Here’s the normal scenario…

You graduate from school excited to take on the world, and then you get a taste of reality. A few weeks into what you thought was your dream job, it starts to fall apart.

The weekly mentorship that your bosses promised turns into more of a monthly thing, if it even happens at all, just because they’re so busy.

You start noticing your colleagues are practicing with outdated methods.  You notice their apathy as their patients continue to perform the same exact exercises week in and week out.  You notice they’re giving false information and potentially harmful narratives to patients.

It turns out that the clinicians around you don’t really care as much about learning and growing as you do.  They just want to get through the day as fast as possible, punch the clock, and get out of there as soon as 5:00 PM hits.  

That spark to learn and grow inside of you dies a little bit each day…

This is tough because, as a new grad, we all felt incredibly insecure about our diagnosis and treatment skills.  On top of that, there is so much information out there that it is hard to know where to start.  What’s worse is that “experts” on social media seem to disagree more often than they agree about topics.  It’s hard to know what to believe and whether or not you’re making the best choice as a growing clinician.  

Funny enough, 10 years ago Dave and Dan felt the same way you may feel right now.  And 20 years ago, Mike felt the same way. We were just much more hungry to learn and grow than the clinicians around us.  

It led us to seek additional mentoring and guidance, which, three years later, led us both to start working at Champion Physical Therapy and Performance.

At Champion, we found strong guidance from Mike Reinold and Lenny Macrina. We could see how expert clinicians worked with patients on a regular basis. We could ask questions about challenging patients. We got access to the physicians and coaches they trusted and recommended. In essence, we found our tribe, folks who care just as much as we do about becoming excellent physical therapists.  This was the same path Mike took from his mentors at The American Sports Medicine Insitute.

Long story short, we were all able to fast-track our careers in sports physical therapy…

Far and away the biggest request we get from students, new graduates and early career professionals is to have some form of mentoring.

What we want to do is to deliver the same guidance that we received all those years ago.  We know for a fact we wouldn’t be in the same place with our careers and expertise if it weren’t for the mentoring and guidance that we received.