One of my favorite quotes is that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. And how that relates to physical therapy, is that the number one skill for being a good physical therapist is to be a deep listener. And when we can listen to someone before, opening her mouth and trying to tell them what the problem is, then we can really get down to the who, what, when where, why and all of those sort of factors that are contributing to their symptoms. I think, sometimes, when we start talking or cut the patient off, A short. We miss some of that story that has very important information. Now I work in a one-on-one cash-based setting so this is more accessible to me and I understand that but I would encourage all pts and all Healthcare practitioners to try to let that patient talk for an extra 10 or 15 seconds and see what they have to say, see where they go with their own story and what conclusions they come up with.

This question is, what would be the best exercise or plural exercises for recovering from an ACL surgery? Who this is a big one right there, are whole protocols for ACL rehab. I see patients for months and months and months on end in order to get them back. So there's a lot that can go into this. My recommendation would definitely be to seek a physical therapist who has experience in treating ACL patients and go with that protocol that you have a have Or someone's physician will have a protocol that gives them different stages and what they can do. So it depends on the stage that the patient is in, of course, in order to determine what they are allowed to do, even because you have to go through the protective stage of an ACL surgery. You can't just jump into whatever you want, but getting the quad back is one of the most important things during ACL surgery because the quad will atrophy very quickly and that's not good. So we want to make sure that the quad gets back and we want to work on range of motion. So those are kind of Big things. I'm going to show you a video here of one of my favorite closed chain, quad strengthening exercises with the band band at knee height and then you're gonna stand in a little bit of a lunge, trying to keep your hips straight forward. You're going to squeeze this muscle as tight as you can put tension on it then. Push your knee back all the way keeping it tight. Then you have to keep it tight as you're coming back forward. So it stays tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight tight, then you can relax brace again. Squeeze, Push back tight, keep it tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, as you come forward. And then additionally, add in some glute. Squeeze tight. Push it back straight. Squeeze your booty. At the same time. Keep it tight, tight, tight tight as you come forward. Rest here. If you need to

I would say that spending time on preventive, care and physical conditioning of yourself is, is one of the most important things that you can do. And I'm going to sort of lump in the the mind-body connection of that into this answer. The reason that I think it's so important is that when you do strength training, or you do a mind-body practice, like, yoga or Mobility work on your own, you are teaching yourself about what your capacity of different situations is and understanding. What your body's capacity is at each stage in life? As you age? So how strong are you this year versus next year? Where have you gotten stiffer or tighter? That will feed into what your chances of experiencing an injury? Are we know that so much of injury and so much of how we age is really related to our environment and that our genetics, so understanding how your body moves and operates as some of the best things that you can do for yourself.

When someone has chronic pain their mobility and their overall physical function, sort of gradually declines, it becomes progressively worse because by the nature of chronic pain, it puts them in the state where everything starts hurting and other joints around the body hurt and they don't want to do as much. Now, there can be some structural things underlying that, but there's also a big fear apprehension. There is stress plays a big role into this. So there's other things that are Beyond just the biomechanics of move Moment that I really important. Now when I'm working with someone, I have to show them that they can move in a way that doesn't hurt. So if it have someone comes in, with knee pain and it hurts to go from sitting to standing, well, the knee needs to go from a flex position up into an upright standing position. So I show them that they can do that and other ways. Maybe we have them in all fours just rocking back and forth but we use a graded exposure or a gradual exposure approach to getting those people with chronic pain to slowly work out of that pattern.

What exercises are used to strengthen muscles? Well, I like this question because it sort of hits at the question of how do you strengthen the muscle? And that is the answer to that is, it's not the exercise, but it's the dosage. It's the intensity that you put your body through to create change and create adaptation. So if I do a bench press but I just have the bar on there and I do 100 repetitions. I'm not putting my body in a metabolic state to actually create change or to create adaptation to allow the muscle to grow. Row. So, the dosage is, is that I have to load weight on there and then do between four and eight repetitions where I can't do anymore and that's what's going to cause a breakdown of that muscle. And then the rebuilding of it to make it stronger. So it's not the exercise, but it's the dosage and the intensity that matter for strengthening

How do you maintain a positive attitude when helping patients with a difficult recovery process? I think there's probably two main ways sometimes patients can kind of get lost in the end goal only. And so, they feel like they aren't getting any better because they're not any closer to achieving that goal. So reminding them of where they were the start and where they are now, can be really helpful. I try and do a lot of objective measures so that I can show them actual numbers that represent their Improvement. And not just kind of like A feeling that they have to rely on and then also setting the shorter term goals with your patients or athlete so that they can feel like they are moving through. The process can help a lot. Think that my staying positive, and keeping all of those things in mind is really important. And I know that sometimes my athletes need that from me since they don't always have the ability to maintain that positive mindset themselves, it can be really frustrating to go through the process. It's not always like a straight, linear progression, you're going to have time. When you're doing great and then you have a little setback and just reminding them that that's normal, can be really helpful as well.