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How is physical therapy for strength athletes different than for the general population?

Physical therapy for strength athletes are very different than the general population. There is a very important and obvious difference between strength athletes such as as Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders, CrossFit athletes, throwers, and other similar sports  and the general population, and that is strength athletes in general have far more muscle and strength. In practical terms, it means physical therapy exercises effective for the general population will not be effective for Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders, CrossFit athletes, or even athletes with less strength demands like soccer.

This is because one of the most basic principles of rehabilitation, and exercise in general, is to provide adequate loading or stimulus on a body tissue so the tissue will grow and adapt. For strength athletes, the tissue is often quite strong, so popular physical therapy exercises such as clamshells or band pull-aparts don’t provide enough loading for the muscles to grow. Strength athletes need a physical therapist knowledgeable in the demands of strength sports such as Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding, CrossFit, throwing, and other similar sports to understand what exercises the strength athlete needs to help resolve their problem.

Here are some examples of exercises good for the general population vs exercises good for strength athletes.

Exercises for hip or low back pain for the general population:
Glute bridges, banded clamshells

Exercises for hip or low back pain for the strength athlete:
Contralateral bulgarian split squats (check second video in this post), barbell hip thrusts

Exercises for back and neck pain for the general population:
Band pull-aparts, band rows

Exercises for back and neck pain for strength athletes:
Downward cable rows (check the third and fourth videos in this post), heavy barbell rows

Why did you choose the name The Kilo Physio?

I chose the name The Kilo Physio because I want to be the go-to physical therapists for strength and barbell athletes, namely, Olympic weightlifters, CrossFit athletes, powerlifters, bodybuilders, throwers, and other sports with a high strength and explosiveness aspect.

The name “kilo” is short for kilogram, which is the unit of measurement for weight used for competing in powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting. Physio is short for physiotherapist, another term for physical therapist.

I chose this name because of my history in strength sports, starting in 2011 when I immediately fell in love with the power, strength, and athleticism of Olympic weightlifting. Over the years I have competed in both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting.

During training in Olympic weightlifting, I was often injured, and about ⅓ of my time was spent rehabilitating or training around an injury. The worst injury I had was a right calf injury; I strained a calf muscle and my coach at the time told me to push through it. This turned a mild muscle strain into a more severe strain that caused me to be unable to do anything explosive, such as snatching, power cleaning, and sometimes even squatting, because it would result in significant pain and limping after the set. This essentially laid me off from training for almost a year and it still affected my training for the rest of the time I trained seriously in weightlifting. I honestly believe if I had a physical therapist knowledgeable in Olympic weightlifting, I could have returned to Olympic weightlifting much faster and rehabilitated it from interfering with my training for so long.

The experience with the injury, and the extreme difficulty of finding a physical therapist knowledgeable in Olympic weightlifting, caused me to decide to become a physical therapist for strength athletes, to help people like me.

During my physical therapy program, I learned how most outpatient physical therapy clinics operate. Because of how insurance works, to stay profitable, physical therapists see multiple patients at once, and often the physical therapist will only see the patient for 15 minutes before passing them to aide.

I did not want to work in a clinic like that, and be beholden to insurance. I decided to start a fee-for-service physical therapy clinic so I can provide excellent physical therapy care with one-on-one sessions to produce great results with fewer visits. This often creates less cost to the patient in the long-run because of high copay costs, needing to spend more time and money traveling to more appointments, and getting healthier faster.

This has resulted in me opening a physical therapy clinic in January 2020, out of Liberation Barbell Club, in southeast Austin, Texas.

Check my instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thekilophysio