#91 - Master’s Series: Sports Chiropractic with Dr. Tim Stark, Part 3

Hi there. It's time for another episode of The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. Welcome, and thanks for listening. Today, we wrap up our final installment of the 3-part master series with Dr. Tim Stark. Today's discussion centers around the future of sports chiropractic and its evolution in recent years, including the prevalence of sports chiropractors in both professional sports and on national Olympic teams. Dr. Stark and our very own Dr. Riddle will also chat about the critical importance of immersive hands-on learning and the extensive experience both have had with volunteering to serve athletes. There is such a huge need for healthcare providers to be actively involved at all levels of sports and athletics. And the docs will chat about that as well. Whether you're just starting out or have been in practice for decades, this discussion offers an incredible amount of valuable insight. Let's dive in.

So I think it's kind of foundational. We got to turn this back around a little bit and talk about how students and practitioners kind of get there. Obviously, you are Very, or have been in various facets, very deeply involved with chiropractic, sports chiropractic training with 2 different organizations, our American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians or Practitioners, and also FICS. I would love for you to give a brief kind of synopsis about how maybe they're different, because at the end of it, you're coming out with a certification or more as a sports chiropractor. But what's the difference between the 2?

Yeah. So the ACBSP, the American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians or Practitioners, they have the CCSP and the Diplomate. CCSP is a 1-year credential, roughly 1 year, and the Diplomate's roughly a 3-year credential. And it's primarily based upon 100 hours of training for the CCSP and roughly 300 hours of training for the Diplomate. I earned my Diplomate And so that worked out pretty well. The ICSC, the Internationally Certified Sports Chiropractor, which is through FIX, the International Sports Chiropractic Federation, is also fairly even with the CCSP, the 1-year credential or the 1-year certificate. Again, it's roughly about 100 hours. Both the CCSP, the 1-year, and the ICSC require some hands-on training. Both of them are doing online training as well. In today's day and age, that's fine. Back 25 years ago, we weren't doing anything online. It was all face-to-face. The doctors had to travel one weekend a month somewhere, which ended up becoming very expensive for some to attend a class that is now oftentimes being taught remotely online. But both of them still require a hands-on component. And clearly in the sports chiropractic world, it's pretty darn hard to teach taping online. It's very hard to teach soft tissue and joint manipulation online. I do have 2 ebooks about joint manipulation of the extremities, and that's probably the best effort that I've made to try to teach remotely extremity joint manipulation. So it's not that it can't be done, but I think to do it the best way is to have that practitioner, the instructor, the sensei, to be right there on the table correcting any problems Or any inadequacies that you are practicing. Practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect. And if you're practicing imperfectly, you're going to be perfectly imperfect.

Love it.

That's a great way to put it.

I'll tell you what though, I fully agree with you on that because I'm being a very hands-on practitioner myself and teaching things that require hands-on. I couldn't agree with you more. Although I will tell you, I was Very pleased to be able to finish out my ICSC online because of the advanced— they've taken your concussion module that you had rebuilt, which was fantastic, by the way. But yeah, I, I see the value in the online. I think there's a lot of the didactic stuff that you can get out of the way through some video learning. But yeah, I don't think there's anything that can replace that hands-on experience of learning what tissue feels like, learning how it moves and assessing it in that way.

Mm-hmm.

Just a couple more questions here. I know that we're getting kind of close on time. So what are you up to these days? What's going on?

Well, right now I'm in Bismarck. This is my hometown. I've been gone for 30-some years doing a bunch of stuff that we just discussed. Again, we had— I was at Northwestern. I was directing the Human Performance Center there, building future leaders. And I'm so proud of the fellows that we had there, but felt like I needed to leave the institution. There was an opportunity maybe again to buy my in-laws' lake home and then semi-retire there. And we actually moved in and then things went sideways again and we ended up not buying the lake home. So at that time, this was right around the mid part of the COVID era. I hate to say that, but it is what it is. We moved out of the cabin, moved back to North Dakota. We realized that my folks here in Bismarck, North Dakota just needed some help. Be nice to move back home for once and be impactful and contribute to some of their needs. So we did. We moved back here into Bismarck roughly around 2020, I think it was. Lived in a camper for 6 months. That was, that was a joy.

Especially up there. Yeah.

Yeah. We, the first day we moved into Bismarck, it snowed. So it was a cold morning. But then spring was subsequent to that. We lived in a very small town, a little farm town outside of Bismarck too, for a while in a 1-bedroom apartment. And then eventually was hired at Bismarck State College as an assistant dean here, and I was assistant dean of health sciences and cybersecurity and some other programs. And then after 10 months in that position, an opportunity at Bismarck State College opened up to direct their research department, and I applied and was invited to take that director position. So I've been in this director position for just over a year. It's an— the college is fantastic. The job is good. It's not filling my human performance cup. And I, and now that mom, my mom has passed in February and my dad actually now we've moved him out of town. And so the real reasons why we even moved to Bismarck are no longer here.

Sure.

And, and so I think we're going to be looking at what our next step is. We don't know what that is. A number of opportunities, I think with both of our kiddos, one in Detroit and one in Clearwater, Florida, with both of them so far away, I think it's time for us to consider maybe again, some early retirement and some sort of remote opportunity where we can just travel back and forth and see who we want to see when we want to see them.

That's such a great thing. I always like to try to end up a conversation with a couple of just little pearls for maybe professional or personal growth. My first one is, when you're in school, what's one piece of advice that you would give to— I want to say a chiropractic student, but I think physio students, chiro students, AT students find themselves in the same place when trying to make a decision. What's one piece of advice? when they're trying to make that decision about which direction to go?

Yeah, hopefully they have an endgame in mind. They know where they want to go. It's a matter of if you know where you want to go, then you can kind of retro-engineer that path and identify and almost visually see what steps and hurdles might be in the way and what keystones you need to step on in order to reach that destination. And you've done that. I've done that. Anybody with gray hair probably has, has learned a lot from that process. And so my learning experiences are, A, get involved. So if you're, if you're interested in sports and that's part of your endgame, you need to be involved in sports today, doing something, whether it's volunteering, whether it's a student organization, and then that's going to open up As well, opportunities to maybe meet people. And so building relationships along that involvement is really important. And I highly, highly encourage looking for multiple mentors that have accomplished that endgame that you have, that you want to reach. And what you might find out is maybe you're not fit for that endgame, or maybe there is a little bit of a twist to it and you want to go to a slightly different path. I know a number of colleagues who really want to do sports medicine, and then they meet somebody in the pediatric world and they pivot just a little bit and they really are all in on sports pediatrics. And so you don't know that until you start dipping your toe in the water in different pools. What I mean by that is different organizations, getting involved, meeting people, observing people. When I was in chiro school, man, I don't— I can't count the number of people that I observed.

Yeah.

If I had an open afternoon or if I knew a clinic was going to be open on a Saturday where I had some time, I asked, I called and said, can I shadow you? I shadowed so many chiros doing so many different things with their practices. I shadowed surgeons. I saw a splenectomy. I saw hernia surgery. I went and shadowed multiple physical therapists, just making sure that they knew I was a chiro student. And that was great. And they asked me questions. I asked them questions. I shadowed a podiatrist and saw a number of foot surgeries and You just don't know the direction you want to go. You kind of do, so you could plan for that, but eventually, you might meet somebody where you're going to pivot a little bit and you might actually be a lot happier about it.

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It always confused me the number of chiropractic students that enrolled in school never having been to a chiropractor before. So I want to talk about a trust fall there, but I think that's, that's great advice that You've gotta think about what the endgame is and then try to connect the dots before you get to that endgame to try to get a little bit of experience with it. Switching directions a little bit, I've always admired, 'cause you and I have had well over a decade of time together, meeting through Tom Hyde, as a matter of fact.

Right.

But I've always enjoyed our conversations, you being one of my mentors. So thank you for that. I've always admired the way that you have accepted challenges, the way that, and I hope this comes across the right way, kind of reinvented yourself professionally. Whenever we jump into the deep end and not really knowing how far down the bottom is, you gotta figure out a lot of things before you get down there. What are you doing? And I know you just kind of mentioned your, your current job. What are you doing right now professionally for yourself to fill your bucket up to Maybe reinvent a little bit? What's, what's on your plate?

Holy moly. Interview like this helped my bucket—

Excellent.

Remain full. I love this. This jazzes me up. I had a meeting yesterday with a small number of international colleagues with the International Sports Chiropractic Federation. We were talking about education and how we can collaborate more with institutions and have a win-win relationship. And that really appeals to me. And after hanging up, talked to my bride and said, man, every time I have some of these meetings and I know I'm gonna think the same thing after this interview, I just feel like I need to get back into human performance and sports medicine or sports chiro or something somehow. And then I— last year, I served as an advisor to the ACA Sports Council Executive Board. That was a great opportunity again to, to work with current leaders in the sports chiropractic world. And hopefully share some hard lessons that I had so that they didn't have to experience those hard lessons or maybe help discuss some tough positions that they were in and try to find some light out of the tough positions. And then this year, I was honored to be asked to serve with Blake, who is the American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians president. He asked me to be a presidential advisor.

Wow.

And so I'm sitting on the ACBSP board meetings with him. Just texted back and forth with him a little bit today about a conversation that we'll probably have later this week. But if I can help in that regard, continue trying to make an impact and a positive impact going forward, especially for our current leaders, our future leaders. Right now, that's what's filling my cup.

Good. You had me worried there when you were talking about retirement, hanging up your jersey and your cleats. We can't have that. Not, you're not ready yet.

All right. I appreciate that.

What kind of stuff do you do to fill up your, your personal bucket? You and I both have an affinity for motorcycles and you have a really unique hobby. What are you doing to fill up your personal bucket besides the professional side?

Yeah, well, thanks to my bride, she many, many years ago said, Tim, you need a hobby. And this was when I think it was either a dean, the dean of the chiro program at Northwestern, or I was just stepping into that director role at the Human Performance Center. And I guess I didn't realize I didn't have a hobby. And so I thought maybe, maybe I'll do some aquaponics. You probably don't know that about me, but I actually started doing aquaponics for a while, which is basically raising fish, pumping their poop and pee into a garden, and then having the garden grow like crazy from all these awesome nutrients and the plants filtering out the water, and then the fish get fresh water. And so I did that for a few years. And when I left Australia, I had befriended an Italian there. His name is Sam, and Sam was roasting coffee out of his garage. And I said, dude, I love coffee. And he said, no, you don't. You don't love coffee. And he said, if you're, if you're, if you're drinking the Australian instant coffee, you're not, you don't love coffee. And I said, well, I don't actually enjoy that, that instant coffee. Tell me what you're talking about. So he said, oh, come on over to my garage next time I roast. So. I bicycled over there. You lived close enough. And literally I was like 2 blocks away and I could smell this awesome— I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about it. I could smell this awesome aroma. And as I got closer, I just saw like this little waft of smoke going out of his garage. And I roll in and he was roasting coffee in a bread maker, a modified bread maker with 2 heat guns. And I go, Sam, what are you doing? He goes, I'm roasting coffee. That's why I wanted you to come over. So, and it was great. Man, if you don't have coffee until you've had fresh roasted coffee and from an origin that you, that you particularly like. So Sam had his Sam blends and I still like Sam number 9. By the way, Sam, if you happen to be listening to this, you can send me some number 9, please.

Yeah.

But for years when he moved back to America, I want, I made a huge investment in a proper grinder, a huge investment in a proper espresso machine, spent thousands of dollars on it and have been enjoying coffee. But I always wanted to roast. So as we thought we were going to be retiring the second time out at the cabin, I realized I think I'm going to invest in a small roaster and start doing this. But in the meantime, when we were still living in Minneapolis and I was the director of the Human Performance Center, I was roasting out of a popcorn popper. And I could only roast like an 8th of a pound at a time. It was just hardly anything, but that's all the popper could handle. And I had 2 of them going at once. And loved it. I really enjoyed that as a hobby. I now have a small little commercial roaster. I have a website now. A couple years ago, I started a website called starkroast.com, starkroast.com, and it's a roast to order. So I carry about eight different origins, meaning they're from different countries like Mexico or Colombia or Peru or Burundi. And and so I have the green beans. I source the green beans. I buy sixty-five pounds at a time from each of these different origins. Keep them in a food grade. dry container. And then when somebody's online and they're— they specifically order 2 bags of Burundi medium roast, I get that order, I roast it up and ship it out the next day or 2 when I can roast, and people have fresh roasted coffee.

And having had it myself, I can definitely put my seal of approval on it.

It basically pays for my habit, my, my, my drinking habit. There you are.

Keeps you out of trouble. But this is a personal question for myself. When's your next ride and what is your dream motorcycle?

Oh man, I think I have my dream motorcycle now. So when we moved back from Australia, so I had a Harley-Davidson, a Roadster. I took it to Australia, drove it every single day there. Perfect riding weather in Australia. Sold the Harley in Australia, made more money than I bought, paid for it. They're very expensive over there. Came back and found a 1998 Honda Valkyrie. Big, basically a Gold Wing stripped down to a cruiser and rode the bejesus out of that. And it was a complicated bike. It had 6 carburetors. It was a 6-cylinder, had 6 carburetors and a choke. And even though it was a beast, I wanted that newer fuel-injected bike. So I love the Valkyrie. I think it's a great bike that Honda makes. And I found a— I've been looking for about a year and a half for a 2014. Burgundy Honda Valkyrie and found one early this spring. And so made an investment, found it in Nebraska, had it shipped up, and now that's my bike. And my next ride is probably going to be to Denver from Bismarck for the ACA Sports Council Symposium the end of September, which I've done twice already on a bike. I rode there once from Fargo when I was practicing there, and then once from Minneapolis to Denver and back.

I'm sure that's a beautiful ride.

It'll be a, it'll be a good ride.

Excellent.

Yeah.

All right. So this is the 3-point contest. You're about to shoot the money ball here. One resource for— that just changes the game, and it can be from any era, doesn't matter. One resource that you would recommend to either chiropractic students or to someone in the rehab world.

Man, a resource. So just a learning A learning resource.

Something that they can go sink their teeth into.

You can't beat, you can't beat being thrown in the deep end for one, and for a learning experience. So an opportunity to shadow docs as a resource, I still think it's tough to beat that. But in regards to like an actual teaching resource, and I'm not saying this because you're sitting in front of me, but I do believe Factor is a game changer in regards to rehab and soft tissue interventions. As you know, my daughter— and so thankful that Factor opened up their teaching to massage therapists because my daughter, who is a very good massage therapist, a sports massage therapist, has been doing Factor for a long time.

Yeah.

Uses it a lot. And she's got a bit of a unique niche where she goes into fitness centers as requested by her clients. And if somebody's challenging in the squat rack, Because they have some sort of hip issue when they're getting into that 50% squat, she'll— she, like her daddy, will say, get in the squat rack, let's load you, and let's, let's see how this is working. And then while they're squatting, she's doing Factor interventions. So I think you and Tom Hyde and everybody else that was involved in Factor in the early days and even today, and I know it's really morphed into so many unique things now. For sure. I think some other certifications. I think NSCA, the CSCS, is a great credential to have. NASM, National Academy of Sports Medicine, has so many unique certifications as well too that can really foster better clinical care as a sports chiro.

Great place to end there. As always, I love our conversations. I learn so much every time you and I speak, and I Gotta tell you how much I appreciate you and your time. This has been great.

Likewise. This has been fun. Yeah. Anytime. Give me a shout.

Oh, we'll definitely follow back around.

Yeah.

We're gonna, once you peel the next layer of the onion back, we're gonna have to see what you've uncovered.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of interested too. I don't know what, I don't know what that next layer is gonna show, but I'm excited for it.

Thank you so much, Dr. Stark.

Thanks, Todd. Cheers, buddy.

Cheers.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 92, where we return to our educational classroom-style format with a fascinating look at the mindset shift that is required for healthcare providers to evolve from pain-based care to performance-based care. That discussion will be with Dr. Tom Teeter, the developer of our new Clinical Human Performance Practitioner program that launches this month. You won't wanna miss it. Episode 92 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 F-A-K-T-R podcast.com to leave us a comment or record an audio message. If you have an idea for a future topic we should tackle or a guest we should feature, we would love to hear from you. Also, check 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-store.com to find out more information about all that we have.

to offer.

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