What’s a win that happened for you or your patient this month? I’ll go first… my husband had Achilles surgery two weeks ago. He was released to start PT and 25% weight-bearing!

One of the coolest parts of being an athletic trainer is seeing how quickly someone can change when you identify the right thing to address. I recently worked with a patient who had been dealing with on-and-off knee pain for a year. They had tried different treatments and inconsistent therapy with no lasting resolution. After one session, he could no longer recreate his knee pain. He also had a noticeable hitch/weight shift in his squat, but we didn’t spend the session training his squat—we addressed the underlying issues contributing to his symptoms, and his squat immediately started moving better. This is why I love the test → treat → retest approach. We don’t always need to spend months chasing symptoms or endlessly drilling movement patterns. Sometimes we just need to identify the limiting factor, address it, and see what changes. When you can connect the dots and get an immediate result, it’s incredibly rewarding—and it’s exactly the type of clinical reasoning I want to help athletic trainers develop inside the CD Elite Athletic Trainer Hub.

One of my favorite parts of this job is watching an athlete realize movement can finally feel normal again. Today I worked with a high school football player heading into his senior season who has been dealing with "Achilles pain" on and off for nearly two years. During that time he's had over 100 physical therapy visits, worked with athletic trainers, chiropractors, dry needling—you name it—and he was still hurting. Instead of assuming it was another case of Achilles tendinopathy, we started with a movement assessment. His Achilles wasn't even tender. The biggest source of pain was actually Kager's fat pad, and he also had major limitations in ankle dorsiflexion, tibial internal rotation, hip internal rotation, and muscle activation throughout the chain. After treating those impairments, his dorsiflexion improved from 25° to 38°, and more importantly, he couldn't recreate his pain when he walked out. Does that mean one session fixed a two-year problem? No. But it shows what can happen when you stop chasing symptoms and start finding the actual limiting factor. That's what I love teaching inside the CD Elite Athletic Trainer Hub. Assessment always comes first, because the right treatment starts with asking the right questions. What would you have tested first?

One of the most rewarding parts of what we do happened in the clinic yesterday. I had the opportunity to work with a disabled veteran who has been living with chronic pain for over a decade. His history included a left shoulder SLAP repair and two cervical fusion surgeries spanning C4 to T1. After years of surgeries and persistent discomfort, he had accepted that pain was just part of everyday life. During our session, we focused on improving the entire system rather than chasing symptoms. We restored thoracic extension, improved shoulder mechanics, increased cervical mobility, released tension through the suboccipital and hyoid musculature, and improved activation of his sternocleidomastoid muscles. By the end of the session, he had nearly regained full cervical flexion, was standing noticeably taller, and—most importantly—walked out of the clinic pain-free for the first time in 12 years. Moments like these are why I love this profession. It's easy to get caught up in documentation, schedules, and the day-to-day demands of healthcare, but at its core, our job is to improve people's lives. Sometimes that improvement is small. Other times, it's a moment that gives someone hope they haven't felt in years. Never underestimate the impact you can have on a patient. The knowledge you gain, the skills you develop, and the time you invest in mastering your craft can genuinely change someone's life.

I haven’t seen anyone post in a while but I have just pasted my BOC and am now an ATC. Most of my Clinical experience is collegiate basketball as I love the game of basketball. Those experiences include Texas A&M, Sam Houston state university, Mississippi state University. My question is how can I continue down this path of potentially going collegiate out here the gate and learning how to become my own AT and improve. Another question is I know that collegiate AT does not get paid as well as others and bills, loans, and hours is what eats at AT as well. How do you combat that? Thank you for reading this.