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Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I wanna thank you guys for tuning into the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast. It means a ton to us here at True Sports that you're listening, that you're sharing, that you're liking. We love the feedback, and we've really catered a lot of what we do here to the feedback we get from you guys, because this Physical Therapy Podcast is for you, the Sports Physical Therapist. So please don't hesitate to reach out again or for the first time, and just let us know what you wanna hear about. Today's a great conversation with Dr. Ben Kelly. He is a Wisconsin sports resident graduate, and we really lift up the hood on all things residency, specifically sports residency. We talk about why you should do a residency, or why you should not do a residency. We talk about how to find the proper residency, the correct residency for you, because they are definitely not all created equa
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And we talk about what questions you should ask when you're interviewing for a residency so you can discern is this the right place for you. We also get into some coffee talk. We talk about dark roast, light roast. Ben Kelly is really a pleasure to have on the podcast. He has taught me so much during his career. He's the first patient... I got to treat Ben Kelly very early on in my career. So hopefully I've become a little bit better of a PT since I treated him but you're gonna learn a ton. He really has an eclectic background, and he's a burgeoning star in the sports physical therapy realm and world. So I can't wait to get your feedback on this conversation. And I really appreciate you guys tuning in to learn from Dr. Ben Kelly. So, out further ado, here's Ben Kelly.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Welcome back to the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast. Dr. Ben Kelly is joining us today. And I personally wanna learn all about the residency process, what it's like to be a resident, what it's like to go through the program, what it's like to apply, what it's like to be accepted, to be rejected, et cetera. And everything that we can find out about being a resident in the physical therapy world. Specifically here at sports resident, Dr. Ben Kelly is going to really enlighten us. So I'm looking forward. Ben, what have you done today to make the world a better place?
Dr. Ben Kelly: This morning, particularly?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, it's already 9:23 in the morning Eastern Standard.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, that's true. Not a whole lot. Still moving into my place, focused on getting some good coffee and in the morning. That's usually my part of my morning routine and just kind of prepping for the day to come.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. Well, that's one thing that you've done. If you are prepping, you're improving. So I love that you're not just coasting. Tell me about your coffee.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Well, right now I'm on a Costco, medium Roast.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Ben.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I'm in between. I'm in between, but normally I have my Trade Coffee. I subscribe to Trade Coffee.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Good choice. Shout out Trade Coffee.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Right now I'm getting it, I think every two weeks. And that puts it kind of right at the edge. I'm running out just as it comes, but I'm a big light roast guy and I know. I could see the face you're making. I expected that. But I think I started medium went dark, and then I've kind of come back to the light roast.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: What am I missing? I walk into high-end coffee spot and they throw me out when I ask for their darkest roast. Come on, man. What am I missing in the light roast? I feel like it's like underdone.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think for me it's like the nuances. I can taste their nuances a little more than the dark roast. The dark roast has given me like that chocolate, the heavier stuff. So.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Just when I thought you were a grizzled blue collar Baltimore boy, you talk about nuance in chocolate notes in your coffee. So thanks for dispelling myths. That's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna dispel...
Dr. Ben Kelly: Let's do it.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: A million myths. Okay. So I have loved watching your career. It's been...
Dr. Ben Kelly: Appreciate that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Awesome to see where you've been, what you've done, what you've already accomplished in life. So enlighten us. Tell me about the Ben Kelly story.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, so, the reason I think you had me on is because I just finished up with a residency, but I mean, that's...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I had you on 'cause you're fascinating.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Okay. Well, I was gonna say the residency is only part of the equation. Like you mentioned, I grew up in Baltimore, grew up in Towson until I was about 18. That's where I live, freshmen in college. Went to Flagler College down in St. Augustine. Did about a year there. Realized that, didn't really know what I wanted to do, but absolutely wasn't college at the time. Came back, worked some... I actually worked some HVAC for about a year before I went down to Orlando at Motorcycle Mechanics Institute where I was working on, or learned to work on motorcycles there for two years or so. And then out to San Francisco where I actually did that. Worked on bikes out there. Did that for three years, realized I wanted a little more thought I wanted to go back to school. So that's when I joined the Coast Guard. Coast Guard took me to Maine. I was in Virginia, but then the bulk of it was in Charleston, South Carolina. And that's where I did my PT school at the Medical University of South Carolina down there...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: The Medical University.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yep. And then, grateful enough to be accepted to the University of Wisconsin's UW Health Sports Physical Therapy Residency. So I've been there for the last 14 months and literally finished last week. So here I am today.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Congrats, man. Congrats.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. I appreciate it.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: What's the carryover? What did you learn in working on bikes that make you a better physical therapist?
Dr. Ben Kelly: That's an interesting question. 'cause I've thought about it a lot and really the human body is just... It's a machine just like a motorcycle is. But I like to say it's just a far more complicated and well-designed machine.
Dr. Ben Kelly: So but yeah, I mean especially like diagnostic wise, every system affects a different system and another system, so it's kinda a cool drawing those parallels and especially as sports PTs I feel like don't always get super diagnostic heavy cases but when you do those are fun as well for me because it kinda brings that detective hat here.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Let me push back on that a little bit, I think every single case that walked in when they are, let's call it textbook their post-op. Oh, it's easy. It's post-op. We have a protocol and always thought there is always a diagnostic piece in the background I think. So when you're working ACLs, that's my pet project or my passion. You're looking at how that how the knee moves and why can't this patient do blank? And trying to diagnose that and then distill it down and explain it like you could explain it to a seven-year-old.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Absolutely.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And so that's a diagnostics. I think there's awesome carry over there. Also. I love your your explanation of the we are a machine. I think we forget that, not only that how amazing this machine is. It's why I still love treating. I'm 15 years in. I can't believe it. I can't believe whatever you believe in, whoever put us together that we were put together like this. And that, it ever works. Usually this is a part of my shoulder spiel. When I explain to an athlete how the human shoulder works, it's a miracle. It's crazy that it ever works properly and that we get ticked off when it doesn't work properly. Because it's a miracle that it works like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Great Louis CK bit on Wi-Fi on planes and when we get pissed off, We're flying over the Atlantic. He says like we're in this titanium tube or whatever the hell we're in. You know better than me, and we get pissed off when we're 30,000 feet up and the Wi-Fi doesn't freaking work or it's slow. And god knows I've written emails to Southwest saying "What the F." I paid $8 and your goddamn Wi-Fi was slow.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's great, Kelly. I'm glad you learned that and let's keep that at the forefront when we're walking in with these patients and athletes to say, "My God. This is amazing that it ever works." That's why I love treating high-level athletes because man, what they can do with their physiology. Super impressive. So that's kinda my takeaway on your spiel there. Okay, let's say once you got into the Coast Guard, did you always know you wanted to go towards physical therapy?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Another good question. So PT was put on to my radar when I was training for the Coast Guard. I played soccer for four years in high school and then after high school I was like, man, I don't want anything to do with this. I don't want anything to do with exercising, working out, so needless to say, when I wanted to go into the Coast Guard five years later I needed to get back in shape. And I was under the impression that if I finished top of my class for physical fitness standards, I could choose wherever I wanted to go. What a stupid idea.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Doesn't work like that?
Dr. Ben Kelly: No, not at all. Mainly I needed to learn to run, and I of course gave myself shin splints like any new runner does and I tried to treat it on my own for a while and then I ended up with you and that's where I actually met you.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And I remember rehabbing thinking to myself, Hmm, I knew that I didn't want to do the Coast Guard for a career. I knew this was gonna be a launching pad, and my thought was, Hey, if I could do something every day that interests me enough to pay the bills and then allow me to live my passion on the side, then that's I think what it is. I mean, I think to love what you do is an absolute blessing and I think most people are not blessed with that. So that's what it started as and then as I got more into it and kind of found my my niche of sports, I began to truly love it. So I think that's when PT got put on my radar was training for the Coast Guard and rehabbing through that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And then the passion you displayed in, I guess qualifying to be accepted into physical therapy school, also pretty impressive because you're on a ship and you're taking classes. Walk me through how that work?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, so I did my freshman year at Flagler, so I had three years, give or take, of classes left. And then the other issue was I had done it far or so long ago that a lot of the prereqs that I was trying to use didn't carry over at that point. But yeah, so that was one of the benefits of being in the Coast Guard. I used their tuition assistance program, was going to American Military University, which is an online program. And at this time, I was actually at the station, which worked perfectly. So we worked nine to five doing whatever maintenance we needed to do, and then we would sleep at the station for either two days or three days kind of on call. And it was that time that allowed me to just kind of sit in my room and hammer away at these classes. So it worked perfectly, honestly.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, you say that worked perfectly, and you say it like, Wow, what a benefit. Impressive to highlight that, you're working nine to five, you complete a four year degree with three years remaining on that degree while you're on a ship between the hours of 5:00 to 1 PM. And probably midnight, and then you're up working hard, I assume certainly by 09:00 AM, you're working. Let's say you're up at 7:00. So the lesson there for me is I thought I was grinding in graduate school, probably in college. Far. I went to College Park. Probably. I thought I was working hard as an undergrad, even though I didn't know what the hell I was doing. You were working hard, Ben, and you had this passion and drive to get to where you are today. The lesson is you think you're working hard. Everyone listening out there thinks they're working hard. Someone else is working harder. I guarantee you.
Dr. Ben Kelly: There's always someone working harder.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: There's always someone working harder. It's always Ben Kelly. Quick story on that. I remember when I was a freshman at College Park, I thought I was freaking working hard. And I just remember being on a phone call with my buddy. I did a year abroad, like a gap year between high school and college in Israel. And I made a couple of friends over there. They went on to serve in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. I just remember being on a phone call, being exhausted and pissed off that I had to go to my CRIM 101 class, what a freaking joke. And I was on the phone with my buddy Smith, and he's like, I hear like these sirens in the background of his phone. He's in Southern Israel. He had gone to the IDF. I'm sitting in this awesome on-campus apartment in College Park, freaking out. He's like, I gotta go. Hangs up the phone and I'm like, Jesus, like my biggest worry is how long can I stay upside down on this keg? And he's underneath a table or running for his M16.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: There's always someone out there working harder to achieve their goals. If they can do it, God knows you can do it and get your ass off that couch and go to that CRIM 101 class. I digress. You just finished your residency. So when did you realize residency was a worthwhile endeavor?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, you also had a role in that as well, despite what you probably wish.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, we'll get there.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think it was, I was volunteering. So this was before PT school. I was volunteering in your Timonium clinic at Sweat. And I remember looking across there and you had already introduced me to Andrew Livingston and...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Legend, legend and great podcast guest.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Good dude too. And he had told me that he'd done his residency and I had asked you, I'm like, what's the deal with this residency? I had never heard of it. And you were like, let's put it simple. He just got out of residency. He's essentially a new grad, but he's practicing like he's been practicing for four or five years. And that's when I was like, all right, that put it on the radar for me. And I'm like, all right, this is probably something I should be doing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And so now looking back, you just did it. Did it decrease that learning curve?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Absolutely. It's hard for me sitting here to say, yes, I'm practicing. Like I've been doing it for three to five years. I think it's all about your perspective. Maybe that's something for someone else to say, who's kind of looking in at my practice, but it absolutely gave me the confidence. It gave me the high level of reps, I think that it would be hard to achieve without that type of thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Tim Ferriss talks about this when he references getting an MBA and he calls it a real world MBA. And so he graduated from Princeton. I think he graduated from there. He was definitely a student at Princeton and he said, I can take, at the time, I think it was like 100 grand and get an MBA, or I can take a 100 grand and go out into the workplace and figure it out myself and invest and see where I fail or save and see what that nets me. And he said, I'd rather do that than simply plunk down that money to Stanford and get an MBA from Stanford 'cause I'm going to learn so much more and chances are I'll probably come out on top. And obviously, that guy did. I think that sounds like what can be accomplished with residency 'cause I think you would take a hit financially, but it can definitely speed you up. My Tim Ferriss version of that, honestly, I didn't know anything about residency. They were definitely less common when I was coming out of school a million years ago. No one at my university talked to me about that and maybe going into that, maybe that's because I barely got out of my graduate program, let alone getting into a residency.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: So, I don't know, but I think they were just less prevalent. I went to work at what I thought was a really good spot, a local outpatient orthopedic that said they did sports and I treated a billion patients, a billion, like three, four an hour. I did my rotation in Manhattan and literally five an hour because it was really like a ballpark appointment. Your appointment is between 9:00 and 10:00, just show up somewhere in there and I'll treat you. Just getting the ability to figure that out and to manage can decrease that learning curve, so you don't have to go to residency.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I got my OCS, which usually comes after an orthopedic residency without a residency. So something I did prepared me for that. It's just a different path, I think, to getting really good. And I think residency can really make that concrete and more predictable of what you're going to get when you get out of it if you go to a good residency. So, how do you find a really good residency, Ben?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think the first part of finding a good residency is doing a quality audit of yourself and of your resume and determining why you want to do a residency. And then I think beyond that, really just understand not just why, but what you want to achieve. And I think, part of that audit is, hey, where am I lacking? Do I feel like I want more mentorship? Do I feel like I wanna work with college and pro athletes? I think that's a big element of it. And I think that's where it starts.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. So you obviously wanted to accomplish those two things, more mentorship, work with elite level athletes. What residencies did you consider and how do you determine where you're going to actually get those?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. So, my take was interesting. So I applied to eight with the idea that, hey, I'm gonna get turned down by a bunch of these from personality connections alone. And that's the thing, you just can't control that. So at some point you need to play the odds game and you need to realize that you may be fully qualified to do this and you may interview, but the person interviewing next to you may vibe differently than you with the mentors. And that's as much as it's going to take.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I played the odds game. I applied to eight. And then for me, I was like, you know what? I'm willing to travel anywhere really, except for the West Coast. I didn't want to go back to California just 'cause it's so hard to get back to the East Coast from there. So I think as I applied as far west as Houston, and then most of the other ones were either in the Midwest or on the East coast. And I was looking at schools with big sports programs. That was one of the things that I kind of looked into. But that was a little bit naive on my part. I was assuming that, Hey, I'm gonna go to these places with these big sports programs and I'm gonna be treating their athletes.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And it's just not how it works in most cases. There are some instances where it does work like that. But I think for me, that's what actually led me to Wisconsin was I was like, oh, this is gonna be sweet. I'm gonna be working with Badger athletes. Not at all. We did not work with the Badger athletes, but I don't think that's a bad thing. In fact, it's a well thought out process as to why we didn't work with them, and I think it turned out for the better. For sure.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. How do you gauge whether you're going to be working with the varsity athletes? Is that possible?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, it's as simple as knowing the right questions to ask and...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Gimme those questions. What do you ask?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Who are the... I guess so sports residencies are broken into clinic treatment and then also outreach. Your outreach is your training room and your on field coverage. So I think it's important just to be blunt and, upfront and be like, Hey, with the outreach component, who are the athletes that we're gonna be working with? They should tell you. I mean, it's a reputable residency, they shouldn't be trying to hide anything.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And so, okay, so you ask, am I working with the Wolverines? Let's say, am I working with, if you're gonna Michigan, am I gonna be working with those athletes? Are you saying that's an acceptable or an expected question?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I would think so, yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: To ask them. Okay. When you asked Wisconsin, they said, nah, you're not gonna be working with the Badgers.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. They said, no, you're gonna be working in a high school training room and on the field, with high school athletes. The way Wisconsin does it is we work at two schools, and what's interesting is that in the Madison area, the athletic trainers are actually hired and on staff with UW Health, which is the big hospital system. So we already have a connection to these schools and these trainers, and we've used the two trainers for, I think my trainer, Matt has been there for 10 years or so, and then the other trainer at one of the other schools across town has been there for a few years as well. So we work at the same high school for the entire year. We cover whatever sports are in season, and we're working in the training room, Thursday, Fridays, and then Saturdays.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Which at first I was like, ah, I wanna work with college athletes, and for me, I quickly realized this is cool. This is actually gonna be better. I had the opportunity to already work with a lot of college and pro athletes, so it wasn't like, oh, I need this experience, to kind of top me off. But what I realized was that when you're working with high school athletes, especially when it's just you and the athletic trainer, you're the person, you're the man or the woman in the training room and on the field. If there is someone who comes in the training room, that person is mine to evaluate and treat if I want them. If someone goes down on the field, then it's a matter of, Hey, can I get there quicker than my trainer? And then I'm treating that person, I'm evaluating 'em, I'm talking to 'em, and I'm treating 'em. Whereas, in most college settings, I think you run the issue of, Hey, where are you in that pecking order? Are you there watching the team's physician or surgeon doing or something like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. That's a really great insight that I think that's awesome to know. And totally makes sense. I think about all the Pros that we get to work with at True Sports, and there's a pecking order everywhere. So the ability to be at the top of that pecking order, like in, in a high level high school let's say area certainly brings a tremendous amount of value. You might just be holding a clipboard if you get your residency with the Ravens or whatever it is, or if that's a team you're covering. So I can totally understand that and respect that. When you're applying to residencies, are you paying per application or what stopped you from applying to a hundred schools?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, I think somewhere in my mind, I thought to myself that eight was enough. I had a good enough feeling with the communications that I had with these programs beforehand. And then, yeah, it became a financial thing. I forget the exact price. It's all done on PTCAS, like applying to PT school is but you know how it is, everyone's got their handout. So, PTCAS wants an application fee. If I remember correctly, the school was taking a small fee. So at some point, it became a financial thing and it was expensive. It was this whole, I feel like the whole last four or five years of my life have just been a massive investment in my future.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Well, it's already paying off, obviously. What other questions are musts in order to determine that you get the right residency?
Dr. Ben Kelly: So, that's a great question because part of being a resident at UW, I feel questions from people all the time. I was in my U-Haul truck, moving, talking to a student from Northwestern answering these questions. And I think one of the things I try... I try and highlight a couple things, and one is the coverage is the outreach that it's with high school athletes. And, hey, don't sleep on this. Don't look at this as a negative. Look at it for the positives that I showed. The other one that I talk about a lot is the didactic. I mean, you go to a residency to learn, to continue learning...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Define that word for me, Ben.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, so at Wisconsin, we have units, like educational units, and they're kind of like PT school where there'll be a combination of classroom and lab-based things, and usually it's myself and the other sports resident with one or two mentors or it is us combined with the ortho residents. But either way, it's a small group. Those are usually done on Thursdays. So the way our schedule worked, we didn't have any clinic treatment time on Thursdays. So Thursday, either morning or all day, you're doing some type of didactic. And these didactics are, think of the stuff you learn in PT school, but then completely narrowed down and focused on sports. So they take that surface level thing and just go very, very deep with it. And it's all very good and timely stuff too.
Dr. Ben Kelly: With Wisconsin, it's applying a lot of times to the sport that's in season, like our concussion unit, it happens right before football season. So those type of things. But one thing I tell people who are applying is to ask about how... Most residencies have a didactic. In fact, I think they all do, but I ask them how it's delivered. That's a question you wanna know from the residency you're applying at, because I didn't even realize this through the application process, there was one or two, but for the most part, from what I understand, a lot of residencies do a MedBridge didactic and it's essentially self-taught. And to me, I don't know, that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And one of the things I tell people about Wisconsin is that this place, you're part of the family. It's the first thing you feel from the phone call you get to interview there, you feel like you're part of the family. And the way they do the didactic says it. It says it all because they can... These are senior clinicians who are making far more money treating people, but they feel that you're important enough and your education is important enough to take those people out of the clinic for four or eight hours and teach you the stuff you need to know.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's awesome.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And I think that speaks really highly to a program. And I know there's others out there to do it similar, but that's something you wanna know as opposed to, hey, am I gonna be expected to treat in the clinic, go to the training room and then do my didactic from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM as I fall asleep with this computer in my lap.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, yeah, that's great insight there. When I was looking at graduate schools, I did not do this, but looking back, I wish I would have to take a heavy look at the staff that is going to be teaching you. What is their background and what are they currently doing clinically? Are they treating or are they just teachers and kind of losing touch with what is current evidence-based practice? I didn't do that, but if I did, I may have made a different decision. I'd imagine that's something also you could apply to residency where you can look at where these... Who are the instructors? That better be a good coffee in the background. And it better not be a light roast in the background. Look over there. Is that guy making a light roast?
Dr. Ben Kelly: It's definitely a medium roast. I checked it out yesterday.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: By the way, I think you could just tell that by the sound of the grind.
Dr. Ben Kelly: A little bit of a firmer grind.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, I think that's what it is. Okay, so can you apply that to residency? Can you look at the staff and say, who are these people and who are they treating?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think you can. I don't know if it's as essential in residency because I mean, every single one of them was treating. You didn't run into like, oh, this person hasn't treated in 20 years. It wasn't anything like PT school. They're all active clinicians. And that's the thing. Another crazy thing is like, these people have... We had most people, I think over 10 years of experience in that clinic, which was another crazy thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That is crazy. So that's not maybe an awesome question to ask. Are there any other questions that you would say you wanna ask when looking and determining residencies?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think a big part of it is gonna be the mentoring as well. Like what the structure of that is. Because there are certain residencies out there that are more fellowships. If you ask them and ask the right questions, you'll realize that, hey, these have more similarities to a fellowship than a residency.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: What's the difference there? What do you mean by that?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I mean, from what I understand, I haven't really looked too much into fellowships, but I think it's the mentoring. I think it's less mentoring and more outreach. And that balance of clinic time and outreach changes. So, I mean, I think you wanna know what the mentorship structure looks like. How is that done? Is it structured? How many days a week? What does it look like? Stuff like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. First, I would be nervous that I would put a residency off by asking a lot of these questions. But then the more I think about it, maybe like if I'm the interviewer, I'm happy that the applicant kind of knows what they want and is as much grilling me as much as I'm grilling them.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And that's absolutely what it is too. I mean, we're selling ourselves as much as the applicant is selling. It's kind of like a mutual relationship.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think, as we were talking though, one other thing that really came to mind in terms of questions, I think is, I wanna know where former residents are now.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. That's good.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Because that's gonna speak to the connections they have, the residency. I mean, that's really what any of this is in Sports PT is, is really who you know and the relationships you build along the way. It's probably more important than how good you are. I don't know if that's a good thing, but.
Dr. Ben Kelly: So I wanna know where the former residents are and what they're doing now, because that's gonna speak to, myself and my goals. Are these things that I wanna do or do I have no... I don't wanna do any of that stuff because then this might not be a good fit for me.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah yeah. It sounds like you're hitting on the networking aspect of it's not what it's who you know. And it's a piece of almost any, almost any field, certainly in what you and I do for is how well can you connect, how well can you build out this network and decide where to go? One, like small piece of advice is I would take a piece of paper and write 'out of order' and put it on that coffee machine behind you. So no one uses it. [laughter]
Dr. Ben Kelly: I can do it. If you give me give you a second. I'll get up and do it. I'm just gonna jam the door to the whole room so no one can come in here that'd be better.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's a good freaking idea. That would be way better. Okay. Let's talk financials. When you're going into a residency, what should a resident expect to make?
Dr. Ben Kelly: You can expect to take anywhere from like a 20 to maybe 40% pay cut. And that's gonna vary based on where you are and the cost of living and everything like that. I mean, I'll be transparent, we made 50,000 a year and that was in Madison, Wisconsin. Now you think for the Midwest, that's pretty good, but Madison is like a hub in the Midwest, so it was definitely a little more expensive there. But I think it actually just got bumped up to, to 55 or 60. So, that's something that people don't wanna ask. The money question is always a hard question in any kind of interview. And I know you've spoken on it and, and I agree with you. I think it's important to know, but I also don't think it should be the first thing that's being asked.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. So did you ask? You're interviewing, you said how much am I gonna make?
Dr. Ben Kelly: To be honest with you, I didn't even ask because at this point I was already invested and I knew that I was gonna take a pay cut. I knew what the range of that pay cut was gonna be, so it was like, All right, whatever. They're gonna give me what they give me and they talk about it in the interview process, they have a presentation of benefits and stuff like that, so.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Okay. And 50,000, what were some of the other numbers that you saw across those eight that you applied to?
Dr. Ben Kelly: To be honest, I don't even remember. I wanna say in that range, maybe the lowest was 45. I wanna say highest was maybe 55. There wasn't a huge difference in a... I think probably a lot of reason too was I was looking a lot, a lot of them tended to be in the Midwest. So it's a pretty, I think, standard, I don't know price of living and stuff like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you're looking at about 50 grand, whereas if you're a new graduate, you're expecting... Or yeah. If you're a new graduate, you're expecting to make what?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I don't know. I had friends who left school start out making 80 to 100.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, I mean, that's a 50% cut. You're doing it for a year. Your residency was one year.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. It's 14 months.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: 14 months. Do they have other options? What's the range of years or time?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Most of them are a year. Most of them are a year, give or take. We did 14 months because it allowed two month overlap. So the incoming residents would come in and then that would give us time to mentor them as well, which was also really cool. I know not all of them were 14 months and did that overlap? I think most of them were about a year. I know I applied to Ohio State, I think they were 18 months.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Oh, wow. Okay. Also with that, I mean it did overlap I presume.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. They had like a six month overlap.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. So that's really cool. And, and by the way that's gonna color a little bit about, of what I can take moving forward. I told you I was gonna learn a ton during this is I wanna know that, and here's why. I wanna know if your residency allowed you to overlap, because that tells me you know how to treat, or you have experience mentoring, teaching, bringing someone else on. And so to me, maybe now I'm thinking this would be a great clinic director down the road. This would be a great teacher of professionals, not just athletes and patients. Because you've already done that. So, and that's something we ask our clinic directors to do at True Sports, and I'm sure across the country that you want that clinical expert to also be making everyone else better.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And what an awesome opportunity to do that in the residency program. I didn't even think about that, but that's really cool to think that that's there and smart on the program.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And it's a totally different beast too. I mean, I remember, I had an outgoing interview with one of my mentors, a couple weeks ago, and I was like, Man, this is... It's completely different, treating, getting mentored, feeling confident with that and then having someone else come in and then mentoring them. And it's cool because it, I'm super interested in it, but it really just two months, you're just scratching the surface.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's also interesting to hear like where you are in your career also but from an age perspective Yeah. If you are younger, if a therapist is younger than the person coming in or has less experience than the person coming in, that's also interesting to me. I watch clinic directors today, our COO at True Sports is younger than a lot of the physical therapists that report to him. So how does he handle that? What is that like? That can be a challenge. Now that I'm kind of, older and I'm looking at, I'm talking to surgeons now that are younger than me. It's a totally different dynamic when I used to feel like I was talking up. Now from an age perspective level playing field, it just changes things and it colors the conversation and the ability to do both.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Talk to someone, mentor someone who's older, younger than you. Those are great life skills that I think are worth highlighting. That's really cool. That's a cool skill that you're able to kind of take away. Walk me through a typical day as a resident. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Kelly: So let's go with a Tuesday because those were a little different. We'll do like a Tuesday and a Thursday. So UW Health is unique in their treatment model. We do 30 minute treats. And I'm probably seeing someone once a week at a minimum. And it could be... But for most people, it's gonna be every two weeks or every three weeks.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Wow.
Dr. Ben Kelly: So at first that was tough. I struggle with that. You learn really well to focus on what's really important and then you cut the fluff out. And then also it really speaks to how I like to treat in... It's a bad business model, but I wanna make people not need me, essentially. I wanna make people resilient. And I wanna make them understand that, hey, you can do all this stuff on your own. So in those 30 minutes, you had to get really really good at educating people on, hey, how can we do this on our own, versus, oh, I need someone to rub my muscle, that type of thing. So because of that though, we have what's called a spectrum and it's a three-part program and it's a return to sport class, group class, essentially, mainly for ACL and lower extremity.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And it meets a couple of days a week, and that's where we fill the gap with our ACLs and stuff like that, where they're getting all the movement skills, they're getting higher level coaching, stuff like that. So Tuesdays 6:40, we have our three plus, which is the last stage. So we're working on... We're in the gym doing a lift. We're working on... We're on the turf, we're doing change of direction, plyometric, all the very late stuff. That's for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So we're doing that, and then I might be able to... Tuesdays I start at 9:30, so I got a nice little gap where I'll catch a workout. Treating from Tuesdays, I'm treating from 9:30 to about 6:30 or 7:00. And then that's pretty much that day. Now, Tuesdays are normally, depending on what location you're at, you've got mentoring at different times throughout that day. So Tuesdays for me at my last location, we're split into two different clinics. So at that clinic, I had mentoring from 12:00 to 2:00, essentially. So that's an hour eval spot where the mentor sits in there with you and then a 30-minute follow-up, and then 30 minutes after that, where we discuss what happened.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's awesome.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And at that location, it's every Monday and Tuesday. And then at the other location, it's every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And you're rotating mentors through, so it's not this... So each mentor has their own day, that type of thing. And then that'll be a Tuesday. So Monday through Wednesday are pretty standard, just clinic treatment. Thursday is where it gets interesting. Thursday, we start the day again with spectrum three plus in the morning. I don't actually treat that day, so then I either go to didactic, which didactic is frontloaded in the first half or two thirds of the residency. So the last few months, we didn't have as much didactic on Thursday, so we have a little bit more free time. But usually it's we're at that spectrum class then we're at didactic for either the morning or the whole day. If it gets done by noon, then we're going to the lab where we do research. And the lab is at Badger Athletic Performance, which is underneath in the, or in the basement kind of Camp Randall, which is a Badger stadium right off of their training room.
Dr. Ben Kelly: So you're in there anywhere from... You're in there for a couple hours doing your research, going to the overall lab meeting, that kind of thing. We do that from about noon to 3:00 and then 3:00, we need to be at the training room at the high school. And really you're there until you're done. So there's days where we don't have any events going on and we're just treating, so I'll be there from 3:00 to 5:00 or 3:00 to 6:00. And then there are other days where we'll start treating at 3:00 and then maybe we've got a basketball game or something and we're getting out of there 9:00 or 10:00, that kind of thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Wow. Wow. And when you say treating, you're treating under the 30-minute with the appointment?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: No. So the high school training room is far more chaotic than that. It's just people coming in and you might be... And that's another really cool aspect of it. I know as sports PTs, we wanna treat one-on-one and stuff like that, but you're in that training room. You might be treating 10 people at once and you're triaging people. You got people over in this corner doing these exercises, over here someone's laying on a table waiting to get checked out. So at that, I really enjoyed that atmosphere. Just kind of like the controlled chaos in a sense. But again, and it's the same thing. Friday's a little unique too, it's just a... It's a shorter treatment day. We're done at the clinic at 2:00, off to the training room, and then right now it's football season so we travel with the football team. And that's the big thing for us. We travel with the football team, and then we'll travel with other teams if they're in the playoffs, that kind of thing.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's really cool.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And then Saturday we're just at the training room pretty much as long as we need to. Training room or whatever event's going on.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: It sounds like a huge amount of hours. How many hours are you involved in residency over the week?
Dr. Ben Kelly: They had varied depending on the football season. I think you can get up to 80 during football season.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Dr. Ben Kelly: But then other times of the year it might be like 50 or 55, just depends on what sports are in season, how many athletes are injured. The big variable with that is the outreach. You're pretty consistent 35 hours a week in the clinic. And this is the UW Health Sports Rehabilitation Clinic at the hospital there. So it's an outpatient setting.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Outpatient setting under the 30 minute. That's appointment based. That's more, Okay. So man, there's knowledge and wisdom in all of this. I like hearing that someone who comes out of at least this Wisconsin, and I bet it's like this in a lot of 'em residency program, they know how to grind. You only learn that by doing it. 80 hours is a crazy number. I've heard therapists complain about having 35 hours of treatment, or I've had therapists talk to me and say, it's taking me an extra hour or two on top of my 40 hours of treatment to do my notes.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Well, that's baked into the cake. And you'd learn that in residency. You better believe it's not gonna be 80 hours. But if you can show me that you've done 80 hours or 50 hours, you are showing me you know how to work. It's very similar to when I see therapists come across or apply for a job with us. And I see ATC on the background. I just know that you've worked your ass off before. You might not know the clinical stuff, but you've worked.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Absolutely.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. There's huge value in there. That are the big takeaways that you had from your research experience?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. I'll be honest, research, it was not my favorite element of the residency. And I think the main reason for that is I just felt like a fish outta water. We use a lot of Excel. I'm not great with Excel. But I think the positive of that is, one, I learned how to do it. I had some great mentors. And part of UW Health is you choose, you have the option to either choose a research or an outreach track. And it's supposed to be one is, heavier focused than the other. It didn't turn out that way. But I chose the research track because I'm, I have the opportunity to be around Brian Heiderscheit and Dan Kovian for the next year, the next 14 months, never gonna get this opportunity again.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And these people are super smart. I just wanna be around them. That's what I did. So, just being around them, I think you get an appreciation for the research process itself. You get an inside look into how it actually happens, how we go from collecting subject data and stuff like that to, this research article that you're reading and applying. So that's super helpful. But I think too, it kind of sets us up, for later in our career, when we, if there comes a point where we wanna transition into do more research, or maybe we wanna do some research and gen... It kind of gives us an overview of that process too.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. That's interesting. I never thought about that. What actually goes into that? How do you determine the question that you're studying? And then how do you make that process as clean as possible? I always wonder, when I sit through these journal clubs, which Dr. Race Hauser does an awesome job of it at True Sports, of just pooling some research, finding an interesting topic or study to examine. And then we pick that thing apart like crazy. On the other side, if you are the researcher, I'm gonna crap on your study if you have a small sample size. So what actually transpires to putting that together and what are some of the limiting factors that limit the hide shews of the world from putting together the absolute perfect study?
Dr. Ben Kelly: That's a good question. I'll try and answer it. I think my surface level understanding of research is probably gonna limit me here though. But I think a lot of it has to do with your subjects and who you have access to, and remembering that they are human. These aren't robots that you're testing, they're humans that are dealing with... In this case they're college athletes, who are dealing with anxiety, depression, traveling home, to see family. So I think there's a lot of limitations based on, who you can get, how you can capture them, how they've been documented or captured, in the past or before they even get to you, that kind of thing.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Because with us too, they have a huge hand in Badger athletic performance, or I should say like with athletics in general there but it's still a separate entity. The coaches and the trainers are doing one thing, and, sometimes it doesn't... It's not exactly how, Brian or Dan would do things, And so I think that might interfere with things, but there's, I think there's just a lot of elements at play when you're dealing with humans on this level.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Well, I think that makes a lot of sense. You bring up all these factors that we know can affect performance or output or ability. Things like sleep, things like nutrition, things like mental health that we know translate to the gym and performance metrics. And I can imagine it gets really convoluted and there are a lot of mitigating factors. It's worth taking that away when you're ripping apart a study to try to discern what is controllable, what's not, how can I take this and apply it to my patient, in Baltimore or in Florida, wherever you are. And what matters. So I think that's interesting. That's kind of eyeopening. So you've given us an awesome kind of overview of your Wisconsin experience. What do you wish you saw more out of your residency?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Oh, good question. My co-resident and I would always say we wish we saw more training room. As a physical therapist, I think treating someone acutely is something that's new to most of us, if we don't have that athletic training background. But it was so valuable to experience that, that I just wish that I had more training room. That's, every single resident gives that feedback in their outgoing interviews is, more training room. But it's a business and at some point, we got to pay the bills too. So it's a balance, I think, of how much, clinic treatment we can get and then also in the training room because we're not getting paid, while the athletic trainers or UW Health employees, we're not making the top pool of money being in the training room.
Dr. Ben Kelly: But I wish we could have more... If I could, I'd be in the training room every day. Just because you get so many reps in there that it's just so hard to replicate. You don't have the structure or the oversight that you do, the clinic where you're worried about, documenting. It's just the interactions are so much more, just ground level. And you're interacting with these high school athletes who are for all intents and purposes, trying to figure out who they want to be in life. And some of them think they're the coolest people in the world and others think that they're the exact opposite. And it's cool to just be a part of that journey with them from like a medical standpoint, I think.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah.
Dr. Ben Kelly: And the atmosphere in that training room was amazing. And I just wish we could have been in there every day for sure.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That's super cool. Along that training room experience that you got, I got an awesome question from a longtime buddy of mine, Haley Wong. She's an athletic trainer and she really wanted to know how is it that at a high level you handle acute strains and how you attack those things right after they happen from an intervention standpoint. Can you speak to that at all? Maybe some of what you saw, because I think it's unique that you see them really quick in that athletic training room. A lot of clinicians that simply practice in the outpatient sector aren't going to see those for a few days until they come in. Any insight on how you handle those?
Dr. Ben Kelly: First thing, stop stretching them.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Stop stretching. Stop stretching.
Dr. Ben Kelly: I can't tell you how many of these athletes come to me and they're like, ah, my hamstring's tight. I'm like, it's probably not tight, man. Stop stretching it. So that's I think the first thing is just kind of just getting that out there, that knowledge base. There's so much out bad information out there. There's that. One of the things that we really implemented here at Wisconsin, and Wisconsin has a pretty big like hamstring research base too, but one of the things that we started utilizing was like nerve glides and nerve flossing, especially for acute hamstring injuries and even in those first few weeks, with the idea that the hamstring is a muscle that when it gets injured, there's a lot of bleeding that occurs, which there's thought that, hey, maybe we can create some neuro-adhesions in there and then which could potentially contribute to chronic hamstring strains or which needs repairs, that type of thing. So I think that's one of the things we get them going on early.
Dr. Ben Kelly: But really that, I mean, obviously, we'll get them on isometrics pretty early as well. And that's one of the things that we utilized a lot on the field. Let's say, for example, you're trying to get, this is a big game, you're trying to get this guy to be able to finish the game. And he has maybe like a very mild grade one hamstring strain and, we're not worried about next week, we're worried about today. I think we would implement a lot of isometrics on the field as well versus stretching. Just kind of digging that heel into the ground or various positions, that kind of thing, and teaching them how to do it on their own in between drives, that type of thing. And then also just working above and below. If you're thinking if there's a muscle that's strained or you're thinking about what's happening on like a mechanical basis, you've got a tear there is pulling apart, hey, can we relieve tension of this muscle either, top side or bottom side, it's gonna reduce the amount of stress on that, through foam rolling, soft tissue, obviously very acutely and short acting, but hey, that could get someone through a drive.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah, yeah. So that's gold because what you're doing is you're treating not just the tissue, the offending tissue, you're treating the neuro-muscular system. And I think pulling that into play is worthwhile. That's your isometric. That's what you're affecting with the isometrics. You're affecting the brain's ability to contract that muscle and then looking more holistically, systemically. How do we offload it? How do we consider what the hamstring has to do? What the hamstring has to do, by the way, differs based upon joint angle. What is the knee angle? What is the hip angle, the two joints across is? And how do you tailor your intervention to that? Now you're talking about handling an entire athlete. And it goes back to what we first talked about, which is this system, the way we were put together and trying to understand it the best we can, and then tailoring our intervention to the way we know we were put together, as well as addressing that immediate or focal response of the actual hamstring tear. So well put, Ben Kelly. Thank you for handling that question. Let me hit you with our lightning rounds. So don't overthink these, Benjamin, okay? Just respond.
Dr. Ben Kelly: First thing that comes to mind.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Ready?
Dr. Ben Kelly: All right.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Have you ever had a tattoo removed?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yes.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: And what tattoo was that?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I feel like you knew that question before you...
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I didn't. I had no idea. By the way, you're the first patient I've ever had on this podcast.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Really? Interesting.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. So we can talk all about your gastrocs and your soleus from an in-depth standpoint, but I just bought you some time. What tattoo did you have removed?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I had the cursive Orioles O right on my thumb. So from obvious like right in there.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Right there. In the snuff box?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. The snuff box. Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: The snuff box. And are you gonna put it back somewhere now that they're amazing?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, seriously. I've waited my entire adult life for this. Well, I guess my entire life period.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Life. This is good.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Probably not. Probably not. I've thought about... No, that was when I was trying to decide if I was going to get that tattoo, that was the other place that I was thinking about getting it. Just like, thank God I didn't do that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Thank God you didn't do that.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. Because they couldn't remove it. The laser, it was so dark that the guy's like, this is gonna require like 15 laser treatments and it was $100 a piece. And oh, by the way, we gotta wait six weeks or so in between treatment. I was like, man, it's gonna take three years. Like this was to get into the Coast Guard. So I found a guy who does the Mohs surgery, like the skin cancer. And he was like, oh yeah, I'll cut that out for you. And he literally just traced it like a football, cut it out, sewed it together, so.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: That is gross. Are you missing any thumb mobility?
Dr. Ben Kelly: Thumb mobility is good. Little bit of numbness still over the incision site, but all things considered, I got away Scot clean.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: It's probably not coming back. That sensation is not coming back. Okay. What is the biggest misconception of residency?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I think the biggest misconception is that once you get in, you've made it. If you think about physical therapy, for a lot of people who are very interested in climbing that ladder, like in terms of education, like residency is a pinnacle in a sense. Obviously you can go on a fellowship and stuff like that. But so I think a lot of times the thought is, hey, the hard work has been done to get here. The hard work has been done to get into PT school. Then, it's harder to get into residency. Oh, I'm here. I made it, perfect. Let's just coast. And you can do that. But I mean, I think it's a huge mistake. You're there for a year and it may seem like a long time, but that year is gonna fly by. You can do anything for a year. And I think instead of having the idea of, hey, I've made it, I'm just gonna coast now, that's not the time to let off the gas. It's time to, I think, hammer down and just, for me, it was just taking every opportunity available. It's all right, long nights, not a lot of sleep. Your health suffers a little bit, but you know what? It's for a year. It's for a year and it's gonna pay dividends.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. Yeah. It clearly has. Okay. What athlete are you dying to have a beer with?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Good answer. Good freaking answer. And what's the first question you're asking that guy?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I wanna know, I wanna know the dynamics, like what was going through his mind when he was playing people like Roethlisberger, Jerome Bettis, people like that, because growing up a Ravens fan, I mean, that was the pinnacle of smash-mouth football. AFC North in the early to mid 2000s. And everything you hear about Ray Lewis was, he was this, not only this athletic specimen, but he was just as smart, if not, maybe that was his strength actually. So I wanna know kind of what was going on with him in on the field, his preparation, and you've heard some of that through media and stuff, but I'd like to hear it from him. That'd be cool.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I wanna know what happened in Atlanta. That's what I wanna know.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I also wanna know...
Dr. Ben Kelly: Maybe we'll get to that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Get to that couple beers in. I also wanna know how the hell he got back on a field, hitting grown men six weeks after rupturing and then repairing his triceps.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Do you really wanna know that though?
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: I do now. I do now because the whole curtain has been pulled back for me with professional sports. So yeah, I wanna know. And I wanna know what Mahomes did at halftime at the SuperBowl. And yeah, I wanna know the nitty gritty. And I think there's value in that. And I think it's... Otherwise we're fooling ourselves if we think...
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. If you think, he's just a very good healer, as they say.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: He's a good healer. He's a good healer. Yes. And Barry Bonds just got much stronger from 38 to 41 years old.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: But I wanna hear it.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Freak of nature.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: He's just a freak, right? He's just a freak. Okay. Last but not least, what is the best PT podcast out there not called the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I have been listening a lot to Danny Matta's, the PT Entrepreneur Podcast. I think it's, whether you wanna start a business or not, I think it's just good. It's different. It seems like most physical therapy podcasts are focused on treatment and stuff like that. But this is almost like marketing yourself in a sense. And I've talked about that a lot with some coworkers is, you look at chiropractor, for example, I don't know this for a fact, but I bet you a large chunk of their program is spent on business and marketing and self-promotion and stuff like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: They're good at it.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. And it shows. So I think, I've always said physical therapists are too nice. You know, it's kind of in our nature. We wanna help people, but in essence, that leads to us getting locked on a lot of times by insurance companies, by larger businesses, stuff like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: By doctors.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Physicians. Yeah. So I know that Danny doesn't really talk about that stuff in particular, but I like the topic of what he has in regards to kind of like self-marketing, stuff like that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. And I had him on the podcast and I would say my takeaway from that was his ability to connect, relate, explain, is top-notch. And I think that's what makes a good marketer. But he comes from a position, by the way, not so unlike yourself, he was a military guy and he had a lot of structure behind him and kind of being able to see this larger scale of what he's capable of, what the profession is capable of. I love hearing that in his pod. So I think that's a great recommendation. Go check out Danny Matta. Really, really a great resource. Just like yourself, Ben Kelly, you have been awesome. I am so impressed with where you are and where you're going. It's amazing to watch. It's amazing to see you.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Appreciate that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: You've always been a learner. And that motivates me. That motivates me to get better. And I think it motivated a lot of the people you came in contact with at True Sports. You're teaching a lot more than you're learning and you're learning a whole hell of a lot. So that's saying something, so.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Thanks. I appreciate that.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Benjamin Kelly, thanks for being here. Thanks for being on this pod. And I can't wait to see what the next few years hold for you 'cause it's gonna be awesome.
Dr. Ben Kelly: Absolutely. Yoni, I appreciate you having me, man.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah man, it's been a pleasure. As always, we want to hear from you. Hit me, TrueSportsPT on Instagram or shoot me a direct email. Yoni@truesportspt.com. I just wanna know how we did, what you thought of Ben Kelly and where can they find you?
Dr. Ben Kelly: I'm mainly on Instagram. It's coach.kelly.dpt.
Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt: Yeah. A great follow. There's great information that you're putting out there. So thanks to everyone for listening. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye.
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