The Ask w/ Dr. Hanson PT
This podcast will share the world of physical therapy inside and outside of the clinic. We hope to create faith in our profession, change minds about access to healthcare and improve upon each provider in a meaningful way.
The Ask w/ Dr. Hanson PT
Harmonizing Rhythms and Rehab with Jeremy Baber - The Journey from Gator Swamps to Broadway's Lights and Beyond. Part 1
The episode heats up as with delve into the foundational roots, detailing the sweat and serendipity that birthed the Baber Method. We pull at the threads of work-life balance, unraveling the tapestry of trials and triumphs that define a career in physical therapy. The narrative takes a heartwarming turn, sharing those eureka moments where the science of healing meets the art of communication. For anyone who's ever faced the stubborn wall of chronic pain, either as a practitioner or a patient, this discussion is a testament to the transformative power of passion and innovation in the quest for relief. Jeremy and I invite you to join this insightful rendezvous where empathy meets exercise, and where every movement has a purpose.
But I don't want to like divulge his idea. You know I don't want to dock from here on your podcast because this is the most. This is the most widely distributed podcast about physical therapy in the planet. At least, that's what your guests are going to say when they come off it, and so, anyway, yeah, I went on that you know the most widely distributed podcast in physical therapy. I mean, I'm kind of a big deal.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, you know, if you don't say it, no one else will. So here we go, here we go. Yeah, so distributed in the world.
Speaker 1:So this is Jeremy Baber, with the Baber method.
Speaker 2:What do you know about that, son? Hello everyone and welcome to our next episode of the Ask With Dr Hansen PT. So what does a teetop teabird on the Redneck Riviera, broadway shows and back pain have in common with this particular episode? Well, you won't want to miss this podcast because we are starting this 2024 podcast year off with a bang with part one of our three part series where we will introduce our guest physical therapist, jeremy Baber. In this episode, we will get to know a little bit more about Jeremy the man, the legend, the myth and the road he took towards becoming the physical therapist he is today and introducing a new and innovative approach to clinical care. And stay tuned because later we will be rejoined by the entire gang here at the Ask to talk about the time that we spent with Jeremy Baber and his Baber technique. You won't want to miss this three part series. So if you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave your comments below, because we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2:So here we go, part one of the Baber technique on the Ask with Dr Hansen PT. Okay, welcome to the Ask with Dr Hansen PT, and joining me today is none of the than the most famous physical therapist in the world. Every physical therapist that comes on the show is the most famous physical therapist in the world. I want to let anybody know who has not been on this show there are a few of you who know who I'm talking about that you are not the most famous physical therapist in the world until you show up on this show and that's the Ask with Dr Hansen PT. So joining me today out of an undisclosed location, unless he chooses to disclose this guy.
Speaker 2:Listen, let me just say this really quickly. I've known this guy. We've been talking for the last few months or so. Right, we kind of created this accountability pact to take our professions, our business, to that next level, and so I got to shout him out because this is a real one, right here and today he brings his new method I don't know if I should say it's a new method, it's an old method. Maybe it's a well thought out method of treating pain in a very efficient way to the table with the Weber method. Did I say that right, by the way?
Speaker 1:Weber yes, b-a-b-e-r. Everybody tries to throw an R in there, like they call it the barber method, like I went to one. I went to this conference and they put an R on my name tag and I was like it's a silent R, apparently, because it's not there. Yeah, they barbered me Exactly. They mid-evil barbered my name.
Speaker 2:They mid-evil barbered your name and completely out of sorts. But really quickly though. Jeremy Barber is coming to the show today. I want everybody to give him a nice round of applause.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you didn't expect that, did you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was about to say you just barbered me. Oh man, did I barber you? Oh, you totally do it. Save it, leave it in the thing. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn't say Weber, I said barber. Yes, we got an instant replay.
Speaker 2:You gotta barb Jeremy Barber, jeremy Barber Gosh, we got an instant replay. I barbered you, you barbered me. That's horrendous.
Speaker 1:That was like my trauma, like since high school. So like literally, I'm like oh, back, it's 1993. Oh my gosh, oh zits all over my face Listen, man Girls paying me no mind because I didn't hit my growth spurt until after I graduated. I was so short when I, when I graduated high school, I was probably about five, six. I'm now Solid six, one you should play ball, man.
Speaker 2:You had been a point card In the Philippines. Yes, yes, you could have been the center. I'm just saying, oh, man, you kidding me.
Speaker 1:My brother went to the Philippines in 2005 and people were like, are you a basketball player? Like yeah, he was six two, so you know he was like Shaq.
Speaker 2:You haven't met Kyra. She is the, the point guard in the Philippines. She's like four, seven. I mean amazing.
Speaker 1:I will be meeting her soon, though I will be, and I'm gonna dunk on Kyra. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Kyra. I hear some trash talking going on in this place. I don't know he might get. He might get up there and get crickets. I don't know if he could do it. Oh no, neighbor might get barbed by Kyra though. Oh no, yeah. No, I'm just saying Kyra's. Kyra's a real one she's I.
Speaker 1:I can tell, oh man, I don't want to get on the court with her, because I can tell she's a good trash rocker the way, the way she owns you in that podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying oh, cut out your heart and like show this to you before you died constantly.
Speaker 1:It was amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm getting up, dude, I'm getting beat up constantly, so one of the things that I wanted to ask you about. So, when we start the podcast, like I can't even play the music Because ultimately what's going to happen is I can't Own the podcast if I use the music. But what is your high got, your? What is the song that Gets, gets baby going? Before you go into a discussion, what is your number one pick for your song that you like to to to like While it like, gets you pumped up, gets you hyped and ready to go?
Speaker 1:Um, and I'm old dude, I can tell you how old I am. I'm like, it's chemical brothers, all right, there's this song called hoops and you've got to listen to it in like 3d. Okay, and you're like, because I used to like. Okay, full disclosure, all right. I grew. I grew up in the south. Okay, so I grew up in the pan handle of florida, the redneck Riviera.
Speaker 2:I may.
Speaker 1:I may have or may not have owned A 93 parniex firebird with teetops, and and do we even make teetops anymore?
Speaker 2:No, no, it's a Definite classic. If you're, you've got a teetop working for you about it Definitely dates me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So teetops, rocking the teetops, and um, I would listen to this song called hoops and there's, like you know, 3d. But at one point in the song it's like a dog comes out of nowhere and there's barking in your ear, but you hear it running across the the car behind you.
Speaker 1:Whoa gets me so high. But anyway I hear it in my workout and go it like the dog runs through like behind me. It's like these are just four minutes of like pump. I'm telling you I get I put that's like song number three. I got kind of I kind of chill in With a little daft punk.
Speaker 2:See, I'm a little dated there, but like I want to say that punk is kind of kind of Current. No, am I they still are.
Speaker 1:They were, they were tired, but like you know, but they, uh, there's some kids, some kids know you know some daft punk Thanks to feral, but like old school daft punk, like I'm talking 1997 homework daft punk. Um, but yeah, hoops, that would be my, my workout jam. Um, I have a three hour workout man mix. I do not work for three hours like.
Speaker 2:For at least three hours if we make that work.
Speaker 1:Wow, but I can drop it for whatever I need to start the workout with and it's like I've mixed it like a dj. That like, wherever it starts, it's gonna flow and be freaking awesome. Oh, I don't care where it starts from, but it, you know, it's the right song before and after makes all All the difference with any good mix tape. And, like I say, mix tape kids don't know what mix tapes are these days. Yeah, yeah, yes, t tops and mix tapes. That's, that's what I'm gonna have on my uh, my logo, that's gonna be my tagline the tops and mix tapes tops and mix tapes.
Speaker 2:I actually like that. That's pretty fly.
Speaker 1:So I honestly, if I had an 80s retro podcast or instagram I'd be yeah, tea tops and, uh, mix tapes. I love it. All right trademark.
Speaker 2:Tea tops right mark. So so you you used to do mix tapes. I just want to get that on record that you used to do the cassette tape and then record it and then line up the next song to the next song.
Speaker 1:Yep, and then then obviously CDs came around and then I got modern, but then, like you listen to it, like there's one song that would ruin the whole mix. Uh yeah, you'd have to re burn the disc and you know it is what it is. Yeah, life is so much easier with Spotify. You know, you guys don't know how good you have at these days.
Speaker 2:You know Kyra's gonna say I was born before the, exactly, uh, and then and then she'll like cross me over as she's saying it. Oh, it's like go to the nursing home, oh man.
Speaker 1:Exactly, my hip will break. It'll be over.
Speaker 2:So I've been talking a lot about the Weber method. So let's get back to the very beginning. So you wake up one day and you say I've got a method, how do I do it? So tell me, tell me what it takes exactly. That's exactly how it happened, I'm assuming exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just woke up one day and like Eureka, eureka, I guess the way I would describe the the evolution of the Weber method is it actually, I don't know, I'm wearing a t-shirt so that you can kind of I don't know, I'm gonna give some shout out to, uh, reconetics. I don't see that that Well, but moment of silence for Reconetics.
Speaker 1:Um but we'll we'll talk about. I can talk about why I stopped teaching. Um, apparently, running around uh the country when you have a one-year-old at home and leaving your wife and kids behind Isn't a great business model, you know, being gone Many weekends, uh, thinking that that's the solution. But I'll go back and I'll talk about that. So why there is a Weber method Is that when I graduated school and I'll just kind of give you my history I went to the University of Florida. Hold on, I was like right over left and oh, yeah, yeah, and at least you had a football team at the time, at least you had a football team at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back in the day, you know back. Oh man, I'm going to tell you guys, let's not date myself even more. But I graduated University of Florida, I moved to Atlanta, assuming that the Gators are going to be in the SEC championship every year.
Speaker 2:I've literally.
Speaker 1:This is the way I was thinking when I graduated, like that's how warped my mind is. We were pretty dominant back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1:And so I was like, oh yeah, man, I'll get to see you back in the golden years.
Speaker 2:In the golden years.
Speaker 1:yeah, In the golden years. And so you just assumed, well, because of you know, previous two years, I'd gone to the SEC championship oh, this is great, I get to see my Gators every couple of years. Over the whole five years they never went. But so actually I chose Atlanta for a bigger reason. I was, I'm pretty, not not nerdy or researchy, but like I literally looked up every practice in the Atlanta metro area, literally looked up everyone going to the websites, researching them, and I found one that I was like, huh, that's interesting, they did performing arts physical therapy. Wow, as a side, like a side gig, and this was back before anybody had a concept of what performing arts physical therapy is. Now it's kind of a thing and I was like, oh, that sounds cool. It's like I could be at a clinic or I could tour around the country with a Broadway show.
Speaker 1:I'm going to send them my resume and I'll drop it off by hand if I have to. But so I put my resume into the company and I'm not going to mention them because the company actually I don't think it actually exists anymore. They got bought out. You know she's, you know she, she cashed out. I'm going to have her on my podcast, probably the one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs I've ever seen. Like well, when I, maybe I'll have her on your. No, I'm not going to have her on my podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm saving her for me Saving her for you. I want to be on there when you do it, because I'm definitely listening to the episode regardless, yeah.
Speaker 1:She's absolutely brilliant In terms of, like, her entrepreneurial skills. She's like a bulldog. Can I say bulldog on this Because I mean everybody hates Georgia. That's the floor to say I didn't mean. I went to work for this company and within three and a half years so that was mostly outpatient orthopedics, you know, everybody, you know, thinks that when actually not everybody thinks they're good, I mean I bet, I don't know, maybe maybe it's different for new grads today because maybe they you've got that DBT behind your name and you got that kind of this puff, you know. You know, pumped up ego.
Speaker 1:I graduated and I knew I was fricking terrible. I literally knew it. I was like dude, I am garbage. I'm going to say that straight up. I was so insecure about my skill levels that I was taking continuing ed like a fricking madman and that actually didn't stop for about a decade. But I was so insecure that I didn't know enough that I was spending a big chunk of change every year, every paycheck, to get better.
Speaker 1:And the nice thing about the practice that I work for is that they also did, you know, development for you as a clinician. But I got hand selected to do the first like full time Broadway gig for this company. So they invested in me and they knew because if I wasn't successful that would be the end of the kind of the line for this company. So I really took it to heart that I've got to go out there and be a rock star for this company and that would, I don't know, suffice to say. They got more Broadway shows after I came through because of the job you know I did and I'm obviously in the relationship she had. But if I've gone out on the tour and been terrible and that kind of, you know, kills the golden goose for her. So she ended up becoming the dominant tour physical therapy for touring productions.
Speaker 1:Then she has, you know, live Nation. She's got like movies studios, I can't say, but like she she's the go-to and I feel like I had a part in that. At least I played my part. I did my job Right. I went out there, rocked it out. So the show that I was almost called Moving Out is a Billy Joel song. Kids don't know who Billy Joel is. Look at, look him up Piano man. But no, billy Joel, he's Piano man. Yeah, piano man, exactly Piano man. If you're going to start, you're going to start with.
Speaker 2:Uptown Girl. Is it another good one, uptown Girl?
Speaker 1:Wait, a second Wait, a second Wait a second.
Speaker 2:I got to make this quick point, though. If you think, what is your favorite? Billy Joel song.
Speaker 1:Please, having gone, put that, put that inside of the comment section.
Speaker 2:Go ahead and hit us up and tell us what your favorite, what your favorite Billy Joel song is Hype song or otherwise. That'd be cool.
Speaker 1:For me now, having been through like touring and listening to Billy Joel for three and a half years, I understand, I understand his catalog a little bit deeper, but like when I hear a song come through on the radio, I'm like, oh, I'm backstage in Memphis or Kat, like that's how deep it is when I hear it. Or now I just think of my wife, because I met my wife on that show and so every time I think about hearing her or hearing those songs it makes me think of her. And there were so many marriages that happened because of that show, because you had a bunch of people under 30 touring the country together living their best life per diem. I don't know if you guys know what per diem is, but my hotel, my food, everything was paid for. So I was backed like banking checks. I was banking, saving up for I don't know what, but I was saving. I know what I was saving up for. I'll tell you guys later. And that was the strategic decision and it actually is paid off Like so well. So back to the original. So yeah, so the background I worked as a Broadway touring production for a tour I toured for five years.
Speaker 1:So I did moving out. For three. I did Wicked. For a year and a half I worked on Broadway doing this show called Sister Act as their PT. After that I was kind of I don't think burnt out on Dance Physio, but I could have done it forever. I could have like that could have been my deal. I was studying Pilates, I was doing all this stuff to be a dance physio and then I took a job and then I started interviewing for different places and I took an interview at a chronic pain practice and in the interview, oh man, I don't know if I can say this, and I'm not going to say it, this is okay.
Speaker 2:Well here, imagine. You prepped it, you got to say it now.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I'd like never told anybody this. Pat said something in the movie. I'll just leave it. I'm going to call Pat. So, oh, I already said it's Lauren, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that interview changed my life because he said one thing that kind of piqued my interest. And this is when people hit you with something at the end this is how he closed it, because I wasn't sure if I was going to take the position. He's like this will be the toughest job you're going to ever have in your career, but you're going to love every minute of it. And I was like that was intriguing, especially for somebody who had good success in an outpatient setting. You know, when you work with athletes and you work with outpatient people and you kind of have this frame of mind like, yeah, I've been successful, you know every step of the way. And I was like, yeah, you know what these people need is just a really good manual therapist.
Speaker 1:At that point I'd taken a ton of manual therapy and I thought manual therapy was the answer. And I was like, yeah, I'm game, I'm going to give, I'm going to, I'm going to come work here and I'm going to be challenged. And it was an interesting holistic practice because they came into physical therapy once or twice a week. They came in there, did yoga and they got pain management. They got injections, drugs, and I was like, oh, that's a very holistic view. He had written a book on yoga and back pain, so he was kind of like this holistic before holistic was a thing and so I was like, yeah, I'm going to give it a shot.
Speaker 2:So so, really, really quickly is this a physician-owned practice? Is this a PT-owned practice? Like what level of practice it's a?
Speaker 1:physician. He's a physiatrist. He's a well-known physiatrist in New York City. Okay, so, yeah, so I was like I'm game and so I went to work there and to give you some background on being the toughest patients you'll ever see majority of my patients, 80% of my caseloads, have already failed physical therapy two or three times.
Speaker 2:Wow, coming in with that. So I don't mean to interrupt you here, but when you, when you say that they've failed physical therapy two or three times, when you're having that conversation with them, what is it like, because they're already looking at you like what are you gonna do for me that the other guy couldn't do? I mean, is that how that starts?
Speaker 1:That is essentially one of the big take-home, like light bulb moments of my career later, mmm, because how I would talk to that person today is so different than how I would have talked to them 15 years ago. In fact, I my spiel was probably like hey, we're gonna stretch, strengthen, mobilize, do all you know, basically the standard PT stuff. That's not the message they needed to hear and I wasn't even putting myself in their shoes. I was basically, you know, at this practice it's a chronic pain practice. So physical therapy was more like fries. It's like, hey, we got yoga, you know that, you know your soft drink, we've got the injections, that's the burger Physical therapy. And we have physical therapy. And it was you're doing all things. So you're getting kind of the happy meal approach to holistic therapy. So and you know so I was the physical therapist. I wasn't like I'm gonna solve your problem. They weren't coming there just for physical therapy. They're coming there for a holistic approach and not. You know, I respect that, but in terms of the conversations that I was having then it was basically the conversation I was programmed to give.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like hey, we're gonna stretch, we'll get stronger to not thinking that yeah, they've already done that dumbass and that's the way I look at it, like what a dumbass I want, like I know, say this, probably, even though I had like good street cred for the first you know, 8 to 10 years in my career and this is what you will figure out, new grads is that you probably have your head up your ass. You probably not even hear this because your head is actually up your ass and uh. But when you get it out of your ass, like I and I will just say this I I've known some of the things I've known for at least a decade, but I haven't spoke up because it's like who am I, who am I to? You know, tell people what they should or should not do. It's like I'm not gonna shoot on people, like I had people who, like I had a really smart chiropractor say that one time I was like you're right, I'm not here to should. All my patients or people are coming through my courses.
Speaker 1:But In terms of what I would say for a new grad, if you haven't practiced for five years, you should probably just pay attention and just get better. And for me I was like I took that approach for probably the first decade of my career. I'm not telling people what to do. What do I know? You know, even now I've practiced for 22 years and I'm still I'm starting to feel like I should, and it's mostly because I'll get to this later. But now there's there's there's no doubt in my mind that people should be listening to me, and, and I didn't feel comfortable with that for a long time. But now I have outcomes that I can't explain away, and if I don't, then there are people suffering unnecessarily, and you know so I just like shit man, you'll make me cry on your podcast. All right, we're gonna have to cut this out.
Speaker 2:No, we're not cutting this out, my friend, oh man, but you know what? The thing? The thing about this, though, jeremy, and it, which is so important to any clinician who's out there and Treating patients if you're not passionate about the things that you're doing, pack up. I watch physiogram like every day, and I watch people complain about how terrible this is and how terrible that, and I get that. But this is why People like Jeremy are so important to our profession and and I know Jeremy has his own frustrations about the things that we do but it's the passion that drives the things that you do every day. I've known OTS to cry over their patients, and PTS and speech therapists. It's because they're passionate about the things that they do, and this is why this matters and this is why Jeremy's on the number one rated show in the world Physical therapy.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am right now. Right now, I'm an undisclosed location, location that could be my wife's Pilates room. It could be, but we're not sure Exactly.
Speaker 2:I'm saying it's probably not so okay, so go ahead. I'm helping you recover and rebound my friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you very much. That was a nice recovery.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that but I get the passion, though I get the passion.
Speaker 1:So I'm not gonna tell people why they should listen up, but in terms of 10 years ago, 15 years so I was working in that practice 14 years ago from today I learned very quickly that what I was doing wasn't helping the people. In fact, what's the definition of insanity? Doing the exact same thing and expecting a different result? So here I am, taking people through physical therapy again. Maybe the third time's a charm, maybe I'm that good. No, I wasn't that good, and I know that what I was doing was basically Legitimate.
Speaker 1:It's helped the majority of the people that I've been working with the basically the seven years prior, and that's when I knew, within my six months of working there, that I don't know enough about chronic pain. In fact, I don't know, jack, at least lot about chronic pain. There's something different about what I'm seeing on a day-to-day basis, and so that's when I went and took the course explain pain. Shout out to Laura Marmosly and David Butler for that book. That totally changed my perspective on what I should and should not be doing with chronic pain and what's the name of the book? Again, explain Pain, explain Pain.
Speaker 1:That was the 2008, 2009 edition. It's obviously been updated, supercharged, but when I took my course, it was actually taught by another famous pain science guy, adrian Loo, and he closed the course saying something. And now the message in that course is quite different than what was being taught and it's being taught today because I graduated in the dark ages, but in terms of at the time and it still is it's kind of a cutting edge approach is that the longer somebody suffers with chronic pain, it creates functional changes in the nervous system. So if I assuming this is video podcasting can see if I move my right arm and it's absolutely pain free, that movement's created by an electrical signal on the left side of my brain. If I have a left shoulder injury, which I did when I went to PT school imagine injuring your shoulder playing volleyball and then by the time you graduate PT school you can lift your arm about this high, and that's as high as you can frickin lift it. After PT school and all the great things I learned there.
Speaker 2:But wait a second. You didn't have like a barrage of students, like beating you up and fixing that shoulder every study session.
Speaker 1:And even with my knowledge base we couldn't. Now it's like I could fix this in like two minutes, but at the time I had a very limited, restricted shoulder. So guess what that creates Functional changes on the right side of my brain. It's almost like you get a software downgrade the electrical blueprint electrical signal that would produce that movement basically degrade over time. You commentate more and more for the dysfunction there and so instead of getting a very clear, precise electrical signal, you get a blurry, muddled signal and they call that smudging. And so at that time I was like huh what, what is this thing? And so what will happen when people have chronic pain? The longer you have chronic pain, you get this chronic smudging of the motor cortex, sensory cortex, and it's an artifact that you see in people with chronic pain. But yet you can give those people, you know, standard therapy exercises, not really changing it to that grade of a degree.
Speaker 1:In terms of the research on chronic back pain in America, if you take somebody with chronic back pain, chronic back pain, which is most of what you guys are seeing on a daily basis, is anywhere between 29 and 53% of people, or I'm sorry, let me back that up when you look at the research, the efficacy for physical therapy for a lot of times is anywhere between 29 and 53% pain reduction for chronic back pain, and that's kind of the average and that's not even at the best. Let's say they're just averaging 53% improvement for chronic chronic back pain. It's still 50%, not the greatest number. It's a good enough number, but it's not great. So why I go back to this is that when you look at, when they look at smudging of different body parts whether it's a wrist, a knee, a shoulder, an elbow the number one part of the body that displays the greatest amount of net capital smudging is the lumbar spine. Now go look at the research, or so let's go look at the spend on muscular lumbar problems surgery, physical therapy. In the United States alone it's over $100 billion. We're spending more than we ever have in the last 40 to 50 years on the problem. But the problem's not going away. Surgery utilization is going up, physical therapy utilization is going up, and so why I bring that up is that nobody in PT school ever told me hey, your target tissue isn't the injured area, it's the neural representation of that injured area.
Speaker 1:So let me back it up, because the first person who said that to me, who basically changed my whole career arc at that point, was Adrian Loo. That's how he closed the weekend that I took Explained Pain in Washington DC and I hopped on a bus and that was my story. For about four or five years I go hop on a bus. Do you have buses these days? I don't know. I was in New York City at the time, yeah no everything, I go hop on a bus Boom.
Speaker 1:I go to Boston. Hop on a bus Boom, boom, boom or train. A bus is cheaper. You can get like a 20-pound. Sometimes you'll get $8, like Mega Bus ticket. Oh yeah, oh yeah, $8. So if you buy it in advance and you know where you're going. So he closed the course and he said your job as a therapist does not to treat the injured body parts, your job as a therapist is to treat the neural representation of that injured area.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening and stay tuned for the next video.
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