 Today I talked about psychological factors and physical demands that athletes go through with their rehab process and just knowing your athlete on a higher level in order to help them achieve those gains. So athletes are on a different platform and a different stage and when they get injured they're not just dealing with that themselves, they're on a platform that the whole world is watching on and something from Instagram to Twitter to ESPN to the nightly news really elite and high profile athletes, if they get injured it's everywhere. And so that's an additional stress that they have to deal with when they get injured that sometimes we don't think about. Athletes definitely go through a roller coaster of emotions when they get injured. There's definitely some grieving stages that they go through, there's some acceptance stages that they go through and knowing how to deal with that has definitely been helpful in my profession. It helps them cope easier and then you can get more done at the same time. A lot of what I do with athletes deals more with recovery and that's not just physically but that's mentally as well. We do talk about breathing techniques, relaxation techniques, sleep is a big one, we talk about their sleep habits. Sometimes when they first get injured they're not sleeping that well so we talk about how they're going to make up that sleep during the day. There's things with time management, coping with stressors, all of that stuff goes into their overall rehab plan. When an athlete gets injured there's always a large team involved, it's never just the athlete and the doctor or the athlete and the PT and the doctor, there's usually a team that comes from their athletic organization and there's also people within that organization that are part of their inner circle in terms of a support system. You have to also look at an athlete's direct family and friends in terms of a support system as well and so they're usually a lot more players in the picture than you'd think. Oh 100%, I mean we've heard some great talks on ACL prevention, I see a lot of athletes, it's probably one of the number one injuries that I see in rehab and looking at prediction rules and when they return to play, how you can look at different factors and minimize the risk of re-injury I think is a big deal. Some of it has to do with just making sure that when they do go to practice that they're engaged and they're focused on what they're doing, some of the predictive traits that have been shown in injury do look at apprehension or tension or not focusing enough and I think talking to kids about hey if you're going to go to practice like let's be all in, let's be there, let's be present and I think that looking at also how much time they're spending at practice, how many sports that they're doing also can play into some injury prevention as well and then just talking to them like how are you feeling, do you feel tired, man we had four practices at soccer this week and then we also went and did swimming, how's everything going, I think it's just a little bit more on the communication front too. A lot of the things I do with athletes are the same that I do with regular population as well, they go through the same stages of grieving after an injury, sometimes people that have to return to work rather quickly actually go through more stress than some elite athletes do and managing their schedule sometimes is even harder than managing an athlete's schedule because when an athlete's injured they have quite a few hours of the day to kind of put towards their rehab and so coping mechanisms with stress or how they're feeling towards their injuries actually very similar to what athletes go through as well. Working with elite athletes I kind of go on the emotional roller coaster with them, their downs are kind of my downs and their ups you know I experienced them with them as well. One of the most rewarding things for me in getting athletes back to their sport is to watch them be successful once they're back. That's huge for me. A lot of times with athlete rehabs you're putting in far more hours than most people would think that you put in. You're always there for them, you're always constantly updating their program based on how they're feeling and so it is a big time commitment on your part too and so what I kind of tell athletes is like if you're willing to work hard I'll work hard with you and it's kind of a team approach and so when they're successful when they get back it's it's really special it's cool. No the medals are the Olympic medals aren't quite my medals but it's really cool to see. So my approach to athlete care is definitely head to toe. We're not just paying attention to the injured body part we are taking care of the athlete as a whole and that has many factors to it. You're looking at recovery, nutrition, rest, work ratios, looking at how much load that that athlete can take at any given time. How are they responding psychologically to the loads that you're putting on them? Do they need a break? Do they need more family support or do they need a weekend off where they can see their friends? There's a lot that goes into the analysis at that level in order to get them back as safe and as fast as possible. The partnership with Spry and the IOC is huge the work that they're doing and the data that they're coming up with is not just geared towards athletes at some point it does trickle down to the general population so everybody wins with something like this. This is the second annual injury prevention conference I attended last year as well and just huge things are being discussed here and while injury prevention isn't necessarily a new topic there are so many new things that are being discovered via data and wearable monitors and things like that as we progress into the future that I think that it'll continue to be a hot topic and something that will continue to evolve. So this is the second annual symposium here for injury prevention I attended last year too. This this year's conference was even better and so many new areas to discover and explore and so I feel like we're just building each year.