Whether they are in their 30’s or 40’s or beyond, our Physical Therapy patients know there is no such thing as “age appropriate” aches and pains — and that an active lifestyle should never hurt.
But to call our Physical Therapy patients “patients” would be a misnomer; to us, they are not patients, they are Priorities.
Never a wait, and the entire appointment is one-on-one with the doctor — that is what Apex Human Performance patients receive with each Physical Therapy visit.
“Priority” is not only how we think of our patients, but is our clinical approach as well, always prioritizing the treatment of the underlying issue rather than merely addressing the symptomatic pain or discomfort that it brings. (In fact, symptom-based approaches may provide temporary relief, but the pain often returns worse than before.)
Through a high-touch, highly-customized evidence- and research-based practice, we reduce the number of Physical Therapy visits needed until relief is felt by 78% (from roughly 5 visits to 1.1 visits), and the number of visits until the rehabilitation has been successful by 64% (from roughly 20 visits to 12.8).
But perhaps the most important aspect of our Physical Therapy clinic is that care doesn’t just stop at the end of a successful rehabilitation or treatment; it continues, just as in professional athletic circles, by working hand-in-hand with our Personal Training practice, to ensure proper strengthening and greatly reduce risk of reinjury.
TOP LINE
TOP LINE
Our Physical Therapy practice is different; the entire appointment is always one-on-one with a doctor; with a research- and evidence-based method; using a cause-driven, not symptom-driven, approach; carrying our patients out of pain, through rehabilitation, to life-long injury prevention.
WHY IT MATTERS
WHY IT MATTERS
The majority of Physical Therapy providers use an incomplete model of treatment predicated on symptom reduction, cheap labor (aides, not doctors), and insurance-based decision making, leaving patients insufficiently rehabilitated and likely to get reinjured.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At Apex Human Performance, patients are not “patients.” They are Priorities; Priorities who are always treated on time, one-on-one, with a Doctor of Physical Therapy. (And never an assistant or aide.)
- Our Systems Approach is drastically different than most physical therapy practices’ Symptoms Approach. Rather than treating isolated symptoms, we treat the body as the interdependent complex system that it is. Cause and lasting solutions drive our direction of care — not insurance coverage and payroll efficiency.
- Our key metric is time — time until patients are out of pain; time until patients are fully rehabilitated; and time until patients can resume an injury-free, pain-free active lifestyle.
Treatment Is AlwaysOne-on-One with a Doctor ofPhysical Therapy
Unlike most traditional practices, Apex Human Performance Physical Therapy is never conducted with an aide or assistant; it is always conducted directly with a Doctor of Physical Therapy for the entire duration of the appointment.
Not only are patients — or as we like to call them, Priorities — treated one-on-one the entire time, but our entire Physical Therapy practice runs right on time. There is never a wait; we don’t even have a waiting room.
Further, the one-on-one aspect of treatment doesn’t end when a patient’s appointment does. Our doctors are available 24/7 to patients of our physical therapy practice via phone, text, FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, and email to conduct and manage care, wherever our patients’ lives take them.
A Systems Approach, Not a Symptoms Approach
Many physical therapists, chiropractors and even MDs will chase a patient’s pain, trying to alleviate pain itself without correcting its underlying cause.
Not only does this “band aid” approach provide a temporary solution to a complex problem — it also sets the patient up for reinjury.
This “Symptoms Approach” is partially driven by medical providers, and partially driven by health insurance carriers, who pay providers a predetermined amount based on a reduction of symptomatology — not a long-lasting correction of its cause.
Parenthetically, it should then come as no surprise that the leading predictor of low back pain is prior lower back pain. By treating only the lower back, with complete disregard to its surrounding and attached structures — from the hips all the way down to the feet — symptoms may dissipate over time, but the root cause was never assessed, explored, or corrected.
This Symptoms Approach is entirely palliative, in the true sense of the word: relieving pain without dealing with the cause of the condition.
Our approach, a Systems Approach, which treats the body as the interdependent complex system that it is, is different. Pain will subside because we identify and correct the root cause. Even better, it is for this reason that pain will never return.
Rather than palliatively treating isolated symptoms, our Physical Therapy practice begins with thorough joint-by-joint assessments to understand global movement and body function. As assessment data emerges, a comprehensive plan that integrates not only the injured part but the entire body is formulated, and a thorough plan of care, moving our patients out of pain, to rehabilitation, to bulletproofing and preventing reinjury is executed.
Because our Physical Therapy approach is a Systems Approach, we often discover and treat dysfunction before it has the chance to result in pain or injury, breaking the common cycle of injury and reinjury.
Injury-free, For Life
In the most demanding settings, when a career, and the millions of dollars that go with it, depends on optimal body function, such as in pro-athletics, thorough and effective Physical Therapy is vital, and requires a three-step process: (1) treating pain, (2) rehabilitation from injury or dysfunction, then, (3) training the athlete’s body to avoid reinjury.
However, outside of pro-athletics, the third step is nearly always left out in the course of Physical Therapy treatment, which is likely why the primary indicator of injury to any given body part is prior injury to that same body part.
This third step — training the body to avoid reinjury — is arguably the most crucial step for living pain- and injury-free. It is unfortunate that this crucial step is directly at odds with the most common treatment approach and the standard health insurance model.
We believe that rehabilitation is training, and training is rehabilitation.
Both training and Physical Therapy have the same goal — strengthening the body and optimizing movement — however Physical Therapy does so in the presence of pain and clinical dysfunction; whereas training does so in the absence of it.
The practical implication of this model is that we treat every patient like a professional athlete. After the acute phase of injury and rehabilitating movement, we immediately begin bulletproofing the body with training. The crucial third step.
Our Physical Therapy practice is predicated on the research that building strength is the single most important factor of injury prevention.
Any Physical Therapy program that eschews strength training increases risk of future injury.
For this reason, our Physical Therapy practice has two very different fundamentals:
- Doctors of Physical Therapy have strong backgrounds in Strength and Conditioning at either the collegiate or pro level.
- Our Physical Therapy practice works in tandem with our Personal Training practice.
This cohesive integration as a team allows us to strategically deliver a seamless experience to our patients, always prioritizing their time: time until pain-free; time until fully rehabilitated; and time until an active lifestyle can be resumed — pain-free, for life.
Our private Physical Therapy practice treats a wide range of conditions, from chronic pain, to post-surgical rehabilitation, to sports and fitness re-entry — as well as ongoing prophylactic treatments for active lifestyles.
Our practice largely consists of three main treatment areas: Executive Health Physical Therapy, Injury and Postoperative Physical Therapy, and Sports-specific Physical Therapy.
Getting to the top requires sacrifices. And for many of our patients, career success came at the cost of their physical health. Our Executive Health Physical Therapy Practice helps patients feel better, sleep better, and think better — while decreasing stress and improving energy levels.
Whether it’s extended sitting periods in meetings and at their desks, extensive travel schedules, or simply the body’s physiological reaction to prolonged high-stress situations, our patients feel the toll.
What’s worse, is with extreme limitations on time, self-care is often last on the list of priorities — and first to go in a time-crunch.
This unfortunately creates a compounding effect because pain is not the only problem. Pain impedes executive function of the brain by 20% or more, which means the ability to make decisions and organize thoughts suffers, making physical and mental burnout inevitable.
And sleep suffers too; pain diminishes sleep quantity and quality by at least 50%, with many studies showing this figure to be as high as 80%.
Adding insult to injury, poor sleep impedes executive function as well, even further compounding the issue.
Quite simply, orthopedic pain and discomfort reduce the ability to think by a factor of at least 60%. (That figure may be worth rereading.)
By treating their orthopedic aches, pains, and physical limitations, our patients not only reclaim their bodies, but reclaim the ability to kick the door down every day.
After an injury or surgery, there is a crucial window of time for effective Physical Therapy treatment to ensure recovery is complete. And most post-injury and postoperative Physical Therapy is perilously incomplete.
Our Physical Therapy practice treats a variety of post-injury and postoperative conditions, from ACL and MCL surgery, to runner’s knee, to tennis elbow and bursitis.
The key difference in our model is that we do not stop treatment and rehabilitation when pain disappears — we execute a treatment and rehabilitation strategy until we are certain that we have bulletproofed our patients’ bodies, so that injury won’t return.
This is the crucial step that nearly every Physical Therapy clinic omits, usually stemming from a mix of setting low expectations for the patient (due to insufficient patient knowledge/understanding), maximizing operational and payroll efficiency, and maximizing payouts from health insurance providers.
We are outcome focused. Outcome focused for the patient, and the patient only.
And our outcome, which is diametrically opposed to the standard Physical Therapy model, is a complete and sustainable long-term recovery, that most often leaves the patient in a better place than even prior to the injury or precipitating condition of their surgery.
Whether it’s golf, tennis, skiing or running, even a recreational sport is still a sport — a sport with physical demands and inherent injury risk.
While it is now common knowledge that training for a sport requires more than practicing or participating in the sport, our Physical Therapy practice is predicated on the research that building sport-specific strength and range of motion are the most important factors of increasing performance and reducing risk of injury.
Most recreational athletes and sport participants are unaware that training and Physical Therapy have the same goal — to strengthen the body and optimize movement — however Physical Therapy accomplishes this goal in the presence of pain and pathology; whereas training does so in the absence of it.
Good Physical Therapy is “training;” and good Training is “physical therapy.”
Whereas most Physical Therapy practices and health insurance plans drop the patient once pain or injury has resolved, our Physical Therapy practice continues care not only through a complete rehabilitation, but through bulletproofing against reinjury — and then optimizing mechanics and performance.
This is accomplished by integrating our Physical Therapy and Personal Training practices along a continuum, to meet the patient or member where they are at the present moment, from dealing with pain and acute injury to improving race times, serve power and drive distance.
Back
- Low back pain
- Disc bulge
- Disc herniation
- Sciatica
- Stenosis
- Muscle spasm
- Poor Posture
Shoulder
- Bursitis
- Impingement
- Rotator cuff tear
- Tendonitis
- Labral tear
- Dislocation
- Frozen shoulder
- Fracture
- Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
- Arthritis
- Total shoulder replacement,
rotator cuff repair - SLAP Tear
Elbow/Wrist
- Tennis elbow (Lateral epicondylitis)
- Golfer’s elbow (Medial epicondylitis)
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Fractures/Dislocations
- Bursitis
- Fractures
- Tendinitis
Hand
- Carpal Tunnel
- Trigger finger
- Arthritis
Knee
- Patellofemoral pain syndrome
- Arthritis
- ACL (tear, reconstruction)
- Meniscus tear
- Ligament strains
- Tendinitis
- Total knee replacement/osteoarthritis
- Hamstring or Quadriceps strains/tears
- Runner’s Knee
Hip
- Labral tear
- Impingement
- Hernia
- Tendonitis
- Bursitis
- IT band tightness/syndrome
- Groin strains
- Total hip replacement, labral repair
Ankle/Foot
- Plantar fasciitis
- Ankle sprains
- Flat feet
- Achilles' tendinitis
- Peroneal tendonitis
- Fractures
- Shin Splints
- Calf strains
- Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome
- Bunionectomies
Head/Neck
- Whiplash syndrome
- Concussion
- Migraine
- Tension headache
- Ocular Migraine
- Cluster Migraine
Our methodologies, which are performed only with/by a doctor, include but are not limited to:
- Active Release Techniques (ART)
- Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM)
- Graston Technique
- Functional Range Conditioning (FRC)
- Functional Movement Screen (FMS)
- Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA)
- Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) for golf-specific injuries and golf-specific rehabilitation
- Joint mobilization and manipulation
- Neuromuscular reeducation
Neither a prescription nor membership are needed to make an appointment.
Our private Physical Therapy appointments, conducted one-on-one with a Doctor of Physical Therapy, are subject to the following fee schedule:
- 30 Minutes: 225/275 - Member/Non-member
- 60 Minutes: 325/375 - Member/Non-member
- 90 Minutes: 425/475 - Member/Non-member
Our Physical Therapy practice is able to evaluate your insurance and will provide an explanation of how your plan may benefit you.