PT Dispatch On-Call Physical Therapy

04/18/2021

PT Dispatch offers house calls all weekend long, so you can get back to enjoying your weekend and start your work week without pain. Stop ignoring your pain or settling for temporary fixes. Our evidence-based method will find and correct the underlying dysfunction that led to your pain in the first place. Call us today for your free phone consultation with a DPT!

10/06/2020

A weak spine is a painful spine. Condition, rinse, repeat.

In the United States, we are blessed with technology that removes most of the physical stressors from our daily lives. As a consequence, our tissues have lost the ability to tolerate the normal stress of daily life. It's no wonder that Americans have the highest rate of back pain in the world.

High intensity resistance training has recently been shown to reduce severity and frequency of chronic back pain. Strength and conditioning programs are an effective way to not only look good in a swimsuit, but also to safely strengthen your spine, reduce your pain, and avoid re-injury.

If you're currently in pain, and are looking for a safe way to get started, we can help! Give me a call or shoot me a DM to learn how to get back to what you're missing!

Dr. Austin Hagel, DPT

08/12/2020

If you had one car to get you through your entire life, which would you invest in? One that can handle whatever you throw at it and still last 300,000 miles? Or one that will burst into flames if you scrape it over a rock?

Working on your body's strength and tissue load tolerance now will determine what kind of reliability you can expect from your body later on in life. Consistent resistance training, plyometrics, and general activity can increase the strength of your muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, and bones, ensuring that your body remains resilient long into old age.

Treat yo-self. Get that 4-Runner. Drive it hard. Don't let yourself become a Pinto.

08/06/2020

As a whole, America's health needs some work. When you compare our health outcomes to other developed countries, specifically in Europe (France, the UK, Switzerland, Germany) you find that the US has around double the prevalence of heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension than our European counterparts.

Additionally, third world countries such as those in South America and Southeast Asia, have a significantly lower prevalence of back and neck pain.

The difference between our culture and the culture of these other countries? Diet and activity. There's a reason our diet is called S.A.D. (Standard American Diet.) In the case of the European countries, they typically eat whole foods, minimize processed fats and excessive sugar, and are typically more active, i.e. cycling to work rather than driving.

In the case of the third world countries, they are typically extremely active due to relying on manual labor to perform tasks which we have largely automated. Carrying water, farming with hand tools, bending, lifting, pulling. They have strengthened their tissues to tolerate physical stress better than the typical sedentary American who herniates a disc by picking up a sock from the floor.

So, what are you waiting for? Bulletproof your body. Make yourself hard to kill. Strengthen your tissues, condition your heart and lungs, and start aging well!

08/03/2020

Very excited about my new PT Dispatch theraband! These will be included as part of the new patient welcome kit, along with a mobilization tool and access to our home exercise app! Time to get back to what you're missing!

08/01/2020

Did you know that "weekend warriors" are one of the groups most at-risk for musculoskeletal injury?

As the name implies, weekend warriors tend to do their sport once or twice per week, usually on the weekend. Since their tissues are not consistently exposed to such intense stress, their load tolerance is often exceeded, resulting in injury.

As weekend warriors, how can we avoid injury?

We must expose our body to comparable stresses during the week. Weight training and plyometric exercise during the week are a great way to expose your body to comparable stress and strengthen your tissues so they can tolerate your weekend activities without injury.

If you'd like some exercise recommendations specific to your sport, I'd be happy to give you some ideas in the comments below!

07/31/2020

Just wanted to show you all my home gym setup. It's literally just some adjustable weights and a rolled up towel as a bench. Not pictured: pull up bar, resistance bands, and suspension trainer, each of which can be purchased for $20 on Amazon. I bought the weights off of Craigslist for $150. Total, my home gym cost less than a 4 month gym membership.

My wife and I have been somewhat nomadic over the past month, living out of AirBnb's. So this setup has come with us. I have not only maintained my strength with my little home gym, but have actually made significant strength gains by isolating muscle groups and focusing on slow, prolonged reps.

With this setup, I can effectively work all of the muscle groups in my body. For the compound lower body lifts, I just do single leg variations to ensure I reach fatigue.

If you aren't incorporating resistance training into your fitness regimen, you are missing out on a number of benefits such as:

-Injury prevention
-Glycolysis (fat burning)
-Increased tone (the vanity component)
-Building strength in order to age well.

You don't need to invest in a $1000 home gym to see great results. If you'd like to see the resistance program I use with this setup, check out the link below! I have put together an interactive page with video demonstrations of each exercise, so you can be sure you're doing them right!

https://ptdispatch.com/home-resistance-training/

07/31/2020

Calling all tennis elbow sufferers! Today's video is for you. Wrist extension eccentrics are a great way to start treating your tennis elbow and are backed by research! So, grab a weight and work out those forearms!

As always, this does not constitute medical advice and does not serve as a replacement for a professional PT evaluation. If you have ongoing pain, give us a call for a free phone consultation. We are always here to discuss your issue and help point you in the right direction!

Keep moving!
Austin Hagel, DPT

To fix the root cause of your pain, check out our website: https://ptdispatch.com/ Call us today for a free phone consultation: https://ptdispatch.com/contac...