lessons – ZacCupples.com

February 18, 2019 Zac Cupples

Optimizing Human Performance, the Importance of Communication Skills, and an Awesome Ronald Reagan Impression

Maximizing the health and performance goals of your clients requires several qualities. While having a model surrounding movement and other health factors are incredibly important, how often do we consider the health of ourselves in the equation? If you do not have a healthy social life, difficulty interacting with other people, and continue to improve our knowledge base, how can we achieve buy-in? The best plan will not work. That and so much more happened in a recent podcast I did with my good friend Robbie Bourke. In this discussion, we touch on several topics: My background What are the good and not so good things that I currently see with the physical therapy and human performance professions, and what solutions I offer for the not so good things he is seeing How can we teach and encourage critical thinking skills? My model to optimize human performance The importance of having a social network My growth so far as a human being How I have used adversities in his life to facilitate my communication when working with clients? When do we stop making allowances for people’s behavior? My in person assessment process with a patient What have been the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far in my life How do I learn? What are my top resource? My amazing Ronald Reagan impression If I had only 1 year left on planet Earth – how would I spend that year and why? If I could invite 5 people to dinner, dead

May 30, 2013 Zac Cupples

Lessons from a Student: The Brain

Oh It’s On Believe it or not, I currently have someone interning with me for the next 12 weeks which is has led me to thinking about many things: 1) People trust me with the youth of America? 2) I have to justify what I am doing now? 3) I hope I can teach her something. It has been a great and even nostalgic experience thus far. I remember just a couple years ago being in this young lady’s shoes having the same successes, failures, and questions she has now. I think working with me may have been quite a difference from the scholastic framework that she was accustomed to. This difference is because our common theme for the week was wait for it…………………………………….The Brain. Most schools, especially in the orthopedic realm, teach about developing physical therapy diagnoses and treating various pathologies. However, we had a couple different cases in which we didn’t necessarily nail down a pathology yet got fantastic results. Case 1 The first patient we saw was a lovely middle-aged woman who was classic for the biopsychoscial treatment model I espouse. She comes into seeing us with chronic low back pain over the past 3 years, has had several TIAs, been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and generally lives a stressful life. Our comparable sign for the day was flexion which was at 50% range and painful (or DP for you functional movement folks out there). We discuss what we think is going on and the first