Manual Therapy for Golfers
I am writing this blog for 2 main purposes:
To tell my story of how I went from a generalist physical therapist to a golf specific manual therapist.
To provide helpful education on how manual therapy can be used to specifically provide more options for the golf swing.
If you have no interest in the backstory and simply want to digest the educational content, feel free to scroll until the videos start. That’s the good stuff. For those of you who love longer form content and want to learn my backstory, keep on reading!
Here we go.
My story is a bit backwards from what most business and professional coaches teach.
“You need a niche. Niche down!”
“Define your target audience.”
“Get very specific on who you can help because you can always go broader.”
This wasn’t in my DNA. I didn’t have a niche. I did have an approach. I treated the entire body. I was a manual therapist. Is that a niche? Probably not but it’s what I had to offer.
Anyway, I practice something called Functional Manual Therapy® (FMT®). Have you heard of it? Unlikely. As it turns out, it became an early superpower of Congruency. Let me explain.
When I was in PT school, we had a 6 month final rotation before graduating. A long time right? Well, along with this came a lot of pressure to make sure I was in a good learning environment.
As a result, I found a rotation in Beaufort, SC with an excellent manual therapist who happened to be trained in FMT®. Had I heard of this approach? Nope, but I had professional social proof that this guy knew his stuff. I then started the clinical rotation and found out first hand that he did indeed know his stuff. I then attended my first continuing education weekend course to learn this approach and found out that these instructors REALLY knew their stuff. I wanted to be like them. I was on my path.
Fast forwarding quickly through my journey… I spent 2 years learning under this master clinician in Beaufort. I then moved to Aiken, SC for my wife’s job for 2 years, which allowed us to pay off our loans, take a bunch more courses and.. I moved to NYC for 2 yrs to study FMT® under another master clinician. Finally, I moved to Charlotte to start Congruency (in the middle of COVID).
So here we are. It’s October 2020. In the middle of a pandemic. I know no one. I don’t have a niche.
Where do I start?
What do I have?
I have 7 years of studying the FMT® approach. I have a process. I have trained hands.
So what did I do?
I started treating other like-minded people in Charlotte… For free.
Now what do I have?
I have goodwill. I have referral partners who see the value in this approach. I have my first clients. I have some amount of proof that this “no niche” thing could really work!
Fast-forwarding to today. We have been very well received by the Charlotte community and have so much gratitude for our relationships with referral partners. We at this time of this writing have 4 bought-in team members who are contributing so much to grow our company.
Everyone tells me that we should be building a brand and I am writing a blog post about my new niche in golf. Backwards? You bet. Intentional? You bet.
The reality is that each of our team members have their own story. It is each of our stories that make our brand unique. These stories need to be told. It may be backwards, but somehow I think our brand will shine brightest as we tell our individual stories.
It’s time to continue my story and write the next chapter: manual therapy for the golfer.
As word of mouth spread, so did my relative proportion of golfers. I ended up meeting one of the local teaching pros here in town who urged me to go ahead and get Titlelist Performance Institute (TPI) certified. I reluctantly agreed.
I went through the certification process quickly the first time and have since consumed the material again slowly. Re-entering the professional learning process has been so energizing. Early in my career, I couldn’t learn enough about clinical reasoning and manual therapy applications. The TPI certification process has allowed me to specifically apply the FMT® approach to the golf swing. I thought I was treating golfers successfully but now I have a whole new toolbox for reasoning through their needs.
I really appreciate working with the golfer because they specifically align with Congruency’s core value of PROCESS. It is amazing to engage with a golfer in their process. If you have a product that could help them be more consistent, they are all in. If you have a product that could improve their mobility and power, they are all in. It is such a natural fit for the FMT® approach.
Below I am going to outline several manual therapy techniques that specifically apply to the golf swing. These techniques will give the golfer more options when it comes to their swing. Options = improved potential for consistency now (for the young-er golfer) and far into the future (for the aging golfer). These “options” will allow the swing coach to best craft your swing and allow for your golf fitness professional to best add strength/power to your swing.
