Bringing BFR to the NFL: Geoff Kaplan, PT, ATC

Summary: Episode 83

In this episode, Geoff Kaplan, PT, ATC, SCS, CSCS shares his extensive experience in NFL sports medicine, focusing on his pioneering use of blood flow restriction (BFR) therapy and its evolution from rehab to performance enhancement. Discover how BFR has transformed athlete recovery and performance strategies in professional sports.

Keywords

Blood Flow Restriction, NFL, Sports Medicine, Athlete Recovery, Performance Enhancement, Geoff Kaplan, BFR Evolution, NFL Sports Science

Chapters

(00:00) - Johnny introduces Geoff Kaplan and sets up the BFR story
 (05:05) - Growing up in New Jersey and choosing sports PT after multiple shoulder surgeries
 (06:02) - Why Wisconsin fit his PT and athletic training plan
 (07:26) - Combining athletic training with PT to work at the “tip of the spear”
 (07:53) - First NFL break with the Green Bay Packers internship
 (09:20) - Returning to New Jersey, then getting the call from the Houston Oilers
 (10:40) - Taking the Oilers internship for $3.25 an hour and living at the facility
 (12:36) - The LA Raiders offer and the Oilers matching it the next day
 (14:03) - Houston to Tennessee and the move from Oilers to Titans
 (15:00) - Joining the Texans and building collaboration between rehab and performance
 (16:26) - Johnny’s first BFR exposure at the Center for the Intrepid
 (17:58) - Geoff’s view of the Jadeveon Clowney rehab case
 (19:54) - Why the Veterans Day ESPN coverage helped push BFR into NFL awareness
 (20:23) - From “why isn’t this frontline?” to standard rehab equipment
 (21:56) - Clowney’s non-weight-bearing rehab and preserving thigh size with BFR
 (23:24) - Return to play and the long-term impact on career longevity
 (24:37) - Walt Lowe’s progressive, outside-the-box surgical thinking
 (26:07) - How BFR spread to every player and became a staple in Houston
 (28:00) - Transitioning BFR into the performance side and the weight room
 (29:48) - How player trust and visible effort make BFR easy to sell
 (31:36) - IPC, recovery programming, and why the research drove adoption
 (33:15) - The cost and portability advantage of BFR units
 (34:39) - Using BFR on game weeks, pregame, and warm-ups
 (36:15) - Why Geoff considers BFR and dry needling the major breakthroughs of his era
 (38:21) - Final take: BFR as a tool that helps players get back to what they love

Quotes

“If you have a dumbbell, if you have a barbell, if you have a game rating machine, you need to have a BFR unit.”

“If you’re not utilizing BFR, then you are behind the times.”

“We are hacking people’s physiological systems.”

https://owensrecoveryscience.com/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:24

Welcome to the Owens Recovery Science Podcast, where we dive deep into all things blood flow restriction training. I'm your show host Johnny Owens, and whether you're a clinician, researcher, or athlete, you've come to the right place. Each episode we break down the latest research, interview leading experts, and translate complex science into practical applications. We're here to bridge the gap between laboratory findings and real-world implementation. All right. Luckily, my new home, there's bidets in every bathroom. So it's been a lifesaver. I feel bad. Right now, there's a million former patients of mine that are somehow feeling happy that Johnny is going through hell. So, anyways, I'm a one-arm bad, and I'm here with my man Kyle Kimbrell, who covered for me last week with the Brendan Scott podcast, which should be coming out soon, which I'm so pissed that I missed. But I was drugged out on Oxy. Yeah, yeah. He's great.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

They do some cool work down there. And it was fun to just kind of talk to about sort of the nuances of exercise.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Yeah, he's he's the man. So when that podcast comes out, everyone, everyone check out Brendan. Um he's he's putting out some really cool stuff down undone, Australia. But today, I've I've wanted to get this guy on for a long time. He he's a friend. Um we we used to live together in Texas. Now we're moving further apart from each other. Um he's he's gone towards the Northeast in the DC area. I'm gone west in the Arizona area, but we'll see each other at all these conferences we meet up. And so today's guest is Jeff Kaplan. Um Jeff is is a legend in NFL, so he and I met um when when he was with the Houston Texans. He was with the Texans from 2009 to 2025. Um he ended uh exact as executive director of player health there, so kind of overseeing everything with the Texans. And now um he's just taken on a new role uh with the Washington Commanders, which is still hard for me to say that right. I hope I don't say their old name a few times, but I might today. It is hard. Uh it is, it is. I call him the commander.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

I try to I try to respect you know the fact that that's been changed. Sometimes people get been out of shape. What I don't respect is Twitter. I still call Twitter Twitter. I don't I'm never ever gonna call it X. It'll always just be Twitter to me. Yeah. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

That's that's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Getting the commanders and the guardians. That's the other one that's always tough because it was, you know, a different name for so long.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

But so now his role is he's a senior director of player health and performance up there with the Washington Commanders. And and reason why this is gonna be such a cool episode is Jeff is basically the guy who brought BFR into the NFL. And so this is he's an OG over a decade's worth of BFR experience um back in 2014. So we're gonna get into that story, his evolution, um, not only just using BFR, but his evolution in the NFL, and and he's kind of taken it to different heights. Um, I was I was with um the Pittsburgh Steelers, and and I remember their guy John Norwig said, you need to teach us up well enough so that we can do what Jeff Kaplan's doing down there with the Texans. So when Norwig says that, that's that that's pretty cool. So, Jeff, welcome to the podcast, brother.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Thank you. It's a it's an honor to be here. You know, uh, you and I go way back, and uh we've developed uh a really cool friendship, both personally and professionally, and uh I owe you a lot of credit, man. You helped uh change our industry, and um it's awesome. So thank you for all you did.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

And I appreciate it. Well, you trust me, you helped me out in a big way as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

Um so podcast over. Well done, guys. All right, we're done. So, Jeff, give us your background, like uh where you went to school, where you're from, um, what what got you into professional sports? You've got a lot of credentials as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Sure. Uh I grew up in New Jersey. I was a terrible high school athlete. I played football, I wrestled, I played baseball, and my body really didn't cooperate. Before I graduated high school, I had four shoulder surgeries, two on each side, because I had lots of instabilities. And um, that's back when the days when they did open bank cards, so I got scars, you know, four inches long on the front and back of my shoulders. And um I thought really quickly, well, I got no shot of being an athlete anywhere, but I love sports, and I really was exposed to physical therapy because I had to go through all those rehabs, and so I wanted to figure out a way I can combine medicine and sports. And when I was a high school senior, I'm probably uh one of the few high school seniors that knew what I wanted to do. I knew I want to be a sports physical therapist. Um so being in New Jersey, I looked at lots of schools and and back then, uh this is the late eight you know, like 1988, 19 uh 1989, that era. There was a lot of schools changing from undergrad PT programs to masters. The MPT was just coming out then. But there were still a number of schools, mostly big state schools, that had the undergrad uh BS program in physical therapy. So I thought, like, I know what I want to do, so I only looked at schools that were still offering the bachelor's degree. And smart. I I ended up at University of Wisconsin, Madison because they were really fair. They didn't care if you came from Wisconsin or not. They gave everybody the same shake to get into their PT program. So I ended, I ended up at Wisconsin, they had their medical school on the same campus as their main university. That was a plus. A lot of other like uh state institutions like University of Indiana and Penn State, some other places, had their medical school in different cities. So you do two years on the main campus and have to go two years where the medical school was, and I didn't want to do that. So I uh I went to Wisconsin. When I was in Wisconsin, when I was at Wisconsin, I got introduced to the field of athletic training. My high school had an athletic trainer, but he really didn't do much. Yeah. And and so a lot dude.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Sorry, my bad. At my daughter's last school.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Um but so I got introduced to the field of athletic training and I got advised, like, hey, if you want to be a sports physical therapist, like you should combine athletic training and physical therapy. And like really learn what it looks like at the tip of the spear in the training room, dealing with athletes all the time. So I um while I was uh trying to get into the PT program at Wisconsin, I was investigating the athletic training program. Long story short, I did both together at Wisconsin, and that's back when I'm so old, they only had the internship route for athletic training. So I had to do all those hours and all that stuff. And um when I finished at Wisconsin in 1993, um the clinical coordinator or the program coordinator for athletic training said, Hey, I have a friend who just became the head athletic trainer for the Green Bay Packers, and his name was Pepper Burris. Oh, yeah. And Pepper Pepper had been spent his whole career in the New York Jets, and Ron Wolfe was the new GM at the uh Green Bay Packers, and he had worked with Pepper at the Jets. So he had brought Pepper to be the head athletic trainer uh for the Green Bay Packers. So my my mentor, his name was Gordon Stoddard. He was the uh former head athletic trainer at University of Wisconsin and transitioned into teaching when he retired from being the head athletic trainer. So he ran the athletic training program. He said, You want me to make a phone call? And I said, Hell yeah, like hell yeah, I do. It's NFL. It's the NFL. So uh in 1993, I went into the summer internship with the Green Bay Packers, and that turned into a year-long internship with the Green Bay Packers. So I spent the whole season. It was the first year the Packers were back in the playoffs after a long playoff drought. It was the second year Brett Farr was there after he got traded from the Falcons to to the uh Packers. It was a magical time. Uh made the playoffs, and um and then I said, Wow, this is a great career. I'd love to be I'd love to work in the NFL. So I applied to every team in the NFL. Obviously, I didn't get a job in the NFL. So I moved back to New Jersey and got a job and worked for Ronnie Barnes. Ronnie Barnes was part owner with a bunch of docs back at that time from uh HSS, and they owned uh a bunch of PT clinics in northern New Jersey and New York and Connecticut called Pro Sports Care. So I got a job in Ronnie Barnes' clinic working at Pro Sports Care. The clinic was at Niss Rutherford Overlooked Giant Stadium at the time, and uh it was it was great. And then I got a phone call, I don't know, like April or May from the Houston Oilers, and they had two full-time athletic trainers. This is 1994, two full-time athletic trainers on their staff, and they said, Would you like to come down and interview to be an intern? And I said, Sure, I'll come down to Houston and be an intern. So I um I flew down and my interview was at Hooters. So Texas. My interview was at Hooters. Which one? Where was it? Uh the one on uh off at 59 in Kirby in Houston. And uh been to that one. Um I don't even think it's there anymore. But they picked me up at the airport, they took me to Hooters, I had an interview at Hooters, and they brought me to the facility. We talked to like for an hour or two, and then I got back on the plane and flew back to New Jersey. Uh and it was crazy. Two athletic trainers on staff.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

That was peak hooters back then.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah, I know. It was Hooters was the place to go. It was. Um, yeah, so two athletic trainers on the full-time staff. Uh they hired me. They hired me um to be an intern. So I quit my job in New Jersey, and my job in New Jersey in 1994, I was making like $47,000 as a PT. I quit my job to make $3.25 an hour as an intern with the Houston Oilers.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

I don't even buy you a picture at Hooters.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

No doubt. No doubt. But $3.25 bought you a picture of beer in Madison, Wisconsin, um, at the KK, the college club. $3.25 for a picture of old mill.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

That's that's all you need, man. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

That's all you need in college. But anyway, so I quit my job. I moved to Houston. I don't know anyone. I'm living in the facility. They have a storage room above the racquetball court. I got a mattress next to the Gatorade, and I'm living there.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Um I lived there, um, worked worked in 1994 as an intern. When the season was over, the head athletic trainer said, We'd really like to hire you. Bud Adams would not want to hire me. So uh they said he said, Would you like to be an intern again? And I'm like, I'm I'm I'm 25 years old, I'm single, I've no kids, whatever. I'm like, what do I have to lose? Right? Let's live the dream.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Can I make $350 an hour?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

But hey, but in the in the NFL, you got 40 hours by Wednesday, so I was making time and a half by Wednesday. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

So you know, um, so I I decided to do it again. So I spent a winter. I spent a winter in Houston, and I got a job at a PT clinic, and I was working in I was working with the late great Russ Payne. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

I did my my internship there.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

I worked, I worked, I worked with Russ, and then um at the time it was the uh LA Raiders. The LA Raiders had a job opening. They got my name somehow. They flew me out for an interview, but they said, listen, like we have our guy picked out already. We're we're we have our guy picked out. He's taken the NATA B O C exam. If he passes the test, he gets the job. He didn't pass the test. So they they fly me out there for an interview, and I I interview with with uh Rod Martin. You know Rod Martin from the Raiders. And uh interview. The next day he offers me the job, and then I tell my boss at the uh at the Oilers, hey, I'm not gonna be an intern. I got a L I got a full-time job with the LA Raiders. Listen to this. LA Raiders, full-time job. I'm living in Houston. $27,000 a year they offered me.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Big money, baby.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Big money. Hey, and and move yourself to LA. No moving allowance and no temporary housing. Figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Well, can I stay in the storage facility above the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

So uh I go back to the Oilers and I say, hey, I got a full-time job. I got a full-time job uh with the LA Raiders. They say, give us a day. The Oilers hired me next day as their third athletic trainer for the same amount of money I was gonna make in LA, so I got a raise first day. No estate income tax in Texas and uh the same salaries they're gonna pay me in LA.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Way to use that leverage, man. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

A lot of leverage. So I became a full-time uh athletic trainer in the uh in 1995. Um and then in it was the three of us, myself, Brad Brown, and Don Mosley for the Houston Oilers. And in 1997, we moved to Tennessee and became the Tennessee Oilers for two years. And then in 1999, we became the Tennessee Titans, and that was the year of the Music City Miracle and the Super Bowl run and all those cool times in Nashville. It was really a lot of fun. Um I was there until 2009 when I became the head athletic trainer director of sports medicine for the Houston Texans, and I held that position for ten years in 2019, and then between 2019 and 2025 um I had different different positions within the Texans in leadership positions and you know, leading the sports medicine staff and uh working closely and collaboratively with the performance team and really creating a high performance model.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

And we met in 2014 when um JD got hurt and um and we were trying to f and I think Dr. Lowe had spoken to you about the research that you guys were doing at the center at the Intrepid, right in San Antonio, and all the great work and and that's where our friendship started.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

And I think it's cool because I remember, and we'll get into that story in a minute, but um when I first got there in 14, the collaboration between performance and rehab didn't seem like it was there as much. Right. And then, you know, as you your as your role became more and more in leadership, it it was awesome seeing how you kind of made everything evolve there. And you know, by the time you know I I did my last poor Jeff, he's been through my course like six times, I think. But by the one of the last times I was there, I mean it was the whole strength staff that was there, and and everyone was you're also gonna be seeing it over there up in Washington. But yeah, man, let's so let's discuss that first kind of exposure to BFR. So I'll I'll tell you the story from my side until I get there, and then you can give me your thoughts of of this guy coming in with these weird tourniquets and and then what you what you thought about after we did it and and moving forward. So yeah, we we had been doing it for a bit um at the Center for the Intrepid. And 2014 we did a Veterans Day special with ESPN and where I was kind of in charge of showing them new programs that we were working on, and and one of them was blood flow restriction, and then Clowney goes down shortly, and well clownie, we're saying Judavian Clowney, and and we're we're talking about his story because he he did a lot of media about this case and and blood flow restriction, and so um we've been able to be able to talk about that. He goes down um with with a pretty significant cartilage injury, um, does some rehab, I guess, and then and then he gets a second injury to to that same to that same area. And uh Walt had seen that ESPN piece. He said you you saw it as well. I don't I don't remember, but I think he said you talked to him about it. And so Walt somehow got my number there um and said, Can you come out here and show us this thing you're doing with the with the service members with these weird tourniquets? Do you think Clowney would be a good candidate? And we'd already been doing quite a bit with Cartilage, and I said, Man, he's a perfect candidate. Um and either you or Walt said, How much do you charge us for this? And I was a government employee, and I said, Do not ever say those words again while I'm a government employee, because I will get fired without having off-duty employment um permissions, which I wouldn't be able to get. So I I I went out there on a on on a weekend, I believe, right after clowning surgery, to to apply blood flow restrictions. So I'll let you take it from there, Jeff, with what you thought about it and and then after we did it.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, obviously he was our first pick of the draft, right? And first game of the season, had a very significant knee injury that is very well documented and publicized, right? Very significant injury. So we rehabbed him, and he tried to come back from the first injury, and then it stayed very chronic, and he had lots of swelling and couldn't come back. And a full circle moment for JD is he's back with the Texans now. I know, that's awesome. He's back with the Texans now, and he actually uh he actually talked to Roland Ramirez, who's the current head athletic trainer now and was the director of rehab and my my right-hand man all those years, and he told Roland how impactful Roland was to h his career longevity, obviously Dr. Lowe too, and how that he owes them so much so much gratitude. Gratitude because uh a lot before this and before some interoperative techniques were designed like biocartilage and different types of um cartilage preservation techniques that were used because I would say as big as as big as BFR was, what Dr. Lowe did intraoperatively and thinking outside the box was just as impactful to JD's longevity of his career. And uh it's incredible, incredible what he did and what because I was there for the whole surgery and I just remember the days and the weeks leading up to deciding who's gonna do the surgery and what we're all gonna do and how we're gonna try to help this guy who has played essentially one game in the NFL in the first pick of the draft, have a long and successful career, right? That was the thoughts. Um, and there was a lot of decisions being made between the GM head coach and even the owner was involved at that time um because it's such a high profile. But there was also a common, another common thread, and it was Stefania Bell, I think, also had done some stuff, some interviews maybe with you and some of the guys, because this all happened, I believe, like around Veterans Day.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

It was Veterans Day, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah, there's a lot of Veterans Day uh stuff going on, and ESPN had a lot of stuff, and I think that's where all so Walt said, Hey, like they're doing this at the at the Center for the Intrepid and in the military, and we need to look into it. This is cutting-edge stuff. So you you came out, and to me, I remember it just blowing my mind. I because the research is so overwhelming, and all this you know, cited articles that you produced, and I was like, why is this not more frontline? Right? I remember having this conversation with you. Uh why is this not more frontline? Like, we need to do this and we need to do it now. So JD was our first guy, and then you know, you look at a couple years down the road, it's a centerpiece of of rehab of what we're doing. It's a centerpiece of the NFL, it's standard, it's a gold standard. Um and we go from having one machine to having 30 machines, yeah. You know, those type of things. And uh it becoming a fabric, a fabric of what we did in Houston, and now a fabric of what we're doing here in Washington. And I would say it's a fabric of every athletic training room across the NFL, professional sports, and even big-time colleges, right? It's it's it's essential. If you don't, if you have a dumbbell, if you have a barbell, if you have a game rating machine, you need to have a BFR unit. Like, no doubt about it, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:29

And JD, I mean, it was such a big surgery. And I mean, I correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Walt had him eight weeks non-weight bearing.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, it was back in the days when you yes, exactly. Non-weight bearing.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

He I mean he rolls in in his scooter with like a big bell on it that he's just he's honking at everyone to get out of the way. And you know, it's just like, man, eight weeks he should lose a ton of muscle. And then I've got a a couple things on this. For one, I've got a video of him doing straight leg raises after we got him all set. Up on BFR. And this was so in the early days, the Delphi units we had didn't have the LOP technology yet. We were still kind of beta. So we were using handheld Dopplers on everyone there that day to get measurements of what their LOP was. Anyways, he's going through his four sets of straight leg rays, and by the fourth set, he had his shoe on and he told me, take his shoe off, his leg's too heavy. And at the end, he told me, take his sock off because his sock was too heavy. It was great. No, yeah, for sure. So basically, his primary mode of a lot of his rehab for his strength and I purchased during that week, eight weeks was just simply BOR from the weight bearing.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Right. It was all non non-weight bearing. So yes, for sure. That's what we did. And I remember talking to you, and we thought it was gonna be revolutionary when it became built-in Doppler. Yeah. You know, like revolutionary.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

If you if you had to do those handheld doppers all the time, it definitely is. I uh we hated having to do that all day. Um but yeah, and then so eight weeks, and then he starts progressing. And and I remember Walt um text me that I think he got a repeat MR at at the 12th week or something like that. And he said his thigh size was almost the same on the MR bilaterally, that he had preserved pretty much his entire his entire thigh with an eight-week non-weight bearing.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, it was it was it was really cool. And and we saw that too once he became weight bearing and that transition into you know more functional exercises, he really didn't have to make up a lot of ground. And I I remember us thinking, and he played the next season and it was ready to go, and and now he's played plus years now.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Yeah, yeah, with that kind of injury.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Yeah, year 12.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Yep. And um I I got a I got a picture with him, and I looked I've never been around pro athletes before this. I looked like such a small human. Um and then Walt had me come out very shortly after that to work with the Rockets, and I got a picture with Dwight Howard, and I looked like an even smaller human. And then shortly after that, I went to work with the Yankees, and I got a picture with CC Zapatia, who's who's huge, he's almost bigger than all those guys, and I look like a small human. I've never got any more pro pictures taken. I just look like such a little dweeb. Um so, anyways, and and I guess I remember Walt checking in while we were there, because it was a it was this fast, furious day. And then Walt, because it was progressing well, he kept sending guys post op, he was doing surgery that day over to the facility. So he was having guys, some of the guys start it that day post some of these surgeries that he was doing. Um, because he became a believer that day. Yeah. We had one guy, you know, he was with a little bit of uh portal blood coming out um because he was so post. And I was like, I gotta, I gotta catch a flight, bro. Uh Walt's like, I got one more. Just finish one. I'm sending one up.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Yeah, I that's one of the things I loved about Dr. Lowe is very progressive, outside the box, not afraid to take risks like super that way.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Fun fact about Dr. Lowe when I came to work with you guys, my aunt lives in Houston. She's an eye surgeon, and she asked what I was doing and yada yada who I was working with, and I told her about I was gonna, you know, with Walt and you. And she said, Oh, well, don't tell Walt I'm your aunt because we were boyfriend and girlfriends in med school, and it didn't end well. So of course, right when I saw Walt, right when I saw Walt, I was like, Hey, my aunt Deborah Shutter says hello. Oh, so funny. Yeah, it's true. Um you embraced it then. And so let's let's kind of go through like how you guys started using it in rehab and then the evolution to to more of this performance side. And so just any cases that you can think of um where you know BFR just really shined for you and and the adoption in rehab.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Well, I I mean I can tell you after that we used it on everybody, and that's why we needed more units. It became such a staple and a foundational piece to what we did there. Um, on everybody. And we we have had a lot of great players come through there, and I I could tell every one of them used it. And uh it just to me it was mind-blowing because it was like so powerful the research behind it and the the evidence and the outcomes that we saw firsthand. And I remember you and I talking, and I don't remember, I don't know if you remember this conversation. I was like, dude, you have to put together a course and you have to go on the you have to do the roadshow and teach people this because it was crazy. And then I think you came to the combine a couple years later, right? And presented.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

I came that right after that. So it was the next year, yeah, yeah. It was the combine right after, and that was where we presented um BFR and presented um Clowney's case, and um Russ Warren walked up to the stage as I was walking off and said, This is gonna change rehab or something like that, and when can you fly out to the Giants and HSS? And after that, my phone would not stop ringing from like every surgeon with ever with every team. And so um, yeah, that's that's that's again where you kind of open that door and have a guy like Russ walk up and and say, Okay, we're gonna do this in the everywhere um was pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

It's so cool, it's so cool. And and it's it's just so great to to see how that has become like incredible, right? And then and then to me, the the next biggest thing is like the um transition that we saw with the strength coaches and use using it with older players or players who couldn't load their knees or their spine and more ingrained into weight room workouts. And then not um I'm sure we're gonna talk about this, but then the last time you came to Houston and we talked about the recovery and the performance enhancements and doing the IPC and how now that's a setting, how that's now a setting on the on the new units. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's just this whole thing is just and it's only been since 2014. So you think about it, that's only 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

I know, I know. Barely. I mean like 11, yeah. It's crazy. So um getting it into the performance side, I I know that was that was hard early on to get some of the string coaches to buy into it, but um it seemed like you know, you and Roland, the guys were really kind of picking some of those players, like you said, the the old knee or the you know, I remember one one player for sure had back surgery and and just couldn't load his back, and you know, he was using bilateral, like you could say his name because it's out there, he had back surgery. Okay. JJ?

SPEAKER_01 29:03

He's a pretty good player. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

I'm trying to look like him with my arm brace. Yeah, um, he was a pretty good player, you know. Exactly. He told me I saw him when I was in up in Milwaukee um with the Bucks. He was out there messing around their facility, and he's like, You're that he goes, You're that BFR guy, and I was like, Yeah, and he's like, I fucking hate you, man. It's the worst thing ever. But yeah, you know, a guy like that who's like, I'm gonna do this um because I just it hearstaled my spine. I'm sure some of the player buy-in also helped. Um, and so it seemed like you had a lot of big advocates there that were really buying in from the player side. But what do you did you have a hard sell getting the players to to do it because it's too hard or it was too scary? Or just tell us how you approach getting a player to do BFR.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

You know, you know, I I think there has to be the the trust factor when you work with guys, and in our setting, it's very unique. We spent so much time with the guys and develop such tight relationships with them, the trust level is really high. And I think if you can tell a guy that this is going to help accelerate your rehab and help you get well faster and get back to do the things that you love and has very little downside, and when you start listening, all the the pluses about increasing this and increasing testosterone and HGH and all the growth factors and all the healing properties, and then they use it and they said, Holy shit, that was hard. Because hard to them equates getting well. Right? That that's that's the way their minds is, so it makes working out really hard. And they're like, Oh, this has gotta work because it's super doing something. And I'm only lifting 30 pounds and it's super hard, or 15 pounds, or whatever it is, or a guy's leg doing straight leg raises with the weight of his leg. You know, and I and I think word spreads when you have success stories and guys that come back and rehab well or get back and do well, and that was a part of their rehab, word spreads and guys talk to each other, and I think it's just easy to sell it then at that point. And now and now it's an easy sell. Like players players want to do it, they come in and asking to do it.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's you know, the evolution, I guess, next the NFL kind of um champion was getting it onto the workers' comp for the players. So now pretty much after a knee injury, the these players are getting their Delphi units through comp and and um yeah, they're they got their own little personal systems now.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Um let's move into the recovery piece then, because you guys kind of also along with with several other teams for sure, but but really started pushing and pioneering, building these recovery rooms with IPC. So can you talk a little bit about what you guys did there with the Texans and then players' adoption and maybe some of the anecdotes you heard from them with it?

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah, and and you can you can expound on the research, but when you came in and presented us a few years ago and you showed us all the research about the IPC and and doing, you know, um LOP and the on off for five minutes on, five minutes off, and three cycles, and how how powerful it was to performance. And the change in all the testing and the blood work that was done to show that the growth factors were there, and how the recovery recovery in the 48-hour window to me it was like we cannot not do this. Like it was so powerful. And um we bec it became our number one, our number one recovery tool because of the research behind it. There's a lot of recovery tools on the market now, you know that, between red light, red light beds and cryo cryo saunas and infrared sauna and immortal chambers and and everything, uh, to hyperbaric chambers and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 32:50

Peptides, every injectable in the world, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

But when you put the research, when you stack up all the research, there's nothing stronger than BFR when it comes to recovery and maybe helping performance. Nothing stronger than research. So we invested a lot of money into that. And when you look at the investment, if a if a team buys a hyperbaric chamber, whatever hyperbaric chamber costs a hundred thousand dollars or slightly more than a hundred thousand dollars, and you can buy ten or more of the new you know, double D FR units, right? For less than that, then you're taking care of a lot more players. And they're portable and uh they're they're just impactful. And when players try it and do it, and then come back two days later to do it again on their own without you telling them, you know, they felt better.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah, yeah, that's badass. Were you guys taking them on the road?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

I mean, I know I know the answer to this, but yes, yeah, yes, for sure. They became part of our our our night before the game program, whether we're home or away. And we have so many players using it the day of game or pre-practice pre-game to help warm up because you can you can warm up with a lot less weight and put a lot less stress across your joints and your muscles and and feel like you get really warmed up really good. So we use it as activation, prehab, whatever words you want to use before practice and before games.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

It's awesome, man. Yeah, and you guys um really started embracing kind of like Steven Patterson's protocol of if you can get multiple sessions in, you know, pre-game, then you kind of get this crossover of the windows of effect, you know. So two to three times uh that you can get these guys doing this sort of IPC or some sort of hypoxia that you might get this kind of crossover effect, which was pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Yeah, so we had guys, you know, if you play a Sunday to Sunday game, we would have guys do it Monday, Wednesday, and then sometimes either Friday or Saturday, right? But the day after a game, middle of the week after Wednesday or Thursday practice, and then again in the window before kickoff.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Yeah, very cool. So now it's your new role.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Um I I know every team's doing it, I know everyone's doing it there, and I'm sure um you're gonna bring in some of your thoughts, but anything you're seeing there that's different or pretty much Well, I I would say that we've expanded our BFR program here significantly since I've been here. And now have enough BFR units where we can do the things we want to do from a recovery standpoint or an intervention standpoint, bring them into the weight room. They're all over the place in the athletic training room. So we have enough BFR units to do everything that we want to do. With a right now we have a 90-man roster. Yeah. So I don't know, we have 20 BFR units now. Very cool, man. So um uh it's awesome. And players are embracing it, they really like it, they feel the difference, and I think that's that's where the uh everybody says like it's the juice worth the squeeze, whatever you're gonna do, or whatever you're gonna invest in.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

And I think the answer is hell yes.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

Yeah, time and time's super valuable in your world. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

For sure.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Any last things you would say to to any PTs, athletic trainers out there who who aren't using blood flow restriction for rehab, or maybe they haven't even thought about using it for recovery or performance that you'd want to put out there?

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Yeah, sure. Like in my time being a athletic trainer or physical therapist, some of the biggest things I've seen a breakthrough in the industry have been BFR and dry needling, like in my era, call it. And to me, if you're not utilizing BFR, then you are not you're behind the times. You're not doing cutting edge, gold standard rehab. You're not providing the best care you can even to you who regular patients like to get back to to do what they people love to do, whether it's walk, you know, play racquetball, tennis, or just be a regular person and have the strength to be able to do it. You're not providing the services that you should be providing because it's the the research that it's backed is so powerful to me. And um I feel like we all get into this profession to take care of people. We want to help people. We want to help people achieve their goal, whether that's walking down the street or playing in a game again, right? And this is a way to do it. I always explain it to people like this is a hack to the system. We are hacking people's physiological systems. For sure. And we're and we're we're we're doing legitimate shortcuts to help people.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Sweet. Well, you're you're preaching our language, brother. We we believe it uh a hundred percent. So I think we're gonna be together maybe it's January next year.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna come out here and do a great in service to the Washington Commanders team. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

Nothing like sending a Texas-Arizona boy to freezing cold Washington in January. We'll we'll have to buy a coat, man.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Uh we'll we'll make it worth your while. We'll we'll take you somewhere cool. Maybe, maybe, maybe we'll see the present. You never know. Never know.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Never know. Well, Jeff, man, this has been awesome. Um, it's uh I uh I love our time working together and and the the the journey you've led. And thanks for being a champion for this, for uh for uh Owens Recovery Science. Uh, we really appreciate you, man.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

My pleasure. I can't thank you enough for you introducing us to it and helping us help our players. That's what we want to do here. We ultimately want to help our guys get back to doing what they love to do. And uh uh the Delphi units and the BFR and Owens Recovery has helped us do that. You have given us a tremendous tool in our toolbox to use.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Awesome, man. Well, I love it. Appreciate it. You know, uh, this is a good interview because you and I talked the whole time, and Kyle hardly got to get a word in. So this might be the best podcast ever. You guys are cooking. I didn't need to say anything. There we go. All right, Jeff. Appreciate you, man. We'll be talking soon.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

All right. Later. Thanks for tuning in to the Owen Recovery Science podcast. Before we go, a quick reminder that the information discussed on this show is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your treatment or training regimen. For show notes and additional resources, be sure to check out OwnTrecover Science.com. And don't forget to like the show and subscribe for more evidence-based insights. Until next time, earn your feedback.