. And I think one thing too that's important to discuss and kind of hit upon here, because I think it's all too often overlooked or sometimes not necessarily something that a lot of students or new graduates take into consideration when they're looking to become a sports provider is the aspect of care that you all can provide that helps with recovery, injury prevention, and performance. I know that both of you have a focus on that and your practices. Todd, I know that you had a career in sports performance prior to becoming a chiropractor. Tell me a little bit about how that is a focus for what you do with your athletes and how that sports performance background has really served you well, both from building your own practice and working with athletes in your local community, but then on at the higher levels with some of the pro athletes, some of the elite level athletes that you've worked with over the years. I recognized early on the importance of having a background in strength and conditioning that first started straight out of college. Well, obviously I was very deeply entrenched in it in college as a college athlete, having to go through strength and conditioning at a very high level. But I recognized the value in it after college as part of whatever career from a healthcare standpoint I was going to be in because if you look at the concepts of strength and conditioning, it's about improving performance. It's about improving resiliency, compliance, capability. We're trying to do those same things in rehabilitation, maybe just at a different workload, at a different pace, at a different tempo. So early on I recognized that the principles of strength and conditioning are deeply entrenched into rehabilitation. So for me, that was a foregone conclusion. I did find out, however, going through the whole sports performance thing. So I owned a franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina called Athletic Republic, which deeply indebted to because it was some of the most formative time that I have as a professional just learning and working with athletes. I got to try treat, not treat, but train rather thousands of different levels of athletes from Olympic which we'll get into it here a minute, to all the way down to the six year old figure skater. So yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly that strength and conditioning was going to be a huge component of that because to me, that's the end game of rehabilitative care. So when you get an athlete that comes in with an acute injury, you work through the acuteness of that injury, you see them through that point where you have to get them now into moving better, and then once they're moving better. You have to get them stronger. But then what happens after you're ready to release them from care? So let's say that they come in for a shoulder injury and you've seen that injury all the way through. They feel better, they're back to one hundred percent. Is that the place you stop? I don't believe it is. I believe that now this just opened a window for improved performance. So my background in strength and conditioning now allows me to either work with that athlete above and beyond their rehabilitated care into a performance based program, or if they're working with a trainer or a coach that does that for them. Now I can make recommendations about the things that I would like to see Because I have an intimate relationship now with that athlete, I know what their limitations are. I know what they need to do now to improve their performance. So my background of strength and conditioning has been absolutely invaluable at all levels of care, whether it was for the amateur athlete all the way up to the elite and professional athlete. From your standpoint, Roger, working as an ATC, I know that oftentimes I would imagine anyway that having an athletic trainer that also understands strength and conditioning, understands, especially those that are working with teams, understands what's happening in the training room could be so beneficial. But then at the same time, it's about educating those athletes on the recovery and the things that they have to do in between the practices, in between the games after that injury has resolved itself that really can make a huge difference in their performance, improving over time. Absolutely. So one of the things I learned early on in the athletic training career is that strength and conditioning and athletic training should be symbiotic. Where we're transitioning we athletic trainers, it's rehab to strengthen and strengthened to rehab. It goes hand in hand, and being of one helps. The ultimate goal is the athlete that's in front of you. So we're trying to we have to be on the same page as athletic trainers as strength and conditioning, so that there's things that the strength conditioning they do better than the athletic trainers do. But it goes hand in hand, so the athletes getting the consummate care in return to activity and as far as certain levels of recovery go. The idea behind the recovery is so that the next day the athlete can optimally perform what they're being asked to perform, whether it be rehab or strength and conditioning. And that's where I see the work of ATSEC coming together. Absolutely, and I'm glad. I'm glad Roger mentioned that team approach because a lot of people don't understand that when you're at the level that Roger has worked at, both from a collegiate standpoint and a professional standpoint, there's a unique synergy between sportsmed and strength and conditioning that needs to be there to have an elite level program. When there's a disconnect between sports med and between the strength and conditioning, I think that's where athletes fall through the cracks. So that's a very interesting point that Roger brought up there. I know that him working with both collegiate and then his professional baseball background, you have to have that synergy in order to get athletes one back up to performance level, but then two have some weigh in on how to improve their performance. Absolutely, and Roger, could you speak a little bit to that about maybe some best practices that you've learned over the years in terms of being a member of that sports med team, whether you're working with a new athlete that's new to you, or maybe you just have joined a team, how do you introduce yourself just to the strength and conditioning team, how do you communicate with them so that that is a symbiotic relationship. One of the things is when you walk into the room, you're checking your ego, and what that means is you don't know what they know. They don't know what you know, So let's strike up a conversation and let's when the athletes knew. You're wanting to just kind of have an empty slate and there's no right or wrong unless it's just morally ethically wrong, but to have an open mind approach with everything that is being presented to you from the athlete or from the strength conditioning and always to present a united front in front of the athletes. And you can discuss behind closed doors, philosophical or educated discussions, put in front of the athlete, it's always a united front. That's how I approached it, and that's one of the things I've learned with that early on in my career. There was a difference between athletic training and strength conditioning. And then as I've grown and learned, I'm like, no, they need to go hand in hand. We need to work together instead of butting heads with things. So and it has to go. It's a two way street. There has to be open mindedness on both sides as well, and so that's hence the checking your ego. Yeah, I can, I can absolutely see how that could be huge. And do you feel like that approaching things from that mindset has served you well and maybe opened some doors and opportunities for you. I know you've worked with some very high level athletes and athletic teams. I know you've also had the opportunities to work with some bands or some famous people along the way. Do you feel like approaching things from that standpoint of being a member of a team, being open minded and checking your ego has really served you well and kind of opened some doors to those opportunities. So you've touched on working then professional athletics. I spent eleven years in professional athletics, one with pro basketball and one and ten years with professional baseball, and that's really where I cut my teeth in learning the value of team approach. And I'm not gonna sit here and say I was perfect. I thought I had, I had the swag of the ego, and I got humbled and it made me grow significantly as a professional. And they it just tremendous respect and appreciation for people showing me the way of humility and working as a team, if you will. And you're talking about traveling with some performers, entertainers, they one of them. I didn't even know who they were when I was first introduced to them, and I think that was I treated them just like like a human Like I was not fanboying or a fangirl or whatever whatever that statement is. I treated them like a human being, and I think they truly genuinely appreciated that. That's and then next thing, you know, they tell people and they're like, this cat's authentic and he's he ain't worried about your celebrity status. He's worried about you. And they have a moment in time with me where they are just like the next person. And even the divas of the entertainment industry feel the same way. And it's developing that they can trust you that you have their best interests at hand versus what you're going to gain from it. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for Part two, where we chat more about the differences in treating athletes at events versus in private practice. Both providers will also talk about why they pack in their treatment toolkit when they're on the road and some of them miss conceptions they've encountered along the way, both from the general public and other healthcare providers, about what it's like to be a member of an elite sports medicine team. You don't want to miss it. Our first episode of twenty twenty four drops in two weeks. If you have ideas for guests or topics you'd like us to feature on future episodes, let us know. Shoot me an email to Jessica at Factor podcast dot com. That's Jessica at fak trpodcast dot com and let me hear your ideas. We value your feedback and I'll personally read and respond to every email received from all of us at Factor. We wish you a very happy new year and we're so excited to share twenty twenty four with you. We'll see you next time. Hey, guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at Factor hyphenstore dot com that's spelled fa k tr hyphenstore dot com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.