Author: Zac Cupples

Continuing Education: The Complete Guide to Mastery

75 That’s my number. No, not that number.   75 is the number of continuing education classes, conferences, home studies, etc that I’ve completed since physical therapy school. Though the courses are many, it was probably too much in a short period of time. When quantity is pursued, quality suffers. Sadly, I didn’t figure out how to get the most out of each class until the latter end of my career. Two classes in particular stand out: Mobilisation of the Nervous System by the NOI Group, and ART lower extremity. Yes, the content was great, but these classes stood out for a different reason. You see, instead of just doing a little bit of prep work, I kicked it up a notch. I extensively reviewed supportive material, took impeccable notes, and hit all the other essentials needed to effectively learn. I was prepared, and because I was prepared I got so much more out of these classes than my typical fair.  The lessons learned in those courses stick with me to this day. For the stuff you really want to learn, I’ll encourage you to do the same. Here is the way to get the most out of your continuing education. By the time you are done reading this post, you’ll understand why I now recommend a more focused learning approach and fewer courses. Let’s see how to do it.  

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Teaching Movement, Expanding PT, Embracing Failure: Movement Debrief Episodes 2 & 3

Here are this week’s Movement Debriefs. I’m hoping to get on a regular schedule once I get settled into my new gig as a PT Mercenary, but hope you enjoy. Anchoring Old Movements to New, Prioritizing PT’s Professional Needs In Episode 2,  we discuss the following concepts:  Visit 2 & 3 of our patient with the lumbar fusion Using familiar concepts from old exercises in new exercises Strategies to enhance learning. Prioritizing Problems in the Profession. Embracing Failure and The Dunning-Kruger Effect In Episode 3,  we discuss the following concepts: My Failure The Dunning Kruger Effect – and how to hack it Embracing Failure Learning from Failure Anchoring Old Movements to New Movements Expanding PT Embracing Failure

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The Squatting Bar Reach: A Movement Deep Dive

Aka How I Mastered the Sagittal Plane In our first episode of “Movement Deep Dive,” we go over one of my favorite moves, the squatting bar reach. It’s an excellent technique and I hope this video explanation is helpful. If videos aren’t your thing, I’ve provided a modified transcript below. I would recommend reading and watching to get the most out of the material. Learn on!  

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Movement Debrief Episode 1: Meet the Patient at Their Story

A Live Movement Video Series Hey party people. I recently started doing some live feeds on the interwebz. You can check me out on Facebook and Youtube if you want to see me live. Otherwise, I thought I’d share with the very first episode of “Movement Debrief.” Here we dive into the following topics: The importance of reflection Using similar language to the patient. De-threatening that language Restoring sagittal plane control A case for manual therapy Enjoy!

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The Ultimate Guide to Treating Ankle Sprains

A Humdinger No Doubt Ankle sprains. Such a bugger to deal with. Ankle sprains are one of the most common injuries seen in basketball. The cutting, jumping, contact, fatigue, and poor footwear certainly don’t help matters. Damn near almost every game someone tweaks an ankle. Treating ankle sprains in-game provides quite a different perspective. Rarely in the clinic do we work with someone immediately post-injury. Instead, we deal with the cumulative effects of delayed treatment: acquired impairments, altered movement strategies, and reduced fitness. The pressure is lower and the pace is slower. You shed that mindset with the game on the line. You must do all in your power to get that player back on the court tonight, expediting the return process to the nth degree. I had a problem. Figuring out the most efficient way to treat an ankle sprain was needed to help our team succeed. I searched the literature, therapeutic outskirts, and tinkered in order to devise an effective protocol. The result? We had 12 ankle sprains this past season. After performing the protocol, eight were able to return and finish out the game. Out of the remaining four, three returned to full play in two days. The last guy? He was released two days after his last game. It’s a tough business. The best part was we had no re-sprains. An impressive feat considering the 80% recurrence rate¹.    Caveats aside, treating acute injuries with an aggressive mindset can be immensely effective. Here’s how.

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The 6-Step Method to Reading the Shit Out of Books

What Were We Talking About Again? If there is one thing I’ve struggled with over the years, it’s long-term retention. Though remembering course materials has had its challenges, the struggle is worse with books. Overconsumption was part of the problem. Trying to read faster, and across multiple unrelated books caused more detriment than use. Much as our attention spans can be overstimulated by abundant information on the internet, so to can we suffer this fate with reading? There are a lot of books after all. While narrowing my reading focus has helped quite a bit, improving my reading strategy was equally important. I remember one summer I made it my goal to learn how to shuffle cards. We played A LOT of cards on my family vacations, and I was tired of having to use the automatic shuffler or having someone else shuffle for me at the family card game. It was time to become a man, damnit! I shuffled anytime I had some free time during the day; which back when I was a kid led to multiple bouts of daily shuffling. By the end of the summer, I was unconscious with shuffling, and still am to this day. Frequent, quality repetitions at any task will likely lead to improvement. Learning material is no different, we must just foster an environment of multiple exposures to said material. Here’s my latest attempt at doing so.

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Starting from the Bottom (Now We Here): When General Physical Preparation Matters

Professional Nihilism? After wiping the tears and coming to the stark realization of our (ir)relevance in performance, we must ask where do we fit in? Do we matter? I’ve asked myself this question many times. It is hard to answer when tactical over-utilization begets repetitive stress injuries; a poor night’s sleep, Slurpees, and donuts make someone ill; or a contact play ends a career. What could I have done differently? What was my role? Though these questions have required skill development in special physical preparedness, sports science, and stress management; improving general qualities is pertinent in certain scenarios. It is these times in which rehab and training are of utmost importance, and we regain our relevance. When GPP Matters Our skills shine in the following instances:

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Start at the End: A Case for Special Physical Preparedness

“I need to get my wind back.” Every time I heard this I cringed. I did all the right stuff returning guys back to sport. I’m talking getting guys more neutral than Ron Hruska on a tropical island, FMS scores that Gray Cook would be ‘mirin’, hop tests that Kevin Wilk would foam at the mouth over, and high intensity continuous training sessions that would make Joel Jamieson say “really?” Yet as soon as they got onto the court, they’d be smoked. I’d hear that cursed phrase over and over again. What was I doing wrong? I thought we address all of their performance needs, yet we would continually run into the same problem. It wasn’t until I learned the following axiom that we broke this pattern:

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How to Approach Learning

It’s Been Awhile Hasn’t it? I was in a place where I couldn’t get much writing done. I got out of the groove, out of taking one too many con ed courses. It’s times like this where you have to look somewhere for inspiration. For me, I looked toward Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was watching “The Terminator” the other day with my aunt; an incredibly good movie, as all Arnold movie are.   Picture the iconic scene where the T-800 is looking for Sarah Connor in the police station, but the officer refuses to let him in. It is then when he drops that iconic line:

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Course Notes: PRI Postural Visual Integration: The 2nd Viewing

Would You Look at That It was a little over a year ago that I took PRI vision and was blown away. A little bit after that, I went through the PRIME program to become an alternating and reciprocal warrior. I had learned so much about what they do in PRI vision that I was feeling somewhat okay with implementation. Then my friends told me about the updates they made in this course. I signed up as quickly as possibly, and am glad I did. This course has reached a near-perfect flow and the challenging material is much more digestible. Don’t expect to know the what’s and how’s of Ron and Heidi’s operation. And realistically, you probably don’t need to. Your job as a clinician is to take advantage of what the visual system can do, implement that into a movement program, and refer out as needed. This blog will try to explain the connection between these two systems. If you want more of the nitty-gritty programming, I strongly recommend reading my first round with this course. Otherwise, you might be a little lost. Let’s do it.

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