Has it ever occured to you that stretching for pain relief can be one of if not the most effective solution for pain relief without drugs or surgery? Join me as I interview stretching mobility coach and founder Kim Nartker all about how stretching exercises and stretching can help provide pain relief and even be used as an alternative to drugs and surgery.
Kim’s Bio and Story
Over the last 20 years of working in the field of Physical Therapy, I recognized clients were caught up in a cycle of re-injury and reoccurring pain, and tightness that PT alone was unable to correct.
This traditional PT system gap, led me to create a comprehensive program called The Stretch Method® This new method would identify, and fix the root cause of A patient’s pain or tightness. This program not only resolves the pain, but also improves flexibility, and provides regeneration to heal the damage and recover fully.
This is the first program of its kind that provides long term relief for clients looking for care outside traditional PT, chiropractic and other wellness programs.
MY MISSION
To help you achieve pain-free living. So you can get back to living life on your own terms.
How a Stretch Mobility Coach Can Help You.
End the fatigue and get your energy back strategy session
Podcast Transcript
?Hello. This is Anna Laura Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab Podcast, where we explore ideas, solutions, and helpful hints to help you in your autoimmune healing journey. We strive to transform your health and inspire helping you so that we can help you with your emotional healing and self-care and some of your physical healing.
things like diets, that kind of thing, which you know, you would find on any kind of podcast on autoimmune wellness. Find all the episodes with show notes at autoimmunerehab.com and now without any further delay, let’s get started.
Hello ladies, and welcome to today’s podcast episode of Autoimmune Rehab. So today I’m really excited because I have with me Kim, who is a stretch mobility coach. I think that’s what you call yourself. Okay. So why don’t you start out, Kim, by going ahead and introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about who you are.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the show and to share what we have to offer to so many people that are listening in. I appreciate it. Sure. Absolutely. So yeah, stretch Mobility Coach is actually a licensed rehab professional and that designation is P T P T A O T O T A, or athletic trainer, and I founded the method.
My name is Kim Naer and I found it. It’s been trademarked, it’s registered, and it actually has physical therapy techniques in the actual registration. But it’s the method, which is the stretch method, which is not just the techniques, it’s the entire program, um, that actually. Preventative and wellness model that bridges that gap in the healthcare system that people are looking for.
That’s amazing. So how did you come up with that? I know part of your background is that you were a full on physical therapist before you created this method. What, like, what I guess, led you to create the method, or how did you come up with it? Let’s put it that way. Yeah, so I am actually a physical therapist.
I’m an assistant, I’m not a pt, but I own a physical therapy clinic in Westchester, Ohio, and it is an orthopedic physical therapy and wellness clinic. And in that clinic I have hired and trained physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, personal trainers, and licensed massage therapists to be able to offer specialized treatments that are more holistic than your traditional PT model offers. And next May I will be in business for 10 years. And in that 10 years I have spoken to. , every one of the clients that have come into the clinic in an effort to learn more about what they’re actually looking for. And, found out probably within the first year and a half that the traditional PT component of the outpatient clinic that I offered was not what they were looking for. It was the wellness component combined with the pt. And then with seeing that, I put my method together and, and the method is actually based on, I, I, my PT that was working for me and still works for me, but she also has a business of her own as a certified manual therapist.
So she is a PT but then took a program post PT school to become a certified manual therapist and her techniques. That she showed me I was able to take those techniques and put ’em in a sequence that was able to provide a results driven treatment program. Now I have a systematic brain, so when I see something time and time again and I put it into action, then I look into improving that.
So my clinic started as a back pain and sciatica clinic. So with her treatments and the way that I could put those together to get a result from someone who had arthritis, degenerative disc disease or stenosis, we actually found that with that combination we could actually get relief for someone that had stenosis within 12 visits.
Wow. So, and that means that person couldn’t stand up for more than five minutes at a time. And the PTs in our area would tell a client, you just have to go for surgery. So we expanded into, The cervical region, and now we’re all over the body. So in 2020 I actually stepped away and said, you know what, I, something in my gut says that people are not necessarily looking for PT services, and I own a PT clinic, so I’m going to let my PTs do the physical therapy.
I am going to call myself a stretch mobility coach, and from now on I’m not training my PTs on the method. They can just, what they come to me with, um, during hiring is what the PT people will get. They will get true pt. That’s just like any other pt. I’m going to call myself a stretch mobility coach, and I am going to take the method that I use, the systematic way that we use it.
And I’m going to provide stretch mobility coach services. And in two weeks my schedule was full. Wow. That’s amazing. . I was blown away and went out to my office manager and said, where did these people come from? What happened? And she goes, Kim, it was just, you know, me, just saying stretch mobility people.
We’re seriously not looking for PT Jill. So do you find in general, are most of your patients that come to you, have they had surgery already or are they trying to avoid surgery? What kind of situation in their life are they usually in? So we have found in just the two years that we’ve been doing this program that we have all ages.
We do have people that go and have surgery and then come in and say, I’ve been cleared from my surgery and now I never ever want to have surgery again. Please help me. Or we get people that come in and say, I won’t let a surgeon touch me with a 10 foot pole. And there’ve actually been a couple people.
We’ve had to say, you, you ha, you’ve let it go too. You have to go in for surgery, but right after you get, you know, finished with your rehab, come back in and we’ll make sure that we get you to where you need to go. Because when things are broken, they have something that has to be fixed. We have kids now, we have clients with Parkinson’s.
We have clients coming in that have cancer treatment and they still need flexibility, but they need someone skilled. uh, gosh, osteoporosis, we see so many different types of people. it would blow your mind. Well that’s amazing. And I know you addressed a little bit of it, so, but I’m assuming, so you know the difference between like the PT and the stretch, so I know with the PT it’s more of, you know, the therapist is there and they’re usually trying to make you do these exercises and they’re, you know, they’re making you do things like grab a rope and move back around stuff and making you stand up and you know, do the bike and all of this kind of, With the mobility stretch, I’m assuming it’s more of like a method where you are assisting the patient and actually stretching is.
A correct assumption or is there a little bit more to it than that? There is a lot more to that. . Okay. than that. . So here’s how I’ll explain it. So physical therapy and what we’re taught in school and what we provide to a customer through insurance-based care is what an insurance company will reimburse you for.
Mm-hmm. , um, is a reactive care system and what that means is someone comes in with pain or an injury. We get to provide care to get them out of pain. The problem with that model is that once the pain is gone, you don’t you, if you do not fix the problem behind why the pain occurred, you are not doing anything but.
Kind of sugarcoating and giving a short term benefit to a person in pain. And what we find is each year those clients come back in to see us. And in the therapy department, we just kind of go, you know, they’re non-compliant, it’s their fault. Right? It’s not our fault, it’s their fault that they keep coming.
I looked at that and went, wait a second. It doesn’t sound like to me it’s their fault. It sounds like to me as a therapist, we may not have the skill to do anything more than get them out of pain. Now we need to learn how to listen to a consumer and build a program that walks them through the pain.
To where we get to the root cause and to where we can then prevent it from coming back and keep people away from surgeries. That’s the area that we work in. So an analogy I use is traditional PT is like a firefighter. Your house catches on fire and the firefighter puts the fire out. But what are you left with when the fire is out?
Yeah. House that’s all burned up and got a lot of damage. Yeah. . So now you can’t live in that house. Yeah. So you know, a way for people to look at, what we do is we take that person who is, who is experiencing pain and or tightness. Through a program that decreases that pain or tightness, you know, figures out the root cause of the problem.
And then we not only work on that while, so, and that’s hands-on techniques, we’re testing them and we’re providing a hand-on technique that is our specialized techniques that includes physical therapy, um, principles. We improve mobility and then we improve stability. The deep stability where those muscles were not functioning anymore or they were compensating.
And then when we take that person from that point and we provide them with exercises that refire muscles that have been shut off, and we challenge the person with every treatment and move them up so that we have a combination. Us gaining mobility through our hands-on techniques. The client does some exercises to refire muscles, and then we give about a 10 or 15 minute home exercise program for them to do at home.
Okay. So that they maintain their results in between sessions. So typically for our clients, no matter what they come in for, we will see results in the very first visit. Well, they. Yeah, they will actually feel different in three visits, and then between six and 12 visits they will see major improvement.
Wow. That’s amazing because I know from my own experience, and I mentioned to this to Kim for a little bit as we were talking before we started recording, I actually had surgery on both of my knees this March, and then I went and did six weeks of physical therapy after my knee surgery, and I was still in a ton of pain.
Like the physical therapy didn’t really even fix my pain. It basically just made it so that I could actually move a little bit better. And the mobility factor because I, I mean there were some things when I went to physical therapy, they tried to make me do one, I couldn’t even do ’em cuz I was still in so much pain.
And it was like, yeah, . So I’m thinking, wow, this seems like this would be, you know, a much better alternative. You know, however, I am one of those people that I really do feel like surgery was a necessity. I, I’m actually gonna have to do stem cells in about a year because I was headed down the road of having to do total knee replacements.
And so what surgery did you have done, if we could ask? It’s called an orthopedic washout. So the surgeon goes in and cuts you open in both knees and they clean you out and they try to fix and repair any of your damage. and so I, yeah, I had pretty significant damage to my knees and was headed down the road of almost not, uh, basically having to do knee replacements on both my knees, but I was able to catch it in time that stem cells will probably fix it, and I won’t have to do that, but, You know, it’s one of those, here’s my concern and they’re be glad I had the pain because it warned me before it got to me too late.
You know, and it’s funny, pain guys is an indicator something’s wrong. It’s literally just a white flag for your body going, I’ve done everything I can, but I can no longer compensate for a problem that you need to get fixed. Um, so it’s interesting you said the type of surgery, so knees are one of the number one things that.
PTs really don’t look preventative at all, and, and I’m not discounted every PT out there. I’m just saying that. Oh, sure. Well, and the PT that I had was actually really good. I really can’t complain too loudly, but it just was not. , you know, and I definitely think it was helpful. I mean, I’m not sorry I won, you know, I don’t , I don’t think it was a waste of my time or money to go, but it was just not maybe as helpful as I feel like something that what you’re offering is so, you know, showing that out.
So yeah, the difference is we’re gonna take a person who is experiencing knee pain and we’re gonna look at, okay, the knee is a middle joint in between the hip and the ankle. Yeah. So we have to look at the back, the hip, the. And the ankle. And if you can take that pressure off of the knee for where the damage is occurring.
And typically it’s on the inside of the knee is where it first starts. Mm-hmm. . Yep. And, and if we can take that pressure off, and we usually can do that within two or three treatments for a knee, and then we have to change and work on, okay, what is causing that pressure to happen? Causes that rubbing to occur.
And then what arthritic damage is present. Um, is it the, is it too much arthritis to where we have to do some regeneration and our regeneration’s a deep thermal laser? Um, I haven’t found a knee that we can’t help not have surgery and not have to spend $5,000 on stem cells. Yeah. That’s interesting.
Yeah, mine is pretty significant. Arthritis damage. Yeah. So I’ve seen ’em to where, I mean, the one knee is much more huge than the other man. They don’t have to, that’s what happened to me too. Yeah. And they don’t have the mobility. They can’t keep it straight. Yep. And we can still get them pretty straight.
We’ve got a guy right now that, um, he had, he, he did regenerative care. Our regenerative care for the laser is $450, so it’s not. As much as the stem cell or surgery. Um, and then his knee, we’ve probably done four treatments on and he is going up and down the stairs, not holding on as much right now. Um, so he’s doing really well.
And then we have another lady, and this is just recently we have another lady that came in and, um, the PT told her she could not wear her heels anymore. Um, and that her knee was so bad that she had to have surgery. And she spoke with me at an event and she came in and it’s been five treatments, um, and she has zero, zero knee pain.
And is wearing her heels without any problems. Yeah, and see I have almost no more pain anymore unless I walk really long distances. You know, if I try to run a marathon, I’m sure I’m gonna have some pain. But , I’ve been able to successfully, for the time being, get rid of 90% of my pain now, so. So that’s good.
But can you get on and off the floor? And pick something up. Yep. Like get down on your knees and go back up. Yep. Good. I actually can. Wonderful. So what we do with people who have had surgery already is our goal then becomes, you know, okay, let’s get as much mobility as we can and as much stability as we can so that we can now prevent that knee replacement.
Yep. I actually dropped something on the floor the other day and had to get down on my knees to pick it up, and I actually couldn’t even do that for probably like three years before the surgery. I mean, I was having knee issues for a long time before. Mm-hmm. , it totally escalated into major issues and now I can do it, you know, I mean, it’s not the most comfortable thing.
I don’t love being on my knees for a really long period of time, like with yoga or things like that. I can definitely do it. Whereas I couldn’t even do it before at all. So That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So yeah, it’s good. But yeah, that’s why I say it’s, that’s, I am sure you are busy, busy, busy. And I know you mentioned that you’re gonna be opening up more locations, and I’m sure people working at those locations are gonna get busy too.
Yeah, we have, um, so we have three locations. So my program, I am an affiliate. I offer an affiliate program. So any business out there, like a medical office or Cairo office or PT office, or a gym that wants to offer stretch mobility coach services, can buy into the affiliate program and open their own business.
And that affiliate is just an affiliate license. It’s not a franchise. Um, and they can open a clinic and then I train the stretch mobility coach. For them to hire in their clinic in an effort for us to spread this around us. And currently we have three other businesses. Um, one is in Canton, Ohio, besides Westchester, of course.
One is Canton, Ohio, one is, um, Pennsylvania. She’s in Lehigh Valley, and then another is in Louisiana. Um, and he’s gonna be opening his, um, his mobile in, um, Baton Rouge area. Cool. That’s awesome. Well, I’ll have to see if I can, uh, come up with somebody that might be interested in my area. I mean, I actually even think potentially my orthopedic might even be interested because he’s very into a lot of holistic stuff and he actually does the stem cells himself, which is kind of amazing because a lot of orthopedic surgeons don’t do stem cells and a lot of the holistic stuff.
They just, yeah, absolutely there. Just like, you know, and he, in fact, he doesn’t even do knee replacements anymore because his patients all get better with stem cells. He doesn’t have to. That’s, well then he is a person he’s willing to really mm-hmm. only do surgery when it’s necessary. And I think in a perfect world, he’d probably rather just do other things and not do surgery
So I don’t blame him. Yeah. So he’d be a great one, um, to be an affiliate for it. And it’s kind of like a business in a box just incorporated into his practice. And then we would try, we would find a stretch mobility coach in the area. Train them and then, um, he would hire them. And from what we’re seeing, it takes probably three or four months to get them full.
And then they’re wanting to hire another person depending on the area. And you know how many people. Yeah. So I’ll have to, next time I talk to him, I’ll have to just see what he thinks of it. But, you know, if it doesn’t work out with him, I’m sure there’s, you know, you’ll, you’ll eventually find somebody.
Cause it’s, yeah, I can see that being, I can see that being a really, really good thing. So, yeah, I’m really glad to have had the chance to talk to you. So let me see. See, um, I think you’ve covered a lot of these questions I was gonna ask. Let’s see, so, oh one, how about this one? What do you think the very first thing is that somebody should either know or do if they’re thinking about coming to you for stretching?
What are some of the, I mean, it’s maybe even one or two things that somebody should really know or do before they get started with doing the stretch. So I’m gonna back that up a little bit and everybody jokes me because I say that because again, your body, when it signals tightness mm-hmm. or pain and tightness is usually that first signal you kind of get up in the morning.
If, and if I use a, a back, a low back being an area, some people will wake up in the morning and go, eh, my back is a little stiff. But when I get moving around, it starts feeling. . Mm-hmm. , that is your first sign that you probably have arthritis in the lumbar spine. And typical symptoms will be, um, you can’t walk as far or you fatigue pretty easily or, you know, after you, um, do some gardening or do some.
Things that you don’t do on a daily basis. Maybe you go to bed that night and you don’t sleep well and you think, ah, maybe I need to get a new bed . But what is happening is that arthritis in the back that grows, it’s a bony growth that’s inflammation and it grows in between two vertebrae. And most of you’ve heard of L four and L five.
Yeah. And so, So the arthritis grows in between the facet joints and the vertebrae, and there’s a disc in between there and some nerves that go off on the back. So you’ve got three, two, and one. So four and five is usually the first one. That has a problem because we stand or sit and don’t decompress that area.
Okay? So that’s the area that has your first initial signs of, um, arthritis, degenerative disc disease, and stenosis. So if you have tightness and it goes away, that’s already your body telling you in the very beginning. I just wanna tell you there’s a problem. Well, that’s good to know because that, now that you’re saying that, I think I’ve probably had arthritis in not just the knees, but the back for, I don’t know if I had it for 12 years.
it totally can. Well, more than longer than I had, you know, severe knee issues, , you know, so it, it’s interesting you say that because we are getting more and more people that are now going. They’re going to stretch labs and zones and things like that because they feel like, well, maybe I just needs to be stretched out because I’m a little tight.
And then they’re coming to us and going, well, that didn’t give me what I thought it was gonna give me. I’m hoping you are my stopping point. And those people are not taking as many treatments as someone who comes to me who already has stenosis and has pain and can’t stand for more than five minutes because those people.
Quickly unlock the joints through our hands-on techniques, refire muscles, and they see much faster results. So if you have tightness and you feel that way in any of your joints, not just your back seeking care, from a stretch mobility coach can actually render benefits within maybe five or six treatments.
And then they can put you on a maintenance program that’s pretty inexpensive. Then they just do some hands-on techniques once a month just to make sure things are not locking down. And then they give you a couple of little exercises that are easy to do to prevent you from having to head out for surgery.
That’s awesome. I love that. So what um, would you say that people should do if, you know, obviously you’re looking on growing, expanding, but there’s gonna be a lot of people listening to this that don’t have access to a stretch mobility coach at this point because you know, you’re not everywhere . Yeah.
Right. What should somebody that’s in a situation where they don’t have access to one, what would be some of the other options that they could explore that. I think it would be recommended. So you can always, so we can do a video call and those video calls with a stretch mobility coach will actually go through some testing, um, things that we can do on you and then we can prescribe.
What you can do on your own. Now, you don’t get the hands-on stuff, but we do have many different tools in our toolkit to where you get better than what you would get if you didn’t see anyone at all. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. So you are doing virtual to the extent that you can do virtual? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. . Okay. Mm-hmm. . That’s awesome. That’s amazing. Okay, so what, is there anything else you want to share with us before we have you tell us how to connect with you? All that good stuff. Um, I, I would say that if you have any question, it has to do with your muscle musculoskeletal system, whether it’s stiffness, tightness, fatigue, um, any symptom that is a musculoskeletal symptom, then reach out to a stretch mobility coach or reach out to us and ask those questions before you head over to a surgeon.
So that you can start at least getting some sort of preventative mindset going. That’s awesome. I love that. Okay, and remind us what your website is and we will have her website and I believe, I don’t know what socials you’re on, but we will have all of that stuff linked below in the descriptions a little.
You’re listening and go find the description box and check those out too. Yeah, absolutely. So the website is the Stretch mobility coach. Com and that is our national website. If you wanted to take a look at what we do at Westchester, it’s the stretch mobility coach.com/beckett. We’re on Instagram and Facebook as the stretch mobility coach, and if you don’t pull up mine, you may pull up one closer to you in those three areas that I said.
If you happen to be a rehab professional and you’re looking to become a stretch mobility coach yourself, then I have a podcast that is Rehab to Wellness Boss podcast. Um, and then I also have a YouTube channel. Um, and that’s just talking to rehab professionals. Um, let’s see, what else do we have? and anytime you have a question, literally it doesn’t matter where you are, you can text our office at, the Beckett office and that number is 5 1 3 8 7 4 8 8 0 0.
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