Cutting Edge Physical Therapy For The Athlete – Podcast Interview with Dr. Jan Kasprowicz

Listen or Read Dr. Jan Kasprowicz’s Monthly Podcast Interview!
Topic – Cutting Edge Physical Therapy For The Athlete
Below you will find an easy to read transcript of Dr. Jan Kasprowicz’s interview on the razorcast™ monthly podcast. You can either click the video to listen to the podcast or simply read the easy to follow transcripts below. Enjoy!

Podcast Interview:

RC: Hello everyone, this is Liz Harvey coming to you from our razorcast™ studios in New York City where we are dedicated to bringing you top quality advice from many of the leading expert
professionals across the United States.
In today’s episode we are speaking with Dr. Jan Kasprowicz. Dr. Kasprowicz is a Sports Recovery Specialist and the founder of New Jersey Chiropractic and Sports Recovery based in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. He offers cutting edge programs and services to athletes and people from all walks of life. With over fourteen years of practical experience in treating patients and athletes for pain relief and optimal wellness, his methods are highly-effective and proven. Cardio health, body conditioning, weight management as well as strength building are all areas of his expertise. Dr. Kasprowicz works with some of the most elite athletes in the country ranging from professional football, triathlon, Division 1 athletics, military and police officers.
Dr. Kasprowicz is widely considered to be one of the top sports recovery specialists in the country and he is also a contributing member of our national network of industry professionals. Today we are going to talk about a very important topic: Cutting Edge Physical Therapy For The Athlete.

RC: Hello Dr. Kasprowicz how are you today?

Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: I’m doing great today, how are you doing?

RC: I’m doing great thanks so much for being here.

Question 1: What are the different components of a typical Physical Therapy program?

RC: So the first question I have is: What are the different components of a typical Physical Therapy program?

Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: The majority of physical therapy programs, the generic physical therapy programs out there basically focus on getting rid of the acute pain patients are in, strengthening an area, stretching an area. They utilize electric stim, ultrasound, ice, heat. I use the term archaic because these are kind of old modalities and old therapies. Personally and professionally I’m a strong believer in getting my
patients moving and having the majority of their physical therapy at home. But what we focus on a lot in our office is movement based
therapy. So this way if somebody comes in with a non-traumatic issue, for example if you’re a football player and you’ve got a helmet to the knee, that’s a traumatic issue but majority of the patients that we see, they’re working down, they start having some pain for some reason in their hip/in their knee, that’s a non-traumatic issue. So those non-traumatic issues really don’t take that much physical therapy to get better. We just need to find the disruptive movement pattern, correct it, and that takes one visit and majority of our patients recover quite quickly from that.

Question 2: What types of cutting edge technology do you use in your practice?

RC: Okay and what types of cutting edge technology do you use in your practice?
Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: We have a lot of different higher tech modalities – we call them the equipment in the office. One of the machines that I use pretty much with every patient is a light cured deep tissue laser. The laser actually it works at the same frequency as the mitochondria. It’s a powerful laser, its 25 watts, in penetrates about two inches through your skin and that laser light energy actually interacts with the mitochondria which is the energy production part of your cell. So it goes through muscle, it goes through skin, it goes through bone, it goes through arteries, ligaments and tendons and when it interacts with all those different mitochondria it speeds up the healing process within all those different types of tissue. The second thing that it does, it also increases the amount of ATP or adenosine triphosphate which is the basic fuel of all cells. So it speeds up the metabolism but also helps to push out a lot of inflammation from the area. We also utilize, like I mentioned, movement based therapies. So if somebody’s having an issue in one of their joints and most likely if it’s not a non-traumatic issue it’s probably due to some poor movement pattern that they’ve learned, we’ve just got to re-teach them the proper movement pattern and their pain goes away. We also utilize a graston tool. A graston tool is just a stainless steel tool that we utilize to break up scar tissue. Whenever you have an injury, one of the things the body does is it heals the area with that scar tissue. It does make the area stronger but scar tissue prevents proper biomechanics so the area doesn’t move well and you’re prone to re-injury. So that graston tool, we go in there, agitate the area with it, break up the scar tissue and this way the scar tissue is broken down. One of my favorite things to use is RockTape which is kinesiology tape. A lot of trainers and physical therapists they use athletic tape which is white tape, very sturdy, prevents motion inthe joints. On the contrary, RockTape/Kinesiology tape is very flexible, it’s adhesive, it allows the joint to move within its own range of motion. But the cool thing is it actually pulls inflammation out of the area, you can turn a muscle on. You can turn a muscle off. And when you tape somebody in a specific way you can really get their core to activate when they’re doing specific activities. We also utilize what’s called a power plate. A power plate, it’s a plate that actually you stand on and there’s handles on it too and it vibrates in all three axes, X, Y and Z. By the vibration, it actually stimulates osteoblasts, osteoblasts are actually the cells which create bone. So if you have a stress fracture or if you’re healing from a fracture in your leg or your upper body or even a surgically repaired fracture the vibration will speed up the healing process and something that might take six to eight weeks to heal will heal in half the time. Also the vibration increases the amount of fat and drainage or the amount of swelling that being able to be pushed out of the joint. One of the accessory therapies that we do with our patients if they’re in significant discomfort and they have a soft tissue injury or a fracture. We have what’s called a hyperbaric chamber which is actually a tube that you sit in. It’s air-tight, it’s pretty big. It fits about two adults and the tube actually it forces ambient air which is just air in the room and the increased pressure that’s forced into that tube which goes up to four atmospheres, which is a good amount, the increased pressure forces more oxygen into your blood. So if you have a fracture or a significant sprained ankle or something and you need to perform within two to three weeks, it speeds up the healing process dramatically and breaks the recovery time by about 50%. Our physical therapy equipment consists of TRX suspension straps, kettle bells, bosu balls, resistance bands, weighted medicine balls. The idea is we don’t like to have too much high-tech physical therapy equipment’s because we like our patients to perform a majority of their physical therapy at home. So from a physical therapy strengthening point of view we look at low-tech as the best tech.

Question 3: How do you focus on improving performance in addition to healing and recovery?

RC: Okay wow that’s quite a bit of equipment you have and moving on how do you focus on improving performance in addition to healing and recovery?
Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: Well we always focus on improving performance, that’s the basis of everything. Doesn’t matter if you’re an NFL linebacker, if you’re a division 1 track athlete or if you’re a plumber or blue-collar worker or you’re just a secretary in an office. It’s all about performance. Either performance with your job or performance with your sport. You need to perform in a safe and efficient manner and that’s our goal. So as soon as our patients are out of that acute pain where they’re not in an excessive amount of pain and they’re not compensating for the pain, we implement strengthening and occupational therapy as well.

Question 4: How do you keep your athletes motivated to finish therapy and fully recover?

RC: Okay and how do you keep your athletes motivated to finish therapy and fully recover?

Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: I say we have pretty much 100%, 100% of our patients, I would say, are motivated and I think the reason why is because when they first come in for their evaluation we don’t set them up with the usual three times a week for four weeks and then we’re going tore-evaluate and bring you down to two times a week and then to one time a week like the majority of therapy centers and physical therapy centers do. What we do is we usually just set people up with two to three visits. And the reason why is because when you have a patient sign up for twelve visits, you’re physiologically telling them that your injury is so severe you’re not going to get better before twelve visits. So what we do is we usually set our patients up with two visits so this way they could understand that maybe it’s not that significant. And also the first day in our facility what we do to get them motivated is we give them things to do at home immediately. We educate them on their injuries, tell them things to avoid, we tell them things to do at home, different foods to eat to reduce the inflammation. So this way they know they’re in control of their issue. And the majority of them
find that very empowering and we also give them my cell phone number so this way if they have any questions at all they don’t have to hesitate, they can give me a call immediately as soon as the question pops into their head. That pretty much gets everybody motivated.
Question 5: Describe the process of determining if an athlete is fully ready to resume his sport.

RC: That’s great and now on the flip side, you must get a lot of pressure from your athletes to “sign-off” on their recovery. So describe the process of determining if an athlete is fully ready to resume his sport.
Dr. Jan Kasprowicz: Well that’s probably the best part of the job is signing off a medical clearance so they can return either to work or they can return back to playing their sport. What we do is in order for us to sign off on medical clearance, each visit that they’re here we make sure we’re stressing their body a little bit more and building up their confidence. By that last day when we sign off on their medical clearance we actually have them do some challenging things so if they’re an athlete we’ll have them do some sprints on the treadmill or have them do some plyometric jumps. We’ll have them do some cutting movements, some change of direction movements, to really stress the area – stress the area for they’ve been in here. And then afterwards we’ll sit down with them, ask them how they feel and then they’re confident that they’re 100% because they’re able to accomplish all these things in a very safe and controlled environment but they also understand that their body’s been stressed a lot so when they go return back to their sport they have that confidence in their head that they already have done this before. And a majority of times we stress them more than they’re actually going to be stressed on the field.

RC: Okay this has been really great information. Thank you so much Dr. Kasprowicz and we know you are really busy, so we want to thank you for your time and help today. And for our listeners across the country, if you are interested in speaking with Dr. Jan Kasprowicz, you can either go online at www.ChiropracticAndSportsRecovery.com or call (917) 748-2902 to schedule an appointment.
On behalf of our entire team at razorcast™, we want to thank you for listening and we look forward to bringing you more top quality content from our country’s leading industry professionals.

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