My Story: Dr. Scott Gray

Well, welcome everyone to The Redefining Physical Therapy podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Gray. And so in this episode I want to kind of explain my origin story and like how and, uh, why I became a doctor of physical therapy, um, and kind of really look at what our end goal and the game is for this podcast and, you know, how to help, uh, physical therapists elevate their game with the orthopedic support and spine injury.

So, for those of you that don’t know, I was a high-performance divisional athlete. I played collegiate football at Butler University and I actually missed half of my college career from non-contact injuries.

And, you know, just like so many other physios that get into, uh, becoming a PT, they were fueled by a physical therapist. And so I went on this long route and so over a two-year period, I had four surgeries and, you know, I had tried seeing, you know, our athletic trainer. I tried seeing chiros, massage therapists, acupuncturists.

I was then tossed around from provider to provider in the medical model. You know, let’s cut on this and this. And it just didn’t really work, right? And so, I even tried seeing, you know other physical therapists and, you know, that didn’t work either.

And so that’s, not until I really saw a manual in orthopedic sport physical therapist that I was healed, right? And so, so many of these other providers were just looking at symptoms and really weren’t addressing the root cause of things.

And so, you know, I ended up going on after, uh, being healed from this, this doctor of physical therapy too, um, you know, becoming an all-conference running back and starting every game that season. And we actually went on to win, uh, 11 games that year and won a bowl game.

So, needless to say, you know, that’s kind of my reason why I’m starting this podcast because I know it can help so many people and other therapists. And so think that it’s our job as a therapist is providing cutting-edge and some proof evidence of our treatments.

And so I just don’t that in our area, uh, or field. And so, even when I first started practicing, I just, saw the disparity amongst therapists. So many therapists are doing cookie-cutter stuff. There’s no rhyme, reason, or logic-based on anatomy and biomechanics.

And so, this needs to change. And so what I’ve done is traveled the globe and learned as much as I can.

I spent over $200,000 of my own money learning from every camp and, you know, I quickly learned that all camps don’t have the answer. You know, McKenzie will tell you to do repeated motions, which is fine and it works for certain subgroups of populations, but it doesn’t really get to the root cause of it, you know, of most injuries, right?

And the same thing goes with, you know, um, anyone who does the FSMA, uh, which is good but doesn’t really sometimes assess and address the root cause of things as well, too. It’s missing things. Um, you know, people in the Shirley Sahrmann camp, great. They don’t put their hands on their people and can’t assess, like subcranial motion to see, you know, if there’s a stiffness subcranial spine, uh, that’s causing cervical spine to move too much at mid-cervical.

So, you know, that’s when I, you know, came to this conclusion that not all of these camps have the answers. And so you have to really take and blend, um, an eclectic approach to these camps. And, um, so over the, you know, this journey, we’re going to, I’m going to help educate, you know, clinicians with things that I have found that worked clinically.

I’m going to question things that don’t make sense to me. Um, you know, and I’m going to provide other resources and tools for you, as an orthopedic sport and manual physical therapist, to elevate your game, uh, so that you can help your patients and have a bigger impact.

So, um, again, this is my origin story as to why I became a doctor of physical therapy and this path that we’re on, um, to really help elevate the game physical therapists and doctors of physical therapy.