Tag: lower extremity

Smith Performance Center Tucson

Knee Pain Meniscus Degeneration and Clinical Experience

  How do you manage knee pain with a meniscus tear?   Meniscectomy, sham surgery, and clinical experience avoiding surgery for pain and function Clinical practice is filled with successes and failures. For some reason, the failures are the thing you remember most and for me, lead to the biggest changes in practice.  The patient that never feels better will never quite leave your mind even when you go home from work.  Knee pain and Meniscus Tear – Round 1 Since my main interest has always been the lower extremity, specifically the foot, ankle, and knee pathomechanics and pathology, I wanted to be the best at rehabbing these injuries right off the bat. My failure with a patient suffering from chronic knee pain led me to the literature surrounding meniscal surgery. The patient reported sharp pain with occasionally catching in the knee joint. The joint had mild joint effusion and

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Physical Therapy Solutions for Knee Pain

  Why should I go to Physical Therapy Solutions at Smith Performance Center for my knee injury instead of another clinic? Physical therapy at Smith Performance Center is not a cookie-cutter, one size fits all type of operation. Depending on what problem you have, the ‘right’ service might be different. Our process, called the SPC Difference, uses physical therapy in 3 distinct services: PT Solutions – One on One Physical Therapy Sessions using SPC Methodology PT Movement – Group Physical Therapy Sessions using Task Based Protocol for recurrent, chronic, or post surgical injuries Health and Human Performance – Long term strength and movement programming your own coach including injury surveillance, early injury detection, and treatment integration Physical Therapy Solutions  The first service that typically brings people to Smith Performance is called PT Solutions.  The name was modified from an idea in the book Innovator’s Prescription.  It may surprise you, but

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Knee injury

Factors to Consider After Knee Injury

Returning to Activity, Physical Therapy, and Neuromuscular Fatigue   Neuromuscular fatigue has been implicated as a significant problem for individuals returning to sport following an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and reconstruction.  Due to the high rate of re-injury in those that have had an ACL reconstruction, one hypothesis is that neuromuscular fatigue will negatively impact strength performance, postural stability (single leg balance), and biomechanics during jumping and landing.  It blows my mind that a female athlete with an ACL tear is 16 times more likely than a healthy female athlete to tear an ACL again. The interplay between a previous injury, the resulting changes to the input to the brain, modified motor planning, and re-injury is an interesting development in research.  Today I wanted to dive a little more into fatigue, its impact on biomechanics, and how physical therapy and strength training can start to augment the problem. There

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Craig Smith

Craig Smith

BUSINESS Craig Smith is the co-owner of Smith Performance Center. He founded SPC with Sarah Smith in 2015 with a mission to provide the Tucson community with the support and tools to manage their health and stay active for life. He is a partner with Evolve Flagstaff. Founded in 2017, Evolve brings together gym, physical therapy, nutrition, and meal preparation services to support the Flagstaff community. Craig Smith founded Amptimum with Ryan Seltzer in 2020. Their mission is to unleash the clinical skill set of allied health professionals by developing documentation mastery, patient management processes, and robust analytics. WORK As a physical therapist, Craig is interested in physical therapy concepts with clinical application, PT diagnostic methodology, innovative healthcare solutions, and team-based practice. He specializes in lower extremity care, gait analysis, and physical therapy. As clinical director, Craig works to develop a shared framework for his physical therapy and coaching team. The shared framework, called PT Solutions and the HHP Program, is carried out daily with hundreds of patients and members. As a consultant, Craig works with allied health professionals to understand their clinical processes. This focus allows for clinicians to optimize their operations and to improve their clinical outcomes, train new staff, and reduce the burden of practice. AWARDS Craig graduated from NAU with distinction and was awarded the Distinguished Graduate for the Department. He graduated with honors from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and was awarded the Outstanding Major of the Year in Exercise Science by NAHPERD. Most recently, he was awarded the Excellence in Achievement from Northern Arizona by the NAU Alumni Association in 2020. RESEARCH Craig has presented research at the American Society of Biomechanics National Conference, the American College of Sports Medicine Annual Meeting, and the National NEXT conference along with numerous local and regional meetings on topics surrounding injury screening and prevention. He has publications in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Journal of Athletic Training, Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Journal of Sports Medicine, and Lower Extremity Review. Craig and his colleagues, Dr. Warren and Dr. Chimera, were selected as one of the “Best Clinic Case/Research Submissions” at the 60th Annual Meeting and 4th World Congress on Exercise is Medicine of the American College of Sports Medicine.