Head to Toh Physical Therapy

Head to Toh Physical Therapy I help active adults resolve the root cause of their pain and live the active life they desire.

Are you ready to overcome the pain or injury holding you back from living the active life you want? At Head to Toh Physical Therapy we empower adults in Colorado Springs, CO with the assistance, knowledge, and guidance they need to stay active without wasted time or money.

05/21/2026

What you believe is the ultimate X factor in pain experience.

Does this mean mechanics and inflammation don’t matter. Absolutely not. They do.

But belief explains why pain is rarely purely mechanical or predictable and behaves in ways that don’t appear to make sense.

And to me the biggest thing is to consider the lies you have been sold, probably by a doctor unfortunately, that is keeping you in pain.

Your alignment may have nothing to do with your pain. Your hip shift, that labral tear, meniscal tear, osteoarthritis, or even strength or flexibility may not have anything to do with your pain.

The body can heal. It is resilient. It is adaptable. We are living vibrant Incredible beings.

In my opinion, the beauty of a movement approach is empowering you by giving you the power to take control of pain.

If you truly start to believe that and put in into practice, it can change your life.

I’ll keep shouting this message until I die. Because SO many people desperately need to hear it, and believe it.

05/18/2026

This is just a concept. It’s not full proof. Pain is complex and something we continue to learn about.

But this is a general way I conceptualize it for myself and my patients that I believe is as close to true as we know, and helpful in deciding on how to treat it.

Mechanical vs. chemical.

Pain that is mechanical is generally easily reproducible and has a clear movement or positional pattern.

Pain that fluctuates without clear pattern can potentially be inflammation mediated.

Then there is nervous system sensitivity which can exist alongside both of those things, or independent of them.

Understanding these concepts informs how we decide to treat pain in a way that is logical and strategic.

Let me know if you have questions or thoughts!

05/15/2026

It would be nice if we could always pin the cause of pain or injury on one very specific thing.

It would be so easy to fix. And I get it, our brains like simplicity.

But very often, pain that happens especially as gradual onset or chronically over time is influenced by a multitude of factors.

This is really important to consider because if we wrongly assume it was the technique on that one single rep, or that one different exercise, or that one slight “wrong movement” it can negatively inform how you address the issue.

Often I see people blame their pain on 1 single exercise or bad movement that often creates an innacurate hyper focus on said movement, and often an avoidance of said movement. For example, I hurt my back doing deadlifts, let me never deadlift again. Clean, cut and dry. But then they never deadlift again. And maybe that’s okay. Or maybe they progressively get a weaker back that gets more and more susceptible to injury, because they have become too afraid to challenge it.

Of course, there are many instances in which there is 1 very clear cause of pain like you sprain your Ankle or your knee gave out.

But even in those instances, what was happening for the weeks to months prior in the way of training volume and lifestyle habits often can make a person more susceptible to acute injuries as well.

So I find it is always valuable to zoom out.

Consider your training volume over the past weeks to months. Consider your other lifestyle habits and overall health and wellbeing.

If you bypass those and try to focus on just one simple mechanism, you might be missing the forest.

And this is important because if we can understand the cause better, we can approach treatment and prevention in a more holistic and informed way that addresses all relevant factors.

05/14/2026

TKE which stands for terminal knee extension is a common knee rehab exercise and a worthy one that works on end range knee range of motion and strength into that position.

If I’m looking for a little more juicy quad pump and quad strength is on the menu for the person, throwing in sissys with it is a nice one.

Sissy squats can be pretty intense on a freshly bothered or newly injured knee. So that tends to come in either mid or late stage or for more chronic issues where blasting the quads is what’s called for.

And yes if you haven’t heard, your knees won’t explode if you let your knees go over your toes. It’s a very normal motion and a very helpful motion to train to build robust knees.

As with most other things it just comes down to dosage and what you are ready for. Don’t be afraid of the knees over toes, but yea of course we take an individualized approach and make sure it makes sense for the person at the given moment.

Love helping our people overcome pain and get back after it in their sports even stronger than before!
04/24/2026

Love helping our people overcome pain and get back after it in their sports even stronger than before!

04/23/2026

I’s, T’s, and Y’s are a solid shoulder rehab stable for working the posterior shoulder rotator cuff and scapular muscles in varied planes of motion.

Standing with a band is an easy alternate that is effective but I generally prefer getting horizontal with a weight as this keeps you more honest.

But these ballistics are a nice progression when we want to start incorporating a little speed and stretch reflex at end range stretch, combined with a sustained hold at the opposite shortened range.

This helps work on a different type of speed coordination and familiarizing the muscle/tendon/joint to a little fast stretch and reflexive contraction.

I almost always start I’s, T’s and Y’s quite light to see good coordination and control. A little heavier for this than you would normally do is nice to get the weight to pull you into the stretch a bit more. I’m just using 5’s here.

That type of faster and reflexive muscle activity is common in sport and often worth pursuing in training.

Both intensity and volume matter a lot in training and in sport and life.We all know too much weight can get anyone.But ...
04/14/2026

Both intensity and volume matter a lot in training and in sport and life.

We all know too much weight can get anyone.

But I find that volume is a sneaky one that gets people a lot, especially outside of the gym.

The answer is not "just rest".

Its about training smarter, and that includes what you do for fun.

Its about being aware of how physical stressors affect your body in different ways and how your body recovers and adapts from said stressors.

This is what good rehab is all about.

It is understanding and applying sound training principles and listening to your body along the way.

04/08/2026

Most people I see with chronic lower back pain are either afraid of or unable to do deadlifts.

Fist things first, DEADLIFTING IS NOT BAD FOR YOUR BACK.

In fact on the contrary, it can be one of the best things you can do for your lower back.

As with anything, overdoing it and not training smart can lead to problems. But with a solid plan, it can be an absolute game changer for people with lower back pain, and also to help prevent injury by making your back strong af.

The pattern i see typically starts with some sort of lower back injury and initially avoiding bending over and lifting things.

While this strategy can be helpful in the short term, what I see happen is long term they lose the ability to do it.

They lose the mobility, the strength, and the confidence to do it, all the while further sensitizing their nervous systems to it.

Often times this leads to a more global loss of fitness and strength. But interestingly sometimes I see people still have relatively strong legs and can squat, lunge, or leg press pretty heavy weight, but completely avoid the deadlift and essentially learn to work around it.

And often that can work ok for awhile, but it can be quite a large point of vulnerability and lead to unexpected flare ups from stuff in the gym or life.

The deadlift is arguably an extremely functional movement pattern. Being able to pick things up off the floor is a very foundational task in life.

So I find that the deadlift is an incredibly powerful tool to help people get out of that rut, overcome the fear of bending and lifting, and have an incredibly robust spine to withstand life and sport.

If you need help forming a solid plan with it, reach out.

04/07/2026

Accelerate, decelerate, accelerate.

This is a great plyometric drill for ankles, knees and hips, and for hoopers.

I’m taking a little time with the turnaround, but you can also do it faster with a “hot lava” cue and bounce real fast off the ground for a more true Plyo.

Work on this drill if you want the Euro Step in your bag.

ballislife

04/01/2026

Acceleration. Deceleration. Cutting. Change of direction. Jumping. Landing. And doing that all as fast and explosively as you can.

Shooting hoops hits it all.

My 2 favorite ways to hit 3s is coming around a screen off baseline, and the step back.

Both involve quick acceleration, deceleration, and into acceleration again (on the shot).

Don’t ask me how many misses I edited out 😉

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Colorado Springs, CO
80917

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