Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

BSMPG wishes all of our friends and family the very best this Holiday Season.

I've never once heard after a lost basketball game an athlete use the word "I".

"I" is just too tough to swallow.

It's always the ref's blown call, the coach's bad substitution or a teammates ill advised shot, but never "I".

It's not because the actual word is difficult to say, it's just that it's much easier to look outward, look at other people's mistakes and other peoples shortcomings.

"U" is just a lot easier to say than "I".

Yes, maybe it was someone elses mistake, and yes maybe the ref should have given you that call, or maybe, just maybe, you're just making excuses.

"I" is tough to swallow. But continuing to lose by making the same mistakes tastes a whole lot worse - on the basketball court and in life.  Confronting the brutal facts, no matter what situation you may be in is always the first step to creating a better "U".

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

I asked a friend at work the other day to help me solve a problem that has been affecting our department.

"Sorry" he said, "that's above my pay grade."

If you continue to refuse to take on responsibilities that are above your pay grade, when do you ever get the chance to ever move into that pay grade?

Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now than you get paid, so you can eventually get paid more than you work?

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Some things are just worth the little bit of extra effort.

Yes, squeezing takes a little more planning, a little more time, and a little more work.  But like freshly squeezed OJ, your extra effort certainly tastes better than the frozen from concentrate your competitors are serving.

Yes, the juice is certainly worth the squeeze.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Talk about effort is worth the result….

I was driving to work the other day when the engine heat indicator alarm went off on my dash board.  Not being a car genius, but knowing enough to know I should see an expert that deals with engine problems I promptly pulled over and into the nearest auto garage.  I explained to the mechanic that the engine heat alarm went off and he asked me to pop the hood so he could take a look.

“Wow, this engine is burning up” he explained to me as he held his hand over the engine block.  “Thank goodness you pulled in here. You got here just in time – I can help you.”

He took out his tape measure, and extended it across and over the engine then quickly disappeared into his garage.

A few moments later he returned to my car carrying a huge piece of foam which he placed over the engine block.  He then carefully pushed the edges down so the foam fit snuggly over the entire engine.

Slamming the hood down over the foam he instructed me to start the car up again and give er a try.

I started the car and walked back out to join him at the front of the car.

“See, no more heat” pointing me to place my hand next to his as he held it over the hood.

Sure enough – I didn’t feel any heat. Wow, this guy was good.

I completed my drive to work (for some reason the engine heat indicator was still going off, but I’m sure it will be fine, I mean I saw an expert who took care of the heat) where I told a co-worker of my pit stop at the garage.  He quickly told me that I was an idiot and got ripped off by the mechanic as he never took care of the problem but instead, simply just covered it up.

“What do you mean?”  I asked somewhat angered.

“Hold on one second – let me take care of this athlete and we’ll talk,” he explained pointing to an athlete on a treatment table.

He turned to the athlete and as he began discussing the athlete’s course of treatment I suddenly felt as though I was back at the mechanics…..

“Ok Johnny, so you’ve been really running up the miles and now your knee is hurting, you can tell it’s not doing well by the swelling around your knee cap and how warm it is. Let’s get some ice and e-stim on that right away, thank goodness you came in to see me, any later you could have really been in some trouble. A couple of treatments of ice and e-stim and you’ll be good to go”
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I joke about this story with friends now because I was once the car mechanic. Not in a malicious cheating way – I just didn’t know how to solve the PROBLEM so I did my very best to help alleviate the symptoms – NSAIDS, ice, massage – kids felt better and I felt good about helping them. That is until they returned with the same problem again and again. 

Solving problems is tough.  It requires an investment of time and a little bit of extra effort.  The plus side however is that once you’ve solved the problem, you’ll end up actually having more time on your hands because you won’t have patients returning with engine failure time and time again.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

The wild turkey can rotate its neck 360 degrees.  This uncanny ability allows this creature to stay one step ahead of hunters looking for a Thanksgiving dinner.

We could learn a thing or two from the wild turkey and take a look behind us.

Sports Medicine staffs are always so busy just getting through each day that we rarely look back at what we’ve accomplished or how we got to where we are today.

At the end of this semester or school year, will you look around and ask your student-athletes / customers what you did poorly and what services you can improve on?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way – a successful rehab, a season with no games missed due to injury or even an exceptionally difficult administrative task done well, but your customer base along with all the constituents in other departments around your athletic department that you do business with everyday possess suggestions and insight that will allow your staff to transition from good to great.

Yes, just like the turkey who can rotate his neck 360 degrees to avoid an unexpected attack, so to should we look around… yes all the way around to all those that we touch each and every day.

You’ll never know you have a disgruntled customer looking to chop your head off unless you look.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

A physician friend of mine challenged me the other day about a recent post regarding omelet’s and rehab.  He thought it was a nice piece but mentioned that it may not apply to all aspects of medicine – “there are just too many variables that have to be considered” he said.

Like what? I asked him

“Take for example the common ACL reconstruction – allograft, autograft, hamstring, patellar tendon, etc.  Each graft is the central part of that surgery and thus an egg, yet each one is different” he explained.

Wrong

“Those are peppers and mushrooms,” I told him.

The key to each and every ACL surgery is the tunnel angle and placement, not the graft choice.

You may choose a bone-tendon-bone graft for example after a previously failed surgery or for those athletes that play a contact sport – but you certainly wouldn’t for someone that performed physical labor like installing carpet where they spent the majority of each day on their knees would you? Graft choice is the pepper in your omelet – mind you a very big piece of this omelet, but a pepper none the less.  Perfect tunnel placement and angle on the other hand, is a must in any successful ACL reconstruction – it’s the egg in the omelet. Get it wrong and you’ll be cleaning up that sticky yellow yolk for years to come.

There are a few things that must take place in every surgery, just like in any rehabilitation and performance programming that make it a successful operation; without that key ingredient your patient will always walk, or well limp, back through your door sometime down the road.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play and pitch in at the first Boston Promise 3-on-3 fundraiser tournament!  Congrats to the winning teams—the Bombers, the Laser Show, and the Never Wases.  Supporters like you make our program possible and we appreciate everyone’s involvement and enthusiasm.  A special thanks to the Charlestown Community Center, all our generous sponsors and the Warren Tavern. Check our Facebook page later this week for photos from the tournament.

Continue to help Boston Promise during this upcoming basketball season by clicking HERE.

BSMPG is proud to announce that Pete Viteritti will join Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, Tom Myers, and Clare Frank as featured speakers in Boston June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Peter Viteritti is a Diplomate of the American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians who maintains private practices in two multidisciplinary centers. As a sports chiropractic consultant to several collegiate athletic programs, he integrates patient centered, functional examinations and advanced manual procedures with traditional medical care. 

He has been privileged to serve on the sports medicine staff at various national and international sporting events.  In addition, he instructed on the post-graduate faculty of five chiropractic colleges throughout the country and has been a featured speaker at both national and international sports medicine symposiums.
www.chirosportsmed.net

BSMPG is announcing a limited time sale of our 2010 Basketball and Hockey Training DVD’s!

You can get all of the presentations delivered to your doorstep just in time for Christmas or give these DVD’s as a stocking stuffer to an aspiring coach looking to take their team training to the next level.  Watch a clip of Matt Nichol, former Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs present “Training Energy Systems for Hockey” by clicking HERE.

From November 23-December 1st, the 5-DVD Basketball set will be on sale for $99.00 and the 4-DVD Hockey set will be on sale for only $75.00!

Basketball - DVD includes presentations from strength coaches from University of Stanford, University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh and many more!

Hockey - DVD includes presentations from Anaheim Ducks Strength Coach, legendary USA Gold Medal strength coach Jack Blatherwick, corrective exercise specialist Bill Hartman and many more!
Don’t miss this one time sale!

** orders placed after December 10th cannot be guaranteed to arrive prior to Christmas.