It\’s not a jolly, just training, honest!
This month starts with an educational story, well Continued Professional Development in fact. As sports chiropractors we have to be good at all of the little things (not just the spinal ‘clicking’ that we are famous for). This means that we have to be experts in soft tissue work. Times have moved on from the old days of just sticking ultrasound on all soft tissue injuries and there are a range of techniques that we now employ to help our soft tissue sports injuries. We use Kinesio taping techniques (the brightly coloured tape that you see on sports people on the TV these days), dry needling techniques (a virtually painless westernised medical version of acupuncture), Kinnective (a special metal tool for breaking down scar tissue and connective tissue adhesions) and many more little tricks. However by far the most comprehensive and widely regarded as the ‘Gold Standard’ of soft tissue work is a technique that I have been doing a version of for 12 years after picking bits up from working with the world class physios at Bath Rugby, which is called Active Release TechniqueTM or ART for short. I looked into doing the course all of those years ago but each section of the course (4-5 sections) was $2500 and was only available in America. Not being a multi-millionaire I didn’t make it over there! Now though it has made it’s way to Europe and it is more feasible for me to complete. So this month I had a lovely 5-day trip to Dublin to enjoy the famous Irish hospitality and do the course. There was an exam at the end so even if I wanted to I couldn’t over indulge on the famous Irish stout! This is the 2nd ART course that I have completed now and each one helps re-energise my days at work and give me extra skills to get patients better more efficiently.
There were a few Americans who had flown over to Dublin for the course as the Euro is so weak at the moment that it became cheaper to travel to Europe. It’s always fun to work with these guys and the misinterpretations can be priceless. One of the Girls had heard that all drugs in Ireland were going to be legal for a few days as the drug laws changed (I haven’t confirmed the truth of this yet!) and there was a mistake creating a few days where no law existed for drug use. She thought that Ireland was going to be awash with all sorts characters taking advantage of the situation. She over heard me talking about taking ‘Molly’ on a plane and thought that even I was one of them! She confessed this to me the next day when I showed her a photo of ‘Molly’ playing with a drum she realized Molly was not a nickname for ecstasy but my 11 month old girl.
So Mollyettes, she is only a month off her first birthday, where did the time go? Timing being what it is I am taking her with me to Florida for a work trip so we will be away for her first birthday. The grandparents are not amused, but hey, maybe we will go to Disneyland for her 1st birthday! I will also be popping in on my oldest friend Paul who owns a Scuba Diving shop near Orlando and my great friend Stuart Campbell the old Bristol Rovers Player/Captain/Manager and now Coach at the Tampa Bay Rowdies. So if you have any messages for them let me know!
Tim Button
0117 957 5388
drtimbutton@clevechiropractic.com
www.clevechiropractic.com
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