Was recently approached on IG by this massage device company to try out their device for a review. I like it for a couple reasons, gets me to try a new product without buying it, social media engagement and who doesn’t like getting packages in the mail?? It’s like Christmas in October! I’m affiliates with a couple different brands. Best money I’ve made is prolly a lil over $1k just promoting their product and getting some commission off it. I like brands that like me. Check out my review on @atbiz_ on Instagram!

Send a cold DM to the entire Bengals roster. One of the players drove an hour today to come do a rehab session and now we are planning to lock in once a week til the end of the season. INSANE! Put yourself out there people!

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?