Deep Dive Into Physical Therapy With Dr. Ray Waters

As the common saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure.” This rings true in the world of physical therapy. Joining George Wright III is Dr. Ray Waters, owner and founder of Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy, who talks about his one-on-one approach to address the specific needs of his patients, particularly overhead athletes. He discusses the crucial role of preventative care to reduce the likelihood of experiencing chronic pain. Dr. Ray also shares practical tips on how desk workers, who move way less than athletes, should still prioritize active mobility to avoid severe neck and back pain.

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Listen to the podcast here

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Deep Dive Into Physical Therapy With Dr. Ray Waters

We’re going to get down into some peak performance. I’m excited to have Dr. Ray Waters in the house. How are you doing, Ray?

I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here.

Can I call you Ray?

I would love for you to call me Ray.

You’re an expert at what you do. I’m going to give some background here. You guys are going to be pretty excited because we’re going to cover everything from professional athletes to athletic athletes. Let’s give a little intro here. Dr. Ray Waters is a world-class orthopedic physical therapist. He’s helping people move better and reduce pain.

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He specializes in treatment for both performance and rehab. He’s got some specialties we’re going to talk about. He has had experience treating Division I athletes, weekend warriors, desk workers, and even post-surgical patients in a lot of different things. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s very good at teaching and educating. He loves one-on-one.

Dr. Ray Waters Of Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy

‍He works a lot with overhead athletes, which we were talking about before the show, who are especially baseball players and people who throw, but it extends to a lot of different sports. You have an amazing background. I was amazed by how knowledgeable you are about everything. Maybe you could start by giving everybody a little bit of a background. What inspired you to get into and start your business, which is Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy? How did you get into that whole arena?

Thanks for such a glowing welcome. We’ll get right into it. I’ve been very fortunate to know what I want to do for a living. That being said, from a young age of adolescence, I’ve always been into health and wellness, performance training, and strength and conditioning. I’ve always been into science and healthcare. I let that guide me a little bit.

To give you the honest answer, physical therapy is powerful. It’s rewarding to be able to help someone and be able to be that beacon of a different alternative modality to get someone out of pain. To be vulnerable for a second with you, if I may, it hits close to home. My mother had several injuries. I was at that awkward age where she didn’t leave me to stay at home alone because we’d burn the house down.

She would take me to her PT appointments. I was like, “This is cool. This guy’s running out of a gym. He has bands and a trampoline. Does he play for a living? This is nuts.” I don’t think I realized how much schooling went into that. Long story short, my mother had some substance abuse issues that PT helped her with. To me, that was so powerful to see.

That was almost a hand reaching out to my mother to help her wean off some of those bad habits that take control of her life and not need that alternative modality of the over-prescription of opioids, narcotics, muscle relaxers, drugs, this, and that. You go to the doctor, and you get passed around. That, in a nutshell, narrowed it down to I may want to become a physical therapist. I never wanted to be able to prescribe medication. I love prescribing movement patterns, strength and conditioning, and stability work. That’s how I became a PT.

Those are vulnerable moments. You’ve got an injury, you’re post-surgery, or maybe you’re dealing with pain, and that pain affects everything in your life. This is why I wanted to have this conversation with you. You have a passion for it. A lot of people go into it because of the prestige, the money, or whatever else.

You’ve got a passion for it, and it came from a real-life story of struggling through some things with your mom. I could imagine any kid going into a physical therapy gym with the bands and everything and having some fun, but you saw some dramatic results. You didn’t just have a passion for it. You went deep down the rabbit hole. You have some amazing certifications. Help me to understand, so that our audience knows your background, these certifications that you have. It is so I understand what it is that you’ve gone down, learned, trained, and studied around.

Education-wise, undergrad, PT school, etc. Some of the certifications are a little extra stuff. The CSES is the strength and conditioning specialist. What that allows me to do is I’m not just a regular physical therapist. I’m a strength and conditioning coach as well. As a coach, per se, I do a lot of personal training and train my clients. I have the knowledge and bandwidth to not only treat from a rehab perspective with traditional rehab, as doing your 3 sets of 10 to 12 to 15 neuromuscular control and endurance, but we work on stability with the goal of being out of pain.

What performance training is, and the certification allows me to push the envelope forward, is that once it gets you out of pain at a higher level, we work on explosiveness. We work on strength development and power. That’s stuff that insurance doesn’t pay for. That’s stuff that is upper echelon in the sense that, in a traditional model, that’s not one-on-one as I practice here at Prevent & Restore.

I’ve had this happen before, which is sad. A patient goes from, “I’m in a lot of pain,” to, “I’m feeling a little better, but I’m not there yet.” Guess what? You’re not in enough pain to warrant more PT, so you’re dying. You’re cooked. You’re like, “I can’t return to tennis or baseball.” You’re out of enough pain for insurance to pay for. That’s why I got out of that big market, along with a lot of other reasons I can go into if we need to.

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That’s huge on the certifications. This is a core element. I tore my right bicep a while back. I’ve had some shoulder injuries and things. I know what it’s like. Having someone like yourself who comes from a background of having had injury experience and things like this helps. Having the certification, but then the application of it, like strength, conditioning, and things like that. It’s not just like a rehab. That’s good.

Why Business Owners Should Wear Three Hats

We have a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners here. When you started your business, was it a little more than you thought it was going to be? You had this passion that you wanted to run into, and you got to build a business. Was this more than you thought you signed up for? What are some of the challenges that you’ve had to overcome as you started to build your business?

That’s a question that keeps us all up at night at times. There have been nights when I’m working and I’m like, “What am I doing? I went from being a PT to doing this.” The biggest surprise for me was the amount of time and energy. It was the amount of energy you spend on doing things that don’t drive revenue immediately, per se.

Have you read the book E-Myth Revisited? It’s a very popular book.

Yeah.

It’s an awesome book. I love that to the core. If any of the readers here have not read it, please read that book. It offers a lot of great perspectives. You, as a business owner, and a lot of the other readers could appreciate this. You have to have the perspective to be three different people, in a sense.

You’re the technician. I’m a PT. I’m a clinician. I already know how to do that. To me, that’s the easy part, in a sense. Do you have the capacity to set aside time each week to be the manager, to look in the past, and to look at what has worked and what has not worked, more importantly? Were your forecasts and predictions correct? Were these trends working?

There’s the entrepreneur. There’s the future of looking in front of you at things you want to try and markets you want to tap into. There are doctors, in my case, and surgeons I want to connect with and talk to. There are baseball coaches I want to talk to. There are gyms I want to get in contact with. That’s the creative entrepreneur. They’re forward-thinking. You've got to be organized with the numbers and nitty-gritty business behind you. You've got to be the technician and do the job. If you’re not good at being a PT, no matter how good you are at crunching numbers, you have to deliver.

How One-On-One Approach Works In Physical Therapy

It’s the reason why a lot of businesses fail. They get into it for their passion. They don’t realize the heavy lifting, or they’re distracted by the heavy lifting, so they’re not successful. You want to be working with a business and a therapist who’s successful. One of the reasons why I wanted to interview you and get some content from you is that you’ve adopted this one-on-one approach.

I’m curious. Before we go into some specialization, which a lot of our readers can benefit from, I want to ask you why you chose to go down that route. Even if you have a passion for it and you start a business, a lot of people get into it and think, “What’s the quickest road to make some money and pay off my loan, my debts, and things like this?” You chose a one-on-one approach versus a business. When I say that, I’m saying your time would be better spent at high volume. Give me some of your thoughts on that and why you chose that, given your profession.

I could talk until Saturday afternoon about this answer. There’s so much to discuss, but I’ll keep it short. The main reason is patient care. Patient care is meant to be best served in a one-on-one capacity. To tell you a quick story, if I may, I’ll tell you about one of the worst days of my corporate career before I made the leap. It was a day when I was seeing three patients in an hour.

Patient care is best served in a one-on-one capacity.

One had a reverse total shoulder arthroplasty, which is when they put a new shoulder in. One had an anterior cervical disc fusion, where they fuse your vertebrae together from top to bottom. Another patient was a workers’ comp patient. The poor fellow broke his ankle. They didn’t send a translator. I don’t speak Spanish. Each one of these patients deserves one-on-one care. You send me two post-op patients, and I could spend a whole hour on each of those, working on their neck or working on this gentleman’s shoulder to get his range of motion back. I’m like, “Dolor aquí?” I don’t even know how to talk. I can’t communicate. That was so frustrating. I will never forget it.

If you remember that book, one of my favorite parts that spoke out to me is the entrepreneurial seizure where you short-circuit. That was my seizure, in a sense. I could never go back to how I was prior to that. I went to management, and I was like, “I’m not proud of what I did.” I wasn’t set up for success. I couldn’t deliver to my patients. I know I can deliver, but I wasn’t set up for it. I physically couldn’t.” That ate me up.

What made you decide to make the move? I’m curious about that, and then I want to make a couple of comments about what you said. What made you decide to make the move? Was it that experience, or had you been pre-thinking about that for a while?

I had been thinking about it for a while. I never saw myself in PT school as owning my own practice. I never saw myself as a businessman. I just wanted to treat patients. I enjoy this so much. I cannot express to you how awesome and rewarding a job it is. What made me change, to be honest, was never doing good enough, and the company always wanted more out of you. I’ll tell you another quick little story. At this said corporate job, on my 3-year anniversary, my manager at the time threw 3 bags of gas station almonds at me. One for each year, I guess. If I stick around for five years, maybe they’d get me shoes. I’m like, “I got it.”

Here’s your passion. You’re not getting rewarded. You’re not doing the job you feel like you should be doing and that the clients need.

It was like, “We’re not even going to talk about a raise here. You’re throwing food at me. I come to work every day. I’ve never missed a day of work in three years, and you’re going to throw food at me.”

You’re describing a lot of people, even when they own their business sometimes, who are on this treadmill, and they’re not willing to do it. I feel like it’s so appropriate to point this out to our audience. A lot of people recognize that they’re not being fulfilled. They recognize they’re not doing their best job. They’re not unleashing their real potential, but they don’t make the decision to do it. That’s way outside your comfort zone, and the best life you have is always outside your comfort zone. Your best ability to be the best you could be for clients is not going to be something you thought about and were comfortable with, but you did it anyway.

At the end of the day, the biggest mover was when I’m sitting in the car, dreading going to work. The real shame of this is that when I was fifteen years old with my mom, I decided I wanted to become a PT, and then I became a PT. I did all this training. There’s a carrot in front of my face, and I’m chasing it. I get to the top of the mountain, or the proverbial top. I made it, I got my degree, and I’m ready to roll, but I’m like, “It sucks.”

It’s not what you envisioned.

Our readers here can probably appreciate and relate to this. I truly felt that the fear of resenting what you do for a living was around the corner. I knew that if I didn’t make a change, I would end up not liking or, God forbid, despising something I thought I wanted to do with my life. I was afforded an opportunity for some mentorship and work in private practice. I got away from that corporate world. I started learning the ways and how to do this private practice world, and I was like, “I can do this. I am worth this. I can make people better more quickly and get results, and I can make money doing it.”

If you feel resentment towards what you do for a living, do not waste your time and make a change.

I love it. This is a great lesson. Success leaves clues. You didn’t have to know what you were going to do, but you knew you had to do something. You described what a lot of people, even those who own their own businesses, are dealing with, and that is that they know that they’re not doing what they need to do. They’re not going in the direction they need to go. It’s going to start to stack up, and they’re going to start to build in. That’s why it’s the cause of a lot of depression, anxiety, stress, and other things.

Treating Professional Athletes And High-Performance Individuals

I want to pivot because I know we don’t have a ton of time, and I have a bunch of stuff I want to ask you. I want to pivot into something else along the lines of what I asked a minute ago. Alex Hormozi talks a lot about scaling the unscalable. Most businesses start, and they think, “I've got to do it this way. There’s no way I could continue to work one-on-one.” The ultimate goal of supplying the best service for a client required that, so you decided to stay hyper-focused on doing these personalized one-on-one deals, even though it may not be scalable.

What happens is in time, people start to recognize your authority and your expertise. You get paid more, and then you can go to that point. You did stay focused on that, and you went one level deeper into some specialization with athletes. I mentioned it in the intro. You talked about overhead athletes. Could you drill down a little bit into that, why you chose that, and what it is that you feel so passionate about when it comes to athletes and high performance?

Why I feel passionate about that stems from my teenage years. I couldn’t put a ball down. I was always dribbling a basketball, playing baseball, swinging a tennis racket, or going golfing. I love sports. I’m a huge sports buff. That being said, when I got into treating patients, I found that I enjoyed treating that athletic population because they’re motivated. They take what you say seriously. They have skin in the game. They’re hyper-focused on getting back to where they want to be. That resonates through them. That resonates through me.

It’s so much fun to treat baseball, in particular. That was my first passion. My first love was the Atlanta Braves. Being in East Cobb, Marietta, a lot of people may or may not realize this, but it’s the biggest hotbed in the country for Little League Baseball. I see an opportunity in that market. I love rehabbing shoulders. That’s one of my favorite things to rehab. Treating rotational athletes and overweight athletes is very different than treating a regular person for neck or low back pain.

I was surprised to hear that there’s such a prevalence of shoulder injury in athletes, especially baseball players. Why do you think that is? With your background, help me understand why there is so much of an issue with that.

If I didn’t go with one answer, it would be that the shoulder is not designed to load and throw overhead. It’s designed to be down here and below. We have the most degrees of freedom to move, but we’re talking about loading and throwing something overhead. I was talking to a doctor at WellStar. One of my good friends, Dr. Will Byrd, is the physical therapist for the Colorado Rockies. He’s an awesome guy. I had the same conversation with him as I had with Dr. Steenlage at WellStar. We were talking shop about shoulders.

The big thing is the overhead component. Softball pitchers don’t get hurt nearly that much. These softball players I see, or your third base, or your catchers who are throwing overhead, throwing and loading your arm down here is much safer, or only throwing overhead with the capacity. These kids don’t get any rest and are asked to train and play ball year-round.

God forbid, you’re undersized, and then you don’t have a joint capsule developed. You’re throwing as hard as you can and getting by on your weak rotator cuff. You’re fourteen, and you don’t have the endurance to load your shoulder and sustain that. You have a 60 or 70 pitch count. God forbid, the best pitcher on the team, when he is not pitching, is a catcher because he has a cannon. They’re overworked. A lot of times, they don’t have the mechanics, the control of their shoulder blades, and the endurance.

You have a specialty in this. It’s like anything else. If you’re out there in the marketplace, there are generalists, and then there are specialists. You’ve talked a lot about the idea that there are preventative, therapeutic, and then peak performance and strength and conditioning aspects to all that. Do you deal with all of that? Is that something that you take a comprehensive approach to things? What is the majority of your time spent on?

I take a comprehensive approach. That’s why I coined the name Prevent & Restore, meaning pre-injury, prevent, restore, and post-injury, if you will.

You’re helping athletes prevent injury.

100%. I write a ton of strength and conditioning programs. I help write the programs for a high school rowing club near me here in Atlanta. I write programs for all my baseball players and pitchers. I’ve written my own performance program for a return-to-throwing program when I have to shut a kid down for not throwing for a UCL or a shoulder injury.

Where do I spend most of my time? In a perfect world, I balance that out, but I probably spend most of my time in the rehab and the restorative part of it. I do offer a lot of functional movement screenings. I do workshops at local gyms, yoga studios, clubs, etc. I try to get out in the corporate world and do workshops about preventative techniques for my desk workers and the people who sit at a computer all day. There has been a significant rise in neck pain since COVID, not because of COVID, but because we’re sitting on our chairs all the time.

Treating Less Active Desk Workers

I want to get into that, but before I ask you that question, our whole economy and our whole globe are always about treatments rather than preventative, which is almost an investment in your time, your talent, and your assets. It’s far less expensive to prevent than to treat. It creates more longevity in that. I love that you say you do that.

You hit that topic of being at the desk. We can circle back to athletes as well because I know that’s an amazing specialty you have. A lot of our readers are professionals. Most professionals, like athletes, who don’t think ahead of time, don’t think about all the stress they’re causing in their body and their backs. They’re sitting all the time. I’ll go twelve-hour days sometimes. What do you have to say in that whole arena of desk workers? I know you’re pretty passionate about that as well.

I am super passionate about that. I want to backtrack and extrapolate one thing about what you said about preventative techniques. It’s super underserved. Honestly, a lot of times, insurance doesn’t pay for preventative care. It’s that simple. We don’t make money unless we’re treating you. When we’re treating you for an injury and providing patient care, it can be a patient lost. That’s why I work in this private practice. It’s not insurance-based. It’s all one-on-one and private. I can see the whole person before injury and post-injury. That’s super important.

You hit a point that I want to make sure people don’t go past. That is that a lot of times, our focus goes where things are covered, but we don’t look at the long-term consequences of that. In other words, investing in your health, your wealth, your lifestyle, your focus, preventative, daily rituals, and things like that. You don’t think about it because we’re so focused on the present and the past. We’re not focused on the future. If you think about the future, you would certainly invest in preventive measures for your health.

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It’s getting up and moving every few minutes. Maybe get on a foam roll or do some soft tissue work. Exercise and move.

Go forward with the desk workers. Tell me about your thoughts there.

It is interesting how I got wrapped up in having a passionate interest in that. During COVID, specifically, and much after COVID, when we went and got locked down, and most people didn’t have great ergonomic setups at work, they were forced to work from home. I’ve heard horror stories of people working on a bar stool at the kitchen counter, or they’re sitting on their sofa like a shrimp, leaning over their laptop all day. Do that for eight hours a day and see how your neck and back feel.

I can’t make this up. The amount of neck pain I saw pre-COVID to after COVID is significant. It’s not because of a virus. It’s because of the mechanics of sitting down. If you were to look at a skeleton, you cannot tell me that that thing’s not designed to move. We sit on our bums for eight, ten, or twelve hours a day on a computer. We wait until something’s bothering us to get seen and go to the doctor. That’s how I got into working with a lot of desk workers. I do corporate workshops and show them preventative strategies that they can do at their desk, like take little micro breaks and work on mobility and whatnot.

Let’s talk about that for a second because a lot of people are like, “I’m on a computer all day. It’s my job. It’s what I got to do.” We’ll talk in a minute about whether they’re starting to sense some pain, but whether they are or aren’t, their body are being affected. What are some strategies and things that professionals can do to make sure they’re maintaining their health when they’re sitting at a computer, they’re on a phone every day, or whatever it is? What are some things they can do?

I’m going to try to take a broad stroke and not get too granular with it. There are three components of it when we think about it. There’s the thoracic spine, which is the middle of the back. How well that moves is there’s the deep neck flexor of how well the neck can hold your head up. There’s the shoulder blade and shoulder girdle strength. Those big three buckets, if you will.

If you have mobility, endurance, and strength from those three buckets, your neck and back are healthy. What happens is that gravity pushes us downward when sitting. If you round your back, that changes the gravity of the position of the head. For every inch that the head is positioned forward in front of your shoulders, that’s about 10 to 12 pounds of pressure on your disc and in your neck.

The head is positioned forward in front of your shoulders. That is about 10 to 20 pounds of pressure on your disk and neck.

If you’re sitting with a rounded shoulder posture and the head hangs forward, and the jaw comes down, we’re loading the neck muscles, upper trap, splenius, and all these muscles in the back of our neck. These muscles are being stretched and yanked out, not to mention the pressure we’re putting on our discs and our joints.

A simple posture. Think about it. You’re thinking, “I’m stressed. I got a lot of work,” but you’re physically loading your body.

It’s crazy. People don’t realize that. I do this all the time in clinics. Every single patient I eval for neck pain, I ask what they do for a living. A lot of them work on a computer. Given they don’t have any shoulder issues, I have them hold a five-pound dumbbell right next to their side, and then I have them hold it out here. I say, “Do you feel the difference? It feels heavier, right?”

It’s still five pounds. That’s just physics. That’s called a moment arm or a lever arm.” The farther away something is in front of you, the heavier it is. That 5 pounds is 24 or 28 pounds out here. That head, if you have a good posture, positioned on top of your shoulders is virtually weightless. Your head out here is 60 pounds. Imagine doing an eight-hour bicep curl or holding a bicep curl.

It could be lightweight.

That’s not that heavy. You could do 100 reps of that and hold it for 8 hours.

Your suggestions would be to get up, move around, take micro breaks, and things like that.

My suggestions would be, first and foremost, to start by going to see a professional. Have them put their hands on you and see how things are moving, so they can give you their expert advice. I’m a huge advocate of foam rollers. You can do so much over the foam roller, like working the thoracic extension. Don’t just roll the back, but you’re pivoting it and getting mobility in the thoracic spine, and then you can roll your lats, etc., out. Working on the deep neck flexors of the neck is a little bit more granular than we can probably get into over this episode, but your neck endurance is important, too.

I don’t think much about that. That’s a good point. I’ll consistently go to the gym, and I’ll use a foam roller. The first thing I do is round my back, roll out my lats and back, and then roll my glutes and hip flexors. I sit a lot, and it makes a huge difference. I still have that because I’m sitting a lot. I don’t think about my neck and spine.

Not until it’s too late. If you think about it, it’s funny because what is your neck? It’s no different. It's muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, and nerves. If you can train a shoulder, the lower back, or an ankle, why can’t you train your neck? No one trains their neck because no one knows how to do it and take care of themselves with preventative strategies. What do you do? You wait until it’s bothering you, and then you don’t do anything. You wait for six weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks, or two months, and you’re like, “I have a bad headache and maybe some tingling in my arm. I should go to the doctor now.”

Looking After Your Thoracic Spine Mobility

I don’t know if it’s our culture, but they chalk it up to stress. They don’t realize it because they just think, “I have a lot of stress. That’s why my neck is tight, my back is sore, and I have headaches.” There are a lot of physical reasons that can be happening. Let’s assume somebody’s reading and they have headaches and back pain. They know they’re sitting a lot, and they’re struggling with some pain. Maybe it is somebody struggling with an injury. What’s the first step they should take towards getting back to doing what they love?

It’s tough to answer that question and not give a negligent answer without evaluating a patient. In the 10,000-foot view, it is going to be work on mobility and work on your thoracic spine range and motion. I can’t tell you how important the thoracic spine is. Not to get too doctor speak with it, but it is in the middle of the back.

Your neck, the middle of the back, and the lower back. The middle of the back is the only part of the spine that’s connected to the ribs. Think about it. Your neck moves a lot. Your lower back moves a lot. You don’t ever move in the middle of your back. Whether you’re a rotational unilateral athlete or an overhead athlete runner, one of the biggest things that I treat, which I address with every single patient I see, I’m not kidding, is thoracic spine mobility. Can you move through the middle of your back? If you cannot, it’s simple physics.

Whether you are an athlete or a desk worker, do not forget about your thoracic spine mobility.

A lot of us are entrepreneurs and business owners. We all understand money. I use this analogy all the time with my patients. Think about forces in the body like money. If you go out and buy lunch with your wife or your friends, or if you go buy groceries, which here in Georgia, we have Kroger or Publix, you spend that $100, and it still exists. It goes from your account to their account. It still exists. Money moves. It goes from over here to over here. It still exists.

It’s the same thing with the body and the stress we put on it. If one part of your body can’t accept and attenuate the forces you’re putting on it, then that’s going somewhere else. The other part of the body doesn’t have the resume to accept that demand that you’re putting on it. That’s why mobility is the easiest thing we can all work on and train safely. I wouldn’t give advice for people to go start strengthening their neck without having a professional show them how to do that, because it’s a little bit more dangerous. You’re not going to hurt yourself. Go foam roll, please.

One of the reasons why I mentioned to you that I wanted to have you on the show is that we talk a lot about, and most people are focused on, mindset. There used to be no mindset. Mind, money, and business, we got that. The body is your vehicle for all of that. Your body will affect your mindset. It will affect your performance.

If you don’t have health, you don’t have wealth.

Correct. The whole purpose, which I think mission accomplished on this, is that awareness is the first thing. If you’re not thinking about the fact of what your posture is and what you’re doing, awareness is the key. Prevention is also the next step that most people don’t take. I love that you commented on that. Then, you have rehab, but I also think that peak strength training and elite-level stuff.

Get In Touch With Dr. Ray

I know you have so much. We talked before about details, courses, and products that you’re doing for both the professional athlete, the professional CEO, and the high-level executive. What’s the best way for people to be able to get in touch with you and connect with you? What’s the easiest way for them to do that?

The easiest way to do that is through my website. I have landing pages right there. You can visit my website at www.PreventandRestorePT.com. You’ll see a landing page. You click, fill it out, and type your name, email address, and phone number. I will get an update and call you within 24 hours or less, usually. That’s probably the best way. I do run a lot of ads on Google and Facebook. If you see one, smash the like button and share it.

I don’t care where you’re at. Even if you’re not in Georgia, you've got to connect with Dr. Ray Waters. He’s got a specialization in a lot of important athletic areas. There are pieces of information that you can apply to every area of your life and business. I wish we had more time. We might have to have you back on a couple of specialty topics because you and I have talked about some other things as well.

Seek Help Before Everything Is Too Late

We touched on the idea of business. I like to combine those things, so we’ll have to talk a little bit about that. Before we take off, are there any thoughts, tips, strategies, or recommendations you have for individuals, whether it’s someone struggling with an injury or people who are dealing with pain? Any final thoughts that you might have?

Go get help. Your body is trying to tell you something. By the time you feel your hamstring cramping because you’ve been sitting all day, it’s honestly a little too late because that’s the ischemic effect of the tissue, not getting oxygen from us sitting down all day. By the time you feel that, you’re already sitting too long. I evaluated a patient who had this episodic tight calf pain for six weeks, and then she strained her calf. That was her body telling her, “Something’s not right. Something’s not balanced. Something’s not moving. Right? Is it the knee? Is it the ankles? Is it the hip?”

Go see your local PT and have them check you out, because a professional breaking down how you move is unlike anything else. You don’t know how you move. I don’t know how I move. I still go see a PT quarterly, at least. Sometimes, I go see a chiropractor. I go see people to help me analyze how I’m moving. I’m a movement expert. I help people move better for a living. At the end of the day, you don’t know how you move. You think you know how you move, but you don’t know how you move. Go get seen. Go get some expert opinion and professional guidance on that.

I love that you said that because so many times, as entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, and high-performance individuals, we are willing to invest in our wealth and in our business. Investing in your health is important. We also talk about coaches, mentors, and trainers in our business. That’s because they can see things you can’t see. The same goes for your physique, your fitness, your mindset, and your business. I appreciate it. I’m so glad I had you here.

If this is your first time tuning in, I want you to do me a favor. Not only subscribe to the show, but share this episode. The awareness of what we are doing as professionals, executives, and high performers is going to help people. I want you to share this episode. Remember, and I say this at the end of all of our episodes, it’s never too late. No matter where you’re at, whether you're in pain or no pain, or whether you’re in your business and you’re growing or you’re not, it’s never too late to start creating the life that you’re meant to live. You’ve got to take action. You've got to do something about it. Thanks for being with us. I was with Dr. Ray Waters. We will talk to you again soon.

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Important Links

• ‍Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy
• ‍Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy on Instagram
• ‍Prevent & Restore Physical Therapy on Facebook
• The E-Myth Revisited

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About Dr. Ray Waters

Dr. Ray Waters is highly credentialed, holding certifications in Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), Functional Movement Screening (FMS), and Certified Ergonomic Assessment Specialist (CEAS). His CSCS certification uniquely equips him to design Advanced strength and performance programs, allowing patients to progress beyond traditional physical therapy and achieve their highest potential.

He has also trained in advanced manual techniques, including the Stecco Fascial Manipulation method, and is certified in dry needling to further optimize recovery and reduce pain. With extensive experience treating Division I athletes, weekend warriors, desk workers, and post-surgical patients, Dr. Ray has developed a particular expertise in working with overhead athletes, especially baseball players and throwers.

He is dedicated to providing one-on-one, personalized treatment plans that restore movement, improve performance, and keep athletes competing at their best.