#90 - Master’s Series: Sports Chiropractic with Dr. Tim Stark, Part 2

Hi there. It's time for another episode of The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle, and today Dr. Todd Riddle will continue his special master series with Dr. Tim Stark. If you tuned in for part 1, you know we've been diving deep into Dr. Tim Stark's fascinating journey through the world of sports chiropractic, his invaluable experiences in the field, and the profound insights he's gained from a career dedicated to advancing the profession. As we transition into part 2, we left off discussing the quintessential elements of building a successful practice: fostering genuine relationships and trust within your community. Dr. Stark's philosophy of embodying care and commitment to his community strongly resonates with the timeless saying, they don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. This is a great quote and one that really represents how Dr. Stark has approached his role as an educator and a clinician throughout his career. In this episode, we'll further explore his extensive contributions to sports chiropractic education. Delve into his innovative approaches in multidisciplinary care, and hear about his unique experiences in chiropractic education, both in Japan and Australia. So settle in; this is an episode you'll want to listen to more than once. Let's cue the intro music and get started.

You.

You mentioned eventually a transition to Australia. I'm very curious because knowing what I know about you and the conversations we've had, I feel like that, that was also then, I don't want to call it a pivot, but it maybe that's what it is into a whole other trajectory that maybe you, maybe you did see coming, but curious about that transition to Australia.

No, I didn't see any type of international opportunities in my crystal ball back in the day. So I was in full-time practice and I told Michelle, I said, I'm going to give full-time practice 3 years. At the end of 3 years, if I really miss teaching, because I was doing a lot of teaching during the residency, really enjoyed it.

Right.

My grandmother was a teacher. Don't know if that means anything genetically, but so I think teaching might be in the blood. And so I said, I'm going to give full-time practice 3 years. I think that's a fair time to determine whether I want to just go all in for practice or if I really miss teaching and want to resonate And rebound back. Well, after about a year and a half of practice, I just thought, practice is okay, but teaching is where I can make a bigger impact. And there is a quick story with, again, Brian Nook, one of my mentors. When I was finishing my internship or externship, he said, Tim, you owe it to people to practice. I go, what does that mean? He said, you're smart, you have good hands, you can differentially diagnose, you can relate to people. You owe it to your future potential patients to practice. And I thought that was an interesting statement. In other words, maybe I or we owe it to our community to make an impact, to take whatever skill set or talent that we might have and then turn that back and turn it around and make an impact and make things better for maybe you, but in your family, but for others particularly. And I thought that was empowering. And so when I was— oh, and then in regards to Australia and teaching, I felt like I could make a stronger impact if I were teaching. So it's one thing for me to see 70 to 100 patients a week. It's another thing for me to maybe see anywhere from 30 to 60 future doctors and make an impact on them to see 70 to 100 patients a week.

Mm-hmm.

Times whatever, 60. And I just thought that was a tremendous opportunity.

That's 10x thinking, right? That's exactly right. You could see your 100 or you could work with a bunch of Chiro students and vicariously see thousands, hundreds of thousands.

Yeah. And I think that was the pivoting point. So we're now what, 8 years into practice? Prior to that, the years prior to that, I was softly looking for different opportunities to teach full-time. There was an opportunity in Surrey, which is a chiro program in England, which did close down. So it's probably good that that didn't pan out. But I was interested in that opportunity. And then I get a phone call from, again, Brian Nook, who was in Australia, and he was building, working with Stephen Pallister to open up a brand new chiro school at Murdoch University in the Perth, Australia, Western Australia area. And he reaches out to me and he said, Tim, keep— if you're interested, We're going to be looking for future instructors here as our program grows. I think it's probably going to be 6 months to 12 months out, but maybe keep it on your radar if you have any interest. And of course, an international move is scary for so many reasons. And so literally I get a phone call like another 2 months later from him. And he said, we need, we need 4 faculty now. And he said, the posting is up. Apply if you're interested. Don't apply if you're not. And I said, I'll talk to Michelle tonight. And so anyway, long story short, I applied, interviewed, and was offered a position. And that went over— telling family and friends you're moving to the other side of the planet.

Literally.

Yeah, it was, it was a, it was a tough go in, in some capacities. Some people were super excited and some people not at all that moving Your family away from them and not seeing that.

You had children in the mix at this point too, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gosh, how old were they? They were like 3 and 6 or 3 and 7 or something like that. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I think my oldest was in second grade and she was halfway through second grade and they bumped her up to third grade when we got there. And the other one was not even in pre-primary or kindy yet. So she spent a year there in Australia before she went to the very first level, which I think is either kindy or pre-primary in Australia. But that was, it was, I, again, that's one of those things I would never not do the US Air Force. I would never not go to Australia. It was a great opportunity.

I love Australia, so I can fully, I can fully respect that thought process. Tell us a little bit about your time at Murdoch. You had an opportunity to teach, but you had a lot of opportunity to develop, develop programs. There was Japan involved in there at some point. Tell us some more about that.

Yeah, it was a brand new program. It was building from scratch. Again, I like to do that type of work. I believe when I got there, it was going to be a 5-year program. So outside of America, and I know you probably have a number of international listeners as well, the program in Australia was a double bachelor's degree. There were other programs in Australia where it was a bachelor's degree, and then the second part of the chiro program was a master's program. And the way Australia worked and way the federal subsidies worked was the government would Mostly pay for your bachelor's degree. But once you went on to a master's degree, a lot of that subsidy diminished, and the student was paying for most of that master's degree. So it was rather brilliant for Murdoch University to say, haha, we're going to do 2 bachelor's degrees, and we're going to get subsidies for potentially both of them. And you would think that you would need some sort of graduate-level schooling To practice chiropractic in various different countries. And we call ourselves doctors of chiropractic. That's the DC credential that we get after our names here in America. But that's not necessarily the case outside of America. Same thing with medical doctor, MD. Those are the letters you get after your name here in America. Those aren't necessarily the credentials you get after you earn after your name outside of America. So the schooling is quite different. To think like To not think like an American when you go overseas is something that takes some training. I was just on a phone call yesterday with some colleagues and I said, and it was an international call, and I said, I know I'm thinking like an American, but here's, here's the way, here's, here's the way I think about this particular point. Yes, I had again an awesome opportunity to teach full-time and a half, man. The teaching load was aggressive. We had, we were building courses while we were teaching them. And hopefully we did a good job. We call them Pallister Pioneers, which are the very first group of students that graduated from the Murdoch University Cairo program because the dean of the program, his name was Stephen Pallister. So they call themselves the Pallister Pioneers. Great group. Fantastic group. I hope we did them justice with being able to build this plane while we were trying to get it off the ground at the same time. And I stay in touch with many of them. And I sure hope that we did a good job. Administration had an awesome opportunity to administrate some programs there. So one of my interests, well, of course, is sports science and sports chiropractic. And so I was handed a piece of paper. It was basically an application to the university to build a new program. And so it would come from the College of Chiropractic, but it would go to the University of Murdoch and for— to build this master's degree. And I looked at it and it said a master's degree in sports chiropractic. And I said, who else teaches a master's degree in sports chiropractic? And doing— I think Google was probably around at that time. This was a while ago. So just didn't see that as being a common master's degree. And I said, and then who's our market? Who's going to be interested in a master's of sports chiropractic? Well, of course, the prerequisite would be you have to be a chiropractor. And I said, well, why are we doing this? And I said, Let's— can we put a pause on this and back up and understand the why behind this? And I said, if we're looking to build some sort of sports presence at a master's degree level, is chiropractic really the direction we want to go, or should we consider sports science, something a bit more broad? Then we've got a market that's this wide versus this wide, chiropractors only versus physiotherapists versus— Anybody with a bachelor's degree in sports science, etc. So now we're— we really opened up the floodgates, per se, for a much broader titled master's degree. So long story short, we tore up the paper application for a Master of Sports Chiropractic, started a new path of building a Master of Sports Science, which I, again, had an opportunity. It was a pleasure to be able to build that. I think it's still running. I hope it's still running. But we did build into the curriculum map—

Yeah.

allowing sports chiropractors, those with some sort of certificate or advanced degree, to enter the program with advanced standing to finish at a bit of a faster rate.

That's such a game changer too. So where does Japan come in? Because I have a great affinity for Japan. I think they're really trying to get chiropractic together there. So tell us a little bit about your time with the Japanese chiropractors.

I love Japan, man. I'm just trying to remember. I'm trying to think of where to start. There's so many cool memories about being there. So how did it relate to Murdoch University? And some of the history on that. I'm hoping I'm not speaking out of order, and I hope that I know the history accurately, but there was an agency in Japan that reached out to Murdoch University to partner with our chiropractic program at Murdoch University to establish a bridging program there in Japan. I understand, and again, I was just small peanuts hearing, I think I heard that there was another American program, chiropractic program in America. That was talking with this agency and getting them started. And it turned out that this American chiro program decided not to pursue it any further. And I think the ball was already rolling with this chiropractic program in Japan. And so they reached out to Murdoch University and invited us and— or we nurtured a relationship, if you will, to build this program. It was a bridging program. We had some really interesting Japanese students in the program. Many of them had like a bachelor's degree in exercise maybe, or health or biology. Some of them were also experienced as judo practitioners.

Yes.

Judo practitioners. So judo practitioners in America, we think of judo as a sport. And of course, with the Olympics just finishing up, judo was, was a highlight. But judo practitioners, judo starting in Japan, was actually a form of healthcare with joint manipulation. And they were fantastic.

They're phenomenal.

Their joint manipulation, super fast, high velocity, low amplitude. That's a term that we use in the chiro world for the non-chiros that might be listening. But high velocity, low amplitude, which means when we move a joint, we're moving it just millimeters, but as fast as we possibly can. And imagine some sort of sport where you have to be able to move super fast, but in a very controlled manner. Judo is—

Perfect.

Exactly that. So it was really impressive to teach some sort of joint manipulation, whether it be a soft tissue manipulation, joint manipulation, and watch these guys and gals catch on to it so fast and be able to do it at an incredibly high level already. So participating in this bridging program in Japan was great. We would go there twice a year when I was in Australia. We would fly there twice a year. It was usually on a break when we were on break at Murdoch University. And we would go to Japan and we would teach anywhere from 2 to about 3.5 weeks at a time. It was very intensive. The Japanese students were studying on their own for the most part. And then we would come in from us, from Murdoch University, a number of us faculty would go there and we would have our radiologists teaching radiology and Brian teaching his stuff and myself and others teaching. Mark was— a number of instructors were teaching our area of expertise that we were teaching at Murdoch. Again, very intensive, 10, 12-hour days. You're exhausted by the end of the day because the process of teaching was very slow. You're there teaching in English and then it's being translated. So it's not instantaneous translation, but it's intermittent translation. So I would say something in English, so then my Japanese translator would say it, where if everybody had some ears on instantaneous, that would have speeded things up a bit.

And sometimes translations aren't that clean either.

Oh my gosh. And I try to keep things light in the classroom. You got to keep people engaged, and if people are smiling and laughing, they're engaged.

Yeah.

And I would purposely— and these were all the slides that I had at Murdoch University that were— we had to basically send them off to Japan many months ahead of time, and then somebody was translating your English into Japanese. So it was the same slide that you used at— or I used at Murdoch. I would have English here and all the Japanese stuff was on this side.

Right.

And so when the slide come up, I could just read my English stuff, teach off of that. And I remember teaching about delayed onset of muscle soreness, DOMS. I think— I don't know if DLR, delayed low-frequency recovery, even caught on, but that was a term that was being used back then as well. But we were talking about delayed onset muscle soreness and how to potentially remedy it, everything from cherry juice to hydrating. And I had a bullet point in there, and I purposely left it in there. Now, we were told, do not use any slang in your slides when you send them over, but I had to leave this in there just to get the reaction from the Japanese students. And the bullet point said, the hair of the dog that bit you. And so, of course, in the drinking days, you would maybe drink a little alcohol the next day and that would help with that hangover. I don't know. I've never been— never had a hangover, never been drunk, actually.

Great.

So I'm just taking that bullet point. by the word of some of my colleagues.

Sure.

But that worked for DOMS. If you were sore the next day, just getting— going out for a walk or getting on the bike and just getting the blood flowing again is what I meant by that.

Right.

So I had no problems teaching that at Murdoch University to a bunch of Australians that understood English, and they probably understood the hair of the dog that bit you. But I would purposely grab a glass of water when I would see that slide I'd hit it, I'd see it, I'm just gonna let him bake on that. So I would drink some water and I would be watching the Japanese students and they'd be wrinkling their forehead and they'd be turning towards each other. I had no idea how that translated in Japanese, but I would imagine they literally translated it to the hair of the dog that bit you.

Yeah.

And so they were waiting, oh, I can't wait to hear where this is gonna go, or maybe they thought it was a mistranslation.

Sure.

That was, that was one of my fun moments there. But man, I love Japan. Love walking around one of the cleanest, oldest countries you can visit. So beautiful people.

So respectful.

Yeah.

Such a great place.

How many times have you been called sensei when you go there?

Oh, you lose track. And it's— that's what's great about it.

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So your time in Australia, how long were we there for?

We were there for 3 and a half to 4 years, just a little bit more than 3 and a half years. Long enough to, to gain our citizenship there. And we really wanted to do that. It was really important to us. We just absolutely loved our stay there. There was really no reason to not stay there.

Right.

Come back to America. However, there were some family things that we felt like we needed to better manage and we could manage those better, of course, living in the States. Getting a phone call at 4 in the morning because of the time change and saying, hearing something from the family and it's like, well, I'm literally 48 hours away. By the time I book a flight, layovers, et cetera, it's going to be 2 days before I get there. So I'm not sure how I can help. And so it was a little frustrating for somebody who wants to be a contributing beneficial family member and just couldn't at times. But we absolutely loved it. We have our citizenship, the whole family does. So we, we intend to move back probably at some point.

That sounds like a solid plan. So you transition back to the US and where's the first place you land again professionally in the US?

Well, we moved back thinking that we were going to buy my in-laws' lake home. That's where I proposed to my bride out on the dock. And so it has a lot of nostalgia. And so we moved actually into the cabin. It's a year-round home. We moved into the cabin thinking that that's where we were going to reside. Things didn't go as planned. We then realized we need to get the girls in school soon. So we had moved back in the summer of American summer. And we were a couple of weeks away from the school, from school starting. So we decided then to move back to where I had a practice because the individual that was running the practice that I had sold wanted me to come back and just consult a little bit and help out with a few things. And so that was a good opportunity and it was a really good school district for our young people, our kiddos. And we thought that was an appropriate move.

That's excellent. So at some point you ended up transitioning back to Northwestern. Is my timeline correct here?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, pretty close. Yep. So we're just a few years away from Northwestern. So I, we were in, went back to North Dakota, helped my colleague with practice a little bit. We were there for a couple of years.

Okay.

And so I called the dean of the program down there and said, what are my opportunities? Is the position still open? And so long story short, applied and they said, oh, if Jeff Rich is recommending you, it's almost a done deal. Almost. So went, we happened to be, my brother-in-law lives in Florida. So we happened to be going down there anyway. And I said, I'd be on campus. I can be on campus if it's helpful. And they said, yep, we'll set up an interview. Set up an interview, and then David Seaman—you know David Seaman—one of the best nutrition guys in the in the industry for sure. He was working there, and when I saw him sitting at the interview table, I thought, okay, done deal. If they did whatever they could to get David Seaman to be teaching in this program, they're doing the right things. And so I was in at that point. And then when David heard that I had contributed to Tom Hyde's Conservative Sports Injuries book in the manner of editing a couple of chapters, just serving as somebody who read them and sent back some feedback to Dr. Hyde. Again, one of those giants, right?

Another titan.

That we all— and you, you surely know.

Yep.

Very influential with Factor. Maybe you can— I'm sure everybody knows that follows you. So anyway, I had assisted Tom Hyde with his, his textbook, and then Dave Seaman found out about that. And he's— and then he was— David Seaman didn't, I don't think, ask me a question after that first one. I'm not sure what that question was, but as soon as he said— David said, as soon as I heard that you had contributed to Dr. Hyde's book, if Dr. Hyde has that much faith in you, I don't need to know anymore.

Done.

And so anyway, started teaching at National University. Again, it was a building, brand new campus, brand new program. I remember seeing the first group of students, and I think they were in their— it was a 4-year program, of course, and I think they were in their 3rd year. When I started teaching them and got to see them through their 4th year of chiro school after the— that undergraduate program too. And again, a great opportunity. Eventually became the department chair when I was there. That was a great opportunity to assist National University with some administration. Love teaching, great people down there. Hired a few people. Carlo Guadagno as a sports chiro. You know Carlo.

Yep.

And, and so many others, just some great people. And then I got a phone call from my alma mater, Northwestern.

Okay.

And they said, yeah. So after a couple of years in Florida, got a phone call and said, the dean position is going to be opening up. Would you have any interest? We know that you've been now on multiple campuses and we think you could contribute back to Northwestern. And so applied, got the dean position at Northwestern Health Sciences University. And I was in that position for a year. Before the vice president of the clinics, Scott Munsterman, great guy from South Dakota, but he was the vice president at the time at Northwestern of the clinics. He wanted to add more sports medicine and sports care on campus. Again, long story short, I was asked to consult. I consulted, kind of changed the way they were thinking about how to consider sports chiro on campus. They asked me to build and direct. This Human Performance Center. They wanted to start a sports chiropractic institute. And again, I just said sports chiropractic is kind of narrow. What— yeah, your niche is gonna be small. How about human performance? It's a term that's growing within the country, very broad. We could do rehab and not just think that it's all sports-backed stuff. And so anyway, I was asked to build and direct that. And so I stepped away from the dean position and stepped into the director of Human Performance Center.

I'll call your return to America, America 2.0. How much do you think your time in Australia influenced or informed your teaching when you came back to the States, both at National and then again at Northwestern?

Well, considering if you were learning how to swim, if you didn't know how to swim and you were thrown in the deep end, it's either swim or die, right? You, you're going to learn pretty quick. And then the next time you're thrown in the deep end, it's like, this isn't that scary. I've survived before. I think this will all be fine. And that's the way it was in Australia, was literally was thrown in the deep end of academia, not teaching full-time. I was only teaching on weekends, teaching the CCSP and the Diplomate for Northwestern and some other institutions in the US. So it was just weekend teaching and it was very specific on sports chiro. They were all doctors of chiropractic already. And so now I'm teaching people that want to be doctors of chiropractic, teaching clinical neurology, which was not my area of expertise, clinical nutrition, which I was a licensed nutritionist at the time, but I had never really taught clinical nutrition, clinical orthopedics, and rehabilitation was in my wheelhouse. But these were all programs that needed to be built and built in the right way with appropriate pedagogy in mind. Which I didn't know much about. So learned a lot about that and about assessment and writing appropriate distractors. And, and the testing environment in Australia is quite different than the testing environment in America.

Okay.

In that a lot of the examinations, if a student passed with 50%, 60%, that was really good. Meaning the exams were far more challenging than a lot of the exams that I was used to in America. Writing reports on the administration side, been there and done that. So I think Australia really helped me establish a very firm foundation to come back to America and work with the institutions here.

So speaking of institutions here in America, I mean, obviously I think since you've been back and you're still very deeply rooted in chiropractic education, we've, we've seen a pretty significant, I would like to say a change or even an uptick of schools. Campbell's got one, Keiser's got one. Pitt just signed up for one. What do you see as the future for chiropractic education? Is it gonna stay the same? Is it gonna be traditional? Is it gonna incorporate more research medicine? What, what do you see?

That's great. Yeah, I think the future is very bright. I think back in the early days, there were probably agencies out there that were trying to close down schools and trying to close down the profession. I just don't think that's gonna happen at this point. We've got so much momentum now in regards to where we fit. In healthcare. I think a lot of what we do, and maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I have a lot of medical doctor friends. I don't think they wanna do what we do in regards to musculoskeletal work. There are, of course, medical doctors that have expertise in that area, but I would say for the most part, the GP chiros prob— or the GP medical physicians maybe don't even wanna do what we do, which is great. And same thing with physical therapists. I think they have their niche. Athletic trainers have their niche. I think together in like the polyclinic environment, I think you've worked in those types of environments as well. I don't think you can beat it. I think when an athlete walks in and they are surrounded by a DO, a DC, a PT, and internationally it'd be a physiotherapist, massage therapist, medical, other medical physicians, that athlete's gotta feel really good that they are gonna be taken care of in the right way. As long as That sports medicine team works well with each other. When I was in Rio in 2016, I had heard, and I heard it from the head of the poly clinic, particularly of the physical medicine side. He said, we need to be doing what Tim's doing. And like, we were having a debriefing at the end of every night. And I just look at him like, oh crap, what am I doing? Was that— did he mean that in a good way or in a bad way? And, he was watching. He was watching. We'd have an athlete come in and I had befriended the DO that was with me, befriended everybody there. And, first of all, and I'll come back to your question here.

That's okay.

You're doing great. Integrated care is where it's going, right? Whether it be in a school environment and/or the clinical environment. But, we would have an athlete come in and, well, first of all, they wanted to put me in a small 10 by 10 room. And they thought that I needed and wanted that privacy. And the same thing with the DO. Right next to me was the DO, another 10 by 10 room with a table. No, that's good. No. It was very sterile. It was very sterile. And then he, on this tour, on day 1, they showed me the physiotherapy room. And it was this large room. There must've been at least 12, maybe 15 physiotherapy tables and everything you can imagine that went bing. Every different physiotherapy instrument. Physiotherapists running around, massage therapists right across the hall, and they had a massive room. And I asked the head of the, the physio— the physical medicine, I said, can I work here? I would much rather have a table here where I knew there was a physiotherapist there and a DO there and a medical physician there so that when I have an athlete, I can call upon them. So turned out that one of our first athletes that came in was a low back pelvis hip thing, and the DO— asked very politely, do you mind if I watch your exam? I just wanna learn from you. And like, oh, that's fine. And so I'm doing my exam, and I said— and, and she was a sweetheart— and I said, you wanna look at this pelvis too? Because here's what, here's what I, here's what I think I find. What do you think? And so she came over. She was kind of surprised by that, that she would let me touch her, touch my athlete. And it's not that way. It shouldn't be ownership of any of this.

Can I, can I pause real quick? What If you don't mind, if you're comfortable with it, do you remember the name of the DO?

I can picture her. I could bring her up on Facebook. And if I heard her name, I don't— maybe it'll come to me. Okay, I might have to go on Facebook here and try to bring it up. But she, she was practicing in Rio, and I don't know if— yeah, and gosh, I feel so bad, but she was great. So she came around, she evaluated, she goes, yeah, I think you're right. I think that left side is this and that. And So I did a little bit of work and then I said, do you want to maybe do some work on this particular area? And she's like, and then again, she was like very hesitant because she thought it was my athlete. And I said, this is our athlete. We're working together. And then I said, what do you think about some interferential or some ultrasound or whatever? Do you think we should bring over so-and-so? And so, yeah, we called him over. He wasn't doing anything. We called him over and said, okay, here's what we're working with this athlete. I did this. She did that. What do you think about some interferential and maybe some, some PNF? And the guy's like, and the physiotherapist was the same way. He goes, well, this is your athlete. I go, no, this is our athlete. This athlete needs the best care, and I feel like you can do this care better than I can. And he's like, yeah, I'm happy to help. Happy to help. So the, the head of physical medicine saw that, and that's what he was referencing is we need to be working better as a team. a heart issue, I would want a cardiologist, I want the cardiac surgeon, I'd want an awesome nurse practitioner, then the cardiac physiotherapist all working as a team to make the best determination for, for me, and the nutritionist, etc. And so when somebody comes into you with a migraine or low back or a catch in their hip or their knee, be great if they had a team around them. So teaching this now in at Campbell At Pittsburgh. I love it. I think it's going to continue going in that direction. Thinking behind the scenes in regards to the fiscal side of academia, institutions are looking for ways to differentiate themselves. And if they already have a PT program, already have a medical program, it's not that complicated to add a chiro program. And if they can get another 20 more students, into their university on campus rather than having them go to another institution. They're capturing that small market, which is helpful. 20 doesn't seem like many, but it's a lot of credits. And there's a fair amount of tuition that comes in with that. So what I was— let me ask you a question. What institutions do we have in America that only teach chiro? Cleveland, maybe? I don't know.

Only teaches chiro?

Yeah.

TCC is one of those that only teaches chiro. Sherman only teaches chiro. I'm not sure about Cleveland, so I don't want to speak out of turn about those. There's a very small handful.

Yeah, I think there's— and that's just it. I think even the chiro institutions that started off just with chiro have really expanded out. John Scaringe at Southern California, man, he's crushing it. That— I'm so proud of what he's done. I've talked to him a number of times. I stay in touch with him. And that institution is growing by leaps and bounds as, as are many others.

Well, I think that model's the way of the future. As you've said, working together in a polyclinic, people always find it very alien when I'm working in an integrated setting with a national team or in just an integrated clinic wanting to pull someone else in. I'm, I am not above saying, hey, this one's just outta my wheelhouse, but I know you're really good with this. Would you want to take a look at this person? Because I feel like they're going to do better with you than they are with me. So I think that's a really great observation that we're all allowed to play in the same sandbox. It's okay. We're not there to be the person. We're there to be as a team, though we know we need to know what our lane is, right? We're there to work together as a team to benefit the athlete, not to benefit ourselves.

Right, exactly.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 91, where we wrap up the final installment of our master series with Dr. Tim Stark. We'll bring it all together by discussing the future of sports chiropractic. And our 2 powerhouse healthcare providers will provide some golden nuggets of advice for sports practitioners interested in serving athletes at the highest levels of sport and performance. You won't wanna miss it. Episode 91 drops in 2 weeks. If you enjoyed today's episode and our Master Series interview format, please be sure to rate the show on your favorite podcast player and visit our website at factorpodcast.com. That's faktrpodcast.com, and leave us a comment or record an audio message. If you have an idea for a future topic we should tackle or guest we should feature, we would love to hear from you. Be sure to check out our show notes to learn more about Factor and to access any special offers from our sponsors featured in today's episode. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R hyphen store dot com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is. is for you to help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.