Revolutionizing Chiropractic Rehab with Movement-Based Resistance Training | Featuring Shon Harker & Dr. Kevin Jackson

What if you could reinforce every adjustment you deliver—and actually make it stick?

In this episode of the ICA Sports & Fitness Science Podcast (part of the ICA ChiroCast series), Dr. Brant Hulsebus sits down with Dr. Kevin Jackson and Shon Harker, founder of Stroops, to explore a game-changing approach to chiropractic rehab and performance.

This isn’t theory—it’s real-world application.

We break down how movement-based resistance systems can:

• Reinforce cervical and lumbar curve correction
• Retrain posture neurologically and biomechanically
• Improve patient compliance with simple, scalable tools
• Bridge the gap between in-office care and at-home execution

You’ll hear how chiropractors can go beyond adjustments and start integrating functional rehab systems that produce immediate, noticeable changes in posture, movement, and stability.

If you’ve ever said:
“I can adjust it—but I can’t make it hold…”
This episode is for you.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why traditional rehab tools fall short
• The concept of “train like you play” in chiropractic care
• Neurological reprogramming through walking-based resistance
• In-office vs. at-home rehab integration
• How chiropractors can co-develop and implement new tools

Resources & Links:
Visit the ICA Sports & Fitness Science Council page to learn more and explore upcoming collaborations.

Transcript

0:07

Hello, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus from Rockford, Illinois, and welcome to the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Podcast, part of the ICA Chiro CAST Series. And as you can see today, I'm joined by a couple guests. First, I'll introduce a familiar face to those of you, Dr. Kevin Jackson, who's also on our ICA sports and fitness council And then our Friend Shon Harker from Stroop. I've tried hard to make sure I say that right with my Midwest twang. So welcome. Shon you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself and who's who? stroops is. Yeah. I'm Shon Harker went to college out my undergrad college, was at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Got my master's degree. Then went on to get a master, sorry, my master's degree from University of Washington. My. Bachelor's was from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, so kind of back in the east side. I've got an engineer degree, got played football for Lehigh combined the two together kind of randomly for developing a new product. During my master's degree program, I was like, I'm lifting weights and my fingers are giving out and I got all these big muscles that haven't gotta workout. I was like, there's gotta be a way to bypass your grip. So I, my wife bought me a home sewing machine from a garage cell. And I went down to the store and bought some webbing fabric, and my mother had taught me how to sew when I was a little kid. And so I started sewing up these little configurations to make a strap. later that became it designed to loop around a bunch of different things. the strap and loop combined together became the name of the first product. So strap and loop became STRs. Later as I developed more and more products. People would come by a trade show booth and like, oh my gosh, so much creativity. Love the innovation. And there was one client that looked up at their, at the brand, Stroop says, oh my gosh, super creative sports spelled backwards with an extra O. That's genius. we're going, we knew that the whole time. That's the brand. So we changed from the product STRs and now it's the STRs became the brand. The master company's called Harken Technologies because we actually design and manufacture our own brand, which is STRs, but we also design and manufacture fitness and rehab products and chiropractic products and other products, industrial products for all kinds of different companies. So we make 'em all here in the United States, behind these walls over there. is just the showroom. So we've dev designed, I've designed hundreds if not thousands of products, they do anything from rehab to the water sports world, to the aerospace world, all kinds of stuff. So that's the quick background of Jackson, you wanna jump in here and tell us a little bit why you wanted to make sure you're on this podcast? Well, I'll tell you what, I I. to visit the manufacturing facility and I was just tickled pink because it has so much potential for us as chiropractors. There's especially sports chiropractors. There's all kinds of equipment that they have, and Shon has laid out some really specific equipment that would be good for cervical curve restoration, lumbar curve restoration. He's got, treadmills that you can also do neurological training on. It just, it's just amazing. It's just, I, I, I can't, it's like a hidden gem for chiropractic and I didn't know it was available. You can design your own stuff. I, I just think he's a wonderful asset, wonderful human being, and I thought it was a must that he needs to be part of the ICA. You Before we got on, you were telling me about some of the things you've already helped design and create with collaborations with others. Are there only things I know Dr. Jackson just hit on a couple of them, is anything you could share with us? Yeah, I mean, I've designed a lot of my own stuff and a lot of it's kind of evolved. The, the, the, the, the thing that Kevin's talking about evolved over time, and I can go into some of the details of that. And it's very fascinating. I've had like two or three companies per week who call me and want me to design something for them because. I've learned is most companies don't have a lot of research and development budget, they don't have the skills for it. You know, Kevin came out, Hey, I wanna design a product. I have this cool idea of mine. But you know, like a chiropractor, they don't know how to design a product. They don't know where to manufacture, they don't know how to launch the product, but they have a really cool idea and they have an audience for it. And they're like, well, we don't even know how to get started. And so MySpace is launching and getting products to market. What I'm not really good at is telling the world, and that's where this ICA becomes super interesting is because we can develop really cool stuff for chiropractors and then they would have to have the audience that they speak to. Obviously they have. Clients that come in all the time. You guys are a leadership group through athletic performance and, and in the chiropractic space alone. So if there was something created for your population, well then you have an audience. And what we found is that if you find the, if we do something like for Kevin or for the ICA, we say, okay, we've developed something cool you guys. Get super stoked because we helped you invent something of your own and now you've got some skin in the game and some pride in the game. So companies that would take a year and a half to two, to three to four. Matter of fact, I'm working with a guy right now, a physical therapist, who is on this product for 13 years, and he is like, I got this product. I don't know how to do it. I've had this idea, I've shown it. People like it. I just don't know what to do. And while he's talking about it, I designed the entire product. a piece of paper and I was able to make it on Monday. the fastest we've ever done it was some, I'll even use the story, it's Equinox. Equinox, humongous company, massive amounts of money. This guy was trying to develop this cool new product didn't know how to do it. He's a trainer and he talks to his boss like, dude, I know how to do this. This is what I got. And he's like, have you talked to Shon And I'm like, Shon Harker, this guy Stroop. And he is like, no. He says, so he gives me the number. The guy calls me up and says, Hey, I got this product. How can we do this? I says, well, tell me about what you're trying to do. And so he describes what he is trying to do. He shows me this Home Depot thing, and he's got it duct taped and you know, saran wrapped and bungee cords and this is my cool thing. And I was like, okay, that's never gonna work because. It's gonna have to be assembled and disassembled in like 10 seconds, or someone's gonna be frustrated. So I looked at it and talked a little about what his end goal was. I says, let me be back. I went back in the back and in like 10 minutes I had it made, I said, this is what your product's gonna be. So he orders 10 2000 of these suckers. you know, I have another story similar where it was a company that they spent a year and a half doing product development and they're like, we, how do we get a product to market? We can't do it. They can't figure it out. They fly to China, they do whatever. And they got my name from somebody and they said, well, you need to call this guy. And so he calls me up, they, she calls me up and I, she describes the product. I says, I'll have it done in a day. like, well, there's no way. I says, yeah, I'll have it done in a day. So she flies out. went through two or three iterations because we manufacture right here. We designed the whole product. She brought it back. It was a Wednesday. She brought it back and said, oh my gosh, I gotta show, show my executive team on Monday. I need six samples. you have 'em here by before Monday? So we made 'em on Thursday, shipped'em out Thursday, got there on Friday. She did a presentation that people loved. It says, oh my gosh, we gotta try a class. so we need 20 or 25 pairs. So. That week we made 25 pair and we shipped them to the class. They said, oh my gosh, these are awesome. We need 40,000 pair within the next six months. we shipped 40,000 pair within the next six months. So what they couldn't do, it took a year and a half. We were able to launch and make in a couple days. Normally, companies that I've talked to recently, a year and a half to three years. Is pretty normal to get a product to market. I talked to another guy like three days ago. They says, we haven't created a new product in three years. I says, I've created three new products this week. So the stuff that we're able to do is getting a product from concept to market really, really, really quick. And then the one that Kevin's talking about is. Is really cool. I dunno if you want me to jump in that you want jump into that brand or do you Good. Keep, keep going. go to? We're good. So the, the, the product that Kevin's talking to was an evolution product. have it in mind at the time, but the product, we make a bunch of elastic resistance products and I can show you them in a second, but I like to train like you play. That's my concept if, if I'm gonna train example is I'm doing the bench press. Most popular lift or football athletes bench press. Super cool. I'm saying, when's the last time you saw an NFL athlete laying on his back? Pushing up. Okay. Then you get your butt kicked and you're laying on the ground. So why aren't we training like we play? And so I wanna mimic all these things. I wanted to make a treadmill that was self propelled and flat because all the treadmills, now, you put your foot on and it moves it back, put your foot on, moves it back. It's a motorized treadmill, so you're not really running on it. It's not true running. You have to drive yourself forward. Then there's a curve treadmill that you step on the high side and you roll down, on the high side, and you roll down. Well, your foot lands uphill. You push off downhill. When does that happen? Never. So why are we training like that? The other one is, when you walk, you guys should know this, when you walk, when I wanna slow down to change the center of gravity, I take a bigger step, puts my foot out in front of me, slows down on a curve treadmill. When I step a bigger step, I go faster. And your brain goes, dude, what just happened? You took a bigger step. I'm supposed to slow down. I didn't, so you didn't take a big enough step. You need to take a bigger step. And next thing that happens is the common person face plants because they it, the brain's not, and body's not working together. So we, I created a flat motorless treadmill. I talked to several manufacturing companies, said, Hey, can you do this for me? He says, you're an idiot. It won't work. I says, don't worry about making it work. I seen a treadmill that does this, and most of them declined and said, you're an idiot. It won't work. Well, I did it. It works. Then what we found out is as you walk, so then I started messing around and said, okay, if I'm walking on a treadmill, if I attach an elastic my leg and I, and I'm gonna back up so Perfect. can you see me here? So if I'm walking and I attach an elastic to the leg because I wanna learn how to drive that hip forward, then I could attach it and while I'm walking, I can learn how to drive that leg forward. Well then what I discovered is I'm doing this, as you can imagine, you're trying to walk on this treadmill, you're driving this leg forward. When I take the elastic off, this leg is doing this. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. What happens if I tie it to the other part, another part of my body? And so I started attaching to different parts of my body and Kevin was here when he, when we did this for him, we basically took and, and we attach it to your forehead. idea is to work on my curve and posture. Well, normally I, I saw a chiropractor do this and he was basically had a band and he had to his guy's forehead into an anchoring position and they were doing. This movement, I don't know what you call it. There's probably some chiropractic move you call that thing. And so we do this and I said, well, as we know, I learned from a chiropractic, a prac chiropractor deed Harrison out in Boise, I was listening to one of his lectures, and he is talked about how the body's connected from top to bottom. I'm like, okay, that's kind of cool. And I know as an athlete, as I on one foot and then I switch to another, there's different muscles, skeletal systems, neural systems, et cetera, that are involved. So I told this, this chiropractor guy, well, if you have it text to here, what happens if you walk in place? Now there's different muscles with my neck. To the left, to the right, to the left, to the right. So he tried that. He is like, oh, wow, that's kind of cool. I get different muscles throughout the whole system when I switch left to right. So then I said, let's try this while you're walking on a treadmill. So you walk on our treadmill, which is, the way, Yeah. you to the treadmill side. Over here is the treadmill side, so you can see what I'm talking about. So this is the treadmill, and there's no motor. You can't get it to go. You have to have a counter force. So if you hold on the side, it'll start to walk. can limp, you can skip, you can do whatever you want. Push it like a lawnmower, hold it like a But to allow yourself to do hands free, you simply attach the belt. Secured in place, and now when you go to walk, you can walk hands free, but it feels like you're walking outside. I can change pace, anything I want, but it's super smooth. now back to the the posture thing. If I take an elastic band and I attach it to my forehead and now I walk, what happens is the muscles in the back, et cetera, are engaged. So now I have to hold my head up. Because I'm Walking is such a common practice for the human body. The body quickly figures out that, hey, doing something weird. In order to maintain balance, you have to have different skeletals, whatever else engaged to maintain that posture. So we started to walk Kevin, we'll have Kevin get tell you what it was like when he did it for the first time. you have him walk for a couple minutes like this. What's really cool. When they do it for the first time, you as a doctor can look at their eyes and their brain is recalculating. You can see the brain through their eyes, like, okay, that's not working. Usually they have to kind of figure it out. And then after about a minute, most people are able to walk, and if you get 'em distracted by talking about their kids or dog, move this into a subconscious mode. So now they just think this is the new normal. And when you get 'em off the treadmill. Because it's been a walking thing, a normal thing. It's reprogrammed their whole system to engage as it was before. Crazy, crazy, crazy that you can reprogram neurologically, strengthen the muscles after you do an adjustment to help maintain that correction that the chiropractic the event did. So Kevin, is this right? I mean, tell us about what you experienced. Is that right? and you're at first really. and you're, you're trying to just stay from falling. And next, you know, your body kicks in, your nervous system kicks in, it starts to coordinate all the muscles and joints and ligaments and tendons, and next, you know, you got a smooth rhythm going. You get off of the treadmill. You feel like it, your, your posture's completely upright. It, it's completely balanced. And it was, it was just the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. And I, I did it and I had, some slides on if you, if you remember, I didn't have the right shoes on, so it added another element to it. But I'll, I'll tell you what, to this day, I'm still shaking my head. It's like that is the coolest thing going and I'm trying to figure out how to fit those you know, physically fit 'em in in my office.'cause there's no space. I'm gonna make it because that, that right there, what you just demonstrated, being on the treadmill, having the lumbar connection. Having the cervical connection, absolutely gold. Gold for a chiropractor, especially a sports chiropractor. So we did, I, I'll show you some I'll show you a picture in a second, but we've done scoliosis stuff. You, you guys hopefully have the imagination and creativity, see what's going on, but there's actually a, we have a cage. Imagine a cage that goes to the front and the back, and then to the left and the right, so you can attach elastic resistance from any part of your body and twists and turns. We actually did one with, for a scoliosis client we actually pulled to the left and to the right and kind of. Move their and force them to walk. And this gal, I can, we have videos of this, but this gal is a very fit person, super, super fit person. We put her on this pulled left and right. I think we have the top and the bottom pulling one direction, the middle, pulling the other direction. And it's a a term that Dr. Deed Harrison talked about, mirror image. You guys might know what that stuff is. I don't really know. But basically, pull opposite. She have to work twice as hard. She was like, why am I sweating? just barely walking what's happening is all the little muscles in my brain, all the little muscles that we're being lazy now have to be engaged. And the brain's like, dude, you gotta participate in the bra and the muscle's. Like I never had to participate before. I was chilling, like, no dude, you can't be lazy. You gotta join in. And so now they start joining in. was interesting when she got off the, when she got off the treadmill, she put her arms out to the side after this and she said like one arm was always higher than the other. Whenever she did this, she says, how are my arms now? And they were completely opposite she'd only been on there for like three minutes. And she talked about how amazing that Phil was. And I'm gonna show you another one we did with, chiropractor. He's outta Boise as well, and he, let's see if I can figure out in my favorites portfolio. he's done all kinds of different setups. He's got hundreds and hundreds of setups. One of which, one of my other most fun one is, I call it computer shoulders. You guys have way more technical terms than I do. Yeah. Like this. And Tech neck. what was that? Tech neck? Tech neck, that's, that's the high tech term tech neck. So what we do is we, while you're walking on the treadmill, we pull your shoulders with elastics deeper into this. So you have to fight. And if you have the head posture down here, we also pull the elastic from the head. So now I gotta keep my shoulders back and get my head engaged, and now I'm walking and sure enough, every coming out is doing old strep. But at the end of the day. It really works. So he's, lemme see if I can find that. couple of these setups that they had Oh. Said this is, this is that setup. Yeah, so for those of you watching it, say a whole cage around the treadmill with bands on this, your trademark bands, in order to help do, like he said mirror imaging to fight back and change it. So you pull, this one's pulling from the forehead, pulling from the shoulders, pulling forward. And I mean all these, this was like a bunch of chiropractors messing around. This guy's got it to his neck and to different parts of the body. You can see he is kind of struggling in the very beginning, but eventually after about 30 seconds, he figures it out and now he's starting to walk normal. The brain has reprogrammed, Hey, this is the new normal. You better figure it out. And you gotta engage these muscles when you get off. you get then the, then it sticks with you for a little while. Of course, like anything else, you have to practice your posture. So this is one that one of the doctors, chiropractor guy sent to me. So you'll see on this one, for those who you know, can't see it, you've got a red line and a green line. This is where the back posture is. There's a curvature in the posture kind of going forward and backwards. And after six weeks the combination of doing adjustments and not, See the on. here, the cervical so and the lumbar curve, lateral views is what we're seeing. So, I mean, I've been to a chiropractor multiple times and I go and get adjusted. They're like, oh, this is really cool, but I can feel all the muscles then pulling my spine back Mm-hmm. position.'cause that's how it's used to. looking at the chiropractor like, guys, you're doing an awesome job adjusting, but the muscles around it are not allowing you to stay informed. If you did an adjustment and then you put 'em on what we call the movement optimizer, which is this pro product, the movement optimizer, you put 'em on there. Now I can strengthen the muscles associated with the adjustment so that the adjustment stays You know, a common phrase I use in my office is I can adjust. You unlock your spine, but you have to put the work in to correct your posture. You're supplying tools for us to use with our patients to help them both biomechanically with the resistance and neurologically with the input to reach. To retrain those stabilization muscles and the proprioceptive outputs at the exact same time to really reinforce us doing the adjustment first, to loosen it, then to hold it on. And what I'm gonna gather is if I'm a chiropractor and I've been trying to fight people with neck curves forever, thinking to myself, man, you know, I know how to fix this. I just need this one more component, this one more thing. If I wish somebody would just make this one thing we call you. Yeah. And you say, well, this is what I've done in the past. This is what we had good luck with. I love your idea. Let's do this. And then sometime, I know you talked fast, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but in, in the immediate near future, then I would be able to have it in my clinic to just share with my patients. Is that kind of a quick summary? Yeah, that, that's, that's true. Up to a point. To make a one-off is not very cost effective. So we're not saying, Hey, I just need this one unit for me and I'm never gonna sell it. Other than that, you know, it just doesn't make any sense for us to manufacture something like that.'cause there's no return on that. What we're looking for is say, Hey, I've got a product, I have a speaking platform, I have an audience, or I want to sell Yeah. to every one of our customers. if that's the case, then it's interesting. I actually designed a product for or a doctor, another chiropractor outta Boise. And he a kit to every one of his clients, and he has a bunch of people that follow their practice. And so basically he says, these are the ways to treat patient. And in order to do it, you need this tool, this tool, this tool. So the concept is, and, and I use this all the time, I said, I want to become a better musician. And all I do is practice. Every time I see the piano instructor, my once a week piano class, and I don't have a piano at home, and I never touch the piano until I go back the next week, you're wasting your time. And if that's really what the chiropractic is, if I just go see a chiropractor once a week or whatever it is. I don't do anything at home. I'm not gonna get better. And so you should also use the same tool at the chiropractic place as you do at home. So, so creating a tool that you could use at home that you also use in the clinic. Hey, I want you to do this or this, or whatever that thing is, now they become good. Matter of fact, that Movement optimizer, one of the chiropractic clinics in Orum, Utah. The guys, you can feel the difference, and Kevin can vouch for this. When you get done walking, after two or three minutes, you can feel your body change unlike an ultrasound or a whatever. Like I didn't know a laser, like did you do something? I don't know, maybe this, when you walk off, you know something happened the clients were actually coming in on their own. Wanting to get on the machine because it feels so good, and they felt the difference immediately. They'd come in, they knew how to set up the machine, they set up themselves and just did it. So am I right on this, Kevin? Is that, is that your experience too, or is that like You, you I'm making it up. and you, you, you notice a distinct difference in the pattern of how you move your range of motion, your posture, your upright. It really, it really is remarkable, really. I'm the end of this podcast. Do you have anything that we, that you wanted to bring up that we haven't discussed? Are you talking, I'm I'll add Dr. Jackson first is anything he wanted to add as we're getting near the end of our time here, Okay. Yeah, so I. this. It's, it's fantastic stuff. There's so many products, and of course we're gonna be carrying 'em on our ICA website. But the one thing that comes to mind that would make this really, really simple for every chiropractor is that they, they sell this band that goes that just connects to the wall. You simply hook up the cervical curve unit and you march in place. adding just right there. You're adding movement. You're adding cervical curve. It's a big thing. Chiropractic, you do that in your clinic. You could have 10 of 'em and you can have your patients using them at one time. You can self-teach 'em how to do it. That's how easy it's, you can make the unit available for them to bring home and to do it at home because it's very, very, very, very cost effective stuff. I mean, it is very cost effective. So, and you know, I, I'm all about getting tangible results and tangible results is what drives chiropractic and the profession. And, and so talked before about having a certain bundle from troops and this would be like a minimal bundle bundle, but easy to get into, easy to implement. And but just that being said, there's so much that this man and, and these products can do. So it's just so worthy of us to associate with them. Let you wrap it up here. So. I. So let me just finalize what Kevin was saying. This is an elastic resistance band. It's safe. You can't overstretch it. It's a built-in safety limit. You can't overstretch it. It doesn't pinch and pull. If it ever breaks, it stays inside. So if you're in, if any of your clients or any of your doctors use elastic, they need to switch to a safe. Protected solution. Now I'm going back to what Kevin talked about. We recommend something like this in a chiropractic clinic where it mounts to the wall. They then simply connect the elastic. You can have a handle or a chest strap, whatever you want. We'll just pretend like it's the head strap, which Kevin was talking about. So when a clinic, they can do this and march in place as he was talking. But this isn't always the best solution for a. Customer, 'cause they don't wanna mount something to the wall. So over here we have what he was talking about this door. Spine, completely around a door. So it doesn't come off if your kids come in or your significant other comes in. So you now can attach it here again, a head strap. Attached here, which I don't have, but it right with me. But you put it on here or you can do your neck exercises or you barge in place or your rotations, whatever you want. This thing all collapses in a little box. That's about yay big. the cool thing about it is we could customize different kits.'cause you could say, Hey, I think this is the right one for a shoulder or a lumbar or a neck, or whatever it is. I don't care. We have all the components. You guys know your space, we know ours. kit whatever you want and go. So know it. We really wanna make an impact chiropractic space. We're good at what we do. We just don't have the voice into what your guys do because we sell to a bunch of other platforms. So we're trying to, how do we get you guys knowledgeable enough? successful enough say, Hey, this is the right package for A, B, C, and you have a doctor who knows what he's talking about. Say, this is what you need to do. Then all the other doctors say, oh, since Doctor X, Y, Z said this is the cool thing, I believe in his philosophy. just implement it and put it into my practice and it's turnkey. So yeah, product development, getting you guys launched, helping you stand out. Also, these are fantastic for memory stuff. It goes in their place, they never leave it. Hey, where's this? Oh, I got it from Dr. Jackson. I got it from Dr. XYZ. He's my awesome chiropractor, and I feel way better. We're gonna have a in the summer of 2027, we're planning a giant symposium and I can already see that we're gonna be doing one with you with these products and make them available through the council. Right now, if you got more questions or want more information, you can go to our council page to see more. Shauna, can I ask for a favor? Could we come back and do another one of these?'cause we're running outta time and I think we have a lot more fun stuff to talk about. So, could I ask publicly here to, to revisit with you again? Absolutely, I do do this anytime. It's a lot of fun, and if anyone else had any questions, you can connect them with me and, and my job is to We have links to groups on our site too, so you can go on there, you'll see the logo and click on that and you can, you can go right to their website and learn more too. Well, this was a lot of fun. I wanna thank everybody for jumping on here and getting this podcast done, and I hope to meet again here real soon, and I hope soon we'll have the ICA Sports and Fitness Package. You can get through Stroop through our website and get going with your patients If this stuff excites you, like it excites us. So thank you everybody. Thank you so.