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Prakash Chandran (Host):  Did you know Emerson Hospital Has a center that helps athletes achieve their personal best with programs tailored to their individual goals and lifestyle? We’re going to learn about it today with Ryan Stoddard, the Supervisor of Sports Medicine at Emerson Hospital’s Clough Sports Medicine and Performance Center.

This is Healthworks Here, the podcast from Emerson Hospital. I’m Prakash Chandran. So, first of all Ryan, it’s great to have you here. this center really does sound amazing and I’d love to learn a little bit more about what you do there.

Ryan Stoddard, PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS (Guest):  Thank you for having me. I’d love to tell you more about it. at the Sports Medicine and Performance Division, we essentially take injured people, not injured people, athletic minded, whether that be professional athlete, a college or high school athlete, someone young, someone older and we try to get them to their personal best. Some of that is on the sports medicine side of physical therapy where we take insurance and bring them through physical therapy and kind of a more advanced or higher functioning spirit in our gym. And for some of those, it’s more like a cash pay performance where they are really trying to gain that extra one percent. So, that’s essentially what a typical day is in our sports medicine and performance center.

Host: Okay and what are some of the things that you do there and maybe talk a little bit more specifically about the patient population. Are you mostly seeing people through rehabilitation or are these like weekend warriors or are you talking about professional athletes?

Ryan:  We see all kinds of athletes. The best screen I would say that we have people who want to come to see us in our sports medicine division is do they self-identify as an athlete. So, that could be somebody who is literally on a pro-circuit or on a tour or being sponsored or paid in any way as a professional. And those professionals are paid for by insurance because that is their job. They are either a scholarship athlete in school or they’re a paid performance athlete as their way to make a living. So, insurance pays for those.

We additionally accept cash pay for those looking for performance enhancement. So, we have a number of different types of people who come in. Some are youth, some are adults, some are older adults, some are retired, and they are looking to gain an edge in their sport. And we tailor the exercises specifically to that activity or if they have some limitations, we kind of target those limitations with specific corrective exercises and patterns and regimens to get them back to or above where they were previously.

Host:  Yeah, I love how tailored and focused it is to the individual and I’d love to learn a little bit more about the specific exercises that you use to help an athlete get stronger.

Ryan:  Oh man, I’d love to talk to you about that. We can talk all day. Let’s see, it’s fall so we’ll pick a normal sport like let’s say soccer. Depending on the position which we first need to know like who they are, what’s their age group, what phase of growth are they? Are they youth, are they in the middle of a growth spurt, are they adult? Would they be a young adult or an older adult? So, knowing what their physiology is; we kind of then hone in on what their activity would be. So, a mid-fielder versus a goalie, versus a striker; we would treat a little bit differently what the end-phase is of what they are doing.

If they have some kind of injury and we’ve screened out the limitations, let’s say range of motion or strength or one-sided weakness; we’ll target those. So, specific exercises would be trying to gain equality on their less dominant side or on their not injured side. And if they have progressed beyond those kinds of exercises; we will now take them up to speed, agility, quickness, plyometric activities. So, there might be box jumps, there might be ladder drills, there might be heavy sled pushes. If they are a sprinting spot; we would have them do a certain amount of weight over a certain distance and try and hit a certain time. If they were a mid-fielder and they are more of an endurance athlete on the soccer fields, same field, same teammates; we might have them doing some more conditioning drills and work in the two and three minute work zones instead of the twenty second, thirty second work zones.

If they are a goalie, we might have them work with explosive drills, jumping, left, right, forward, backward, reaching, flexibility type things. So, depending on who they are and what they are looking for, or if they are coming to us to figure that out; those are kind of the areas we’d look for.

Host:  Yeah, it really sounds like you kind of start with that assessment and really figure out what their goals are and everything after that is a science. Like you’ve probably seen so many athletes at this point that you really know the regiment of exercises to give them to really enhance their performance, wouldn’t you say?

Ryan:  I would agree. We have such a great team of talented therapists and athletic trainers on staff. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I started in 1996 and I got my doctorate in 2003 and since then, I’ve seen so many different levels of so many different sports and different athletes and I’m no expert in this area or that area, but we know that we’ve got somebody that is and so we’ll really pair them up with the best therapist to kind of look at things and we have again, a pretty good team. we can say heh, take a look at this. what do you see with this? Any ideas on how to enhance that or to get over this? And we all fill together.

Host:  Yeah, that’s amazing. So, I’m sure the audience is listening and especially me personally, I’d love to learn about a couple of examples of athletes that have come to you and maybe you’ve helped them out and I’m curious as to what they’ve been able to do after going to the Sports Performance Center?

Ryan:  Okay, if I can take you through a fast forward version of one recent patient that we’ve had. She had a major injury skiing; I want to say Colorado or Utah and she had eight surgeries and was really coming in at what you’d consider to be like ground zero. Lots of limitations, lots of things to work on in very many different areas and at the end of her rehab; again, we are fast forwarding several months to kind of okay I feel like I can get back out there and start skiing again. She was on crutches and didn’t have use of her lower leg and there was a number of issues.

At the end, she’s pushing her body weight on a sled down twenty yard turf as fast as she can possibly do it with all the right movement patterns, really good lower body control, good core stability and strength. People are coming in for a work out. Because it’s rehab, doesn’t mean it’s easy and because it’s rehab doesn’t mean it’s like laying on the table and doing some easy things. Things start there. But if you want to get back to the level that you were capable of before injury or if you want to rise above that level; we are going to have you work pretty hard.

Host:  Yeah, it definitely sounds like it and thank you for sharing that story. So, really, it seems like your approach is get them back to a baseline, have them push themselves just as much as they possibly can and once they are there; how can they push past that baseline and really get to that peak performance? Is that how you would say you analyze things?

Ryan:  Yeah and examples of that one patient’s exercises if you wanted anything very specific; we would have her start maybe on like an assault bike or rower and have her workout at a certain workload and we can measure that either in wattage to gauge intensity or any other way with heart rate straps and other things. We could do metabolic conditioning to get her heart rate and breathing into a certain zone where we are going to look for a certain physiological change in her body. We have ordinary bikes and other things too. We are getting a high tech treadmill this year. We have the Vasper where we incorporate blood flow restriction training for some of our athletes, if that’s appropriate.

I mentioned that she used a weighted sled which we can start light and by light it’s already starting at 70 plus pounds and then we work that up to typically what an athlete’s body weight is. For some power and strength athletes, if you are thinking football and hockey; we would have them do much, much, much more and one of our clients had all of the weight that we have in the gym plus me on top of the sled and he was pushing it pretty easily. Yeah, it was ridiculous. I was afraid the turf would melt or something. But he did great.

Everything goes kind of in phases and if you think of something that hopefully most of our listeners have heard of; you think of like a rotator cuff repair and you can’t start pitching day one after surgery; you go through phase one and when you gain phase one, you can then progress into phase two and if a certain amount of healing has happened and you met these guidelines; now you can progress to phase three. So, we take that approach with our athletes that are not injured, just looking for that edge too and in the case of this patient, she started with table level exercises just getting muscles to turn on again. There was like complete, complete weakness where things weren’t even working. And she finished at the end phase where she’s pushing her body weight heavily.

We did other things that were pretty sport’s specific or if they had a specific need or want like oh, I notice that that person over there was doing Olympic lift. Can you teach me Olympic lift? Is that going to help my rehab? And sure, of course it is, anytime you start to use multiple joints, ankles, knee hip, lower back, upper back, middle back, shoulders, er cetera; you are going to get a well rounded performance out of your body and that will hopefully bring you back to your baseline.

Host:  Certainly. One thing that I wanted to comment on is just how excited you sound as you are talking about these things. And I can really tell that you have a passion for it. so, I’d love to learn a little bit more about your background and why you love what you do so much.

Ryan:  Thanks for asking. I get easily excited. And I get really excited talking about this. So, I’m happy to be here. Where did I start? I started out at UMass Lowell in 1996 as a freshmen in exercise physiology. And I worked in a PT clinic right away in my first semester my freshman year to make sure I wanted to get into physical therapy and not only strength and conditioning or not only some other area. So, after four years of undergrad at UMass Lowell, I got my strength and conditioning certification through the National Strength and Conditioning Association in 2000 and then I went right into PT school and I went to UMass Lowell for my doctorate and we graduated in 2003. I married my wife right after that. She was also in that same class with me all the way through those seven years of school. I got my board certification in orthopedics so it’s a specialty clinical board after your national physical therapy boards just to kind of differentiate and specialize in orthopedics and sports medicine. And I have been doing this at Emerson since 2012 perhaps, maybe even sooner than that.

Host:  I love it. and it definitely sounds like they are in good hand if they go to Emerson to see you. One of the last things that I wanted to ask in wrapping up here is I know that the Sports Performance Center deals with a number of different sports and it obviously depends on the sports that you are trying to get better at or rehab from; but I’d love your best tip for helping a general athlete get stronger. What is something that you wish more athletes knew before they came to see you?

Ryan:  That’s a million dollar question. And I ask some friends these questions all the time. I think the best single tip for anyone to get stronger or to get faster or to get towards their goal is just to commit to the plan. So, when you find a plan that works for you or you find someone who you can relate to, go with that plan, commit to it and execute every piece of that to the fullest that you can do on that day or at that moment or in that minute or in that second. But whatever it is, commit to it, don’t give up on it. if it says it’s going to take 12 weeks, then give it 13 weeks. If it says it’s going to happen, believe in it and go after it.

Host:  All right Ryan. I really appreciate your time today. And for everyone listening, commit to that plan. That’s Ryan Stoddard the Supervisor of Sports Medicine at Emerson Hospital’s Clough Sports Medicine and Performance Center. Thanks for checking out this episode of Healthworks Here. anyone needing an injury evaluation can contact 978-589-6911 to learn more about Emerson’s Sport Performance Center. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thanks, and we’ll talk next time.