{{first_name}}, what a week it’s been! It had me so busy, that I didn’t get to write this newsletter until this morning. So if you find a few spelling mistakes… my apologies. Coffee just doesn’t seem to work the way it used to before kids. Now I understand.
Either way, there’s a new section titled Practical Research where I'm sharing a couple of articles that can change (improve) how you practice and communicate with your patients. Give it a read. The articles are linked below the section.
The Clinical Coach
Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome vs Tibial Stress Fracture
The Trap: Calling everything "shin splints" and letting the runner keep training.
Here is what happens in most clinics and most run clubs. A runner shows up with inside-shin pain, someone says "shin splints," and the advice is to ice it, stretch the calves, maybe get new shoes, and run through it. And for genuine early MTSS, that is not entirely wrong. But "shin splints" is a lazy label that flattens a spectrum into a single word, and the spectrum is the whole point.
Medial tibial stress syndrome and tibial stress fracture... Continue reading
Learn more about Bone Stress Injuries, their diagnosis and treatment in Dr. Kemps BSI course coming up mid-september!
Upcoming Dry Needling Courses
When:
Weekend 1: October 17-18, 2026
Weekend 2: November 14-15, 2026
Where: St. Charles, MO; location TBD
Total Hours: 60 hours
*Payment plans are available on the website.
Students and Professionals welcome to all our CDNP courses.
Practical Research
A new randomized clinical trial compared stabilization exercise alone with the same exercise combined with pain neuroscience education in 48 patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain. After six weeks, the combined approach produced greater improvements in pain and disability, alongside improvements in pain-related psychological measures and ultrasound measures of the transverse abdominis and multifidus.
What this means to your clinical practice: Persistent low back pain should not automatically trigger a search for a better exercise. Sometimes the barrier to progression is the patient's interpretation of pain. Fear of movement, catastrophizing, and the belief that pain equals tissue damage can reduce willingness to load, move, and return to meaningful activity.
Your clinical opportunity is to combine education with progressive exposure and loading. Explain why movement is safe, establish what symptoms are acceptable during rehabilitation, and then progressively rebuild the patient's capacity. Importantly, PNE should support exercise, not replace it. A new multidisciplinary low-back-pain consensus published this week similarly recommends PNE as part of multimodal rehabilitation, particularly when maladaptive beliefs, fear avoidance, catastrophizing, or reduced pain self-efficacy are present.
Research 1 and Research 2
TCC Business Corner
Made a mistake? Don’t dwell on it. Fix it and move on.
It’s easy to get caught up on the mistakes we made and dwell on them a little to long. I know because I’ve been there in the past.
Dwelling on these does two things for you. One, keeps you stuck in the past thinking about the what-ifs? Two, prevents you from taking action in the present.
If you are stuck on a past mistake, let it be. Learn from it. Have a plan to avoid it, and correct it, and move on. The worst thing you can do on a mistake, is to dwell on it longer than 15 minutes.
I had one of my mistakes catch up with me this week. It stung, but it was a mistake I should’ve handled a year ago. In the end we did the correct thing. I might’ve lost a couple clients for that mistake, but I learned from it, and it will definitely not repeat itself. I’ve already created the steps necessary to avoid a situation like that.
Yes, some mistakes will burn bridges, lose the trust of a client/customer, and even close some doors for you. You can’t dwell on that, your other 10, 100, 1000 clients will feel it.
You owe it to the rest of your clients to be present, give them the best you have, and to all your future clients, you owe them to fix your mistakes without them knowing.
That’s it for this week.
Keep showing up, I’ll keep cheering you on — and as always, level up! 🤙🏼
Dr. Kauffman and SmartCARE Education
P.S. Our upcoming STL Dry Needling Course is open for registration!! Don’t miss out!
