From Burnout to Balance: How Nathan Carlson Built a Smarter Way to Help Runners Heal

Jimmy: Welcome to the Physio Insights podcast presented by Runeasi. I’ll be your host, doctor Jimmy Picard. I’m a physical therapist, running coach, and team member here at Runeasi. On this show, we have real conversations with leading experts, digging into how we recover from injuries, train smarter, and use data to better guide care. Whether you’re a clinician, coach, or an athlete, we’re here to explore what really matters in rehab and performance.

Let’s dive in. Alright, Nathan. Welcome to the podcast. How are doing today?

Nathan: Good, man. Always happy to talk to you, Jimmy. Hope you’re having a good week.

Jimmy: I think I just saw a coffee cup. Are you drinking some coffee?

Nathan: Yeah. I’m always drinking coffee, man. So today I have a it’s a it’s June but I’m drinking out of a Santa mug because this So is my my favorite I try to drink so I drink one cup of regular coffee in the morning and then I try to have one more cup of decaf because I’m getting old. And so, you know, I’m I am trying to limit, you know, the caffeine consumption a little bit.

Jimmy: Wait, so you only have one cup a day? Two. Two. But one real cup.

Nathan: One real cup. Yeah. Every once in a while, I’ll splurge and have a second, you know, maybe if it’s the weekend or something.

Jimmy: It’s not a coffee podcast, but this is probably cup number four.

Nathan: Oh, and you have the Fellow cups. Those are my favorite. I love their stuff, man.

Jimmy: Yeah. That’s nice. Alright. Well, Nathan, for those who don’t know of you, you’ve been around for a while. You’re a big wig in the bone stress injury world and kinda Chris Johnson’s partner in crime.

Can you do you mind telling us a little bit about your background? Like, I guess first, just where you grew up and what sports you played growing up?

Nathan: Yeah. Of course, So so I grew up in Blue Springs, Missouri, that’s a suburb of Kansas City, you know, and, you know, growing up, fell in love with sports like lots of little boys do. So for me, it was the Kansas City Chiefs. And at that point in time, it was Joe Mondana and Marcus Allen and all these guys that, you know, are are old now. And, and fell in love with basketball as a kid, so I loved the NBA.

Jordan was in his heyday when I was a little kid. So I remember watching him and the Rockets and everybody else that was good at the time. That’s what I played growing up. So I played soccer for a little bit as a kid, but I I really fell in love with basketball. And so for a large portion of my childhood, that was like a huge part of my personality where that’s that’s the stuff that I watched.

Those are the things that I read. In my free time, I worked on, you know, ball handling and shooting and all that kind of stuff. And all I really cared about was basketball. You know? And along the way, when I was I think I was about halfway through high school, I started I started taking classes at a local gym that was sports performance classes.

So this would have been back in, 02/2003. And you know, now that stuff is super, super popular, but back then it wasn’t so much. And so there was a big facility in the city that I grew up in that had a gym. And so I went to a trainer, his name was Mark Thompson, with a bunch of other local high school kids. And you learned how to Olympic lift and sprint, change direction, you know, squats, dead lifts, all that kind of stuff because that wasn’t as formalized in high school back then.

And so, man, I fell in love with that whole thing. So kind of my that was really my entry point into my career. It was sports, but really it was those strength and conditioning classes because I just loved them. Right? And so, you know, I stopped playing basketball after high school and I started running because I didn’t have anything else to do when I was in college and I liked all that stuff.

Again, it kind of took that somewhat obsessive personality that had served me well in basketball and applied the same thing to running. But you know, an 18 year old with tons of free time doesn’t always make the best decisions. So I got hurt all the time, right? And I didn’t know what I was doing. And so I’m buying Runner’s World magazine, which was only a physical magazine back then and going through and trying to learn things and again, of fell in love with that.

And that’s kind of what led me to PT school was the idea that, oh, could do this, like I could learn how to help runners so they don’t run into this stuff. For some reason that just clicked with me. And through college, I started a little, you know, personal training business where I started training people. I would train my friends, you know, at school and then home, I would I would go to people’s houses and train them in their basement.

Jimmy: Wow. So

Nathan: that all kind of just happened. And then I went to PT school and, you know, went through schooling like everybody else and always kind of said like, I want to work with runners at some point, you know, I want to work with athletes, but really I want to work with distance runners because I just find that sport so it was so helpful for me, especially mentally. And a lot of my family members were runners too, so there was that as well. And then worked at a big sports clinic out of school. We were really the only clinic in town that kind of said we’re focusing on athletes.

And so, you know, again, this was ten, twelve years ago, we had a turf field and it looked like a CrossFit gym and it was really open, like stuff that you see at a lot of facilities now. But that was that was pretty rare back then. It was still very much like, you know, drop ceilings and carpeted floors and, you know, private and all that kind of stuff. And so I got to treat everything. You know, you see football players that, you know, sprain their MCL.

You’d see, you know, UCL reconstructions of baseball players. I would see a lot of the distance runners. And I just got to learn a lot. We had a performance we had a performance staff in house. And so that transition between, okay, you’re on the performance side, you’re on the PT side.

Like, I got exposed to that right out of school, and kinda having those conversations. And then about a year into practicing, I went to my boss and I said, hey. I wanna I wanna start doing strength and conditioning stuff with distance runners. Could I run a class after work? So basically, it was gonna be 7PM.

I think it was on Tuesdays. And you know, it was, hey, let’s see how this works. And I just started training people. And so I had some groups, had some individuals, I started working with high school kids that kind of led into more patients because I got to know more people and all the other stuff that we do. And you know, when you have a clinic is you’re going and meeting with coaches and going to races, doing and talking at running stores and all those kind of things.

So I got to do all that, you know, kind of on somebody else’s dime, build that up. And then eventually, a buddy of mine who’s a running coach said, hey, we’re going to open a treadmill studio in the middle of Kansas City, would you be willing to come in or would you want to come in and treat patients there? And I really didn’t have an intention to start a business. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with that. But, you know, I didn’t I didn’t get an MBA in school.

Business stuff wasn’t particularly interesting to me.

Jimmy: To interrupt for a second.

Nathan: At the

Jimmy: same time, it sounds like you had that entrepreneurial spirit though with your coach or training people through college and stuff like that. And then adding a program at the the clinic you’re working at, you’re definitely like, I guess you found what you’re passionate about and you’re excited to like explore that, I guess, and it meant getting paid. So when it sounds like you also had, like, this dream scenario. You came out of school and you got to work at a pretty amazing clinic. And I guess I didn’t realize.

So, like, you you went into PT school with, like, the strength training as, like, the kind of foundation. Is that right?

Nathan: Yeah. I mean, I was I have trained people longer than I’ve been a PT, you know, and so I started doing that when I was 18. Yeah. And again, it was mostly for like family friends in their basement. Yeah.

You know, so it was I would I would take so my dad my dad was a bodybuilder growing up and, and he still lifts weights now. But, so we had a bunch of weights like, I learned how to lift with my dad using like sand weights in the basement, you know, and so I would take the weights that we had at home because I’m still living at home. I would put them in my car, I would drive to someone’s house, I would take it all out, we would train, come back, I probably charge, I don’t remember, maybe I charge $20 a session or something back then. Yeah. And then, yeah, that was my entry point to exercise prescription, working with people, you know, and to be honest, my programming wasn’t good because I’m sure I just used the stuff that I saw in fitness magazines at the time.

And so yeah, that was my first exposure to really all the stuff that I do now.

Jimmy: Cool, yeah. All right. Let’s put a pin in that. We’re gonna circle back because I do wanna ask more about that. But yeah, keep going.

So this treadmill studio approaches you.

Nathan: Yeah, so my buddy Jeremy, who’s great coach says, hey, we’re going to open up a treadmill studio, you know, would you want to see patients out of there? At the time, I had kind of figured out that, you know, for me, the model of managing a clinic or managing a couple clinics or, you know, kind of that that progression, which is what we see with a lot of, you know, motivated clinicians is that’s the typical progression. Yeah. It was not interesting to me.

Jimmy: Yeah. So like, I remember. Yeah. Like where it’s like, you’re a couple years out and it’s like, it seems like you have made it and there’s nowhere else to go. Right.

Besides falling into one of those roles, you look at those people and I mean, no offense, the ones that I worked for, they all seem to like hate life. They’re under under ton of pressure.

Nathan: Not see their family. Yeah and so that was the other thing at the time, we had had our first, our oldest was less than one at the time. And so, you know, I had seen the model of you run a clinic or you run, you know, you run a business in that model and it’s like, you work from seven to seven, you’ll take six day of patients, you’re marketing all the time, you’re you’re gone on the weekends marketing. And again, to me, I’m like, I am perfectly fine with working hard, but I’m not interested in not being a part of, you know, everything, other things in life. My tendency, I don’t know if you’re this way, is to overdo it on stuff.

Right? You know, we don’t ever see that with endurance athletes. Right?

Jimmy: Never. Yes.

Nathan: And so I learned really quickly to kind of find my edge with this. And a lot of that was figuring it was talking with my wife too, or saying what is, how do we do this where we support each other’s professional goals? There’s going to be times for both of us because she’s she’s a motivated person too in her job, where we can work on the professional things and go for those goals that we find important and are meaningful to us without, you know, putting the other one, you know, kind of down. And so, yeah, I felt like I was at this cross where roads where I’m like, I’m either gonna start my own business or I’m going to do something else altogether. And I didn’t know what that was.

I didn’t have another option.

Jimmy: How did but having the kid that’s got to put a little extra pressure on you to make the right decision here.

Nathan: Of course. And I remember having a conversation, you know, so I’m really close with my dad. And I remember talking with him a bunch about this. And one of the pieces of advice that I got was, you know, it feels like you have a sense of security when you work for someone else. But the only way that you really you’re you’re you’re the position that you have the most security is if you work for yourself.

And that can feel a little counterintuitive because there’s a pressure that comes with that. But, you know, COVID was a great example where, you know, we we probably both had, you know, colleagues that lost their jobs, that they got shifted from salary to hourly workers. All those things happened to something that was outside of their control and they didn’t have much control around where they could put their effort into things. And at least when you and this is all things that I’ve learned. I’m not gonna act like I this is the perception I had when I started my business.

I can control where I put my efforts and and that’s something that’s different than again if you work for somebody else. So so yeah, so I started. So I’m like, okay, I’m gonna do this. At the time, I had a roster of strength training clients, which was so helpful. So at that point, I’d been training mostly high school kids in group sessions for probably four or five years.

And so I knew going into potentially opening that business that okay, well I know I’ve got 20 kids lifting with me right off the bat. And so that gives me a little bit more of a buffer to say I’m not starting from zero. And this is before Chris and I started teaching together, before any of that kind of stuff came to fruition, it was just patience and lifting clients.

Jimmy: Yeah. And Buffer that buffer is huge. Yeah. Because Yeah. When I moved here and had to relocate my business essentially, that was like what because I had the buffer of my coaching clients, there was never a doubt in my mind that like I was gonna continue doing what I was doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep going.

Nathan: So so we opened up and you had mentioned Chris, I got so I got to know Chris, oh man, probably a year or two before I opened my business as a mentor. So he was at the time, I had kind of taken all the running courses you could take. There wasn’t as many of them back then, there’s a lot more now. There’s a lot of really good ones. But back then, I kind of took all the stuff I could take.

And Chris had a mentorship option on his website. And so I just cold emailed him and said, you know, I’ve seen all your videos. I’d love to learn from you. Something along those lines, you know, what what kind of options do you have? And we did a few sessions over Zoom where he basically would take me through a slide deck and we’d talk about kind of his, you know, the way that he approached treating runners and that kind of stuff.

And at that, you know, at some point over the next couple years, we started doing stuff together.

Jimmy: Was that was that more of like a business mentorship or like just like treating patients?

Nathan: No, just treating because I had worked for somebody I was working for somebody else when I originally met him and again, I didn’t have any I didn’t have any motivation to open my practice. Yeah. I I that wasn’t even on my radar. I’m just like, I’m trying to get better at treating runners.

Jimmy: Yeah. And when what year was this?

Nathan: So probably 2015. So about ten years ago.

Jimmy: It’s funny. Like, it’s funny how, like, I guess, Chris has, like, touched a lot of people in, like, ways like this. Like, it influenced them a lot. I tell this story, like, people I don’t know. Like, I feel like this is kind of unbelievable story, but do you know how I met Chris?

Nathan: No. Uh-uh.

Jimmy: I was a PT student, so it had to be sometime around 2012 or 2013. And so I was probably just like you reading his blog and, like, all that. And he had posted a blog about his subjective exam and, like, questions he was asking and stuff like this. And I’m the nerdy student, PT student, like, at a coffee shop supposed to be studying, but I’m reading his bog head. And I this is not an exact not a lie.

Like, I there was at the bottom of the blog, there’s like a question, like, could ask a question. And I don’t my memory says that, like, it said, put your phone number in here. Like, you could put your phone number in there. So I typed my question, basically asking something like, oh, why did you ask why do you ask this question? What’s what’s the thought behind that?

Put my phone number in. Ten minutes later, my phone starts ringing. And it’s like New York City area code. And I answer it, and he’s like, yeah. Is this Jimmy?

I’m like, yes. He’s like,

Nathan: oh, this

Jimmy: is Chris Johnson. I just got your question on my blog. I wanted to answer it. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Like

Nathan: Yeah. That’s not crazy.

Jimmy: Yeah. Now Chris is way busier than he yeah. I don’t think he has time to do stuff like that, but that’s just speaks to him.

Nathan: Well, that’s how a lot of the stuff how that’s how a lot of professional relationships start. You know? It’s it’s just someone reaching out. You know? And I I, you know, I think, especially with social media, there are times when it can be frustrating with, you know, some of the stuff that people put out or maybe the approaches that people take to things.

There’s a ton of great clinicians that are really giving up their time and their knowledge. I’ve been super beneficial from that from lots of different people, both, you know, previous bosses and people locally to Kansas City, people online. Again, certainly, you know, Chris and I have have a really close relationship over the last ten years. But there’s and I and I try I really try to to take that same approach because that’s what I’ve seen from the people that I respect the most. And even that’s beyond PT.

That’s like family, friends and people that I’m close to that have nothing to do with medicine. They’re just good people, that they are giving of their time, they are giving of their knowledge. And I think that, you know, there’s a lot of great individuals like that out there. And and I think that, you know, as we move through our careers, you know, if you’ve been the benefiter of something like that, continuing to do that for kind of the next generation or the next group of people, that’s a really I think that’s a really important thing. We can’t be, you know, you can’t be giving out all of your time for free because that doesn’t work, especially if you’re, you know, an adult with kids, you know, in in responsibilities and things like that.

But I do think we should be giving with our time and Chris is a great example of it.

Jimmy: Yeah. As are you.

Nathan: Thanks thanks, buddy.

Jimmy: Yes. I reached out to you not long ago when I was dealing with some career Yeah. Advice. Yes.

Nathan:  We all and we all do that. Everybody goes through that.

Jimmy: Alright. Yeah. So picking back up though. So as you started to like become or yeah, a business owner and do your own thing, tell me a bit a bit about that.

Nathan: Yeah. So you have to learn all these skills you didn’t know you needed to have. And a lot of them are foreign to you. So, you know, at the start, it’s like, need a website. So let me go on Squarespace and figure out what that looks like.

You know, I need a way to document patient interactions. How am I going to, you know, actually get paid? Like, what’s a payment processor and how does that work and how do taxes work? Like, you know, if I had been writing a blog for a couple of years prior to starting, but, you know, how am I gonna keep doing that? You know, you you learn all these things.

And and one of the benefits, I think, for a lot of people when they start out is there’s a lot of energy around it. Like, you’re you you you have to be very motivated. You have to be very energetic around it. And so you just you just put yourself out there and you just you just gotta figure stuff out and you make mistakes and you learn and, you know, like many people, you I overbooked myself going back to, like, making sure that the way that you’re approaching your career works for your whole family spouse and things like that. You know, I remember about a year into the business, I was just slammed with stuff.

So lifting kind of took off, you know, patient volume was increasing. I had mentioned to you before we I got put on the staff at UMKC. So I was the head physical therapist for their cross country and track program. Chris and I had started doing a little bit of stuff together. So there was there was more responsibilities from that with with teaching and content and things like that.

And so my schedule got really big to the point where, you know, I would wake up at 04:20 in the morning, and I would drive to the gym to train people from five to seven to then drive back home to get my kids ready to go with my wife to my in laws and then drive back and then either like treat patients or train more people or go market. And then you know, if you work with if you work with athletes, they need to see you before and after school or work. And so you’d have this split shift where it was like busy morning, busy afternoon, evening, dead in the middle a little bit. And so I’m just kind of running around, I’m saying yes to everything, which is important. I think you do have to do that when you start.

But I remember having a conversation with my wife and this was probably about 2019 and saying like, this approach is not sustainable, something has to change. And then 2020 happens and COVID happens at the start of the year. And, you know, for me, that was, it was a a break that happened that wasn’t planned. And that’s when I really started to reorient my business. Yeah.

Chris and I started teaching more. I started shrinking my hours down and being a little bit more calculated with the things that I was gonna say yes to. And and then

Jimmy: If do you think you could have made those changes had it not been for COVID?

Nathan: I have no idea. I I mean, I I do think about that. I I would hope so, but I can’t tell you. But I can’t tell you that I would. I don’t know when that would have happened either.

And so, you know, for me, I used to be really critical of my of like other clinicians, right? That, you know, they’re they’re on the they’re on the clock all the time. Not going to be that way. You know, I’m not gonna do that balance, all that kind of stuff, you know, and then three, four years into my business, I’m like, oh, I’m doing all the same things I used to be really critical of.

Jimmy: You know, I think when I when I first met you, it was around that time because it was during the first mastermind you guys did for your business.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy: During that whatever it was during COVID. So it was during the six months that I was working with you guys, Seth is it Seth Godin put out that book about now I can’t remember the title, but you shared a quote from it. You we’re both reading at the same time.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy: You shared a quote where it’s essentially something along the lines of like, when you’re working for somebody else, like your boss is just constantly like nagging at you and you feel this pressure from your boss to do all this stuff and to be productive and to film your quiet time with work and go go go. And then when you’re a business owner, you just replace that voice with your internal voice.

Nathan:  A 100%.

Jimmy: And it sounds like that’s kind of the trap you were in at that time. Or like you’re yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. There’s this I think there’s this idea that busyness equals productivity or progress. Maybe maybe progress is a better word. So it’s like fill every second, no downtime, you know, rest is laziness. Again, like all things that we hear from endurance athletes, you know, for any of us that have been in an athletic environment, that’s what you think.

And so at the same time, when I at the start of COVID, I started reading a lot more. So I had read a little bit, you know, the first couple years I’d had my business, but I really started reading more at the start of really around COVID. So, you know, Cal Newport’s Deep Work, that book talks a lot about that. There’s other great books that talk about like the need for being realistic with how much you can get done and the difference between kind of running around and seeming busy and working on things that are really in your best interest long term. And so that’s when I started to say like, am really good at being frantic.

I probably need to spend more time working on something that requires a little bit more effort and has a little bit longer timeline for seeing any results from it. So that’s when I really started getting interested in bone stress injuries. So again, probably a year before maybe like 2019, especially when I took the job at UMKC, you see a lot of bone stress injuries when you’re in the collegiate system. You see a lot of bone stress injuries when you’re in when you work with runners in general, but you definitely see a lot of them in college. And I really didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest.

Like I had not been up on much of the literature, it was very much a well, you know, let’s just get you on a good exercise program approach to a lot of that stuff. And so that was really the first time where I said, let me take this one thing and let me just try to learn about it. And it was not with the intention that I’m going to teach courses and do some of the stuff I do now. It was just, I’m not very good at this. Let me try to figure this out a little bit better.

And so at the time, my space was above a coffee shop called Crows. And so I would, if I had time, I would go down to Crows and I would take an article, whatever it was, and I would just try to go through it. And I had this laundry list. So the first paper I read was management and prevention of bone stress injuries that came out in 2014. And so I I went through that one and I had a little notebook and I took notes.

And then when I got to the end of that article, I went through the reference list and I would just pick if I could find an open access article or I knew someone that I could get it from, I would do that same thing with that one. Print it off, go through it, take notes, think about it, go from there. And so that was really the first time that I said, let me try to make the stuff that I’m doing a little bit better in quality and not focus so much on quantity, which has been a which is really, really valuable to me now looking back. Because it is very easy to focus so much on quantity of things versus quality of things.

Jimmy: Yeah. And you’re and you’re referring to posting or you’re referring to what are you referring to there?

Nathan: All of it. Everything. Yeah. Like, I think it is really so like, I could post on social media every day. I could write a newsletter every day.

I could do whatever pick whatever it is. I have tried and I stood it’s always a learning process to figure out what is a realistic amount of things that I can produce that I am happy with the result and feel good about. Yeah. You know, I I you can’t I can’t spend not gonna spend six months on an Instagram post, but I do wanna make sure that I’m taking more time to try to produce something that’s of good quality. And that, you know, that’s, again led into things like courses and, you know, downloadables and those kind of things where it’s let’s let me take more time, let me try to read and understand things, have some time for reflection, not be in such a rush to get it out there, but still be working towards something.

Jimmy: Yeah. Because I think for for new businesses and I think that just the world we live in now where it’s like, yeah, you see people posting all the time. I think it’s funny you brought this up because in preparation for this, I was just digging through your Instagram to kind of see what topics you’ve been posting. I’m on Instagram, I’m pretty inactive on Instagram. I struggle with it because of I just struggle with it, I think.

Yeah. But I was I remember being this morning being a little surprised. I was like, oh, I got back to like 2024 very quickly. I was like, oh.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy: He doesn’t post that much, you know? It’s like but you’re right. It’s like when everything you posted was like one of those mini videos as very high quality or some slides that were also very Yeah.

Nathan: Well, I think I think for clinicians too, you know, I think it is a it is a benefit to share your knowledge with other people. I enjoy that. If you’re thinking about it solely, you know, from a business perspective, I think that is a good thing to do. If you enjoy doing that, that makes it easier to do. Right?

We’re going to do the stuff we like to do. And so I like sharing information. I like teaching. I’ve always been that way. But but the way that you do it, I think you can make it you want to make it unique to you.

So if you like talking on camera, great. That do that. If that’s your strength, do that. I don’t have any interest in showing a video of me saying, here’s a day in the life of a running specific physical therapist and me like going through my day. There’s nothing wrong with that type of content.

Sure. It’s just not for me. Yeah. So I would like I like to talk about things that, you know, I’ve probably seen either personally or professionally and then trying to give my perspective on them with a little bit of research and then again, how I’ve kind of navigated them in my career. So that’s the kind of stuff that I like to do.

I like to write more than I like to. Well, let me take a step back. I like the product of, you know, I like a written product more than video because if I write, I have to think more. And, you know, when we talk about the future with like AI and everything else, video is gonna be it’s gonna be really hard I think to stand out. Not that you have to try to stand out like you’re trying to be an influencer, but just just getting your message out there, I think, might be a little bit more challenging.

So I have found it much more satisfying professionally to try to focus more on written stuff like a newsletter because it takes more time for me to think through those ideas.

Jimmy: So there’s value in that as the clinician and like becoming a better PT. You’re educating people. Do you also see like a return on investment for your business with that?

Nathan: A 100%. Yeah, because it’s hard to talk about, you know, real life. So and I run into this sometimes even with my content, like I enjoy sharing facts and figures. So you know, I have old posts and newsletters and this is stuff and courses and everything else about like, here’s the average timeline for returning to running after a bone stress injury. Here’s how your cardiovascular system changes when you stop training and have like a table or something.

I like doing all of that, but I think that it’s much more helpful whether you’re talking about growing a patient caseload or just, you know, your satisfaction as a clinician, as a business owner, as a person to work through some kind of a challenging idea. So I’ll have a newsletter that goes out tomorrow that’s on the the relationship between Mega Man X and and running a business. So Mega Man X was the was the video game that was really popular when I was a kid. Don’t know if you play that or not.

Jimmy: I do not even remember that.

Nathan: So so it was really popular when I was a kid. It was a lot of fun. And so the newsletter is about that and, you know, only relying on AI to do all our difficult things. And so it took me time to work through that. And the process of working through that was really valuable to me personally.

I enjoyed doing it. It wasn’t easy, but it was it was enjoyable. And I’m happy with how that newsletter turned out and hopefully people will find value from it. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I personally enjoyed working on it.

And I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that when you’re worried about, I need more patients. My revenue’s lower. You know? And so I have found it much more helpful to work on something that a problem that is relevant maybe in the community or population that you exist in and trying to share your unique perspective on it. I think that’s an that’s a really helpful way to stand out.

And again, I I find it really valuable just personally to to work on things like that.

Jimmy: Yeah. It’s almost like you kind of I see this with like your coffee drinking and like when you share your books that you’re reading on in your newsletter. It’s like you lean into like your quirks a little bit and it sounds like with this most recent one, it’s like, yeah, you’re leaning into like what separate what makes you different and then also just like a normal person.

Nathan: So I’ll give yeah. I’ll give you an example. So Katie Pajorski is a PT that is out near DC. And Katie works with runners, but she also works with climbers.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Nathan: And I know nothing about rock climbing. And but I’ve gotten to know Katie a little bit over the over the last couple years and I find climbing stuff super super interesting. I don’t work with climbers, but, know, the content that Katie puts out around climbing, I think is really really interesting, but it’s like all unique to her. Yeah. And again, I think, you know, when we learn how to do things, we mimic other people and that’s how we, you know, learn how to play sports and write and, you know, talk and walk and everything else.

But I think it’s really, really cool to let a little bit of your personality show. You don’t have to show the whole thing. You know, like, share what you like. Share what you’re you’re into. You know?

I think that that’s really, really helpful, and it makes it more enjoyable for you. So, like, I don’t share coffee stuff because I feel like it’s gonna be good for my analytics. Like coffee. I like books. I like reading.

Sometimes I talk about the drums, like I played the drums since I was in middle school. So like talk about the stuff you like to, because I bet people are gonna enjoy that.

Jimmy: Yeah. Alright. If we back up a step because we glossed over like you’re you like yeah. So you’re starting the business, rolling with the business. Like, when did it turn in?

When did it kind of morph from working at the treadmill studio to like what you’re doing now, teaching and doing all this other stuff.

Nathan: Yeah, so so probably 2020, 2021, you know, Chris and I put together a course called bones, tendons, weights and whistles. So we started teaching that at the time, we taught that all virtually during COVID, but then we started teaching it in, you know, in clinics. And so we started doing that. I started doing some mentorship and some other offerings around bone stress injuries. And so I had a couple online cohorts that I would do, you know, I made a couple products, like I have a return to run guide on my website for bone stress injuries, other things like that.

So just starting to work on things like that, doing a little bit more mentorship. And so all that kind of grew, again, not out of the intention that I wanted to do any of that, just, I liked doing that kind of stuff. It seemed like people found value out of it. And so again, I think when you, when that’s the two things, like it’s something you’re curious about, people are interested in it, lean into it, whatever that is. And so kind of leaned into that and that’s grown over the last few years to where now like I still see patients and train people, but I do that really two, two and a half days a week now as opposed to four, five at one point, but four for most of most of my business and trying to balance all this.

So working on projects that I enjoy, trying to mentor other people, still seeing patients and training people. Yeah, none of that has, I think sometimes we think that we have this exact plan that’s going to happen. So we go back to when I was in PT school. When I, as soon as I graduated, I basically had mapped out like my whole career from a professional education standpoint. So at the time I’m like, so I’m going to go, I’m going get this certification and then I’m going to go do a residency and I’m going to do a fellowship.

So I like had everything mapped out that I was gonna do and then I didn’t do like any of that. And so that was a big learning process You for me because

Jimmy: did other things.

Nathan: Yeah, it’s like you do other stuff, you know? And so sometimes we put that, you know, carrot out there and we get it, but other times it changes.

Jimmy: Yeah. I always say it’s like you can’t like, I can’t you could never predict, like, how to get where, like, where you were gonna be in ten years. I I always go back to for me, it was like college. When I was like a senior in college, I had no idea where I was going to go to college. My parents didn’t go to college.

Like, I had no help with this stuff. Yeah. And the schools I applied to, I I didn’t get into one. The other was really far away, and I like randomly applied there because they had a good track team.

Nathan: Yeah. And I was

Jimmy: like, to go there because it was so far away. I ended up going on a summer trip. Like, this is a summer between senior year and freshman year of college.

Nathan: Yeah.

Jimmy: My friend was gonna go to Hampton University and he was gonna run there. And I just happened to tag along with the trip and I met the coach. And the coach was like, oh, you ran these are your times. If you here’s an application. If you submit this right now, I will get you in and you can come here.

Nathan: Yeah. That’s funny.

Jimmy: Sweet. And then that led to me getting into transferring from there to William and Mary, which is a school I never would have gotten into had I not, like, had this stepping stone. But it was so unpredictable and there’s a path like I knew I couldn’t have predicted whatever happened.

Nathan: Yeah. Well, sometimes too, you put those goals out there and then you achieve the goals and they’re not nearly what you think they would be. So, you know, I I remember this in my first job. So again, I’m like, I just wanna work with athletes. Just get me with, you know, get me with all the top end people like that’s who I want to treat, even outside of running.

And so, you know, again, a couple years into my job, partly because I was motivated, I feel like I was good clinically, but I was motivated and we were one of the only games in town, we would see, you know, if you got cut from a professional team, like say you’re in the NFL and you get cut so you don’t have, you know, you don’t have access to medical stuff, we would see a lot of the people that were cut by a team or they were in between, you know, in between teams or, you know, it was kids that were back and they’re playing football at a big D1 school and they’re, you know, they had an ACL reconstruction, like we would see a lot of, you know, had some Olympic level gymnasts, like we had tons of people like that. And that’s what I thought I wanted to do, man. Like, I just want to treat those people all day. And again, a little bit into it, it’s like, oh, this schedule’s kind of rough because everything is urgent or at least it’s perceived to be urgent. It’s you’re on call a lot, late evenings, early mornings.

And again, when I had a, you know, we had kid coming along like, this is not what I thought it would be. You know, and I’ve had that happen lots of times where, you know, there’s something that you think you really want to do and then you get the chance to do it and it either is not what you think it was or you do it for a time period and then you’re like, that time period is done now. The thing that I liked doing or wanted to do, I’ve done it and now I’m ready to do another thing. And so I I think about that with large group training. So when I started, I would do large groups.

So less cost per person, you know, it was an easier entry point for a lot of distance runners. I did that for a time period and then at some point I’m like, I actually don’t like this offering anymore personally. And so I’m gonna I’m gonna have to move to something else. And again, there’s there’s been many times where I’ve had that same situation where either you you get that thing and it’s not what you thought it would be, or you do something for a little bit and then it’s okay to let that version of yourself kind of be done and move on to the next thing.

Jimmy: Yep. It’s like that whole thing will got you there here once you get you there or something like that, right?

Nathan: Well, then it becomes work, right? So like it seems really enjoyable until you you get paid for it and then it’s just work. Yeah. That happens too.

Jimmy: Yeah. I mean, I I can relate to that. We talked off air about like almost at times feeling like personal trainer and like I had a group strength class in Salt Lake for the entire like three years that my business was there and it was amazing to help get me started with my business to get some income and revenue coming in. And then and it was I made really great relationships with everyone. And, like, when I ended up moving, it was, like, very sad to let that go because of mostly because of the relationships.

But if I’m honest, like, I was burnt out on that class because it was twice a week, 7AM. I like, we had two kids during that time and it just became, Yeah, something that served wet me well for the beginning to get the business up and running. And then I yeah, I needed to to change. Yeah, but like I asked you earlier, how would COVID have without COVID? Would you have like dropped the things that you needed to drop?

Yeah. Without me moving across the country, I don’t know that I would have ever stopped that class.

Nathan: You know? Yeah.

Jimmy: Even though I was, yeah, no longer it wasn’t serving me as well.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes the you know, sometimes you get those breaks in which which kind of do it for you. Yeah. I I don’t know, you know, how much stuff I would have hung on to that I that I really probably shouldn’t have torn that that break that we all had to go through.

You know? It it was definitely served a purpose for me even though it was a rough time for a lot of people.

Jimmy: Yeah. Alright. So if we pick them back up with you kind of like enjoying this process of digging into something deeply and producing some which likes valuable content. You just released a new course on bones or bone stress injuries.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy: Tell me a bit about that because I I’ve seen what you’ve posted.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Thank you, man. So I have a course called Rebuild Now, and it’s an online self paced course, it’s on my website.

And the goal of that was really trying to put together kind of all my experience working with that population, which is a lot of missteps and mistakes, treating bone stress injuries, my understanding of the literature, and then my experience teaching those concepts to clinicians and try to put that into a really digestible course that people can go through. So there’s a lot of information around bone stress injuries. There’s a lot of research, there’s a lot of literature. And so trying to distill all those ideals down and then say, are the these are the concepts you need to know. This is how, you know, someone is going to present in the clinic.

And then this is how you navigate things from that initial evaluation to them returning to competition. So some of that is like subjective questions to answer or to ask, you know, making sure you develop good rapport with your patients because you do end up talking about some sensitive things. What are the tests and clinical patterns to look for? You know, how to design exercise programs, how to progress cross training, trying to understand if someone’s ready to run, and then how do you navigate them from that return to run progression back to whatever their specific definition of running is. Because that’s sometimes I think where we drop the ball.

We either drop the ball in that we miss the diagnosis. I actually think we’re getting quite better at that. So how do we perform a really good differential diagnosis? Cause a lot of times the rehab pros, the person that has to figure out where we are. And then how do we make sure the time from diagnosis to running is as productive as possible?

And then how do you actually take someone through training? So it’s not just this, you know, ease back into running or kind of letting it letting it go to the coach, which even the best coaches I think have a hard time with not just throwing everything back at the athlete, but how do you progress someone back to a long run and progress them back to workouts and how do you integrate them into racing and all those kind of things that can be challenging. So that was the whole kind of purpose of that course is to say, let’s take all this information and try to make it really digestible for clinicians knowing whatever way they work with runners.

Jimmy: Do you so if you feel like we’ve gotten better at the diagnosis, you said, and I would agree I would agree. It seems like I guess I I was at ECSM a couple weeks ago, and one of the courses or or one of the lectures I attended, they were talking about how we are seeing more, like, femoral neck stress fractures or sacral fractures. And one of the questions that came up was like, are we seeing more of them or are we diagnosed?

Nathan: Was just feeling diagnosed more. Yeah. So go back to my clinical career. I think I saw a lot of bone stress injuries my first couple of years and they just didn’t get diagnosed.

Jimmy: Yeah, which like, what were the the main presentations that

Nathan: Yeah, so it’d be like a distance runner with a flexor strain or a calf strain or something like that.

Jimmy: Low back pain.

Nathan: Low back pain. And but what but what happened is, you know, so they a lot of times they’d see their PCP or they see a sports med physician. This was at my first job, it was in Missouri. At the time we didn’t have direct access. So everybody came in with a referral.

And so I think a lot of times what would happen is they would go in for a complaint of pain and that recommendation from the doctor would be, okay, stop running for four to six weeks and go to PT and maybe we’d see them like a week or two later and start them on some things. And I think a lot of times when you remove running from the equation, symptoms go away. Not all of the time if it’s more progressed or more in a higher risk location, but a lot of times if you take running out, it kind of settles down fairly quickly. And so I can confidently say I had a lot of patients that got diagnosed with a muscular issue that looking back was probably a bone stress injury. And because when they came in, it was like, hey, let’s start them on clamshells and bridges and, you know, TA contractions and all that kind of stuff.

It just, it wasn’t enough to resensitize the bone. And if you have some kind of a sensible progression, they’re probably okay. So yeah, that’s my, I mean, that would be my perspective is, I don’t know that more of them happen. Maybe they do because I do think that as social media has gotten more popular, issues around nutrition have gotten worse to a point. And so maybe we do see a little bit more.

I also think we just missed a lot of them.

Jimmy: Yeah. Issues around social media. I’m a I also think, like, Strava plays a role in like people overtraining or pushing pushing way harder than they can they should. Seeing some elite runners training and trying to mimic that. But, yeah, it was also I can I agree with you?

Like, early in my career, definitely missing or looking back, those were stress fractures diagnosed with muscle strains. Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy: Which is fortunate that we’re getting smarter and better at, yeah, uncovering these and hopefully, like, things like your course help spread the word and we get even better.

Nathan: Yeah. That’s the that’s the goal.

Jimmy: And so then the other side of your course where it comes to where you’re talking about the more transitioning to the performance side of things, You think that your background, like with strength training helped you be more comfortable with that side of the rehab world?

Nathan: Absolutely. I mean, I think my experience in college starting that, but also my first job. So the first job that I worked at, again, was a sports clinic, but we were a high volume sports clinic, like you saw multiple patients at the same time. And so because of that, plus my boss’s experience, he was a, he’s a PTATC and he he worked for a few different professional teams. So his his kind of framework for rehab was very exercise based.

And so that was my I remember I had two job offers that I was considering. One was actually out in Seattle when I got out of school and one was back I was back in Kansas City. And the one in Seattle was very manual based. Like, it was forty minutes of manual, you know, and so I did a clinical there, and I I love those people. They were great.

And then, you know, this job back in Kansas City that was very exercise based and, you know, my wife and I have family here, you know, cost of living with Seattle and a starting PT salary and a teacher. My wife’s a teacher. Like, I don’t I don’t know how it would look financially out there. And so, you know, I ended up taking the job at the exercise based clinic. And so I got a ton of exposure to that and more experience with that.

Again, because at the time I was working with football players and, you know, basketball players and gymnasts and all these, you know, high level sports, you know, part of the rehab process would be like, take this lineman through a DAPRI squat protocol, you know, after they’ve had ACL reconstruction. Like it was, you know, I got a lot more exposure to that. And so I do think that was more helpful to me to then when you see, you know, when you see runners and they’re like doing, you know, body weight leg raises and isometrics and stuff like that. I’m not gonna those exercises I don’t think are bad, but I think we can probably do quite a bit more, which again, that was my my bias kind of coming into things. Mhmm.

Certainly, can overdo it at times, but I think all that was very beneficial to me.

Jimmy: Yeah. Because on the flip side of the coin, I’ve I’ve I saw your post about why runners shouldn’t lift heavy shit or something like title something

Nathan: like that.

Jimmy: So there’s nuance here. Right? It’s like

Nathan: Yeah. Well, that that again is more my experience in over programming for people. So, like, you find the balance. So, like, I’ve had a lot of runners that, you know, either they had way too much going on and I started adding and lifting to what they were doing, and I probably should have just done nothing Yeah. Because they didn’t have the time.

Yeah.

Jimmy: I had a phone call with a runner right before hopping on this who recovering from femoral neck stress fracture, we’re back down, we’re returning to run. He’s now like, we are like six months into an actual running block, and he is asking what he could add to improve his form work. Yeah. And I was like, well, in like three of your past comments on Training Peaks, were talking about how you were time crunched and could barely get back to your house and time won’t run. Yeah.

So I don’t think we should add anything else.

Nathan: Right. Like, let this let this stabilize. And then, you know, it’s like, I think seasonality is important. So there’s times when we can definitely put more on someone’s calendar. There’s lots of times when we when we can’t.

So I think as clinicians, we wanna do things. Like, we wanna have people do things. We wanna do things to people. But sometimes not doing things is a little bit better. And again, I I I feel like I’ve gotten better about being realistic about someone’s situation.

I wasn’t always like that. Like I’ve I’ve over lifted a lot of endurance athletes. My programming is much simpler and has less volume to it now, I think than when I started twelve, thirteen years ago.

Jimmy: Yeah. Do you so yeah, I’m with you. This kind of brings up this idea of like, sometimes it’s the go to is always add add add. And there’s like, okay, maybe we don’t need to add. But then there’s maybe we actually need to subtract.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for runners in particular, that can be really hard to say like, hey, we need to take things away. Like you’re doing enough. But a lot of times that’s what we need to do.

As a clinician, can feel weird because you’re like, instead of doing stuff, we’re just like removing stuff.

Nathan: Yeah. So some helpful things I I have found, you know, if you look across someone’s week, is there any point of like peace or stillness? Because there should be something. Yeah. You know, so I I think that can be helpful.

Jimmy: Yeah. How do you help a runner? So when you as you just said that, I’m thinking of another runner I consulted who is have I’ve been working with her for a while and I look at her training. Like, I I put I upload most of my runners onto TrainingPeaks so I can see everything that they’re doing.

Nathan: Right. In

Jimmy: that way, there’s no hiding and I can see. And I’ll look and I’m like, there’s you haven’t had a day off in six weeks. Like your day off is like you going on two hikes or something.

Nathan: Right.

Jimmy: And so like but I have a really hard time like help it like, I will point it out but like how do you like, you have any recommendations on how you would help? Yeah. Because I’ve also heard you talk about, yeah, like, you want somebody doing something complete unrelated to running. Don’t read a running book, don’t watch a running

Nathan: Right.

Jimmy: Release or something like that. Yeah. So how do you help here?

Nathan: Yeah, so that’s a good question. So I one of the questions I talk about this in the course that I ask every patient, but I think it has particular relevance to a bone stress injury is what do you enjoy doing that isn’t related to exercise? And so that could be running, could be hiking, that could be skiing, that could be whatever it is that you like to do. We should have something that is enjoyable, that is not doesn’t require you to move your body.

Part of that is because if you get diagnosed with a bone stress injury, you’re going have time away from that anyway. So if there is something that you like, maybe we can invest a little bit more time in that. And again, to me, it’s like, don’t care what that is. Maybe that’s reading, maybe that’s painting, playing video games, playing chess, doesn’t matter. But we should have something we enjoy doing that’s not, you know, exercise.

Now there are lots of times when I ask runners that question and I’m either met with a blank stare or with an almost immediate acknowledgment that they don’t have any. They don’t have a way to that answer to answer that question, and they realize they should. So and again, I think I think time of year matters here. If you are six weeks out from your, you know, a race, you’re trying to get your first BQ, you want to like there’s some big performance goal, your your life might need to look a little myopic like this is the focus, but it shouldn’t look like that all the time. So if someone is having a hard time finding things outside of running, this is from, man, what’s the book?

It might be from Cal Newport’s work, it might be from somebody else. But like looking back to the things that you enjoyed to do when you were a kid and if there’s something that you like doing that you don’t currently do, maybe do some of that right now. Like go take a class or do something, I think that can be helpful. But you know, I think for the first part is just acknowledging it. Another thing that might be helpful is if you’re working with a runner that everything is focused around running, sometimes it can be helpful to have them say, hey, have you ever shared like your typical week with a friend that’s not a runner?

I guess kind of gotten their perspective on it because most of them will be like, hey, like you’re doing a lot. Yeah, you might like, you could go like have brunch sometime and not just not go around. Yeah. And so, and again, it’s this fine balance because a lot of times the like approach of I’m going to work hard, I’m dedicated, like that’s really valuable for And lots of for people that are successful in endurance sports, it’s also necessary because training takes a lot of time and it’s not always comfortable. But sometimes we can run into that becoming an issue if we do need to take a little bit of a step back.

But, yeah, that’s so that’s a question that I I will use with I I ask all my patients, is like, what do you like doing that’s not exercise?

Jimmy: I love it.

Nathan: And then just kinda see where the conversation goes. Sometimes we can get some positive changes and sometimes we won’t. And all we can do is maybe bring up the idea.

Jimmy: Nice. Yeah, I like it. Probably the last question I want to ask. This is a loaded question. It’s a lot, but yeah, how would you describe your rehab philosophy?

Like simply put, what would you say?

Nathan: Yeah. So I mean, my whole goal, I think we can go back to like the first patient interaction. So I want to make sure that anybody that I see feels like they have the time to share their story, get their questions answered, and that any kind of plan that we put in place is with the idea that they’re going to be independent as they get back to what they want to be able to do. So a lot of that comes down to making sure that I’m expressing empathy with the person, that we’re taking into account them as a whole person and all the unique things that they might have going on. And that in the end, anything that we put together is designed to give them agency and confidence in their progression back to whatever running looks like for them.

And that’s again, that’s just come through my experience, you know, over the years.

Jimmy: I think

Nathan: probably if you asked me as a new grad, it was like my approach is that I’m gonna fix everybody’s problems and I’m gonna be like the savior complex. Yeah. And it’s just it’s just a little different now.

Jimmy: And so you’ve built a business around that, like, allows you to treat that way. Yeah. Like, giving you more time with patients. I’m guessing though, like, that business that model can be bad for business now.

Nathan: Yes and no.

Jimmy: Like, financially, I guess.

Nathan: Yeah. So to me, it all comes down to how are you measuring success. So I’m not gonna I’m not gonna deny that like revenue and the money that you make is important because it is. Like you have to make, you know, to me, I want to make enough money where I can live the lifestyle that myself and my family want. And one of the going back to coffee, one of the things that I wanna be able to do is I wanna be able to get a coffee anytime I want without fretting over the cost of it.

So I’m I’m somewhat of a simple person, but that’s one of my that’s one of the things that I want. Yeah. And so I think that in the moment, if I say if you say you’re a patient of mine, say, okay. So Jimmy, we’re gonna meet today for ninety minutes for your evaluation, and then we’re gonna do your follow-up in three weeks, which is a typical kind of timeline if I’m gonna see a patient. We’re going to meet about every three or four weeks.

For most people that are done with a serious injury, I think two to three visits is pretty typical. We have a plan in between. That’s how I like to do things.

Jimmy: So how do you how do you monitor the in between?

Nathan: Yeah. So they can I do, fifteen minute phone calls if they need them? They can book that on their own. And then I write out a plan for in between sessions. So I like that model partly because I understand that runners don’t wanna come and see me and compliance is rarely an issue because they’re probably gonna do their stuff.

Jimmy: Because of my population.

Nathan: Yeah. Because of my population. And if compliance is an issue, I’m probably not the right fit for them anyway. And so if you look at that on paper and you’re like, man, like, you only saw Jimmy for, like, three visits. I think that in a lot of models that is, you view that as, a problem Yeah.

Instead of the idea that I bet if you provide really good care for Jimmy, Jimmy’s not gonna go to anybody else, and he’s probably gonna refer his friends. Yeah. And that is how it’s played out for me. And when I talk to a lot of clinicians that maybe have a similar model or approach, it’s the same thing.

Jimmy: Yeah. Think I think it’s refreshing from the patient side. It’s like, oh, I don’t have to come in twice a week and whatever, spend my copay and, like because I remember what, like, all of my jobs leading up to start my own business were like, yeah. Here’s my plan of care two times a week for eight weeks based on, like, the docs orders. You know?

And then it’s just like, it becomes watered down. And then we’re I feel like you give PTs a bad repute our industry in general are like a PT is becomes that. They become the person you that’s very low value service, you know.

Nathan: Yeah. I’ll normally tell people you don’t there’s you know, if you want to come in and watch me and have me watch you do your exercises, that’s fine.

Jimmy: But I don’t

Nathan: think but I don’t think we really need that. And, you know, most runners are they’re good with that. Yeah. You know, if someone has a a time crunch, it’s like, I see them two weeks before Boston and they wanna check-in, like, you know, in, like, seven to ten days before they before they leave or something like that. Like, there’s times when maybe maybe we do need a little bit more frequency or at least I found that it’s helpful, especially if there there are race considerations.

And then there’s other types of p there’s lots of PT that that idea is necessary. Like, if I have an ACL reconstruction, I’d probably wanna go in two to three days a week for the first six weeks. You know, if you had a stroke, maybe going in weekly is the best plan. Like, there’s other models. For me with the endurance athlete, that’s kind of the frequency that I find we can see progress.

I like the product. I think the the patient enjoys the product. And, yeah, and you’re always figuring this out. Like, is the right mix of all this? It it does change over time, I think, as you learn more and you figure out how you like to work with people.

Jimmy: Yeah. So just to summarize then, like your rehab philosophy is basically like this. You come your approach it from a stance of like empathy and then empowering the patient to kind of overcome their injury with you as like the guide who’s there infrequently, but they’re in their corner when they need them.

Nathan: Yeah. So so there’s a good book called Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best. I don’t if you’ve read that one or not by Jonathan Painter.

Jimmy: Motivational interviewing one?

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he he says, I guide, you decide. So, like, he’ll guide, but then the person decides.

Jimmy: Alright. You know Steve Magnus, the running dude? Yeah. He he says he I heard him talk about this too, and I I stole it from him with all my patients and athletes. It’s like Sure.

You’re they’re in the driver’s seat. I’m copilot, navigating, like, pointing out pitfalls that I know, like, people tend to fall fall into, and I’m just ultimately, they’re in control. They’re driving it.

Nathan: Well, and I think that is a lot better place to be in as a clinician too. I think if you partly because people are really complicated. You and I are complicated. You know, it’s not just the patients we treat. If you feel like you have to be, like, you know, pulling them along the way, you’re going to get really tied to their outcomes.

And that can be problematic because outcomes are uncertain. You know, to me, I feel like I’m here to listen and empathize with you. And I’m going to share my perspective. I’m going do the best that I can with the information that I have. And you know, and for a lot of people we do, we tie our professional worth or abilities to our patient outcomes.

And if you’re going to run a business around a population, your most of your patients probably do need to improve. Otherwise, people aren’t gonna come and see you. Yeah. But, you know, the specific outcomes, you know, there’s a lot of uncertainty we just don’t know about. And so it’s like we’re gonna be the best we can with the information that we have.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Alright. I think that’s a good place to kinda wrap it up.

I’m excited. I wanna now learn more about your course and I wanna take it. So where can I find it? I think you mentioned this on your website.

Nathan: Yeah. So it’s on my website, runningmatekc.com/rebuild. And, you know, if anybody has any questions, you know, about the course, they can always shoot me a message on Instagram or or you can email [email protected]. But you’ll find all the information you’ll find all the information on my website.

Jimmy: Awesome. And then what’s your Instagram?

Nathan: Running mate Casey.

Jimmy: Running mate Casey. Awesome. Yeah. You got great videos, you got great content. It’s very deep content.

Yeah. Thanks, That’s

Nathan: the stuff I like to do. You should produce things that you enjoy. That makes it much easier.

Jimmy: Yep. Alright, Nathan. Well, great to have you. Appreciate your time.

Nathan:  Thanks, Have a good rest

Jimmy: of your day. You too. That’s it for today on the Physio Insights Podcast presented by Runeasi Would you like to share an interesting case, insight, or have a thought about the podcast? Comment below, and don’t forget to follow us for more episodes.