An experience from my first year out of college in the fall of '82 still sticks with me. I had just completed a tough 3 week R2play on one of my footballers with a grade 2 ankle sprain. After his first game back, his father approached me to thank me. He said, "you do good work...so what do you want to do with your life...you certainly don't want to stay here". Well, here I am 3 decades out. I've always felt we HS ATC's work in the most challenging setting. The largest student athlete population, with little resources and manpower. Working with the young, developing athlete. Injuries occurring in this stage of physical development may manifest in permanent disabilities in adulthood. Yet, we're isolated from the intellectual stimulation of the college setting. Very few of the colleagues I started out with way back in '82 are still around. Unfortunately, they've long since burnt out and moved on to other professions. This stinks- it means never having the chance to mature as a professional, not to mention the effect on the athletic training profession as a whole.
If you're looking for info on the latest electrotherapy device, you probably won't find it here. Those of you that have heard me speak at the EATA, ATSNJ, or NEA meetings know I use the kinetic link concept of rehabilitation. The ground, gravity, and momentum are my main modalities of choice; my hands being the second. I wish you to embrace the "wall-less" training room concept.
Does what works on the college or professional athlete work for the high school age athlete? I'm going to be challenging you to think about it. Hopefully you're going to learn from my mistakes, and I'm going to learn from yours. Maybe we can re-define the high school setting into something to aspire to, rather than just another step on the ladder. 
6 comments:
Hi guys,
my name is Chris and I´m working as a sports therapist/fitness coach in Germany (Europe;-)). I just wanted to tell you, that this blog is a real good possibility to share our ideas. Because the main thing we have to do (and which makes our work unique), is to combine scientific background knowledge into practice. A practice which is often underestimated in my country, unfortunately. The "Athletic Trainer" per se doesn´t really exists in our "german woods", but it´s a growing market here. Mainly sports scientist or physiotherapist are working in this field here..I just wanted to write and gratulate you to this blog and I will frequently join it for sharing our ideas...good job, Joe :-)
Hi Joe;
I agree fully with your approach. I think many in the field of athletic training and healthcare feel a need to use fancy devices, and high tech tools, but I feel the best approach is to examine for movement issues, and correct accordingly, using low-tech approaches whenever feasible. I wish you the best and I will be visiting often.
Regards,
Ken Cieslak, DC, ATC, CSCS
I couldn't agree more with you about the high school setting. After years working in college athletics I spent four great years at a high school. Those challenges you spoke of are some of the things that made me a better athletic trainer. Looking forward to reading your blog.
Hi Joe:
I hope everything is going well. I asked Reddit to reopen its sports medicine reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/sportsmedicine/).I posted your most recent post on the page and I hope that you will continue to do so. I think if we all work together we could use Reddit as a novel way for the sports medicine community to share interesting articles (news and research) as well as websites (e.g., all of our blogs and other sites).
Best regards,
Jeff
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