If you are trying to lose weight, what do you do? You step on the scale and get your baseline. Then you apply your intervention: you eat better, you move better, try your best to avoid Chick-fil-a, etc. You then jump on the scale and retest that baseline.
In the care of the spine, shoulder, knee, hip, foot, ankle, jaw, etc. — baselines are crucial. Let’s say your knee is bothering you. We collect three baselines: your subjective baseline (6/10 pain level), your objective baseline (range of motion, specific tests), and most importantly, we collect a functional baseline. Uhhm, what is a functional baseline? The term functional has gotten abused in the movement community, but from a macro perspective, functional means something related to how you function in your individual life. Your functional is different from my grandfathers functional (he’s a beast). For example, with our knee issue here, depending on the individual it could be anything from: stairs, walking, sitting, squatting to pick up your kid, mile 20 on a bike ride, a deadlift, cutting side to side, the pain you feel transitioning to your downswing, etc. It could be anything related to you. We need to collect subjective, objective, and functional baselines so that we can hold ourselves accountable on our progress.
Every patient is a puzzle. In order to achieve rapid results, the clinician needs to be analytical, always minimizing variables. A patient the other day said to me, “Doc – holy s#^T! This is fun!” … Odd thing to hear in a chiropractic office, right? The reason why this patient was so fired up was because he was beginning to truly understand his condition. Back pain he had been living with for 5+ years. We could create his pain, we could take his pain away. We knew what positions & movements would increase or decrease his pain. We were continually testing his baseline functional and objective tests and seeing the progress. Our detective caps were on. It sounds nerdy, but it’s fun. It’s cool to learn about movement … we have one body that we’re blessed with but also stuck with. By understanding your physical issue and how it behaves, you WILL conquer your condition – I can pretty much guarantee it.
What I do isn’t rocket science. I do not have magic hands. We problem solve – we always test, we never guess.
Dr. David Jolson
PS – I’m happy to discuss your issue with you and see if it’s something that I could help with: let’s find a time to chat.
