Navigating Sports Chiropractic: Tales and Tips from Brant D. Hulsebus DC

Join us for an insightful episode of the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council podcast, featuring our special guest Brant D. Hulsebus. With extensive experience in sports chiropractic, Brant shares his professional journey, the significance of his various certifications, and his mentorship under Dan Murphy and Fred Barge. He discusses his efforts in promoting chiropractic education through high school shadowing programs and sets up a pathway to Palmer College of Chiropractic. Brant also delves into how to get involved in sports chiropractic, networking essentials, and the importance of maintaining a high standard of care. He recounts personal anecdotes and emphasizes the unique and valuable contributions of chiropractic care to the sports community. Whether you're a seasoned chiropractor or just beginning your journey, this episode is packed with valuable tips and inspirational stories.

Transcript

0:04

Hello. Today. I'm the host of the ICA sports and fitness science council podcast, and I'm interviewing the illustrious Brent hustle bus. And Brent has been involved in sports chiropractic for a very long time. He's very knowledgeable. And he has a lot of letters behind his name. And I was wondering if you could clarify and expand on LCP, CCWP, FICA, FPAC. I mean, it's, it's an alphabet you know, just extraordinary. Can you just give us a insight as to all your degrees and certificates? My chiropractic mentor is Dan Murphy. When I first met him, he told me his life. He just goes through phases and sort of does what he does in chiropractic and I found the safe to be true for me because I went to a Parker seminar and Dr. Chestnut spoke and he got me excited and I went out and bought all of his textbooks and signed up for his class and got my certified chiropractic wellness practitioner where we studied hunter gatherer tribes and tried to do the wellness of science. What's the science behind wellness chiropractic care? And then my father you know, I grew up with Fred Barge, you know, crashing in my bedroom, me having to sleep on the couch because Fred spent too much time the after the seminar with my dad and uncles. So he did the LCP, Legion of Chiropractic Philosophers at Palmer College. So we did a whole year course. We had to write a thesis and defend our philosophy thesis in front of a panel of professors. Then the the ICA made me a fellow for all the things like podcasting and little things I do. And I was actually on the CCWP council first. This is my second council I've been on the board with of the ICA. And then last summer, Palmer made me a fellow as well at Palmer College. I do a program where I have high school kids come in and shadow. Then I set up a curriculum to go from high school to the junior college in town, where they can go for free if you're a Rockford resident. And then from there, they can go right to Palmer. And so the students come here and shadow. At the end of the school year, I run a coach bus and I take all the students to Palmer for the day so they can walk around the chiropractic campus and visualize themselves in the seats and get to meet the admissions team. And we've been doing this, you know, 10 years minus the COVID years, and we've had eight students so far. Sign up to become chiropractors. And we're a little bit of a lag time, right? Cause you don't go right from high school to chiropractic school, Yeah, of been really, really exciting to watch that. wow. You've been, you've been around chiropractic and of course, contributing to chiropractic for a long time. What generation are you as far as your family's concerned? Sure. I tell everybody I'm a third generation chiropractor and I'm number seven of 10 in my family, counting spouses, which they count. So, Well, that that's amazing. And it's been so nice for me to get to know you. And I think you're just a storehouse of Information about chiropractic, but how does one go about getting involved in sports chiropractic? you know, I have kids come all the time and tell me they Want to go work for the Cubs or they want to go work for the Chicago Bears and you know the White Sox I actually know the chiropractor takes care of the Bulls the White Sox and the and the Blackhawks and the Bears and he's quite happy and he's got a whole team and he's not going anywhere and they're quite happy with him so you're gonna have to write it out until he's expired or they've moved on from him to get that job, but You know, I just walked into minor league teams. I'm in the town of Rockford, Illinois. I always tease it's the second biggest metropolitan area in Illinois no one's ever heard of. But we have, you know, the Toronto community is about 300, 000 people. So we have that minor league baseball. We have that college league baseball. We have the minor league hockey. And when a new team comes to town, I just walk in and introduce myself and say, Hey, I'm, you know, a chiropractor and I love working with athletes. You know, I Excited to come in, help your team, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I've made relationships with the orthopedic doctors in my town by going to different, various functions, so they know me and trust me too. So, it's just a matter of getting out there and doing a little networking and trying to sell yourself, which is, you know, as a side note, I'm really excited for what our council is doing with the certification. You're going to get a sports certification to be able to walk in with that paper and have that confidence when you walk in there to ask for that position. Yeah, yeah, and I, I, I think that's a great thing that you're doing and a great thing that, of course, our council is doing. and we can even start out with little league teams, like, say, if you're a mom or a dad, and you've got a child, that's on a little league team, you can just offer to take care of the little league team. And I think one of the big things is just making it look like you're a caring, loving individual. You're not necessarily out trying to get their insurance card so that you can make money off of them. You're doing it more of a service to your community. But, but can you talk a little bit about possible compensation? And it doesn't have to be monetarily, right? And it probably won't be. I learned that right away. So, unless you're working for one of the four big sports, there's probably very little financial compensation. The biggest thing I get out of it is credibility. When people are looking for a used car salesman, looking for an attorney or a chiropractor. They're always trying to find that one that's, they know the good ones out there, they know there's ones they don't, maybe don't want to see. And from the moment they find out that you're the team chiropractor for this team or that team, you automatically gain credibility in the public eye. The other thing I ask for a lot is marketing. I want my name on there. I want you know, on the hockey rink, I have a big dasher board. And since the official chiropractor of baseball, I have a sign on the outfield or on the on the walls. You know, in the outfield, so everyone knows it's me. I also, if they're going to announce the other doctors, I have to be included. So if they announce the orthopedic doctor and the family physician, they have to announce me as well. And if they have a website, this is really big. If they have a website, they're going to list me on the website. Now, the website's important to me, probably bigger than all the other stuff, because when you Google search chiropractor near me, And you're on their website, you're going to climb astronomically in SEL search powers. So you're really getting marketing more than anything else. Yeah, it's such a, it's such a great niche market for chiropractors, you know, just from little league, all the way up to you know, the minor league and even if you could get into the big leagues, but you know, I think it'd be easy for any chiropractor to get involved with the little league team if their grandson or their you know, their son, what have you, or even a patient comes in. I'm involved with the local wrestling teams local track teams and they all come in. I give them a super discount. Yeah. Because, you know, what, basically what I'm trying to do is give back to my community and serve my community and it's not all about money and, you know, income, it's all about helping people. I think the last time I checked as to why I want to be a chiropractor, but let's say that you're fortunate enough to get involved with a a team. What, how do you, what do you, is there any like preseason things that you like to go for to get a baseline? Is there some type of testing that you use that might be helpful for the other healthcare providers that are along with the team? Well, if you're in practice, you should already have a definition of your minimum standard of care. Any patient that walks in your door, this is what our clinic does, no matter who you are. And you have to apply that same minimum standard of care to the support team. So in our clinic, you're going to come in and unless there's a cancer treatment, you're pregnant. You're going to get films. We're going to take films on everybody. So we go ahead and tell the team ahead of time. Everyone's going to have to have full set of films before the season starts. We also write down our findings that day. And then in the locker room, we have an adjusting table in the locker room and we laminate all the listings and our notes on every single player by their number so that when we're in the locker room we're able to give the same quality of care that we would get had they come in the clinic. Now they might have blasted music that I've gotten too old to know the songs for anymore and you have to really scream, turn your head to the left so you can do a near field check. But but we, we, we don't deviate our standard of care. And originally that was hard for me to get everyone to sign on to this, but then I sat down with ownership because I've learned players and coaches come and go, but ownership stays. In Illinois, we have horrible malpractice laws for physicians, and I was able to demonstrate my pre season screenings, x rays, and exams. Showed that the athlete wasn't perfect before the season started. So then when they go to sue at the end of the year, I kind of ruined the lawsuits. There's a lot of ex players who don't care for me, but I don't think I'm ever going to see them again anyways, but I do have ownership and they, they understand. So you have to sometimes find a way to, not just because it's good for them as a patient to be able to help them, but it's also. It helps the team financially, and even with the AHL Icehogs, the farm team of the Blackhawks, when we x ray the whole team, we usually find three or four reasons we have to change the way we adjust someone than we normally would, whether it's a spondylolisthesis or something else, but something we have to be made aware of. And the players give me attitude about it too, but when I show them, man, I'm glad I found this. Have I not known this? We've even had one who had a congenitally C5 and C6 fused. And he says every time he gets his neck adjusted, it hurts so bad. Well, the chiropractor is going in there trying to get rid of that fixation, but nobody had ever x rayed him. yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so important to do a high standard of care, you know, the pre and the post testing, especially if you're going to be not in a locker room, but let's say you're on a sideline. Let's say you're at a a little league football game and you want to take care of someone who was injured, that you had an established protocol, that people knew what you were doing, had good optics to it. if you just take, say a little player and you, you know, do a double rotary movement on them, I mean, that's probably going to be upsetting. For the viewing audience, you know, so I, I, I really think that's really important to have good technique, good, just good pre and post testing and, and have everybody on board, you know, ownership, players you have a really interesting story that you can tell us from being involved in sports chiropractic, anything come to mind? I know it's a surprise question. But do you have anything that's unusual that comes to mind? We this is just kind of fun to kind of take a, it's not even a chiropractic story, it's just a situation. We had a player that was skating and he just collapsed. And he got up and he's grabbing his side and there was no contact and he came in the locker room and he was talking about how he had to maybe vomit or have a bowel. Those weren't his words, but for the podcast sake and I'm, we have an orthopedic doctor here that's travels the world teaching. He's phenomenal orthopedic surgeon. If I ever need orthopedic doctors, there's no doubt where I'm going. And we have a ER guy who I'm really good friends with. And they were trying to figure out what's going on. And at this time, the trainer didn't allow me in his room. So we, me and the massage therapist and the strength coach made our own area. We called that the sickness area. Ours is going to be the stay healthy area. We, I laminated a sign and brought it. And so they came over to our area and they're like, you have any ideas on what we should do? And I said, well, you guys are used to being in the ER and in the hospital when you have to solve every problem. I'm used to being in private practice. And when something comes in my office, I don't know what it is. I put him in the ambulance. You guys are so used to having to be the problem solvers and fix everything that you don't realize that we have six ambulances here. Go ahead and put it in and send them off. And it turns out he had a lacerated spleen. Something they never would have been able to take care of at all in the locker room. yeah. Yeah. I often find myself being the voice of reason. We had one player, the goalie, got crashed into, he got his neck wrenched around the goal pipe, and he said, I gotta get adjusted. I gotta get adjusted. I said, yeah, buddy, I'm here for you. And those same two doctors said, well, don't you think we should do an exam first? I'm like, well, yeah, of course we should. So I watched him do the range of motion, blood pressure, and all these different checks and tests. And then they walk him over to me. Now, I knew at this point, nothing was going to adjust, because 20 minutes had gone by and he was in total spasm. I was not going to be able to do anything but my drop piece. And the funny part was, they looked at me and said, aren't you worried about causing a vertebral hemorrhage after what just happened? And I looked at both of them and said, oh, you guys. You guys are phenomenal physicians. You guys did a dynamite exam. I wouldn't have done anything differently. And surely if his vertebra artery was hemorrhaged, you guys would have caught it. You guys are phenomenal doctors at your exam. And they got really mad at me because I was talking down to them like, well, they would have caught it if he was doing that. Because chiropractic adjustments according to the research don't cause that. They expose that. So, and as a side note, it was kind of funny because he has ankylosing spondylosis and his lower spine again, they can assign x rays of them and the surgery called me from the hospital. They took him to the hospital that night to get an MRI. of his neck and he goes, hey, just so you know, his C2 is completely fractured. I'm gonna get the x ray right now. Oh my. gonna be in big trouble for trying to adjust them. And I said, you know, he got dressed, took a shower and drove himself to the ER. It's pretty hard to do that with a completely fractured C2. I said, I think you've been working too many hours. And I was told one time in x ray class, if you look at x ray long enough, you can see Elvis. And that orthopedic doctor said, you're a real, now mind you, I'm only 27 years old and this guy's, 40 and he's like, you better get dressed and get down. You got a lot of answering to do smart. And I said, okay, we text me 15 minutes later. So the radiologist came by the King's doing good. I'm going to go home and get some sleep. So, You that's very funny. You had an interesting statement. You said chiropractic adjustments, cervical adjustments don't cause, but it exposes vertebral artery dissections. Do you want to elaborate on that real quick? Yeah. yeah, I'm, I'm a, I have a whole file on my phone or research papers. Even last night, the hockey game, there was a deal there. He said he doesn't touch cervical spine because he sees so many cases with a certain the chiropractor had dissected the cervical artery. And I said, well, If you read the research by Cassidy and the PubMed stuff, not the pamphlets that the American Heart Association feeds you, if you actually read the PubMed research, you'll find out that Cassidy has found out that the majority of those cases, that the artery was already hemorrhaged. And the reason why they saw chiropractic care is because when your vertebral artery is hemorrhaged, it creates agonizing neck pain. And so if I have agonizing neck pain, where do I go? They go with a chiropractor. And so it's the trained chiropractor that's able to, to tell this is not a subluxation based pain, this is something else. And the research actually shows the safest place to go if you ever have this is your chiropractor. There are two fun reasons. One, we know our patients. If a patient came to your office, you've been taking care of them for 15 years, and they had a vertebral artery hemorrhage, you would notice something is just not right today, and you would react to it. The second reason, though, it's you're safer at the chiropractic clinic is because if something like that happened to us, we'll be in a newspaper, our name will be drugged in the mud, and we're scared to even get close to stuff like that, even though we know what we know, so we're twice as likely to send you to the ER. However, typically, once you go to the ER, they will blame the chiropractor. If all the chiropractor did was look at you and call 911, somehow or another, we still get blamed. Yeah, it's a shame and of course we're all dealing with that and I think that was a very well put point about the, you know, it's, it's, it's just something that occurs and it occurs sometimes it's, it's just out of the control. They're going to end up at the chiropractor. we, we deal with that on a regular basis. But do you do you have any closing comments you'd like to add? Yeah, just, you know, sports chiropractic is fun. If you, if you, if you love sports, you're going to have fun with it. If you don't love sports, you're going to hate it. It's been very rewarding for me. I've got, like I said, credibility in my neighborhood. 21 years, I've been taking care of various baseball teams, indoor soccer teams, basketball teams, MMA fighters, high schools, and we also work with the junior college in our town. And, you know, I always, my dad raised me, you know, he said, if you get adjusted your whole life, you'll become a star athlete. And you have all these amazing powers. I don't, I don't know what happened cause I'm a third generation. You think by now it would have kicked in. I know my dad graduated the same year as Aaron Rogers. Dad apparently worked out pretty good for Aaron Rogers, but you know, I still have championship rings. I still drink out of the cup. But I don't have to get all beat up and injured to do it. I get to take care of those guys. So. It's been rewarding, and you know, I've had so many guys come through here for hockey that go on to win Stanley Cups, go on ahead to the Hall of Fame, and to be able to walk by those guys and have them say hi to you and recognize you, it's, that's, that's why you do it. You don't do it to become rich, you do it because you, for the love of it. You gotta love chiropractic, you gotta love sports, and you always have to remember you're the ambassador. A lot of these guys I see come from Russia where they don't have a lot of chiropractic, and you become the ambassador for our profession. That's so beautiful. And you know, in the locker room or in the sports environment, we really do have something unique and separate to offer, you know, the, the, the athlete. And it's so wonderful. I think we have a wonderful program at the ICA. And I think as time goes on, this is going to be really helpful for a lot of people to get involved with chiropractors get involved with their local sporting team. So thank you very much for being a guest today. I wish you all the best. Thank you.