Alan Palmer DC - ProBaseball & ProHockey Chiropractic Society

New podcast alert! 🏋️‍♂️ Tune in as Dr. Brant Hulsebus sits down with Dr. Alan Palmer to discuss the role of chiropractors in pro sports teams and the journey of the Pro Hockey Chiropractic Society. Don't miss this insightful conversation! 

https://probaseballchiros.com/
https://prohockeychiros.com/

Transcript

0:08

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another podcast here from the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council. I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, a board member, and I'm very excited today to introduce our guest. Now, I've known our guest for a little while because of hockey related, but Dr. Alan Palmer, why don't you go and tell us who you are and where you live and introduce yourself to us. All right. I'm Alan Palmer and I live in Scottsdale, Arizona, but I hail from the great state of Minnesota, the state of hockey, so that's my connection with hockey there. I grew up with hockey. It's always been my, Favorite sport, I think, as a spectator and participant when I was younger and things like that. And yeah, I've had the really great fortune, the blessing to have taken care of the Arizona formerly Phoenix Coyotes since their first year here in, in the Valley in 1996, up until a couple of years ago. And same thing with the Arizona Diamondbacks. And yeah, hockey and baseball have been a big part of my life, my practice life and all that as well. Sure, but you and I first heard of you and met of you because I just finished my 20th year with the AHL Rockford IceHogs. And somebody came to me and said, Hey, did you know there's a pro hockey chiropractic society? And that sounded pretty neat to me. So I got online, found you and joined. And you know a little bit about this group, correct? Yeah, it's something that I started a group called SIPA back in the mid nineties. I was working with the San Francisco Giants in spring training here in Scottsdale and the head athletic trainer, Mark Lattan, asked me to try to network the chiropractors in major league baseball because they had such a tough time finding a qualified chiropractor when the team would travel because a lot of teams didn't have them. Or the chiropractor wasn't available. So they had to actually go to the phone book oftentimes. And Mark shared some of the horror stories with me of some of the things that, a lot of chiropractors just don't know about how to work within the multidiscipline system. They come in and they really step on people's toes and shoot themselves in the foot. So we started this group where we did training seminars. We did educational seminars in different cities and we brought in who we thought were some of the best instructors in technique and various things, and tried to help to educate and qualify chiropractors for working in sports and eventually adding some chiropractors to the major league teams. And then I was super busy. I had four kids within six years that at that time were probably in their, you know, 16 year old range and they were all in sports. And so between my practice and working with the two teams and trying to run the SIPA thing, I finally just had to put it on the shelf. And then a few years ago it was probably about 12 years ago. I met Dr. Rick Bishop in pro sport. And we got to talking and he said, why don't we start that back up again and get it going? And I said he didn't have kids at the time. He wasn't working with any teams. And I said, you're going to have to take the helm and I'll help you with everything. And so we started the professional baseball chiropractic society. We did an annual workshop every year at a spring training facility. We'd alternate between Florida and Arizona and have our educational workshops there for the the chiropractors in major and minor league baseball. And then about six, seven years ago, I said why don't I take this template then and create the professional hockey chiropractic society. We basically just, I modeled it after that. And and then, so we've had that going ever since. With a little bit of an interruption from COVID, of course, from being able to do live events, but we got a workshop coming up the end of July in Chicago. And so I'm really excited about that. We've got some great speakers. Dr. Mitch Malley, who a lot of your. Docs have probably heard of. I consider him probably the best adjusting chiropractor in the world. And teacher. He's just phenomenal. He's like a 12 degree black belt extremity adjuster. He's amazing. And then we got Ray Barile who's the he's the St. Louis Blues head athletic trainer. He's been there many years and we've got some other great speakers too, and 12 hours of CEs. And so I've been working really hard on putting that workshop together. We're going to go tour the Chicago Blackhawks training facility and the Blackhawks are putting lunch on for us there and everything. It's going to be a neat weekend and a great experience for everybody involved, hopefully. Awesome, and you're right about that because it's even when I was in the back then now the defunct UHL Before it became part of the AHL. We I get that all the time. Hey, we're going to be in Kalamazoo, Michigan One of the guys needs to see a chiropractor Who do you recommend them and I'd get the phone book out and start looking too because I didn't know anybody in Kalamazoo but now it's exciting that Because I get to meet the other AHL chiropractors at the previous conferences. we give our trainer a list of all of our Gonstead listings on everybody. So when they go to another team, meet their chiropractor, they can give them those. But not only that, but now we've all met each other and we can call each other and talk to each other. that's a big part of it is the networking, is just networking everybody together. And it's so true. It's just having that connection and that network and. Really understanding the, our role as a chiropractor in the multidiscipline system that is, is so important. And in fact what's neat is on the baseball side with the the PBCS, we've been able to add over 30 chiropractors to minor league teams. So we've have an initiative there for the last few years where we help to, identify qualified chiropractors and interview them first and do all our due diligence, check their background, check their board record. And then for the most qualified of those we give them over to the the team head athletic trainer or the medical director, whoever it is with the team, the major league team. And then they, filter that down to their minor league coordinators, and they do the interviews, and we've been able to place a lot. And then actually, your associate, Dr. Nate Hays, is our guy with our minor league system at the hockey, and we've begun that as well with hockey, so hoping to, get all the teams utilizing chiropractors. So by the time players have worked their way up through the system, too, they're very familiar with chiropractic and request, and want to utilize the services of a chiropractor, so it's that was Kris Versteeg's complaint when he was down here with the Rockford Icehogs. He went to Chicago. At that time the Blackhawks didn't have a chiropractor. Oh, yeah. how do we have one in the minors but not in the majors and Right, right. a thing. And the Blackhawks, the I don't know the person they first hired but I know the interdisciplinary thing did not work out at all with them. So I think when you're talking about having an organization that can help not only the chiropractors find teams, but the teams find chiropractors is very important. Yeah, I think so too. I think so too because, it is a unique setting, in our own offices, we are the gatekeepers, right? We call the shots and we direct care and we dabble into other things, different types of modalities and, Treatments and nutrition and various things. But when we're in that setting, we have to realize we have to stick to our, our wheelhouse and until you, at least until you develop relationships with the medical staff and the trainers and everything to where they begin to trust you more and more, they know more about your skillset and then, you, they'll let you a lot of times expand that repertoire a little bit, but of course, when it comes to nutrition, of course, too, you have to, with all the anti doping things and. Everything having to be NSF certified for sport. You got to make sure, you can't make recommendations that are outside what are approved, or you could get in trouble and play your test, there was a positive test or something big trouble just for recommending something that isn't on their approved list. Right. Yes, I had a previous associate used to throw out the word subluxation, degeneration too much. And here you have a 20 year old kid being told he's got degeneration of the spine. They say, the agent's calling you. So even knowing the right wordage to use in front of players is an enormous skill. Yeah. No doubt about it. Yeah. So this is a, go ahead. No. Go ahead. This is an ICA podcast. And I go to Palmer College like this right in my backyard. And a lot of people hear that I'm a sports chiropractor and they think that means I gave up on that word subluxation because I'm in a sporting environment. And you could speak of this too. That word definitely still exists in the sporting world, correct? yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is fundamental to what we do. And, I've had conversations. Recently we've been trying to trying to fill the spot with the Montreal Canadians. They do not have a chiropractor. So we've been working behind the scenes to try to work through their medical director and so forth to see if we could introduce one of our chiropractors as a possible position there. And as it turns out he came back and said that they have a physical therapy, physical therapist that manipulates and that some of the key players on the team are really comfortable with this individual and so forth. And I've had some conversations even with, your associate Nate this morning, telling him the story that, cause it's all really just transpired and that, they just don't understand that what we do is so different, it's not just. moving bones or popping bones or manipulation. It's specific, it's a specific assessment, a specific line of drive, depth of thrust, corrective measure that is so different than what is often done in the training room when athletic trainers or PTs are trying to manipulate bones. and they don't understand the power of it. First of all, they don't understand that you're not just trying to get a kink out of their back. You're trying to enhance the performance of the nervous system and the function of the individual overall as a whole. And so the, that gets lost there and it's sad because players really have no appreciation for that and they're not being educated about it. So they have no idea. They think in their mind that they're maybe getting the same thing that they would be getting from a doctor of chiropractic and it's not true. It's just not the same. One of the things we do in our team is we take a pre full spine x ray of every player before the season starts. And then we get to sit down with them for five minutes and tell them the whole chiropractic message. We get five minutes and we try to maximize that five minutes. Your report of findings. You gotta squeeze it down to five minutes. And it's even more fun when you got two or three players in the room making fun of each other. It's just, yeah. That's hockey players. Yeah, I can bet. I can picture that. And I know this is true, maybe not so much because I'm going to talk to Dr. Stacey Conrad next with the football group. But I know this is true with baseball and hockey. A lot of times we're the ambassador for chiropractic because whatever country they're coming from, like the Russian hockey players, they don't have chiropractic where they're from. You want to talk a little bit about the role that we play not only as team chiropractors, but as ambassadors for the whole profession. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it is a unique role that we have. And and what's also unique about it is there's virtually really no chiropractors or none that I really know of that are full time with teams and travel with the team. And they're down there in the training room all day long. We all have our own practices and then we do this on the side. So it's a little unique of a kind of a setting there, which actually really says a lot about what our role and what we provide the teams that they will allow. One specialist, just one specialist, that will do that. Obviously, the medical doctors, the surgeons, and so forth, have their own practices, too. But with regard to the kind of manual work that we do, typically, everybody involved that gets to put their hands on the player and do manual type work is a full time employee of the team, except for us. We're like the hired guns that get to come in there and do that. But, yeah, it's true, when you work on athletes that are from different cultures and different countries and different things, you get to introduce them to to chiropractic care. And, it's funny cause over the years I've worked on a few of the Russian players, with the team and, they're just, they're a different breed, they'll get off the training table, they'll go off to the side or they go outside and have a cigarette and stuff, some of these players from back in the day, smoking cigarettes and drinking and all this stuff. And here are these high level athletes, but they just have these cultural norms for them that. They they still, they still experience and do and involve themselves with. Absolutely. yeah. Alright, I want to thank you for joining us and I'm going to put a link to both the Pro Baseball Chiropractic Society on this, I'm going to put a link to the Pro Hockey Chiropractic Society too, so people can go on and learn more about those two groups if they'd like. And I always let you have the final word, so the thing we didn't talk about you wanted to mention, go ahead, this is your chance. I appreciate you having me on first of all Doc, and, it's just, it's exciting to be able to just participate in this kind of a role. I've always felt that, every time I walked through the parking lot, the players lot, going into the clubhouse and everything, I always had to pinch myself because I'm like, why me? How can I get to be so lucky to be able to do this? So I always, I never took it for granted. I always just appreciate and have a deep sense of gratitude for that role. And I think, for your docs to their listening and wanting to work with teams, I started out at a lower level. I started out at a high school. I went to then to the junior college and I, you have to pay your dues. You have to do that and build your resume really. And that's really important. But the biggest thing I could probably leave as a takeaway is just, you got to check your ego at the door. You have to realize that you're really lucky to be there. If they're, putting their trust and confidence in you at whatever level you're at to be their team chiropractor. Just realize that you have a special role to play and that you're an ambassador for the profession too. It's not just all about you. And I think that's really important. And if you understand those standards and protocols of how to communicate properly, the chain of command, you're Make sure you clear everything with the head, athletic trainer, whoever the gatekeeper is for that team before you do it. And they know that they can trust that you will do that and not step on toes of other medical specialists that are working on the player and stay in your lane. You should do really well and that's good for you. But it's also great for our profession that we have, we can elevate our profession to a level to where we are accepted and more and more. Household name athletes benefit from chiropractic is and that trickles out into their talking points or when they speak to the media, they get adjusted, they had a problem, they feel better and that's better for our profession as a whole because they're out there praising, the, singing the praises of chiropractic and that's ultimately for me what it's all about and why I really took on that challenge from Mark. In the early days to really start this is I felt if we could get the Barry Bonds of the world and Joe Montana, he got adjusted in the pregame show by Nick Athens. We could get those kinds of stories out there, man. We could really elevate our profession to a whole nother level. I was thinking about Dr. Ted Carrick and Sidney Crosby on Sports Illustrated, Yes. Yeah. know. You never know. And I also love the fact you said it takes hard work and stuff like that because students come to me all the time and say, what's the one piece of research you presented with the team to have them hire you? Yeah, I tell them it takes two things, it takes, it takes three things, it takes a little bit of luck. It takes a little bit of putting their time in with other teams they use in high schools. I did all that too. And lastly, geographically, you can't live in the middle of Omaha and expect to be the chiropractor for the Dallas Cowboys. You have to live in Dallas. So But there's where expanding the minor league systems and the lower level professional teams, organizations and leagues and so forth, chiropractic into those areas give a lot more chiropractors those opportunities, whether you live in Omaha or some other small town that got a minor league team or minor league hockey team or something like that. It gives you more opportunities. Yeah, so so that's great. Perfect. I I was this, some of our minor league teams here in Rockford, Illinois, I was a selling point. Hey, you should come play for us and not Kellen Mazzucca's. We have a chiropractor. Oh, I want a chiropractor. So they picked us over them. That's great. Awesome. Perfect. keep. All right, All right. Thanks for joining us and thanks for tuning in. And for those of you listening, feel free to like and subscribe to this podcast. And like I said earlier, I'll put links in the description below. You can find it there. Otherwise, everybody stay healthy, stay strong and enjoy your world of health, science and fitness. Yeah. Take care, everybody. Thanks, doc. Appreciate you. Transcription by ESO. Translation by