08/03/2026
I allowed myself to be deceived that ONLY strength and VO2 max are the great indicators of longevity. But I’ve come to realize that movement is probably at least as important, if not more. I was talking to Dr. Cristina, AMP Performance & Physical Therapy, about my personal goal of touching the basketball rim again, so she tested my jump profile on the VALD force plates. The data it generated allowed her to make suggestions regarding my training, to encourage faster attainment of my goal. For instance, the data demonstrated greater vertical height on my right side with single leg jumps and my jump from a dead stop was higher, on average, than my “down-up” jump. This suggests that I need to work on my overall ability to utilize the stretch shortening capabilities of my tendons to be more efficient with my jumps. One way to do this is to add in Olympic lifting or supersets where I pair a weighted exercise with a body weight exercise.
The adage that “you can’t improve that which you don’t measure” is part of what AMP Performance & Physical Therapy does. Numbers are not the whole picture, but they help support observations made regarding movement quality. At the Gohl Clinic of Chiropractic, we also use objective findings like instrumentation and pre/post full-spine/extremity x-rays to not only confirm the issue, but to measure the changes over time.
Though it gets blurred by the general public, I don’t see any overlapping between chiropractic and physical therapy. Different tools for different problems. Our job as chiropractors is to remove interference to the nervous system via spinal adjusting. And though adjusting extremities does not remove direct nerve pressure, a joint properly articulating will make Dr. Christina’s job infinitely easier when she fixes up movement patterns and stabilizes and strengthens the supporting structures of the joint.
