Ep. 66 Special Niches: Treating Severe Headaches and Rock Climbers with Logan Cooper, PT, DPT

Ever wondered how to tackle chronic headaches, face, neck, and jaw pain? Or curious about the secrets to addressing rock climbers’ injuries, especially those notorious finger tendons?

Dr. Cooper spills the beans on these and more, unveiling breakthrough approaches that combine elite manual therapy techniques with the Neubie.Join us as we explore the intricate balance of looking globally and locally to solve complex patient problems. Dr. Cooper (PT, DPT) provides a holistic perspective, delving into the impact of posture on the neck, face, and jaw, as well as the ripple effect of jaw health on the entire body.

Episode Highlights:
– Strategies for Chronic Headache Relief
– Unveiling Solutions for Rock Climbers’ Unique Injuries
– The Art of Global and Local Problem-Solving
– Holistic Insights on Posture, Neck, Face, and Jaw Health
– Don’t miss out on this conversation!

Here is a link to a study mentioned by Cooper in the episode: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/number-steps-day-more-important-step-intensity‍

Read the transcript:

Garrett Salpeter (00:04.236)

Welcome to the NeuFit Undercurrent podcast. I am joined today by Logan Cooper, Doctor of Physical Therapy and also an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist as well as a Certified Specialist in several other areas, including SFMA, FMS, TPI, some of the certifications that we know and have talked about a little bit on prior episodes. And Logan has been practicing as a PT since 2005. He opened his first practice.

the OMT, Orthopedic Manual Therapy Specialists in 2014. Around that same time in 2013, he started serving as a faculty member at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine and is the co-chair of the manual therapy program there, which we’ll get to dive into and talk more about. He’s the co-chair along with Lisa Chase, who was our guest back on episode 55, just for a little bit of context, if anyone’s heard that episode or wishes to go back and listen. And…

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:00.727)

Thanks.

Garrett Salpeter (01:02.18)

Today I’m excited to dive into all of this with Logan and he’s got several areas of expertise that I think you’ll find very interesting. So Logan, welcome.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:09.922)

Thanks for having me buddy, I really appreciate it. I haven’t missed an episode of the Undercurrent Podcast yet, I’m super excited to be on it. Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (01:19.64)

Thank you so much, I appreciate that. And I’m really excited to have you on here because I think we’re gonna cover some new ground today just to kind of foreshadow this for our listeners a little bit. You are an expert in headaches, neck and jaw, facial pain areas that we haven’t talked about yet in any of the previous 60, however many episodes we’ve had. So we’ll get to cover that. And also some of your experience with rock climbing and working with that population.

So I’m really excited to dive in to give people a sense of who you are and what you’re up to. Can I ask you to walk us through your typical week? Because I think that’ll give people a sense of the breadth of what you’re doing.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:56.618)

Oh buddy, we’re gonna be here a while. I am all over the place. It’s actually a pretty interesting week. I look forward to it every time. Mondays, I work with a holistic dentistry practice and I treat their craniofacial pain patients. So anybody they’re seeing with jaw pain, headaches, that kind of symptom presentation. And then I also…

work with their patients if they’re having an oral appliance like a night guard or an expansion device or any kind of like a phrenectomy, a loosening of the tongue or the lip tie, and I’ll make sure their head is working okay. And if they have an oral appliance adjustment, just because the bite might be level on the appliance, it might, we have to make sure their head accepts the appliance right.

So I assess and treat them before and after any appliance adjustment. So that’s every Monday and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I’m in my spine practice in Germantown, Maryland. That’s mostly patients who have long-term spinal pain, back pain, more headaches, that kind of thing. And then every Friday I’m at my other practice called the beta PT where I treat a lot of high-level rock climbers.

So wide, it’s a big diversity of population. I see from Monday to Friday.

Garrett Salpeter (03:29.592)

Yes, yes, that’s awesome. And there’s all these different things that I wanna get into that we will, but we’ll have to try to go in order, try to go in order here. You also, several weeks out of the year are up in Michigan teaching at the Michigan State University, so obviously that’s not in the typical week, but you’re doing that. So can you tell us a little bit about that program and some of the work that you’re…

Dr. Logan Cooper (03:39.319)

Yeah.

Dr. Logan Cooper (03:52.179)

Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (03:59.044)

doing that you learned from that program that you’re now teaching to others going through that program and how that informs your work and how you use it with these different populations.

Dr. Logan Cooper (04:07.818)

Absolutely. That program changed my clinical life. It’s been, I don’t know what I would do without learning that material. So it’s an osteopathic program and it’s through the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine and it’s continuing education. So we teach physical therapists, MDs, and osteopathic physicians how to do osteopathic manipulative medicine.

And it’s one of the only, if not the only program in the country that opened up its osteopathic training to physical therapists, which is a very unique, normally it’s a very closed door kind of territorial environment, but they’ve opened their doors. And that was really pioneered by a former PT and now DO named Carl Steele, who Lisa, Jason, I teach with. And we do…

Everything from muscle energy technique to high velocity thrust, and it’s really an incorporation of a lot of different techniques into an overall holistic approach to patient care.

Garrett Salpeter (05:23.508)

And you are using that, using those, obviously in combination with the Neubie, of course, that we’ll talk about, but using those techniques with your jaw and facial and migraine pain patients and spine patients and rock climbers. Essentially it’s informing your approach across the board there to your…

Dr. Logan Cooper (05:43.542)

Well, absolutely. We, you know, if I have a patient in front of me, it’s a whole person. It’s not just a jaw or a shoulder or whatever the diagnostic code that comes in. Right. So the great thing about the osteopathic approach is it, it allows us a framework to look at the whole person and how it integrates into their unique needs and their unique demands.

Garrett Salpeter (06:09.964)

Awesome, I love that. And it’s interesting to hear how passionate you are and experienced you are with manual therapy. And as a manual therapy expert, if I ask you, if I ask a typical manual therapy expert what their thoughts are on modalities, the answer will often be somewhat negative. But I’m gonna ask you that same question. What is your thoughts?

on the use of modalities generally.

Dr. Logan Cooper (06:40.566)

Well, I was very much in that initial ballpark for the first majority of my career. I would think that if I had 40 minutes, I’m gonna get you much better with my hands than I would with any modality, like an ultrasound or the typical tens or NMS stim. And then I was introduced to several different modalities. The biggest game changer has actually been the Neubie And…

It allows it’s so with the manual therapy, it’s a great reset of the nervous system. We can, we can kind of reset the system, but just because we do a manipulation and we get a cavitation, we get a pop or we change the mechanics of something. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the nervous system has.

learned that there’s been a change and then how to incorporate the change. It might still sense the perception of a threat. And that was something that, that was a bridge that I just couldn’t seem to cross and I couldn’t understand why. Like I changed the mechanics. Why are they coming back or why, why aren’t they moving differently? And then I came across the Neubie and that has just completely changed the game for me and it’s allowed.

me to influence the input into the nervous system so then we can change that output and get that movement correction because now we’ve resolved the threat. It knows that it’s safe to the nervous system now knows that it’s safe to move because I’ve restored the mechanics and now it’s learned okay there’s no more threat now we can now we don’t have to limp now we don’t have to guard against the movement it’s okay it’s safe to move.

I’ve never been able to unlock that threat.

Dr. Logan Cooper (08:35.394)

The Neubie has been a game changer for me. I use that and then a deep tissue laser has been wonderful as well.

Garrett Salpeter (08:47.02)

I like that. We’re obviously introducing with the Neubie electrical energy. There’s value in light energy also and totally in favor of the combination of those and I appreciate that perspective too where it’s you know, it’s complementing what you’re doing. It’s certainly not replacing anything that you can do with your manual skills your evaluation and your and your interventions and yet it’s opening up that

that avenue or allowing people to capture the benefits more is sometimes how we hear other manual therapists talk about it, where you can open up this avenue for more movement, but then like you said, if it’s threatening, our brains are wired to make sure we don’t get hurt and limit us, limit our range of motion, limit our output. And so if you can train someone to really own that new range of motion, that new opportunity that you’ve opened up, then they have a chance to keep it and to really own it.

and it just, you know, kind of fits hand in glove. It goes really well together. So I love, I love to hear that description. And I’m honored that, you know, the Neubie has made it into your repertoire there alongside those manual skills.

Dr. Logan Cooper (10:00.51)

It’s been, it’s been really great. The way I, I kind of presented to patients is that when, when we have an injury or a threat that comes into the system, it doesn’t even have to be an injury. Sometimes it can just be a perceived threat, but most of the time people are coming to me because of some kind of injury. The nervous system has a few responses. It can turn muscles extra on to kind of splint, protectively splint an area for moving because it doesn’t want to hurt.

it can turn other muscles extra off, so they’re not pulling on that threatened area, regardless of, and it can create pain. So those three things, pain, because pain is always an output, it’s always a response. Muscles turning extra on or muscles turning extra off, regardless of the distribution of those three things, and often all three happen together, the area where that threat has come in,

the threshold gets lowered. The nervous system is extra sensitive at that area. And what, the way that I approach things is I try and restore the mechanics to offload the threatened area, and then use the Neubie to find exactly where that threat is coming in and raise the threshold. So it’s not as sensitive. And that sequence tends to just work.

anomaly. Well, especially in people, the majority of people I see have been in pain for five, 10, 20 years. It’s like almost a lifetime. So their nervous system has learned to maintain this. They’ve had some homunculus smudging. So they’ve had literally changes in their brain that have been made over this course of time. And this allows us to wake those brain centers back up.

and redefine these areas that have been just smudged and unclear for so long. And just changing the mechanics doesn’t always affect that neurology. So that combination has been key.

Garrett Salpeter (12:07.852)

That’s awesome, that’s so well said. I think I wanna capture this segment here and put it on the homepage of our website. That’s just the perfect overview, the perfect two minute overview of, what this type of approach can do. That was beautifully said, thank you. And now with that background, I think that conceptual understanding of manual therapy and how technology like the Neubie can help support that.

I think it’s a great time to dive into some of the specifics. So how are you using this approach, for example, with the people who have facial pain, jaw pain, migraines, let’s dive in deeply from the neck upwards because this is an area that we haven’t really talked much about on the podcast. Of course, general principles still apply and like you said, you’re treating a whole person, but there’s also specifics.

Dr. Logan Cooper (12:41.326)

Sure.

Dr. Logan Cooper (12:53.236)

Totally.

Garrett Salpeter (13:06.64)

for how to handle cranial nerves. And there’s unique techniques and approaches and perspectives here. So let’s dive in and talk to us about how you approach these challenges, these diagnoses, and in kind of whatever order makes sense to you.

Dr. Logan Cooper (13:20.398)

Sure. You know, first start with getting everything is back into as postural balance as possible with the manual therapy and the mechanics. And then I’ll get into more kind of head and face mapping with the Neubie. And this is something that I’ve just kind of come up with and explored. Again, it’s a it’s a manipulation of the general principles of

mapping that we would do throughout the whole rest of the body. So I’ll go through and do the typical mapping process through the arms, the upper quarter, that kind of thing. But then if you think about the trigeminal nerve and its communication through the upper cervical spine, so the trigeminal cervical nucleus, and all its communications into the C1, 2, and 3 region, there’s a big influence from that.

So the trigeminal nerve talks to the nuclei in that region, then it goes up, it ascends through the trigeminal thalamic tract up into the brain. So that’s why neck pain can sometimes refer as, or neck issues can sometimes refer as head and face pain. The trigeminal nerve is gonna do sensory, has three branches primarily to the forehead.

under the eye and then along the jaw. But then it can sometimes have referred pain to that region from that upper part of the neck. If there’s a neck component to someone’s headache, this has been just game-chained because it, again, allows us to take that neurology and down-regulate that threat from a way that just hasn’t been done before. So I’ll go through and.

treat out the mechanics and then I’ll have our the red pad or kind of that grounding pad on the upper part of the cervical spine horizontally so it covers that C123 and then I’ll have the small sponge and small electrode going around and I’ll basically map the face and I’m only looking for the very onset of

Dr. Logan Cooper (15:39.234)

the sensation of the stimulation. If you’ve ever done this on somebody’s face or your own, you get to certain regions and it can be a very, very sharp kind of sensation. So I’m not looking for that at all. I just want that initial onset. And then I treat it a lot like we would through our normal mapping and then treatment process.

Garrett Salpeter (16:06.669)

Mm-hmm. That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. And also just great for clinicians to hear about this approach, because I think it’s an area where there’s a chance to really help people, and there’s a lot of difficulty, and not a lot of great answers, or people that really know how to address these in an effective way.

Dr. Logan Cooper (16:28.622)

Yeah, headaches are tough. It’s like this ninja kind of diagnosis. It’s not like a broken arm that you’re in a sling for. And everyone sees, oh, you’re in a sling, a cast. Man, that must really hurt. People who suffer from headaches, it’s this invisible kind of attack that.

that it’s hard to understand if you haven’t suffered from them yourself. When I was a kid in middle school and then into early high school, I had just crippling, absolutely debilitating migraines that would come four or five days a week and I’d be just praying not to throw up, go in a cold, dark, quiet room, leave me alone, hope to fall asleep and wake up and it might be gone. Went through CT scans, MRIs.

self-hypnosis, medications, and then side effects from medications for years. No one ever, now this is a long time ago, we’re at 40 now and I was in middle school then, but no one ever, ever put their hands on me to say, you know, what’s going on and look at me from a mechanical point of view. And once I was introduced to…

this kind of approach, it changed my life. It took my headaches from three or four awful a week to maybe two a year, which is, I mean, that will change your life. I’m not headache free, but to go from three or four migraine headaches a week or for lasting three or four days to maybe two headaches a year, I mean, that’s…

Garrett Salpeter (18:04.746)

Oh yeah.

Dr. Logan Cooper (18:17.195)

It gave me back my life.

Garrett Salpeter (18:21.164)

Yeah, was the person that you worked with that finally helped resolve this, a physical therapist doing this type of work, or what was the…

Dr. Logan Cooper (18:25.834)

He was actually a dentist and a physical therapist and a DL. It was kind of a combination of things. I was at Michigan State doing my first cranial course. And there was a dentist who would come in and demonstrate the effect and the influence of a proper bite on your strength and then how you moved. And he made me a custom night guard in the bathroom at Michigan State.

He did the mold and everything because I was suffering so much. And from that moment on, my headaches were instantly better. I woke up the next day feeling different than I had almost ever. And it just, it opened up this rabbit hole for me. I’m still digging deeper in it because there’s so much to find and discover. And it’s, it, there’s not a lot of.

research on this kind of stuff out there. There’s, it’s just not there. So I’m trying to uncover as much of it as I can and then bring these other influences like the Neubie and try and help these people that have just suffered for so long and just been thrown medications and ultimately just, you know, you just have daily headaches and that’s just the way it’s gonna be. Oh, it’s hormonal. Oh, it’s, it doesn’t, it’s not necessarily the case.

There’s a lot that we can do.

Garrett Salpeter (19:56.196)

So there’s a few things in the last several minutes here we talked about when working with headaches, face and neck, you talked about looking at postural balance. So let’s go back and touch on that for a moment. So are you essentially seeing along the kinematic chain if there’s issues in the foot and lower leg or those sorts of imbalances, of course create compensations further up the chain and that can…

can create asymmetries and patterns of torque in the neck. Is that essentially?

Dr. Logan Cooper (20:27.498)

Absolutely. I mean, from, if you look at Meyers work, right, there’s all the fascia lines and there’s a direct line from the bottom of the foot up the back through the back of the neck and the occiput that comes right to the eyebrow ridge, the superficial back line. We have all these different connections and if you’re kind of flexed at the hip, if your lumbosacral junction can’t extend through your pelvis and your lower spine, then you’re going to be kind of pitched forward.

And we have this innate drive to get our eyes level with the horizon. Okay. It goes back to, you know, we need to make sure the lion’s not going to come out of the brush and eat us and then, you know, it’s a balanced thing and it’s a communication politeness, right? So you and I are looking at each other. If I’m forward bent and my head’s tipped down, then I not looking you in the eyes. It’s kind of rude.

So we’re going to do whatever we can do to get our eyes level with the horizon. And if, if we’re forward pitched, that means we’re going to extend our head on our neck, or it’s like for the people listening, we’re just like looking up a little bit all the time. And what that does is it adds a constant compression to the back part of our neck and where our head meets our neck. All the time.

Now that we’re on computers and sitting, and the computers have their own kind of gravitational force, they kind of pull us forward, right, to get that forward head posture. We’ve got to get that head back into the plumb alignment where it should be, or as close to it as possible, to decrease the stress on the neck, and then how that influences up into the rest of the head, into the jaw.

Garrett Salpeter (22:12.908)

And if you talk about those fascial lines, there’s one on each side too. So that could, what you’re describing could be asymmetrically more severe on one side, introducing perhaps a rotational pattern also in that, you know, on top of that, right?

Dr. Logan Cooper (22:17.588)

Alright.

Dr. Logan Cooper (22:27.658)

Absolutely. And then what happens is people have had this typically for a long time and they’ve strength trained on it and they’ve tried to put fitness on dysfunction and you can’t do it. What happens is you get really good at moving really badly and you get really good at maintaining that dysfunction or that imbalance that you just mentioned. So then what we have to do is you have to come in and undo that and then

teach the system how to move correctly. We have to teach it a new habit because they don’t really unlearn the old habit. You have to learn a new one. And that’s kind of our approach and a really good way to see kind of the influence of, a lot of times people understand or really appreciate the influence of the head on the neck and how that impacts your bite and how your teeth come together. And we were talking about, for example, the patients with jaw pain and work on.

at the dentist office. But if you’re sitting kind of straight ahead, looking at me now, and you just kind of tap your teeth together, just gently, and get a sense of where that first contact point is, then if you slump, if you sit just how everybody tells you not to, with your mouth kind of relaxedly open, and then tap your teeth together again, you might notice that there’s a little shift in where that initial contact point was.

Now if you sit up or stand up super tall and look up to the ceiling, and again, gently tap your teeth together, again, you might notice a little shift of where that initial contact point was. So that’s how we can change your bite just by changing your head position on your neck. So if you’re clenching and grinding and waking up with headaches, which many people do,

Oftentimes what’s happened is our head has come forward and it’s like we’re looking up at the ceiling all day long So our jaw kind of shifts backwards in the socket and then these chewing muscles these muscles on the side of your head Kind of by your ear and your temporal area and then below your cheekbone are working so hard to get the jaw re-centered in the socket And that’s that constant tension that you feel

Dr. Logan Cooper (24:44.162)

So we can change the socket position and re-center the socket over the jaw and a lot of that balances. It works phenomenally well.

Garrett Salpeter (24:55.904)

Excellent. Thank you for that description. I think that’s, I think that really helps, you know, bring it to life and help people really get a feel for that connection of how posture and position elsewhere in the body can affect the jaw. In terms of your, you know, if, if someone, if you’re working with someone now who has headaches, jaw pain, you’re talking about how it could be coming essentially from anywhere in the body.

with your Michigan State experience with, you know, in introducing you, I mentioned that you’re SFMA, you know, done TPI, you know, these different ways to assess, how are you, you know, when you have a patient in front of you with these types of issues, how are you essentially finding where you need to go first? How are you finding whether it’s a posterior chain on one side or whether it’s something more local on the neck? Can you talk to us a little bit about…

how you’re focusing your efforts to get the most bang for the buck with that patient.

Dr. Logan Cooper (25:54.122)

I think that is the hardest question in manual medicine. Where do you start? You start where you can get in and is typically the answer I get. You start where the system allows you to enter. It’s not always gonna be the same for everybody. I tend to start kind of from the middle and work out. So I’ll start from if.

in a very kind of simplistic way. If it’s someone coming for head, neck, jaw, I’ll start at least at the thoracolumbar junction down to the T12L1, but really even the pelvis because of its influence up the chain. So I need to make sure your pelvis is working well all the way up. And then I’ll kind of build the foundation from the ground up. I look at the jaw and the head is like the roof on a house.

If the foundation is slanted, the roof really doesn’t stand much of a chance. So I work my way up to it and get rid of as much artifact or influence from these long levers. So the long levers are some of the, like you were talking about, there’s these fascia lines and these long muscles that can pull and torque and twist and that they can give you kind of a false

positive or negative about what’s going on locally. So you take away or you limit or remove as much of this global influence as you can before you look locally. So I’ll always do, it’s funny, my patients, when they come in, whether it’s headaches or an ankle sprain, if they’ve been seeing me for a while, they’ll come in and they’ll turn around, turn their back towards me because they know I’m gonna move their pelvis around.

doesn’t matter what they’re coming for. I gotta make sure that’s clean. But I’ll typically start the very first time with an SFMA movement assessment because it’s two minutes, two and a half minutes, and it gives me a great idea of how they’re moving from neck to ankle. And that gives me an idea, okay, well, where am I gonna?

Dr. Logan Cooper (28:09.494)

go in. If they’re really hot and reactive in their neck, I’m probably not going to go there first. I’m going to go to some of these areas for the people who are familiar with SFMA that are more dysfunctional but non-painful. See if I can restore that and then get into the problem painful area.

Garrett Salpeter (28:29.96)

And just as an aside, can you explain to everyone listening the difference between FMS and SFMA because they’re all part of the Grey Cooks program, but just to explain that so everyone’s on the same page also.

Dr. Logan Cooper (28:37.204)

Only.

Dr. Logan Cooper (28:42.662)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a continuum. It depends on where the person’s coming in. So if someone’s coming in with pain, I’ll look at more of the SFMA. So it’s a selective functional movement assessment. It allows us to break the body down by different regions and then further break it down into where to find out if it’s a movement problem or a stability control problem. An FMS, a functional movement screen, is more for people who are not in pain.

And it’s a global assessment of, again, how well they move unloaded, looking at squats, lunges, shoulder reach, but it’s more for those who are not in pain. Once someone comes in and they’re in pain, then I’ll regress them to an SFMA, and then they can progress more to the functional movement screen. And then they have another progression.

functional capacity, there’s a whole other step along that continuum now. That’s the difference between the FMS and the SFMA.

Garrett Salpeter (29:55.856)

Thank you, thank you for that. Just wanted to make sure people understand when we’re throwing out these acronyms and everything. Don’t want to leave anyone behind. So when we’re talking about this population of people with headaches, neck and jaw pain, you’re looking globally, you’re assessing TL junction, movement of the pelvis, looking at that, and seeing what you need to clean up essentially globally before even working locally there. So I’m glad we got to dive in a little more.

Dr. Logan Cooper (29:58.89)

Yeah, no, there’s a lot.

Garrett Salpeter (30:25.872)

deeply on the postural balance side. When you’re working locally, there’s a lot of interesting, I think, different conversational threads we could embark upon here, but, you know, one of the things that I’ve seen over the years is that there seem to be reflexes between the jaw and the rest of the body that can be very significant. So like you talked about.

this dentist came in to the Michigan State Program and showed you how bite mechanics can affect different things. You know, I’ve had experiences of doing manual muscle testing and someone will open their jaw or cleanse their teeth or deviate jaw left or right, and all of a sudden that will massively strengthen or massively weaken output even in leg muscles and things like that. So we sort of see these different far-reaching and significant effects of the jaw.

Dr. Logan Cooper (31:13.738)

Yeah, absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (31:21.952)

You mentioned, you know, when we’re talking about that several minutes ago, there’s, there’s not much research on that, but what, what can you tell us about either based on your experience, literature, or both your experience in terms of this domain of, of how working on the jaw and, you know, temporalis and mass, uh, masseter and pterygoid muscles and how those can affect even other areas in the body that just kind of be this local and global approach here.

Dr. Logan Cooper (31:45.02)

Yeah, absolutely. I consider the jaw as part of your core and it’s not considered like that and really any other communication when it comes to core strengthening and core training. But I used to fight a lot of Muay Thai and different, a few different things. One of the first things you do is you really kind of set your jaw.

You bite down on that guard or whatever it is, if you’ve been in a fight, right? You don’t keep your jaw nice and loose when you’re in a fight. And if that’s off, man, everything can change. Kind of like what you were seeing when you were manual muscle testing, I’ll often look at if someone gets a night guard or an oral appliance, I’ll do a grip strength test with the night guard out and teeth together, and then I’ll have them put the guard in,

do another grip strength test, it needs to be the same or better. If I see a big drop in that grip strength, well then I know there’s something not right with this guard. And I use that grip strength as a window into their nervous system and its ability to take its foot off the brake. If the nervous system senses a threat, it’s gonna limit the amount of force that it’s gonna allow you to give.

because it doesn’t want to do too much. If I can take away threat, it’s like changing the governor on an engine. It’s going to allow you to go faster. It’s going to take its foot off the brake. And a well-fit guard of good occlusion, so your teeth coming together, that we should see an increase in strength, an increase in grip strength, more vitality through the head. So the bones in the head, the cranial bones should all move.

It’s not fused bowling ball like we were initially taught. It doesn’t move like your elbow bends, but there should be a rhythm. A certain rhythm, a rate, and an amplitude, and a well-fit bite, or a well-adjusted bite, whether it’s without a guard or with, should promote mobility and vitality through that system. And that’s what I assess. If there’s a dampening of that vitality, a decrease in the grip strength,

Dr. Logan Cooper (34:02.45)

even if the guard is level or the bite is level, something’s not right from a functional point of view. And that’s where I come in.

Garrett Salpeter (34:12.808)

That’s a fabulous description and one follow-up question. What is the effect size that you’re seeing? So if you’re looking at someone’s grip strength, for example, are we talking like, you know, a half a percent or are we talking more significant?

Dr. Logan Cooper (34:24.333)

I’ll see, it depends on the initial start, but 10% is not unheard of at all. If someone’s got a 70 pound grip strength, it’ll go up seven to 10 pounds, which is huge. Or if they’re already asymmetric, right? With the guard out or before the treatment, you can get a balancing, you can get an increase in the weak side now within only a couple percentage difference from their dominant side.

Which is huge and the relationship between grip strength and all cause mortality is massive. The 10% drop in grip strength could lead to is shown, forget the exact study, but to a significant increase in your risk of dying within the next five years. A drop in grip strength. So if I can raise your grip strength by 10 pounds, man, we could have just prolonged your life.

to a degree, right? Maybe not that extreme, but it’s not unheard of to see, I’ll see again, 10% changes pretty routinely.

Garrett Salpeter (35:36.604)

Yeah, I’m so glad to hear you say that because that’s congruent with my, you know, more subjective experience, actually more, fairly objective experience using a handheld dynamometer also and seeing changes. And for reference for people listening in our NeuFit certification curriculum and continuing education courses, our level one course is applying the 80-20 principle, giving people the techniques.

Dr. Logan Cooper (35:39.278)

Thank you.

Dr. Logan Cooper (35:45.251)

in the

Garrett Salpeter (36:03.288)

like we’ve talked about here and on previous episodes of mapping and master reset and foot and hand bath that are gonna be the biggest needle movers for the most number of people. However, that 80-20 principle, or maybe it’s the 20 to 25% of techniques that help 90% of patients. There’s still those 10% where there’s other things that we’re gonna have to do. Many of them are likely the chronic pain patients that end up in your office, Logan, right?

Dr. Logan Cooper (36:31.106)

Okay.

Garrett Salpeter (36:33.68)

So we have our level two course is going to cover a few different things like visual and vestibular system that could be these overriding influences that sabotage progress. And like you just talked about, if the nervous system perceives threat or something is off, it’s going to create governors and limitations globally. And it can affect, you know, these issues can affect anything else in the body and reducing output. And one of the topics that we cover, and it’s…

It’s a little more, I think, rudimentary than what you’re doing and what you’re describing here and doing in practice. But we do some jaw work where we can have the electric glove on and do some work on those temporalis muscles, on the masseter, do some jaw mobilizations. And it does make a big difference. I’m just glad to hear you say that and just, you know, helping, just also letting people know that this is, some of this is in our curriculum, some of this you’re doing, but it just…

Part of my motivation for saying that is just to highlight the effect size and the impact that jaw work can have because you can go through all these different wonderful evaluation, assessment and interventions and still not quite be all the way there. Sometimes doing that work on the jaw can be the missing link or can be the thing that leads to that breakthrough.

Dr. Logan Cooper (37:56.258)

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s such a niche kind of area. It’s a very subspecialty area that even if you don’t work on the jaw, understanding that it’s there and it’s potential influence and then have a connection with a good dentist or a good myofunctional therapist who will work on tongue strength and mobility and understanding its potential influence into the system.

is huge because just like you said that last little 10% sometimes can make all the difference in the world.

Garrett Salpeter (38:30.54)

Yeah, yeah, beautifully said there. So we’ve talked about the importance of, of posture and how the foundation, you know, if the foundation is flawed, the roof doesn’t stand a chance. Talked about mapping on the head and face and, uh, some of the work that you’re doing there, the relationship between the trigeminal nerve and the cervical spine, uh, talking about jaw reflexes, but let’s see before we move on to, you know, talking about rock climbers, totally, totally different.

Dr. Logan Cooper (38:56.266)

Yeah, I know, right?

Garrett Salpeter (38:59.572)

Of course, jaw affects grip strength, so there’s a connection there too, but anything else that we need to cover in this sort of survey of the headache, neck, jaw topic before we move on to a different population.

Dr. Logan Cooper (39:09.802)

I think that’s, we covered a lot there for sure. It’s a really amazing area to work on and you can change people’s lives with changing their headaches. And I just can’t emphasize enough how disruptive headaches are. And it can be such a hard population to work with because they’ve typically been in pain for so long.

But if you can give these people even just a little bit of relief, take their headaches down from daily to weekly or then over time. And I know you’ve said this before, it’s not about being perfect, but persistent. So stay persistent with this care and this kind of approach and understanding that you’re changing, you’re trying to change a nervous system that has learned over a long time how to maintain it and keep its problem and its pain.

So if you stay persistent with this and use these approaches, whether it’s a combination of the manual therapy and then trying to influence the nervous system through the Neubie and retraining, and if you can just baby step it and stay persistent, you’re gonna make a world of change for these people. It really is amazing.

Garrett Salpeter (40:34.732)

Yes. Beautifully said there. And, uh, let’s, let’s transition now. So we’re just essentially going chronologically through your typical treatment week here, starting at the dentist’s office, then working with the chronic pain patients in your own practice. Let’s, let’s transition to the, the latter portion of your week where you’re at the beta PT or other office inside of a rock climbing gym. Um, can you tell us a little bit about, about your experience with

with rock climbing and some of the unique demands of that sport. That’s something else we haven’t covered yet on this podcast and something that I don’t know a ton about and will enjoy learning more about too. Then we can get into how you’re treating those athletes and stuff, but can you help us kind of understand your experience there and the demands of that sport to start?

Dr. Logan Cooper (41:23.542)

Absolutely. I got into climbing when I was in PT school. So in physical therapy school, I had less than zero money, right? You’re just racking up debt. And so I did, I like to do three things. I like to rock climb, I like to sail, I like to play golf. So I taught rock climbing, I taught sailing, and then I picked up range balls at a golf course. So I could do the three things that I love to do without having to pay for it. And that was my real introduction into climbing.

and trying to teach climbing movement really helped me understand the demands of the sport from a very early stage as I was, because I would teach climbing movement before I really understood movement. And so as I was learning movement through PT school and all of our training in school and then in clinic, I was learning more and more about teaching climbing and they just kind of stair stepped each other up and.

It was a really great way to learn it. So then once I started treating more climbers in my region, and I’m primarily in Maryland and Virginia, there’s not a lot of therapists, physical therapists in this area that work on climbers. If you go out to the West Coast, there’s some PTs that work with a lot of climbers out there, but there’s not very much on the East Coast where I am. And so I had climbers come from all over.

see me and it just turned into this amazing opportunity. But I was having, I was still primarily my only in my spine practice then. And it was really hard from a business perspective. So I know a lot of your listeners are clinic owners. So you have as a clinic owner and you’re trying to market you really want to market to one person. We’ll talk to one person in all your messaging. So it’s consistent.

it’s reproducible. The person who hears your messages, they hear your message and they say, oh, Garrett’s talking to me. So to have that conversation with a rock climber is a very different conversation than someone suffering from chronic spinal pain, which is very different from someone suffering from jaw pain and headaches. So I created the Beta PT so I could have that conversation with climbers and really focus on

Dr. Logan Cooper (43:50.822)

on their unique sport needs and demands. And it’s grown so much. So I’m within Sport Rock is the name of the gym that I’m housed within. And they have a climbing performance Institute. So I’m the head therapist for that whole performance Institute. And it’s been just amazing. I could go there and work 12, 13 hour day and just come out so energized and excited because I just.

‍

I love working with climbers.

‍

Garrett Salpeter (44:23.48)

That’s awesome. I love that feeling too of doing things and, you know, grateful to say I often feel this way too, you know, where I go through a work day that, you know, sometimes or to some people might feel like a grind and depleting, but to feel energized from that is a, is a wonderful feeling and a good, a sign that we’re on the right path. So I acknowledge that. I like that. That’s, uh, and it’s one of the things, you know, you and I are both, uh, we’re talking, you know, both our, our whoop brothers here, you know, tracking our metrics and stuff.

Dr. Logan Cooper (44:33.742)

Right.

Dr. Logan Cooper (44:40.739)

Thanks for watching.

Dr. Logan Cooper (44:49.294)

Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (44:53.176)

And just as an aside, that’s one of the things that I find, obviously very diligent about my lifestyle and setting my circadian rhythm and when and how I eat and my exercise and movement and non-exercise movement, all these things, but I do find that probably the biggest lever is my mindset, my mental state, how I’m feeling about my day. I think that seems to move the needle on my recovery metrics and everything.

more than perhaps anything else.

Dr. Logan Cooper (45:23.17)

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s one of the reasons why I love, I love whoop. And I’ve been on it for over three years now and really recommend it to all, to all my climbers is that, you know, we, we take a very personalized approach, your needs as a person and as a climber are very different from someone else’s needs. Who’s a different person and maybe a different type of climber. Um, and if we really want to, to specialize and,

make that care, what the care that you need, very unique to you. Well, we need to do that based on how your body’s ready to accept whatever challenge we’re going to give it, right? Just because you have a hard workout or a hard climbing day scheduled doesn’t mean that your body’s ready for it. It’s just an arbitrary workout on an arbitrary day. This thing that we call a calendar doesn’t really mean anything if your body hasn’t recovered from what you did yesterday. So we’ll look at your

whoop score, you green, yellow or red. And if you’re green, for those of you who are unfamiliar with whoop, it breaks it down into how kind of well you’ve recovered based on a bunch of different metrics, heart rate variability, strain scores, all these different things. And green is typically good, like you can really go hard that day. Yellow is, yeah, you did pretty well, you can go, but pace yourself a little bit. And red is…

All right, let’s focus on recovery because maybe you had too much alcohol or you didn’t sleep or you had an argument with your significant other, whatever. So then I have a different set of things we do like I’ll have them pull from their red exercises on red days, yellows on yellow days and greens on green days. And really customize the red doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. It just means okay we’re going to focus on mobility and breathing and recovery and then

we’ll push that hard work out to tomorrow. And now we’ll climb hard. We’ll do repeat, we’ll do whatever our program needs to be. And that’s allowed me to really see that window. And then kind of like what you were saying before with your lifestyles, there’s certain non-negotiables that have to be there. So you need to get enough recovery and sleep. You need ideally some early morning sunlight. You need to get enough protein, you need enough water.

Dr. Logan Cooper (47:40.502)

You have to have the building blocks to recover and then to support performance. Otherwise, nothing I do is going to work. It’s just not going to be there. So get enough steps in every day. I don’t know if you’re familiar with, there’s a study in, what was it? I think 2020 by the NIH that looked at average steps per day. And are you familiar with this study at all?

It, so we looked at the average steps that Americans take, I think is 5,114 or 17 or something, about 5,000 steps a day. And then they looked at people who walked 4,000 steps a day, 8,000 steps a day or 12,000 steps a day. And then they compared that to all cause mortality. So your chance of dying from anything.

Garrett Salpeter (48:08.332)

I’m not sure. Tell us more about it.

Dr. Logan Cooper (48:36.926)

and the people who walked 8,000 steps a day over the people who walked 4,000 steps a day were 51% less likely to die from anything. That’s huge. And then the people who walked 12,000 steps a day over the 4,000 steppers, well, I think it was about 65% less likely. So to ask people to do 12,000 steps a day is a lot, but I try and get everybody up to at least 8,000 steps a day.

Because then you’re, I mean, again, we can prolong your life just by step count. And it didn’t look at intensity or other exercises, purely step count. And it’s things like, you know, parking your, your car farther away from the food store, walking into the food store, walk the car back, the cart back to your car. And then walk the cart back to the front of the food store instead of the little aisle thing, you know, where you can put the cart, like that kind of stuff.

So that goes into the lifestyle that you were mentioning. The certain non-negotiables, they just have to be there. And then.

Garrett Salpeter (49:42.752)

Yeah. I love that. This is a bit of a bonus topic, just piggybacking on what you said. One of my favorite authors is a woman named Katie Bowman, who many people listening to this podcast will have heard of. If you haven’t, it’s K-A-T-Y, then B-O-W-M-A-N, I believe, Katie Bowman. And so she talks about the distinction between movement and exercise and how in our society…

Dr. Logan Cooper (49:51.736)

Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (50:11.172)

we’ve essentially come to the collective belief that all that really counts as movement is these formal blocks of exercise in the gym. And she shares these studies about how our most active, most quote unquote active people today are exercising say 300 minutes a week, which is what, five hours a week. Whereas our hunter gatherer ancestors on average were active 3000 minutes a week. That’s.

10 times more, right, 50 hours a week, that including walking around, doing chores, going on hunts, which of course, persistence hunting means a lot of walking and jogging, and then occasional sprints mixed in means carrying back the carcass of a deer or whatever animal. And so, understanding that movement and the loads that we place on tissues all day long. And so from that, I took really a strong influence.

in terms of what you said, you know, just finding ways to get more steps in. And then also during the day, you know, spending time sitting cross-legged when I’m on my phone or laptop, instead of just being in a chair and alternating the positions of, you know, sitting 90-91 way and sitting the other way. And that’s helped me a lot. You know, I’ve historically have just been more, more stiff connective tissue joint-wise, and that’s made a big difference for me because there’s no extra time or extra work. It’s just, but that counts as.

has some of the overall movement. Exercise, if you look at movement, if you listen, you can’t see me, but if movement is kind of a big circle, it’s the size of the whole screen. Exercise is just a small part, a smaller circle inside of that. There’s all these other things that count, and more movement is the goal, not necessarily just more exercise. So I think that’s.

Dr. Logan Cooper (51:54.062)

Exactly, and I’m a huge fan of hers as well. And a lot of what she talks about is nutritious movement. So we want to take, to use her term, I believe it’s movement snacks. And what I tell my patients is this, you could eat broccoli all day long. Broccoli is good for you. It’s a healthy food. But if all you ate was broccoli, you’re not gonna do great. You’re gonna have a ton of gas. And you’re just not gonna do well.

So while broccoli is good, you also need fruits and meats and other nutrients in your diet. Well, movement is the exact same way. If all you do is one exercise or you just go to the gym and you do that one routine and that’s your, or you just go for a run every morning and that’s it, while that’s good, it’s not a nutrient dense diet of movement.

And that’s what we want. We want all these different macro and micronutrients from our daily movement. Maybe we get up and we walk to the water cooler backwards. How often do you walk backwards during the day? Probably not enough, right? But that’s just this change to your nervous system. It’s this little movement snack during the day, 30 seconds. Just take a little 30 second backwards walking break or take a big breath and put your arms over your head.

When’s the last time most people put their arms fully over their head? Probably not often and then when they do, oh it’s tight, I haven’t done it in months. It’s gonna be tight. So I’m a huge fan of her approach to nutritious movement and taking these little movement snacks that are bite-sized and doable versus asking somebody to do a two-hour home exercise routine that they’re never gonna do. So I’m right there with you buddy.

Garrett Salpeter (53:50.356)

Yeah, I love that. That was very, very well said. And I hope that this will, the insight will have the same effect on people listening as, as it did on me, where it really has shifted my perspective in the last few years and helped me, you know, be healthier and move better. And, you know, it’s really has made that shift in perspective between movement and exercise and finding ways to take these movement snacks and, you know, this, this perspective has really been a profound.

profound improvement to my quality of life. So I appreciate you sharing that insight there and I’m glad we got this bonus portion of the conversation.

Dr. Logan Cooper (54:27.346)

Absolutely. Well, this is also to tie it back in with the rock climbers. This is the stuff, this is how I approach my climbers as well. It’s like I try and they tend to be hyper focused on their sport, but they’re, they have a whole life outside the gym or the crag that they’re bringing to their performance. So I have to again, look at them as a whole person and say, okay, well, how can we

Garrett Salpeter (54:42.778)

Mm-hmm.

Garrett Salpeter (54:51.297)

Yeah.

Dr. Logan Cooper (54:54.806)

we get these little gains. So there’s a principle called aggregation of marginal gains. Okay, this was brought into the British cycling team years ago when they were having a big drought and performance. And rather than trying to make one huge gain and perform better, they brought in the new coach brought in a dentist to teach him how to brush your teeth‍

You know, the doctor teach them how to wash their hands. They changed the paint color in the van so it picked up dust better where the bikes were stored. All these little areas, and they made these little 1% gains in all these areas outside of cycling that now their cyclists were able to perform exponentially better because they didn’t have all that other garbage going on.

And that’s what I do with my climbers is I try and, okay, where are these modular gains or marginal gains that we can make outside the climbing gym and then bring that improvement into the gym or onto the crag where now you’re more energy efficient. So you can try harder and go longer with less energy expenditure. So that’s a huge principle to take advantage of.

Garrett Salpeter (56:18.548)

I love that. So definitely our detour talking about nutritious movement was not really a detour because it definitely is relevant. It’s part of your messaging to those athletes. And then, you know, just coming back to the rock climbing topic, what are you, just to help us understand more specifically about this population, you know, I think people probably know

grip strength is important, strength to weight ratio. What are some of the things that you’re working on that are unique to the challenges of rock climbers from either a training and performance or therapy perspective in terms of issues they’re dealing with? Can you help us understand a little more of the specific needs? Like we talk about major league baseball pitchers and there’s a lot of arm care routines. Of course the whole chain matters. For the same reason you talked about how the…

lower body issues can affect neck and jaw, right? That can affect throwing mechanics, but there’s specific needs there. What are some of these specifics for rock climbers especially?

Dr. Logan Cooper (57:23.918)

Absolutely. The majority of what my patients come to me complaining about or with the history of are pulley injuries and tendon problems within the hands. So the tendons that come down and help bend your fingers, they’re under these little arches of ligaments, different pulleys. And if they’re gripping, sometimes they might hear a pop. And typically that’s a pulley rupture.

‍

You can get these chronic tendon pains, start to swell in your fingers, you lose your strength. You really can’t climb on it for a certain amount of time depending on the grade. It’s like an ankle sprain, but in your finger.

‍

So that’s a lot of what I see, that and shoulder problems. So we’ll treat the local pain generating sites. So we’ll treat the tissue that’s inflamed, irritated or damaged, but then really where I spend the most amount of time is trying to figure out why they’re over gripping and where that inefficiency is. So then say, okay, well.

you know, both hands were on the wall. You use both hands and hopefully you’re working symmetrically. Well, why is it always on your right hand? That’s family. Okay. Maybe it’s a shoulder mobility issue or a…

scapular stability issue. So you’re really, you’re losing your awareness of kind of where that limb is in space and your ability to control it proximally. So where the closer part to your center is. So then the distal or farther away capability is less. So you’re going to really be over gripping and that can lead to those chronic problems.

Dr. Logan Cooper (59:16.778)

And that’s where I spend the majority of my time, is trying to figure out why are they injured to begin with? Why is that tissue so overloaded to begin with?

Garrett Salpeter (59:33.2)

So, an analogous approach, looking locally and globally, trying to ask why, just, you know, with a different presentation, different set of symptoms, but I can, of course, see the parallels in your approach and can tell why you’re effective.

Dr. Logan Cooper (59:47.33)

Yeah, and it’s just a great approach. And what’s so cool is that being housed within the climbing gym where I am, so I can, I’ll do my manual therapy, I’ll do my kind of reset of the system. Well, first I’ll watch them climb, I’ll record them. And I’ll say, okay, well, let’s recreate a problem or a climbing route that kind of keys off or elicits your symptoms.

So a lot like in our Neubie mapping, right? We’ll say, okay, well, is there a motion that you move your arm in or your leg that generates your problem? So I’ll look at that with my climber on the wall and I’ll see, okay, how are they moving? Where is that provocation point? Then I’ll take them down, I’ll do my manual therapy, we’ll get the Neubie on them, I’ll go through some more kind of general motion like our typical upper quarter kind of movement thing.

But then I’ll take them back to the wall and I’ll have them do some repeaters of a similar motion with the Neubie. And then I’ll take that off and then re-record them going through their problem or through that route and it’s night and day different. It’s just, and I haven’t seen that anywhere else. It’s just, it allows us to get this.

immediate assessment and influence and reassessment of their nervous system on the wall. And it’s just, it’s so exciting.

Garrett Salpeter (01:01:22.064)

That’s awesome. I love that approach. And that’s cool for me to hear the insights. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a climber be treated or heard that description of how you would treat a climber like that. One other question, when you talk about these pulley injuries and the tendons in the hand, are those, I assume if something ruptures, that would.‍

need a surgical repair, I don’t have much experience dealing with this, so what, is it the same? Yeah.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:01:49.874)

It’s degrees of terror. Again, it’s like an ankle sprain, right? You can have grade one, two, or three and complete rupture. So you can have different amounts of tearing of the pulleys. And depending on which pulley was injured, kind of dictates the timeframe of recovery. And then were there also tendon influence as well, or tendon damage from the flexor tendons. So we have two major.

‍

two flexes of our fingers, the superficialis and the profundus. So one goes to the middle kind of bone in the finger and then it kind of inserts like a y into that bone and then the other tendon comes through that to the tip of the finger and bends the end part. So sometimes we can have a tendon influence. You should be able to do just like a, so you can see it here, you should be able to just bend like the middle part of the finger.

That’s one tendon. And then if you kind of hold that still and you just kind of wiggle the tip of your finger, so hold, yeah, that’s a different tendon. So something we can try and see, okay, which tendons are involved? Is there a tendon contribution where primarily the ligaments from the pulleys? Oftentimes it’s both because it’s such a disruptive trauma that you get an influence of more than one tissue. But…

So we can kind of isolate or try and determine the degree of influence with those different tissues. And that just changes the timeframe of not climbing. It’s a time off and then a return to climbing and at what grade and then how quickly we can reload that system.

Garrett Salpeter (01:03:35.06)

I appreciate that insight. I’m sure, especially clinicians listening to this know that, but if we don’t work with hands day to day, some of that information isn’t always top of mind, right? So it’s.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:03:43.446)

No, absolutely. I remember studying for my OCS and man, this is now maybe 12 years ago. I had focused hard on the hand because I just, I didn’t do much with it and I didn’t think I would. Now in this population, I’ve, man, I’m so into hands.

Garrett Salpeter (01:04:07.924)

but it’s awesome that you’re able to help because if you’re a climber and you have a tendon pulley injury, I mean, that’s a big freaking deal. When you talk about how this is analogous to an ankle sprain, we’re doing, of course, mapping, looking, assessing globally, also doing mapping, potentially doing foot baths, immersing an electrode in water to disperse that.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:04:13.963)

Can be, yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (01:04:37.38)

healing benefits of direct current throughout the foot. Are you doing any similar with the hands? Are you putting the glove on the athlete or are you immersing their hands in water at all? Any of those types of treatments as well as…

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:04:40.004)

Yeah.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:04:44.43)

I do a lot of hand baths, a lot of hand baths. I think they’re absolutely wonderful. It really helps. Calm, it just changes so much. So I’ll do, again, restore as much joint motion. I’ll do some deep tissue laser on there because the blood flow to that region isn’t great. So if I can stimulate some vasodilation, some nitric oxide release and get the cells to start healing and absorb that light,

and then combine that and follow it up with a hand bath, it works great. It really allows us to speed up the recovery so much.

‍

Garrett Salpeter (01:05:26.288)

Awesome, awesome. I appreciate that. I think those are great, great insight into the issues that common issues climbers are dealing with and how you approach it and how you’re able to help them and provide higher, I think, higher value of care than they’d be able to get at a, certainly a general PT clinic in their area. But just specific to that population too, the value you can add there. I think that’s also a good.

‍

segue, you mentioned something about having this other business, how that allows you to have a different business with a different voice that’s talking to a different avatar or, you know, ideal customer profile. I think that’s a great insight. Are there any other on the business front? Because I know, you know, obviously people know by now in the last hour that you’re a very knowledgeable clinician, but from previous conversations, I know you’re also enthusiastic about…

growing your business and to have a very holistic view of that and are learning to take off your PT hat and put on your business hat sometimes. But are there any other things either that you’ve done historically that have helped move the needle for your business or anything else that’s top of mind that you’re really working on right now? Any other business related insights?

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:06:39.662)

Yeah, we could be here for another hour or two. But I think the biggest, maybe two or three, is first is to make time for it. I was always so focused on clinician, and getting more letters after my name, and no one cares about that. Definitely not from a patient point of view. They just wanna know you can help them. So I’ve had to…

Garrett Salpeter (01:06:43.719)

Alright.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:07:05.686)

to really schedule and dedicate time to working on the business. So every Thursday in the morning, I have dedicated five, six hours where I’m at my home office where I am now before I go into the clinic and I just, I do work on the business, I think about marketing plans, I go over different metrics and actually put on the business owner hat and take the clinician, allow myself to take the clinician hat off.

because I’ve scheduled dedicated time that’s non-negotiable. My schedule at the clinic, I’m booked through February or March of next year. And at the time of this recording, we’re middle of October. So there’s always people asking, well, can you fit me in? Can you fit me in? And in the past, I would do that. I’d been over backwards to just get more people in to try and help them. And what I’ve really been working on is making this dedicated time absolutely non-negotiable.

This is my business. We’ll figure out how to get you in during clinic time, or maybe I can do something else, but my business time is now my business time. That’s been very hard for me to do because I constantly want to make everybody else happy. But this is just what I’ve had to do for the business. That’s been a huge game changer.

Number two would be to find a business mentor. So I’ve gone through, I have really two mentors. Darren Hardy is a big one of mine. I’ve gone through a lot of his training. And then Greg Todd is another more PT specific mentor of mine. And being a part of a group that’s focused on business and business growth.

is huge because we’re not taught any of this in PT school. We’re along the way. We’re not taught how to market and how to talk to people and do anything even remotely related to business. So it’s, how do you learn it? Some people can learn it from a book. I think that’s great. I try, I’m reading all the time. Like Alex Ramosi stuff is phenomenal. Absolutely wonderful. But I like interaction

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:09:25.89)

So being a part of a group that’s also going through similar things, and we can troubleshoot, we meet every week. You mentioned Lisa Chase earlier, she and I are in the same business mentorship group. And it’s so great to have a community to be a part of, that you don’t feel so damn alone. It’s so hard as a business owner. And you can feel it’s just the weight of the world. Like you’ve got all these employees that rely on your ability to make the right decision.

and then you got your family and you have your patients and it’s like, it’s one brick upon another on your shoulders and it can feel super lonely sometimes. At least that’s been my experience. So being able to be a part of a group has been huge. Just absolutely, just so important to me.

Garrett Salpeter (01:10:18.undefined)

Awesome, I think that’s great advice. In terms of the business time, setting aside time to take off your clinician hat, put on your business hat, I think there’s an interesting thing that happens to people who are successful over a career, and I certainly would put you in that category, where it becomes necessary to have a flexible identity, to change identity over time, to be able to.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:10:36.054)

Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (01:10:46.008)

you know, in a certain season, identify as a clinician, get all those letters after your name, become a true expert, put in your, you know, 10,000 hours, but of course it’s more than that in your career. But then, you know, like a snake sheds its skin in order to grow, you know, we have to be able to, to put that aside and assume a new identity. And that can be painful because it’s uncomfortable. There’s a fear of the unknown. There’s a fear of failure or a fear of success, or you know, there’s, so to be able to do that, I think is one of the most important.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:11:06.37)

Good.

Garrett Salpeter (01:11:16.096)

important abilities or perspectives to have there. So I’m glad you mentioned that. And that’s just an idea that I think we can all kind of self reflect on of, how are we, what identity shifts have we made during the course of our careers? Is there one that we may need to make in order to go to the next stage of our career? That’s good. And I love that.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:11:35.362)

Absolutely, and I tend to be an early adopter to things. So when I, for example, the Neubie, when I came across that and what it could do, when I, I thought, wow, that’s really cool. Let me try that. And it wasn’t more, but well, let me give it a couple more years, let it really go. And it was already been like, you already put in the work to get it to the point where it was when I came across it years ago. And when I…

Garrett Salpeter (01:11:40.515)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:12:02.562)

When I commit, when I find something like that, I like to go, I just go at it. Because if I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail real fast. Because that will give me more time to learn from that mistake and then recover. Not that I failed with Newbie, I think it was great. It’s been a huge success. But I’ve, I think being open to change and to the skin shed, as you just mentioned, and then some of these other alternatives and ways to incorporate.

different avenues into your practice and not just be so stuck in your way has been really important to me too and to find this to be open to these other changes and then to be open if you’re going to fail like it happens but just do it quickly get it out of the way and then you can move on and being open to that is really is really important.

Garrett Salpeter (01:12:54.764)

Yeah, that’s a great.

Garrett Salpeter (01:12:59.168)

a great gem there. I think mindset ultimately is the thing that helps someone be successful or not. And that, the mindset around how we look at trying new things and the risk of failure and how we address failure, because we’re all gonna fail. If we can, like they say, fail fast and learn quickly, and iterate quickly, that I think is the key. So that’s really good mindset in there. And then also getting…

mentors, people you can learn from. You mentioned some good ones. I love you mentioned Alex Formozzi. He and I actually in 2017 and 18 were in a business coaching group together. So I got to interact with him. He lived here in Austin for a period of time too. We got him on the Neubie and for people who don’t know his career, he’s taken off. He had this business called Gym Launch that trained gym owners how to market, how to retain customers.

grew their business and he’s just a brilliant entrepreneur. And he talks a lot about how the best people, they never don’t do the basics. So mastering the fundamentals and sticking with it on the blocking and tackling or just the basics can take you a long way and it takes discipline and doing the right thing over and over and over again. So in terms of mindset, I love his content. It’s definitely worth a follow on social media. If anyone is…

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:14:22.698)

Yeah, he’s got a ton of stuff out with $100 million offers and leads, the whole series coming out and it’s just, it’s brilliant. And he gives away so much. And it’s, I love his stuff.

Garrett Salpeter (01:14:29.494)

Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (01:14:37.656)

Yeah, me too. And if anyone is wondering, what has he given all this away? Does he have an ulterior motive or something? So he’s at the stage of his career now. He basically gives away, essentially a business school, an MBA education for free to most people to give back to the world. And then there’s a small number of people who are business owners who he will then invest in and make part of his portfolio company where he’ll take an interest in the company to help them grow. But really for most people it’s just.

amazing valuable content for free or the cost of a book if you buy the book. Yeah. So it’s good. I’m glad you mentioned him. I think that’s a good note on which to end here. We covered a lot. I mean, you know, your treatment approach, headache, chronic neck pain, climbers, a little bit on lifestyle factors that really move the needle with recovery and health and performance. Shoot, I want to go back and listen to this one again.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:15:09.371)

Impossible book, right?

Garrett Salpeter (01:15:34.728)

I appreciate you being on Logan. I know, especially, you know, we heard you’re booked for five or six months out here. So making the time to share your wisdom and insights with everyone here. I really appreciate if people want to want to follow you on social media or check out your website, what’s the best place to look you up and follow along on your journey.

Dr. Logan Cooper (01:15:50.102)

Social media, that’s a touchy subject. I gotta get better at it. I’m working on it. OMT specialists, well you’ll find me on Facebook there, Instagram as well. Website is just OMTSpecialists, that’s Oscar Mary Tango Specialists with an S at the end there,.com. That’ll bring it to me. You can also go to thebeta, B-E-T-A-P-T.com and that’ll get you to me as well.

Garrett Salpeter (01:16:19.372)

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for, for being on the show here. I really, really appreciate the insights. I think this, this was extremely valuable. Hope everyone listening feels the same way. We appreciate you tuning in and we will see you on the next episode of the undercurrent podcast. Thanks so much. Bye bye.