Recent Blog Entries
Posted 08/11/2011
I have now been here working at the Hruska Clinic for 1 month and am starting to get acclimated with Lincoln and the new job. We have explored the parks and pools with our kids, enjoyed the nice weather (heck, we are used to taking advantage of any nice day where we came from) and are starting to get our home comfortable and lived in. The question I have gotten the most from people since we moved is why did you move here? Just for a job? Why would you move your family to Lincoln, NE to work at the Hruska Clinic when you were so established where you were? Other than to try and get away from the North Dakota winters (yes I am actually looking forward to experiencing a Lincoln winter) the answer lies in what makes the Hruska Clinic different from any other clinic. As “the new guy” I feel I have a unique perspective on what makes this clinicdifferent. As I wrote before I spent the last 9 years working for a “traditional” physical therapy clinic in Minot, ND. I was blessed to have worked with some wonderful physical therapists and people. But I knew there was more out there. As a whole I feel physical therapists are caring professionals who truly want to help people feel and function better. Here at the Hruska Clinic we are not different in that respect at all. Everyone here is 1000% motivated to help people feel and function better. However, we have different, and I feel better, tools to get that job done. We utilize the science of Postural Restoration, developed and taught through the Postural Restoration Institute ™ to guide our treatment in order to address the cause of pain and dysfunction rather than trying to mask the symptoms of pain and dysfunction. The staff here is immersed in the science of Postural Restoration and dedicated to not only treating patients but taking it a step beyond that and getting our patients back to whatever their hopes and dreams may be. The first question we ask on our intake paperwork is what activities are you happiest doing, not what hurts. That frame of mind is what guides us. Those activities that make our patients happy become our goals as much as they are our patient’s goals. In addition to the people here, we have additional tools at our disposal to look beyond PT to address other needs that our patients may have. There are other influential factors that may be limiting what we can do as physical therapists that cannot be addressed anywhere other than at this clinic due to the resources we have available. For example, our patients may have needs for other specialties including dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, or other specialties that we recognize, understand, and can integrate with our treatments to allow us to achieve the amazing results that we see for people who have not had success anywhere else. This is what makes us different. Our attitude, our approach and our tools. They really are unmatched and not available anywhere else and that is why I moved here… oh and for the winters too… believe it or not.
Posted 08/03/2011
Questions or comments for Torin? to send him an email.
Posted 07/25/2011
Click here for Lori’s 2011 Fall Shoe List!
Happy Running!
Lori
To email Lori, !
Posted 07/22/2011
Questions for Dave? Send him an email !
For more information about the position your body is in and why, Click here!
Posted 07/19/2011
As the “new guy” here at the Hruska Clinic I am not used to this blogging thing but hope to get accustomed to it. As you may or may not know I recently started here at the Hruska Clinic after working for the last 9 years for a hospital based clinic in Minot, ND which is my wife’s home town. The last month or 6 weeks has pretty much consisted of preparing and packing to move, moving, and unpacking once we got here. My family and I are enjoying the new experiences, and heat, that Lincoln has to offer. If you follow the news much you may have heard of the devastating flooding that hit our old town of Minot over the last month or two. This devastation only made our move more stressful as we left family and friends behind in the midst of the worst natural disaster that the area has ever dealt with. 12,000 of the almost 40,000 residents of the city were evacuated due to the flooding. 4100 homes had some water in them with upwards of 3000 having at least 5 feet on the main floor and several hundred with water above the roof line.
This weekend as we continued to do all those little projects that come with moving into a new house, like staining a deck and building a swing-set for our boys, we were able to see some pictures, via Facebook, of the devastation in Minot as the water has now receded enough to let the residents back into their neighborhoods and assess their homes. After being under water for nearly 3 weeks the amount of damage done is truly devastating and the pictures I know do not do it justice. Many homes including my mother and father-in-laws house were either moved off of their foundation or had the foundation cave in. These houses are now unsafe for living in and most likely will need to be demolished and destroyed. The power of water and mother-nature is truly amazing.
As I looked at pictures of these homes off their foundations, tilted, twisted, and caving in, and felt for the owners of them knowing that they may never be able to be restored, the PT in me could not keep from thinking about how our bodies are fighting that same stress all the time. We utilize the analogy of our pelvis being the foundation for our spine a lot here. We all put repetitive, asymmetrical, stress and strain on our pelvis with the asymmetrical demands of life and our tendencies to stand more on our right leg and reach more with our right arm, twisting our spine more to the left than to the right. This is caving in the foundation for the rest of our body. Our house, aka our thorax, is tilting, twisting and caving in just like those houses that need to be demolished in Minot. We therefore cannot breathe well. Our arms, like the decks on those houses than now sit at 45 degree angles from the ground, cannot work the way they should. Our necks and heads, like the chimneys on those houses, are tilted and starting to fall over.
What a dire picture I paint. The good news is that unlike those houses that will probably be destroyed, we can restore our foundations and untwist our houses. With the power of a left hamstring, a left adductor and a properly opposed left diaphragm we can rebuild our houses and straighten out chimneys and decks and make our houses happy and livable again. It’s also a lot less messy. Please keep the residents of Minot and other flooded areas in your thoughts and if you need help with your foundation or contact us here at the Hruska Clinic.
Posted 07/18/2011
In this week’s “Swing into Health Golf Series” blog, Jen addresses the importance of Left hip rotation in the follow-through of your golf swing. Check it out!
Questions or comments for Jen? to send her an email!
Posted 07/13/2011
“My name is Torin Berge and I have the privilege to be the newest therapist at the Hruska Clinic. I was born and raised in Colorado Springs, CO, attended the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks where I was a member of the Fighting Sioux swim team prior to attending Physical Therapy school there. I graduated with my PT degree in 1999 and embarked on my career as a PT. I felt early on that my experience in PT school was just the foundation of how to be a PT but never really answered the question “Why?” I wanted to know why certain people had dysfunction and pain, why certain people would succeed with PT and why some wouldn’t. At my first job as an outpatient PT in Sioux City, IA I was lucky enough to work with a few PTs who strongly recommended PRI courses to me. My first taste of PRI was a one-day Protonics in-service in late 2000 by James Anderson. He was the first who could actually answer the question “why” and I was hooked. I have since attended numerous PRI courses and have utilized it for as main treatment technique while working for Trinity Health in Minot, ND. When the opportunity to work at the Hruska Clinic came up my wife Leslie, who is also a PT trained in PRI, and I decided that there is no better place to work to be able to treat patients as a whole person, to be able to answer their “why” questions, and be the type of PT that I aspire to be. I look forward to the opportunity to grow and learn from some of the best PTs around.
On a more personal note I am married to my wife of 10 years, Leslie, who I met as a graduate assistant in the gross anatomy lab while in PT school. It’s a long story, but yes, we met over a dead body. She currently has been able to stay home and take care of our 3 boys, Carter, 5, Quinn, 3, and Bailey ,1. She has been a great support for me and is definitely the glue that holds our family together. We enjoy spending time outside as a family whether at the zoo, on a bike ride, the lake, or just in the backyard. We are excited to be joining the Hruska Clinic family and the Lincoln community as a whole.”
Posted 07/06/2011
Learn about appropriate frontal plane positioning & it’s effect on your golf swing by watching Jen’s latest video…
Questions or comments for Jen? to send her an email!
Posted 06/29/2011
Questions or comments for Jen? to send her an email!
Posted 06/27/2011
During the work week I have a great opportunity to consult with physical therapists at the Hruska Clinic regarding challenging patients. Friday, Dave Drummer DPT asked me to look at his last patient, whom he was having difficulty gaining flexibility at the hips. The patient’s left internal rotation was only 18 degrees, his straight leg raise across each hip was approximately 40 degrees and when he walked his legs and feet turned out.
This medium built, active 56 year old, normal anthropometric individual played a lot of baseball in his youth and now plays tennis. He still could only squat while staying up on his toes, just as he did when he was a baseball catcher.
I took my three grandchildren to Cars II this weekend and was reminded by Mater, the old tow truck, how important pistons are for power and freedom. This Pixar movie reflected on car parts, and that you don’t have to be dent-free to move fast, as long as your pistons are lubricated.
What a way to end a work week and a weekend. Piston power was needed in Dave’s patient to open and relax his pelvic floor, so that his small hip external rotators were placed in a position that would allow him to internally rotate his legs for walking power and in aligned pistons. In Cars II, you won races with good lubricated aligned pistons.
A piston is a cylinder or disk that fits snuggly into a cylinder and moves back and forth under fluid pressure. Dave’s patient had a cylinder, his thoracic-abdominal cavity that was too curved, or hyper-extended, and didn’t allow him to push his abdominal contents into his pelvic floor with his diaphragm, his cylindrical disc. His patient’s two diaphragms were poorly timed, and placed his pelvis in a position where his legs were in too much torque, affecting his respiration, thrust, flexibility and overall performance. His groin impingement decreased, his straight leg raises went to 80 degrees, and his leg internal rotation increased 10 degrees after he learned to squat with his heels down and reach forward with his hands to “straighten” out his cylinders. His pelvic floor power and position immediately became restored with every breath he took. This previous baseball catcher can now play tennis with two aligned cylinders.
… maybe we all need to go to a Pixar movie to watch animated cars breathe and talk, so we can learn about the power of good respiratory and pelvic floor mechanics.
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More blog entries can be found in the archives…
Posted August 11, 2011 at 7:41am by Torin Berge.
