Xothrm Smart Pad, developed by JoHan Wang, really impressed me at the convention this year. JoHan joins the podcast to discuss his AT story and the creation of the Smart Pad.

JoHan what is your AT story

Practicing AT for 20+ years

Assistant AT at Boise State

Golden state warriors

Stanford University

Director of Sports Medicine

9 years for the LA Clippers

Director of performance at Golden state warriors

1 year at TCU

I needed a better work-life balance

I had reached the top, there was nothing else for me to move up to.

The college environment changed from my previous experience  

What was your “aha moment”

(TCU girl needing skin grafts)

My infatuation with heat started a long time ago but it is the most common modality in the world.

He had a student-athlete use moist heat packs and ended up needing skin grafts

Ultrasound, Exercise, and Radio waves all produce heat

Ice slows down the inflammatory process which is the opposite of what we need

The effects of heat are well-documented 

I partnered with Sean Whalen Founder of AlterG

One of the things that resonated with me was that they ineffective and only heated the skin.

3 Ds

Dated

Dumb

Dirty

Dangerous

Depthless

We created a product that eliminated all of those problems

We wanted something that felt hot and satisfied the psychosomatic need

The Xothrm is a closed loop system so it micro adjusts to be accurate and adjust

We are the pellet grill of the heating industry

We use a carbon-infused piece of rubber

3 Ps

A safe cleaner and more effective heat therapy

Precise 

Powerful – on-demand heat

Penetrating

Internationally Ice is still used a lot

Benefits of heat

30-day happiness guarantee

Contact:

JoHan – 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johan-wang-9a809a9

Xothrm – 

https://www.instagram.com/xothrmhq

https://www.facebook.com/XOTHRM

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

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Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Working definition: Athletic dry needling vs non-athletic dry needling.

There is not a difference between the wording.  We aim to take and make dry needling practical and easy to use.

We filmed professional-quality videos that are included in the course.

What got you started in Dry Needling?

I took 12 CEUs per year for 10 years

What is your favorite application?

The cervical seems to give the biggest outcomes

I love when people are stumped or out of options and willing to try anything

Weirdest needle

Needling has a systemic effect

Pelvic floor dry needling

There are a lot of barriers to entry for the secondary school AT.  

How do you walk through those?

Get the waiver specific to dry needling.

Use a lot less needles

Include stim and needles to reduce the number of needles needed.

Typically I use 16 -20 needles

Young kids, I use less than 10.

If someone is scared of needles, can they do this course?

We get this often.

I try to get them to try a few and see

We have only had one person no-show on the next day due to the fear of needles

When would you apply E-stim to needling?

Allows you to dose needling – essentially make it more or less intense.

Best used for pain mitigation

If they are hesitant

Find out their objections

You can have anything in the world you want if you help enough people get what they want. – Zig Zigler

Call to action:

use SportsMedicineBroadcast.com/DryNeedling for your exclusive discount

Contact Us

Scott Dixon – AthleticDryNeedling@gmail.com

Scott – 904-853-1921

Jeremy Jackson –

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Contact Us

Jeremy Jackson

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Mark, where are you from and how did you get into Athletic Training?

A family friend owned the Milwaukee Bucks

We used to landscape his yard.

I was a sophomore or junior in high school and got connected with the Bucks AT.

Went through the Internship route

Worked Minor league baseball with the Brewers

Started working with Bellin Health after my internship

Passed on a low A ball job and stayed with Bellin

Tell some of your family origin story…did you have kids, tried but couldn’t, chose to not do natural childbirth…

Been married since 2010

One month before our wedding my wife-to-be ran a marathon and collapsed most of the way through.

2 months into our marriage she did a tilt table test and learned she had low blood pressure.

2011 convention in New Orleans and she was still running

She had a cardiac incident while in the pool…as in she actually died.

She ended up needing an internal defibrillator.

Talk about your adoption journey.

We were trying to have kids, but the heart meds were possibly affecting her.

We started using IVF and failed once, tried again and then my dad fell and broke his femur.  Then we learned that it failed again.

It was heart breaking.

Then my dad passed away the next week.

Most of the football season was a blur due to all of the family trauma.

My wife took the lead in looking into adoption.

We did not know if we wanted local, foreign, foster care, straight adopt.

We connected with adopt help out of California and a social work back here.

Once people know, the stories started coming out of the woodworks.  Lots of people I knew were affected by adoption in one way or another.

April 1st, 2014 we went live with our adoption.  Which was coincidentally our birth mom’s birthday.

What conversations have you had with other ATs about the choice to adopt?

Our adoption is open.

We get lots of friends asking us to speak to friends in family in similar situations.

Our son knows he has a birth mother and a mom and dad here.

Contact

Mark: IG, Twitter

Jeremy – SportsMedicineBroadcast on IG

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Mitigating Secondary Loss is something that hits home for me. Bubba Wilson has taken his role with ATsCare to another level. We recap the summer and one of the best CEU talks I have ever heard.

Where has AT taken you?

JJ: 

Thibodeaux, LA

Dallas, Texas

Arlington

Fort Davis

South Padre

Lansing Michigan

Hot Springs

Las Vegas

New Orleans

San Antonio

JJ Road trip

5 weeks

One van

7 people

Chad from Candid AT

Michigan AT Society Meeting

Meeting Cookie Tuesday in Detroit

Megan Smith at the University of Delaware.

Favorite tourist thing: 

Niagara Falls

Least favorite tourist thing

Statue of Liberty

Bubba

All this travel means you need to have your stuff in order…

I teach and followed the DaveRamsey plan to get out of debt, budget, and have my financial house in order

Talk about secondary loss

Nok box

I Am Dead, Now What

Bubba’s Quick Start Guide

Video from Trinity Sports Medicine Update

Call to action:

Contact:

Bubba Wilson –@ATCLATBubba – on X

Jeremy – @MrJeremyJackson on socials

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

LEADS Academy was created to build foundational leadership and empower the next generation of leaders in the Michigan Athletic Trainers Society. Jacob Ortega-Schultz and Courtney Lewis join me live at MATS 2024.

LEADS

Leadership Excellence and Development Series

Contact Us

Jeremy Jackson

MATS Leadership

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Brian Parker spoke for an hour at the Michigan Athletic Trainers Society annual meeting. Energy drinks, stimulants, drugs and the need to educate athletes.

Taylor took anabolic steroids to get bigger faster stronger. 

He quit cold turkey and that lead him to depression and he chose to take his life.

Brian speaks at a lot of regional meetings and would love to come share Taylor story with your group.

3 questions to ask:

1. Contains banned substances?

2. Am I using it properly? 

3. Is it necessary? 

Just one energy drink can hurt your blood vessel function. 

ALL ME podcast

Contact Us

Jeremy Jackson – MrJeremyJackson on Twitter, SportsMedicineBroadcast on IG, FB

ATCorner Podcast

Ryan Collins

Joseph Eberhardt

Christina Fry

Bob Marley

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Professional Boundaries ebook from Dr. Sadie Adado and the ATvantage.

Dr. Adado, what are some professional boundaries you have put in place?

Scheduling (personal and professional time blocks for zone of Genius)

“Self-care” (exercise, meals, meditation, yoga, reading, walking, family/friends)

Quality improvement project on how I spent my time.

Why did these need to be established?

As a young professional, I hadn’t yet learned what I needed. It took a lot of self-awareness and reflection to understand my own needs so that I could practice putting boundaries in place. 

Walk us through some of these Professional Boundaries conversations.

Self-awareness is a journey. It doesn’t end, it’s continual and ever-changing. 

Tuning into self in each moment will help to outline needs that can be met. 

It is your ownership of that, responsibility that matters. Take action for yourself, no one else will. 

What are some of the boundaries you see other Athletic Trainers needing help with?

I hear ATs talk about being taken advantage of, lowest paid, constantly overworked, etc. The story feels redundant at this point. I wish more ATs felt empowered to change their own script. If you’re burnt out, who has the power to change that? Stop pointing fingers at the system and start being an agent of change. 

Establishing boundaries helps create life balance.  What does life balance look like for you currently?

For me right now, I love my work but it’s definitely not what I spend most of my time or energy on. Some might scoff at that, but truly it’s been a process of shifting the scales so that I came first. My body, my mental health, my spirit, and then my family friends pets.. it took a lot of practice and still does (every day) of ensuring that my cup is full so I can give. 

I love Financial Peace University and we are debt-free including the house.  How do you think finances play into life balance?

I also love the messages about financial peace. Finances play a big role in this balance. 

It can be tough… I was an AT with a Masters salaried working 60+ hrs a week and paid under $40k. I had 3 job offers in the same week and that was the highest… needless to say I lived paycheck to paycheck for a long time, feeling totally stuck. Eventually, I moved to working 5-6 jobs at any time to get “unstuck” but then found myself burnt out. I’m sure this story is familiar.

I decided to put energy into one place. For me, that was starting my small business. This created freedom of my time which is actually the most valuable. Long story short, this journey brought me to where I am now. And I still have multiple sources of income but it’s much more harmonious. 

I think for ATs the balance of life and work does revolve a lot around money. I think we need to talk about it more often. We need to justify and prove our worth not just “say” it.

Contact Us:

Dr. Sadie Adado

Contact Us

Jeremy Jackson

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Drew, tell me about the injury.

Junior in high school playing 8-man football in the panhandle of Nebraska

Diagnosed as a complete ligament tear – multi-ligament knee injury.

A few days after the injury my foot started to turn blue so I went and got a CT scan and was immediately life-flighted to try to save my leg.

In December 2019 I started for my high school’s varsity basketball team.

In rural Nebraska, they had a physician on-site and he missed the diagnosis.

They did not have a plan in place to handle that type of injury

Discuss how the injury was handled or managed on-site (at the time of injury).

On the night of the injury, I got tackled from behind and my knee buckled

By the time I got off the field, my knee was swollen to the size of a grapefruit.

I was taken over to a barn where he diagnosed me with a multi-ligamentous tear.

He said we would continue the evaluation on Monday.

I got up on crutches and the more I stayed up the worse my leg started to feel.

I sent the picture to my parents and I knew something was wrong.

I went to the local ER where they performed CT scans, IVs, and other tests.

I was in Denver within 4 hours of noticing my foot was blue.

My 6-hour surgery started at about 4 am.

The surgery looked successful at first but after a few hours, there was no pulse left in my leg.

Drew, when did you know you would need amputation? (do not name names please)

Before taking me into the surgery they had talked to my mom that amputation was a likely outcome.

After the surgery, I looked at my mom and said “I am going to lose my leg aren’t I?”

The surgeon came in and broke down while explaining what was going to happen.

You spent 30 days in the hospital and had 8 surgeries.  What are you thinking or feeling during that time?

After the doctor left my dad asked if I was telling them family or if he needed to.  But I was going to be the one to share the news.

We called my head FB coach and he was driving to come see me.  He pulled over at the time and started crying.

Drew came in almost weekly.  That meant driving 4 hours one way for treatment.

First few days I was in the ICU due to the necrosis and the potential problems from that.

The whole football team drove the school bus down to the hospital to visit me.

I had a lot of people coming in to visit me and that motivated me to stay positive.

Newspapers started picking up the story and I got a ton of cards and gift baskets.

Food was weird, I got good at video games and connected with most of the team helping me 

Daniel: I grew so much through Drew's injury

I always want patients to have an experience when they are here, not just have a doctor's appointment

Contact Us:

Drew – drewhaley01@gmail.com – @drewhaley5136

Daniel – Daniel.Ruedeman@uchealth.org

Jeremy – MrJeremyJackson on “X”

These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast:

Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products.

Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast

Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school)

HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST

MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast.

Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better.

Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.