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
Neural Retraining and Enhanced Performance
In our final reflections with Jeremy, the series culminates with a deep dive into the practical applications of his clinical approach, emphasizing patient-centric care in the digital age. From the digital evolution of Baber Method to a comprehensive reboot of the motor cortex, we share success stories that underscore the efficacy of tailoring therapy to the individual's neural needs. Join the conversation with the Dr. Hanson PT community, and for more insights into the transformative power of brain-focused therapy, follow us on our social media channels.
But today I treat people who fail physical therapy two, three, four times and the things that I do with them. They're like well, why hasn't anybody ever explained it this way? Or why aren't? Why did it not fix the problem? And this is fixing the problem In terms of my modus operandi changed in 2009. I was like, okay, I'm going to figure out ways to use exercise to change the brain and I've spent a decade doing that. And then I had like a magical moment in 2013 to kind of change everything the way I thought about everything. So this is Jeremy Baeber with the Baeber Method.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to part two of our discussion with Jeremy Baeber, founder of the Baeber Method. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Ask Pots cast so far. In our last episode we got to know Jeremy a little bit better and discuss his road towards becoming a physical therapist that led to the clinician that he is today. Now, in part two of this episode, we're going to dig a little deeper into the Baeber Method itself and get a better understanding of the clinical foundations of the neural activation screen that guides the clinical approach of the Baeber Method. And don't forget that we're going to wrap up this episode of this series with part three, where Kyra and a special guest will join us in studio to discuss our time with Jeremy Baeber. You won't want to miss it and remember, if you haven't done so already, don't forget to like and subscribe to the Ask with Dr Hanson PT. Thank you for joining us, and here we go.
Speaker 2:A few minutes ago you mentioned that it sounds like quite a few of the patients that you've had and we have this conversation here quite a bit is that therapists are rushing, rushing, rushing, rushing, rushing to treat the problem that they find right.
Speaker 2:We talk about that in this clinic all the time, right Like am I treating the problem or am I treating the symptom?
Speaker 2:And so the students that pass through here all the time, we talk about that all the time and I use the analogy that we're concerned over this water that's coming through the dam and our treatment is to stick our finger into the water coming out of the hole in the dam, but at the end of the day it's the other side that's broken free, but the only thing that we see is this little bit of water coming out and that's all we're paying attention to, because that's the presentation.
Speaker 2:And evaluating the whole patient is about finding the answer to that problem and I'm happy to hear you going down this road, because sometimes it seems like that is few and far between I hear from providers, and especially when you're going to a kind of course, or sometimes that's not the conversation, it's body part, body part, body part, body part, but there's a person attached to it and to get that answer you have to address and attack the whole person one. But you spoke about communication and we find that communication tends to be one of the number one reasons why most people fail in other clinics. Do you feel that it has more to do with that rush to treat thing that most clinics find themselves into.
Speaker 1:I'm going to just backtrack and kind of reiterate what I just said is that if therapist knew that the problem if they're over here in this injured joint, painful joint, they're going oh, my shoulder hurt, yeah, the shoulder hurt, but where is that pain signal actually coming from, coming from over here? So the way we explain it to members who come through the program that I've developed, we just say hey, the human body is just like a computer system. You have hardware, you have software. Initially, in those first three months that you're experiencing pain in your body, in your hardware, it's predominantly in your hardware. But once we go past that three-month mark, when we start going down that chronic pain highway and the further we go down that highway, further, further, further one year, 18 months, three months, six years, 18 years you're now developing software problems. So the longer somebody has their problem, sales are tipping from hardware. Three months, boom, boom, boom, boom. Six months, boom, boom, boom. 18 months, boom, boom. Three years. If they've had therapy two or three times, it's mostly a software problem at that point. And that's just my experience. And my experience is different. I spent the last 10 years working with people who failed with physical therapy and writing and programming for that population and the programming is doing quite well. Talk about that later. But if somebody had told me that gave me a birds and the bees kind of before I left PtU simple and say, hey, listen, half the things you're going to see even if I just been told half the things you're going to see are going to be half hardware, half software you've got to start checking the software, and so my mission has been trying to create a system to treat the software, to assess it and treat it. So that's really what I've been working on, and I think so. What I would just say in terms of getting to the root cause is you've got to know what the problem is first. If you only think the problem is a shoulder problem, then you're going to miss half the picture or whatever percentage of the picture could be the software problem. So what happens is I come in.
Speaker 1:I love it when somebody's done physical therapy two or three times. In fact, I'm going to look like a freaking hero, and the reason why that is is I can come and tell them a different story. I can tell them the story I just told you about smudging, and then they get to start to believe and think differently about their problems. Like maybe I have a software problem. I haven't even shown them anything yet. When I start doing the techniques and I could show them, hey, this could be weakness, this could be instability, or it could be a software problem.
Speaker 1:When I start to show them and the cool thing is like guess what, if we can change that in two or three minutes, I guarantee you it's mostly a software problem, because the only thing that can change in two or three minutes is your brain. If it's a hardware problem, it's not going to change. In fact, that's for me it's like a diagnostic. It's like if I don't get an immediate change in their range of motion, strength, muscle activation, whatever my barometer is at that moment, then I know it's probably a hardware problem. I think we're coming in with clean diagnostics or it's been ruled out.
Speaker 1:So in terms of the way I'm approaching the problem is, at this point in the game, when somebody fails physical therapy two or three times, I know I'm looking at a software problem and this person is still searching for a solution. So when these people end up on my door, they're there for a reason. They've done acupuncture, massage, physical therapy, chiropractic. Everybody's ruled out the hardware for me. I'm like thanks guys, I'll take it from here. So, in terms of when you start learning what a brain-based approach is and that's the term I'm using it's just a brain-based approach to the problem. When you start having screens and tools to address that, the picture becomes clear.
Speaker 2:So, getting back to your method, you talked about software. Like, therapists don't usually consider themselves as software programmers, and by you calling it software, we are now entering the Google phase of the world that allows us to do the software approach to human movement and pain management. So you've made PT's actually sound really sexy now because you're saying that we're doing software programming now.
Speaker 1:We could be sexy. We could be so fucking sexy. They think about back pain. They think about the chiropractor there's somebody cracking their back, yeah, so like, and which is there's nothing wrong with. I'm like, you know there's nothing wrong with manipulation, you know it's a great tool, but it is just a tool. What I want to be able to give? No, it's just a tool.
Speaker 2:I have a. So here's the thing is a full disclosure. So I'm because I know there are a lot of people who will listen to you say that about chiropractors and then start throwing in jabs into the commentary system because they've heard me talk about chiropractors a lot, and I think chiropractors are wonderful people.
Speaker 1:I think they're way better marketers amongst physical therapists. Oh yeah, man, physical therapy is like the Mickey B's I don't even know if they have Mickey B's and I'm trying to find something worse than Mickey D's in terms of marketing itself.
Speaker 2:Help me frame that. I'm going to frame it. If you don't mind, I'm going to jump in on this. Yeah, do it. So I feel like physical therapy in our modern era. Right, it reminds me of Sears, right, you remember Sears back in the day?
Speaker 1:I know, but I don't think anybody else does.
Speaker 2:But Sears would sell you everything, right, they would sell you houses. They would sell you cars, insurance, rental cars. They sold and like basically produced everything in the world. Now if I had to give you the Sears is like Sears in our day, is like Amazon is today, would you agree with that? I would agree with that. Like. The Sears catalog was like a big thing, especially like this being. We're filming this around Christmas time now. So I would wait for my mom to get that Sears catalog so I could flip through the toy section and see all the toys that I wish I could have. But I would flip through that thing and I would look at all that stuff. But it's like.
Speaker 1:Amazon now.
Speaker 2:I feel like there was a time when physical therapists did everything. We did wound care, we did. I mean, we pretty much ran the gamut. And now it's like everybody else does what physical therapy used to do. And now we're trying to come back and say, look, we're still here, dude, what happened to our creds? But everybody's gone on to Amazon. Like nobody wants to look in our catalog anymore because they've gone on to Amazon. And what I will say is, because of that, I think that there we're missing out on the value of what physical therapy has to offer. But, to your point, we do need to Amazon up our skills so that we don't become Sears. This is kind of where we are right now and we're having to redesign it. So I love the fact that she uses word software. Sorry for the rambler, jay.
Speaker 1:No, that's great. That's the way I look at things. I always look at through a software hardware lens, and that helps you as a therapist. The problem becomes it's like how do I look at the software, how do I assess?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:That's where because this is a new idea and concept so I looked at before in 2009, I was looking at through the lens of like explain pain. I've studied other symptoms systems, I've studied other systems that we're looking at the nervous system, and I was searching for a way to directly interface with the brain. And so, if you look at neuroscience, there's a neuroscientist, daniel Wolfe. You can look up his TED Talk. He basically tells you the purpose of what the brain is for. Everybody's got a brain. Well, most people have a brain, hopefully but we think, though, the brain is there to help us decide who or what we're going to be, navigate our feelings or give us drive. And really, if you look at it just from an evolutionary standpoint, the purpose of the brain is to generate purposeful movement. The whole point of the brain is to generate movement. It doesn't care about anything else, because without movement, you can't interact with your environment, you can't survive. So I really feel like most physical therapists have the ability to become movement scientists, especially with the tools that I'm trying to equip you with. So I know most people are familiar with the FMS, like the functional movement screen, and that's why, like shout out to Gray Cook, he is one of my heroes. I'm going to say that always has been. In terms of what Gray Cook has done is he made screening the body like he does, orthopedic tests and nothing. Like you know, it would seem kind of pedestrian to a lot of physical therapists but to the fitness industry or any sort of industry, even, like you know, strength coaches, he gave them a framework to work off of, look at to find orthopedic dysfunction and gave them a system. And that was my motivation to create the neural activation screen which is basically the foundation of the Weber method.
Speaker 1:And before the Weber method there was a system called ReConnectX and so ReConnectX. My thought process with ReConnectX was this Rewire, restore, reconnect with movement. So what I was trying to do is kind of reconnect the injured area to the brain. So that's where ReConnectX came up with. The only problem with ReConnectX is people thought I was saying Reiki or whatever they're like, and they just didn't get the term. But I knew what it meant. But when your audience doesn't know what you mean, you've got a marketing problem. And so I had this one friend in South Carolina. He's like how's that Weber method going? I'm like dude, it's ReConnectX, dude, not the Weber method and every like patient would be like, hey, how's the Weber method going? I was like, maybe it is the Weber method.
Speaker 1:But there were a couple of reasons why I didn't want to go with Weber method. When I first started out, I was trying to do a collaborative effort with other people in other disciplines and then, you know, they tended to drop out. I went Thanksgiving. I had family come in from Arizona, california I hadn't seen them in 30 years and I did a demo with a couple of them and they're like how do I invest in this? I'm like, dude, this isn't, it's going to be a losing investment for you for a decade. And that's what it was for me.
Speaker 1:I never stopped, but in terms of because I didn't understand what the problem was like. I thought I'll just keep making this technique better, the system better, and I didn't really understand marketing. I tried to farm it out to other people and then people would be excited for a little while, take my money and leave, yeah, so then I'm like I'm going to have to do this myself. It's like anything that you really want to get done, right, I'm going to have to do it myself. So then that's what I spent the last. That's how we bumped into each other. We were going through a business marketing system and that's how I bumped into you in a discord chat, because I saw your Instagram saying you know, I want to meet this guy. This guy looks like he knows what he's doing. He could help me. But now I met you and I know that you really can't help.
Speaker 1:And then I'm doing you the favor because I am famous PT in the world.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So I basically figured out I'm going to have to do this myself and at the end of the day, I'm going to have to be the face of the brand, which is really scary for me, Because I didn't want, I wasn't comfortable, that wasn't my comfort zone. I was a very shy kid growing up I guess I won't say it right now. I was in a motor vehicle accident when I was 12 years old. I was riding a bike and I got hit by a car and my face opened up like a saran wrap of hamburger meat Like that's how my dad described it, what I look like when he saw me and so I was really hung up. Prior to do it again. I was really hung up about my appearance. I was always like hiding, like shy, so it took me a long time, Maybe, maybe to find my voice and to kind of like be, but the beautiful thing about that is before I was ready to speak.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot of lessons over the last. I actually did physical therapy in the hospital. I'm like, who is this asshole torturing me? Don't they know? I'm like 12? I got hit by a car and you're making me get out here with this walker. I'm like. Who is this Serious dude? Exactly, exactly Like anyway. So I didn't even know what physical therapy. I could go on a whole like.
Speaker 2:I couldn't imagine.
Speaker 1:Of how I got to where I'm at today and maybe I'll hit it. It's like okay, so, but in terms of, yeah, I was very shy for a while because I was very subconscious. What do you call it?
Speaker 2:Tell conscious about my parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would hide, shrink from the public eye. I grew up this crazy, weird haircut to cover up all my scar tissue. I had multiple plastic surgeries. I'm presentable these days, I guess, but yeah. So for a long time I was very self-conscious. All right, fast forward.
Speaker 1:I did a stint where I went up to Canada for nine months. Every month I'd go up there, spend a three day weekend, study this guy's technique who was a chiropractor, really a chiropractor. I loved it. So when I said before chiropractors, I think they just have a better marketing, like people are gonna go to a chiropractor before they go to a physical therapist and that's what I'm saying, I gotta respect that Because they have a go-to skill set. See, the thing is, with the therapists we don't have that. But I think exercises are go-to skill set and if you knew you could use the exercise to manipulate the brain in real time and change strength. That you think is weakness, but it's actually just neural inhibition. If you knew you could change that in three minutes, you would look differently at exercise.
Speaker 1:It is literally the most powerful drug on the market, meaning that if they created a drug that could do what exercise has the power to do, you would never be able to afford it. In fact, they'd probably ban it. Pfizer would make sure it gets killed in the R&D trials. But, in terms of, we do have the best tool for the solution for chronic pain. You just gotta know how to use that tool better. So it's like being an artist. We're gonna have a million people paint a picture, but the picture there's third grade art, high school art and there's like masterpieces, and so I think that we have the skills. It's just you have to know how to use them. So, in terms of the way I approach things now, software versus hardware I kind of said that before, but in 2013, I guess I can fast forward.
Speaker 1:So I lived in. So after I finished the chronic pain practice, I kind of went back into outpatient therapy world in New York City and in that time I started working on brain-based techniques, and so I'll just give you the long and short of it is that and if you're not familiar with the term, there's this term called cross education and that's basically and I heard about this in college the first time so there was a pop quiz. I was taking a course in the athletic training school, and if you're stuck in a cast for a month. What's gonna happen to that arm?
Speaker 2:Atrophy.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're gonna lose probably about 30% of your strength, 20, 25% of your muscle bulk, right? So the interesting and amazing thing is that if you're stuck in a cast for a month, you're gonna lose like 25 to 30% of your strength and muscle bulk. But what they found and this was the pop quiz that I heard while I was in PTA school, so that was about 2001. If you strength train the opposite side, it creates neural drive to the opposite side of the brain. So as I'm working here with my right arm, left side of my brain is doing it or firing. There's a cross transfer of strength and skills that accrues if you do enough exercise volume.
Speaker 1:So what they found, and they still find this today, is that you can minimize loss of strength, loss of atrophy, with opposite side strength training. So that was the first kind of idea that's been out there, and that phenomenon was discovered in 1894 by scripture at all at Yale University, because I started trying to figure all this stuff out. There's a paper trail of people using this effect for the last 100 years. Nobody knows it. Like it's crazy, when you talk to physical therapists about cross education, they don't know it. So, in terms of so there's this effect where you can use opposite side exercise to retrain the brain 2013,. So I started up my initial techniques in 2010,. 2011, was doing a lot of opposite side training to try to create neural drive to the injured limb and that works to a degree. 2013, I'm sitting on a tennis court with a bunch of collegiate tennis players and I'll lean back up a little bit because there's no way nobody gets to anywhere where you're sitting here today without others' help Absolutely not.
Speaker 1:And in 2010, I think I taught my first workshop in 2010 or 2011 in New York City, off, and it was just for a bunch of friends of mine. Like friends, like Pilates people, I was taking Pilates training and I invited a lot of Pilates instructors to this course because they had seen some of the stuff I was doing. They're very interested. And one of the participants asked hey, can I invite my brother? He's like really into neurology and exercise. And I was like sure, because I was like, yeah, more than Mary, I need to look like.
Speaker 2:I'm something, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:And so this guy who was an IT specialist I was gonna say Michael Sting Michael Sting and he came into my course really liked what I was doing, was so impressed by the things that I was able to demonstrate in that weekend. He told his mom. Mom happens to work for something called the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. They do workshops for college tennis coaches. I was invited to go do a workshop on reboot the brain for sports performance. I tried to create a topic that would resonate with coaches and I had some really top coaches, like the number one coach for the US Tennis at that time, or the US Collegiate Tennis. Shout out to the Florida Gators.
Speaker 2:This is a Gator thing.
Speaker 1:That coach showed up at my thing and then he was like whoa, this is amazing. And he was very interested until I wrote up a proposal and showed him the price tag and he wasn't that interested.
Speaker 2:Oh, never, take yours Never.
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter, I would, yeah, at this point like that money. It wasn't even that much money in my mind now. I did that with inflation but on. So. But in that course I met with a tennis coach who was very interested in what I was doing and he could see immediately that I had an impact on him everybody in the room and he connected me into his world. But, like, why I talk about that is that that connecting with that tennis coach led me to a collegiate tennis player who was probably, who was one of the number one high school players in the country. And then he went on to play at Stanford.
Speaker 1:Well, one of his buddies injured his wrist and was a senior in college and had wrist pain to physical therapy injections. They're about to do exploratory surgery into his wrist. The surgeon for the Yankees was about to do his surgery. That's like, that's how connected. So he had the surgeon for the Yankees telling him he's gonna go do exploratory surgery into his wrist, something he's been dealing with for a year. He's like this is great because he's a college senior. He's like, well, that's stupid. It's like the MRI is showing nothing. You're telling me I need to go in there and do surgery you don't even know what you're looking for. Just go in there and look for a problem. I'm like dude, how, like at 21 years old, we get the wherewithal to say this surgeon doesn't, this surgeon for the Yankees doesn't know shit. Well, not that he doesn't know shit, but it's like that's not a good, you know prudent course of action.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So then he asked around to some of his buddies and he got my number. So at that point I started getting connected into like people in the tennis world in like his New York area because I was living in New York at the time. And sure enough, this patient I met with me and in two weeks I fixed his wrist pain 100% better two weeks.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And it's because everybody was looking at his hardware like it was a problem, whereas I know that, hey, you know, more than three months longer, longer that injury, you know, basically hangs out there, the more it's becoming a software problem. Right, and so I cleared the software issues the way I would look for them, and I cleared them. His pain was gone. Okay, I was floored by that, so floored, and at that time he's like I want to work with you, like I want to help you get your method system out into the world. I'm like sure, kid, whatever.
Speaker 1:But yes, yes, that's great, fast forward. You know, he graduates Ivy League Business School at the time, goes, works out in corporate America for a couple of years, ends up at a and two years after working at they needed somebody to write an MSK musculoskeletal program for that for them, because they're entering that space, they needed a digital therapy product. He rings me up and he says, hey, I think you'd be perfect this, I just need you to come demo the president of the company and I was like sure I'll come out. Hey, he just happens to have chronic back pain.
Speaker 1:I do my demo, I work with him, and then two weeks is back, felt that he'd had for like four or five years and in two weeks he's like my back's better than it's ever been in the last four years, because I looked at his software nobody else had, and so the things I'm teaching right now I want to teach is like it should have been taught to us in BPP school. You can't, because it's you know, you know, do things don't happen that quickly. It's got to go through research. Whatever I get it, I get that. So then I went to an unnamed university in Florida and I showed them what I've been working on and like this is amazing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And they're like but we can't study it. I was like, well, why not? Well, unless you can fund the research, if you can't stroke a check for 250 grand, we can't really study this Right. And I was like well, thanks. I was like can I get a refund on my tuition, please? Wow. So anyway, unnamed university that you know, that I do adore, but I get it. I totally get it. That is the academic game and that's the way academia works, and I get it. I totally get it.
Speaker 1:But luckily for me, I had a backup where I could fund my own research. We track our data and I guess this comes full circle. So, in terms of this is one of the how I was planning on getting there. But what I was saying is like everything that's happened to me in my life is because somebody else spoke up for me, not for me, which is weird. Like when people speak up for you, they're putting their reputation on the line. They're there and that's. And even when I stopped, there's always people speaking up for me, and it's just by the grace of God that I'm even sitting here on this podcast. I feel really blessed. So, health, joy.
Speaker 1:They're like listen, all you got to do is just average. Just be average. Be no like in the middle of the market in terms of the players, like there's four or five major players in this market. As long as your outcomes are within their range, which is anywhere between like 58%, 63 is the kind of the median and then 68 is the top end. If you're anywhere in that range and it's acceptable, we're happy. And I was like great, that's all I had to do. I had to get those outcomes or I'm going to be unemployed in two years. Wow, I was like I felt I can do that. You know, I was like, yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 2:That's a lot of pressure, though I mean because this is the first time you're testing your your system against clinical outcomes, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so exactly.
Speaker 1:I'm going up against evidence-based practice directly head on. They have the best minds in academia orthopedics designing their program, so I have to at least match them. I saw how I do was just match them. I just had to be at that Mendoza line, I just had to get to you know, the bare minimum of you know. So that's fine. So I was like, okay, great, because if I don't do that, I'm going to be fired. So that that was basically what I was up against. So then and I guess I skipped over Reconetics. So Reconetics was the brand. So the thing I felt good about, though, is that I was coming into it having already done digital healthcare delivery for about a year and a half prior, where I'd already worked with people remotely, and our outcomes were like so much better than 68% that I was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I can do that.
Speaker 2:So, so, so but.
Speaker 1:I didn't know.
Speaker 2:Let me stop you right there. Right, so you going in, you had a company called Reconetics going into this. That's correct. I was doing this, so you were absolutely delivering this. So was this more of an in-person thing, or were you all?
Speaker 1:remote. When I was in New York City, it was all in-person, so I figured out all the techniques in-person. So what's unique about my like? When I was in New York City, I mostly worked in practices that treated one on one for an hour and I wasn't in there for one on one for an hour, just like doing stuff and making.
Speaker 1:I was trying to figure it out because it was like my lab, right? So I was testing people. I was like I find a pattern. I tested the next person. Once you see a pattern happen in 10 people in a row, you might be onto something. Okay. So in terms of now, it's like when you see a pattern, something 10,000 times in a row, you're like no, that's just the way we're wired in nature and we should start taking advantage of it. So, in terms of Reconetics, it was my technique therapy system decade. My business partner saw utility of creating a direct to consumer model where we just write Exercise programs 15 minutes a day. I, you do it five days a week. An eight-week program would cost you about $400 an hour. When I was in New York, they could deliver outcomes that nobody else could, right, but for a for a digital delivery, because I'm working with somebody one-on-one in person.
Speaker 1:So I took that same algorithm and I kind of just mapped it out and we created it like a digital, like version of it and then we could do whatever that for like $1,500, which is totally reasonable within a lot of people's price range.
Speaker 2:Just based on that, just based on the population that you were working in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in terms of so then we started finding ways to, you know, attract that kind of clientele to our website and Sign them up, take them to the program, and that's basically I'd already done that. So then I took the same algorithm have been using for now. This is now where we're in, I don't know At least since 2015. That same algorithm, so last eight years, same algorithm that I already knew, based upon the statistics that I've done, that was getting 88% improvement. Wow, I guess. I guess that wait a second, wait a second.
Speaker 2:Wait a second, wait a second. So you just slipped that in there. So your goal was to get somewhere in the middle market, right? Yes, medi-orkley, mediocre mediocrity in the middle? Yes, right, and yeah, you're telling me that your outcome level for improvement was what now? At least 88% 88 but here's, that's different, that's different Okay that's me.
Speaker 1:That's me working with somebody independently over the internet. Okay, could I train other coaches to do it? Could I train other people to do that? That's why I wasn't sure about okay, because when I explain things to people, Well, I do it. I know it's gonna get done right right.
Speaker 1:How do I know if some person, even though I train them, are gonna do it right? And I learned that was something I learned in the first year, that we're a first six month is that actually I train people to do it Wrong? The evolution, oh yeah, the evolution was yeah, we got media like we got decent outcomes in the first six months. But I realized the, the way the coaches explained it and worked with the patients, like the way we did the first six months, versus what we've done for the last two years. It's so different. Like I learned things. I learned mistakes in those first six months and then we flipped it.
Speaker 1:Talking points changed, algorithm change. There's a lot of interesting things Because I had to make it anyway. It's like where people struggled in the algorithm if they didn't want to do what I call the neural integrations. The first part of my program is something called global activation. We are literally activating the, resetting the motor cortex from head to toe. I Was not giving the coaches good enough talking points to say Explain why they had to get me funky patterns of big, funky positions. They just thought they were exercises. That's when I realized no, they're not exercises, we're. These are software exercises. They're not gonna look like things you do at the gym, right therapy. And as soon as we started explaining people why they had to get me funny posture's, funky posture are, the outcomes change because now people need to know why they're doing something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely and as soon as we gave them the why, it shifted. Well, when I was working with people over the internet, I knew the why. I was telling them why, but I didn't give the coaches enough why how to sell the program and now the sales job is just like hey, we don't do this. These patterns are developed by looking at people who failed physical therapy. So you can go do eight to ten weeks of strength conditioning. It's not gonna fix these patterns the patterns that I do. I'll say this I've worked on people who play in the NFL, nba, major League Soccer and Major League Baseball. I can come and take them after they've done everything they've done with their trainers, their PT staff, atc staff, and I'm still gonna find everything that you will find on in the neural activation screen on their affected limb, even though they're not in pain anymore.
Speaker 1:Why that's important is there's a neural. It's almost like a neural injury happened. There's a scab there and then sometimes physical therapy the things they do in their daylight picks that scab. What the neural activation screen Does it shows you where it's their scabby tissue and then it give you a means of putting a band-aid on it. But what's gonna happen is that band-aid are these patterns that reset that circuit and over time, you keep resetting that circuit. Four, five, six, seven we make everybody look five days out of seven for these patterns. That's in terms of the threshold to reset the pattern day one it's strong for a little while but then breaks day two, day three, day four, about day five, something changing your nervous system when the pattern will hold for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:And so why that's important is that this is something clinically that we're all missing, and I know why. Because it's like nobody's told you that it even exists. And so that's the big thing is I have to create awareness of like, hey, there's a problem here that exists. Now, the beautiful thing, how it all comes for full circle is, is that I wouldn't have that data. I didn't even believe in what I was doing as much until I saw the data start coming through Of our last thousand patients, and that's when I was like holy shit, there's something that's Different. So okay, so I'll just tell you what our outcomes are.
Speaker 1:We just a published a white paper. I don't know if we'll be able to link it to this podcast. I'll send you the link and maybe you can. Yeah, but in terms of I think it was 242 people.
Speaker 1:We just took our our chronic back pain program. So if you look at like you take 240 people with chronic back pain, you put them through a standard algorithm, like evidence-based algorithm, they're gonna, on average, on the high end, will be 53% better at the end of those eight to 12 weeks. You put people through our eight-week program and they're gonna be 80% better. Wow, and like for me, like I didn't even believe it, I'm like we can't hold these numbers because I was like you know, six months it was high and then there was some shift in the way we delivered it and Numbers got it like it's been as high as 85% and this is like we just have a running number where we look at our graduates and they're pain reduction and then it's been as low as 79, but for the last two years it's been 82% and I'm just holy but, but when you take out the highs and lows, you do the median or the average like I don't know.
Speaker 1:In the paper it's like it's 80. Well, that 80% is the best outcome in the world for chronic back pain at eight weeks.
Speaker 2:So for a standardized exercise algorithm let me ask you this, because all my ortho nerds are gonna ask this question what was the standard what? What were the metrics that you used to measure that, those outcomes?
Speaker 1:Rate of perceived improvement, so meaning that we could have used. I think they all got an ODI and that sort of thing, but it's like what did the patient believe happened to them over these eight weeks? If somebody says you know, let's say that you use. They started with a nine out of ten worst pain and they ended up with a three out of ten or five and you say, oh Well, they're 60% better. Well, what's even better is you just ask the Patience, sorry.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Like what percentage do you think you're better? They're like oh, I'm 80% better, I'm 90% better, and that's what we do. We basically it's, it's, it's 10. It's like on a zero, you know whatever it's you know. So 10 point scale, or it's based on zero to 100. And our average for, you know, rate of perceived improvement is, you know, 80 to 82%, depending upon how you calculate it. So I still like thinking that how is that? Now we have people drop out who won't complete the program, but if people complete the program, they average an 80% pain reduction.
Speaker 2:What's your dropout rate, though? What is your own?
Speaker 1:That I don't know, I'm not familiar with.
Speaker 2:I didn't compile the data but in terms of we could we could only look at people who completed the program.
Speaker 1:We actually did what we asked them to do. We treated anybody who finished six weeks even though we Well, maybe not for that sake, but in terms of when we track our data anybody who finishes six weeks, we count them as a graduate and we don't care, even if their numbers low, we just are average them in. So there are people who are dragging down our numbers because they're just not doing what we know we ask them to do. But in terms of the study or the white paper that we published, it's an average 80% pain reduction and if you look at those numbers, of those you know 242 people only 6% didn't have a clinically significant improvement, which means a barra, a bare minimum of 30% improvement. So in terms of my confidence of applying this algorithm, it's gone up tremendously, because I'm like well, you know what, if they just do the things that happen for the next six to eight weeks at a minimum, they're going to be 30% better, 94% of the time. What we, what we have in the program and in terms of the algorithm, it's very similar to what you guys do clinically, but the thing that you're missing is the first three weeks of our program. We put them through exercises that basically resync the motor cortex in a way that traditional exercise can't, because the set rep ratio that is being presently employed or the set rep set rep range is an optimal for resetting the motor cortex, and I can show you what that looks like. But it's not going to make sense to you. But you're using the long set rep ratio to reset the motor cortex and so what happens is you never hit enough volume to generate the stimulus that needs to happen. So you're stopping short of what needs to happen. And so when we do these things on the front end, when we put them through a conditioning program, they're no longer compensating for their motor cortex not activating properly. It's actually activating properly. And then when they do the conditioning exercises, they actually do their job, so it optimizes the things you're already doing.
Speaker 1:So there's three phases to our program, and the first we call it global activation, the second conditioning, and then the third is our chronic pain program. So if people don't hit 80% by the end of phase two, which is basically week nine, we put them into a chronic pain program, the way I would write a chronic pain program, and it's more like opposite side, training, where I know this, I know what circuits because I've tested them over, you know, for a long time. I know what the circuits are for shoulder, the hips, the knee, and so when we get people who don't get to phase two, who basically get to phase after phase two and conditioning and only 50% better, I have another arrow I can fire to get them to 80%, and that's why it's usually the people who fail conditioning that are dragging down those numbers. But if you had a means of lifting them up, boom, you can get more people to 80%. So I have different.
Speaker 1:There's two brain based areas of our program. Phase one, global activation, which there's two different motor systems in your brain that you're trying to fix. So when you go to pick up that box of OGs, lozenges or that water cup, or if you're a marathon running, you're hitting that water station, you're moving your whole body while you move that arm. You're no longer doing unilateral motor processing. There is a second brain area and I roughly just call it the global motor system. The cool thing about the global motor system, and that's what I just call exam found a better acronym and I don't.
Speaker 1:I can't find a name for what I'm. What I'm talking about Is that the moment you have an injury, pain, surgery, it goes offline and never comes back online. I've looked at it and what's fascinating to me is, even though the pain goes away, it's still offline and it's actually going to lead to another problem or or create some other issue. And the reason why I talked about software hardware is I just treated a guy 88 years old. Everybody for the last five years has been told him he has osteoarthritis 88 years old. I'm thinking, yeah, you got osteoarthritis.
Speaker 2:But that's a common thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I was like I'll give it a shot. I didn't. Here's the thing. I didn't think I could help him, but the way he moved and I saw him at church every week not the way he moved is upsetting to me. I'm like Okay, jeremy, you, you like to treat him after church one day? And I just like Hi, my name is Jeremy Baeber, I'm a physical therapist. I really do think I can help you.
Speaker 1:And the back, coming full circle around that, around that same comment. I'm surprised he didn't turn me down right, because I'll tell you in a second. So he agreed to let me treat him and I treated him and in two weeks he was a pain that he'd had his knee for five years. Mind you, five years he's had this knee pain, 80% better within two weeks. And in that interview, when I met him, he's like yeah, I tried physical therapy last year. It made it worse. So I told my daughter I'm not going back to physical therapy. And but yet he gave me a shot.
Speaker 1:I don't know why, and I maybe was just the way I, maybe something spoke to his heart. They thought like, at this point I don't know, I don't, maybe, I'm just confident I didn't like oh, I think I can help. I was like dude, I think I did basically said Listen, if you give me 15 minutes, I'll know when you know whether I can help you or not. I don't even need 15 minutes, guys, I need about five minutes. That's why I go to these shows and I do demos. I get sent all over the country to do demos because I can demonstrate the efficacy of physical therapy in a way you, as a physical therapist, cannot. I can show the power of physical therapy five minutes. Everybody thinks I'm doing a physical therapy. I'm like I could look, go to 1000 physical therapists and see if they're doing anything that I'm doing.
Speaker 1:The reason why I say that is when I start talking. We do these talking points about different parts of the brain and injury and inhibition, and I'll ask people like has anybody ever explained it to you this way? And I'm like no, you know, 1000 people have told us no, no, no, no, no. And the day somebody says yes, I'll let you know. But in terms of the, we explain things in a way that's never been explained. Nobody's ever looked at these things. And you got to imagine, guys, I am working with people digitally. When I'm working with them digitally. They're just taking my word for it.
Speaker 1:All we can do is track people's outcomes. When I work with person in person, I can show hey, this changed that change, boom, boom, boom. So that was my thought, was I was worried that like I felt like there had to be a magic show to get people like better, they had to experience what was actually changing. At the end of the day, as long as you have you track outcomes, that's all that matters today. So it doesn't matter how cool a presentation I can give in terms of like what these things do and change in real time.
Speaker 1:At eight weeks I got to have outcomes, because that's all I'm going to be compared against is my outcomes versus your outcomes, versus the standard paradigms outcomes. So, working with this gentleman, I didn't know if I could help him, but I had a better shot than the average PT, because I'm not going to do PT with you Big shocker there. I don't do, I don't know a lick of evidence based practice and when I work with people clinically, I just skip all the conditioning. I just do phase one or phase three of my program and I can get people better much faster than eight weeks. Anyway, sorry to sound like an arrogant prick.
Speaker 2:No, I think you have to be confident in what it is that you do. Because you're not, I mean, how are you going to convince me? Thank you for joining us again Now. Stay tuned for the conclusion of our series, where we will wrap up our time with Jeremy Baeber and some takeaways that we have after having gone through the clinical approach, and this all comes in part three of our series. And remember, if you haven't done so already, don't forget to like and subscribe to the Ask with Dr Hansen PT. You can also find us on Instagram at tiktok, at Dr Hansen PT. Thank you for joining us and until next time, take care and take care of each other.
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