David Reavy is a Chicago-based physical therapist who has worked with some of the biggest names in sports, including Dwyane Wade, Gilbert Arenas, Matt Forte and Tracy McGrady. Two seasons ago, his hands-on work allowed Alshon Jeffery to play through an entire NFL season with a torn rotator cuff and win a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles.
On Wednesday, Reavy will speak about athlete health and recovery at SportTechie’s Accelerating Change event in Chicago, which is being held in conjunction with the NFLPA on the eve of the new NFL season. (The doors open at 2:30 p.m., and a few tickets are still available. Forte will give a separate talk from an athlete’s point of view.)
To preview our event, SportTechie caught up with Reavy to give you an insider’s look at what pro athletes go through in order to get their bodies right—and to understand why some struggle after their bodies have been knocked out of alignment. “An injured athlete will have moments of greatness but will be inconsistent. We can take them out of pain and increase their performance,” says Reavy, the founder of React Physical Therapy and the Reavy Method. “You can make so many changes to the human body that most people don’t realize.”
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SPORTTECHIE: We focus on athlete performance and the technology that monitors their output. You work on world-class athletes with your hands. What’s the most important thing you know that tech might miss?
DAVID REAVY: What’s amazing about athletes is their ability to compensate for a long period of time before they get injured. So a lot of times athletes just play hurt and that’s just normal for them. A lot of them don’t believe that they can get out of pain. If I don’t need surgery, then I’m good to go. Well, the reason you’re having pain is because of all these muscle imbalances. And that’s the reason why an athlete can jump out of the gym but can’t stand on one leg. If you can put that body back in balance, they can produce unbelievable things. And so to me, the LeBron James and the Bo Jacksons, that should be the norm for these guys, because that is them using their body properly.
When athletes come in to see me, they will often have swelling in their joints but no pain. A normal person who has swelling in their joints can’t walk, or can’t even get out of bed. These guys can just deal with it and play that way until something breaks or until it tears. Their ability to feel pain is different than our ability to feel pain, which is a gift and a curse. If you can correct those muscle imbalances early on, you can prevent a significant injury. If you have all your muscles firing, they produce more force and absorb more force.
SPORTTECHIE: Muscles firing? Can you explain that like we’re five?
REAVY: If you squeeze your bicep, you should feel that muscle contract. If you squeeze your glutes, you should feel a really good squeeze. That means it’s firing. You should be able to contract every muscle individually, and then you should be able to contract your muscles together. Think of muscles as chains, that’s what proper sequencing is.
People have to understand that proper sequencing matters immensely. Because when you push off, it’s not just one muscle doing the work. The position of your bones dictates how the muscles work. So, if you put your bones in a bad position, your muscles won’t fire properly. If you cut and lean too far forward, then your hamstrings overwork, and you can pull your hamstring. We see a lot of baseball players run to first base and pull a hamstring. That shouldn’t happen. The problem is they’re sitting on the bench and then they get up and are expected to do an explosive movement. Sitting puts your pelvis in a wrong position if you’re sitting for a prolonged period of time. The more that we sit, the worse off that we are.
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I believe the pelvis is the foundation of your body because that’s the biggest bone structure. Over 60 different muscles attach to the pelvis. So if you don’t move your pelvis properly, you’re going to have a lot of muscle imbalances. When you do an exercise, you should feel that muscle work. When you ride a bike, for instance, you should feel your whole leg working—calves included. And so if one muscle is overworking, that starts to create a muscle imbalance.
Your body tells you your story. Pay attention to it. If you don’t feel a muscle working, it’s not working. Understand your body. Movement is very important for people. Look at the best athletes in the world: they make things look easy, because their bodies moves properly.
SPORTTECHIE: How do you find these imbalances? What do they look or feel like? Are they evident in just the training room or on the field?
REAVY: You have active and passive insufficiencies. Active insufficiency means the muscles are too tight. Passive insufficiency, the muscles are too long. So everything works better when your body is in neutral. Muscle imbalances are when your body is not in the right position. You can catch imbalances by looking at movements. If an athlete can’t squat properly, they’re not using their biggest muscles together. The best functional performance is being able to use your biggest muscles together—your lats, your abs, your glutes.
A lot of athletes take multiple steps to make a cut; that means they can’t produce enough force to cut on one leg—and professional sports is a game of inches, it’s a game of separation. The more separation you can create, the more open you are as a receiver or a running back.
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And athletes taking plays off. That’s how you know when their bodies aren’t feeling right. When athletes feel great, they take no plays off. They’re working hard from start to finish. But when they’re starting to take plays off, then their body doesn’t feel right, so they start saving themselves for something else.
On defense, you have to be able to react to someone’s movement. So if you can’t play defense or you can’t react to someone’s movement, that means you’re tight and you have some type of muscle imbalance. So those are telltale signs that your body’s not working properly.
In endurance sports, your muscle imbalances come out more. Once runners start slouching forward, your body is compensating. They’re fatigued, they’re done. Stop running. You’re going to hurt yourself. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
SPORTTECHIE: Is it just a matter of resting? Or how do you “reset” the body? This plays into the idea of load management and players missing games…
REAVY: Professional athletes are like racecars. They need pitstops and the pitstops should take care of them properly. If you have a muscle imbalance and then you train on that muscle imbalance, you’re just creating a further muscle imbalance. You have to correct that imbalance first and then train properly. If you can’t move properly without weights, you shouldn’t be adding weights to your workouts. The first step is moving properly, the next step is doing resistance bands, and the third step is adding weights. If you can’t lift properly, you’re doing all these explosive movements in an imbalanced fashion, which means you’ve created more harm than good by reinforcing the imbalance.
Recovery is huge for people, and I think taking people out of pain is the ultimate form of recovery. You need to start listening to all these nagging injuries. This culture of playing through pain? Listening to nagging injuries and getting them corrected can prevent a big injury later.
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When muscles get too tight, they shut other muscles down and throw your bones out of alignment. And the position of your bones will dictate how the muscles works. So if you can’t put your bones into the right position, then your muscles aren’t going to work properly. Body awareness is huge, and if you’re not aware of your body—if you can’t balance on one leg or if you can’t squat properly—that changes the way you move. A lot of sports create muscle imbalances. If I’m throwing, I’m doing the same thing over and over again. So in the weight room you have to correct that.
But if you go into the weight room and you lift wrong, you’re just creating more of a muscle imbalance. When you go back on the field, you’re going to break down faster. It’s the job of your trainers and your physical therapists to make sure that you don’t have any muscle imbalances. I think athletes of the previous generations were able to play longer because they didn’t have their muscle imbalances come out, because they weren’t training wrong. Now, if you look at Instagram, everyone’s a “trainer.” But are you doing the right things? Understanding biomechanics and how the whole body works together will produce less stress on the body … We have to get more balanced—and then get stronger. I think the current norm is, “Oh, you’re getting stronger. You’re fine.” But if your glutes aren’t coming to the party, something’s going to break. It’s just a matter of time.
SPORTTECHIE: Posture seems to be a huge factor?
REAVY: People need to understand that there’s a big connection between performance and the way you look. A lot of professional athletes have great posture. And the people that don’t have good posture, they have a “forward head” and get hurt. So when your head comes too far forward in front of your body, your posterior chain becomes lengthened—and now it becomes passively insufficient and shuts down your glutes, shuts down your legs. If you’re looking at your phone all day, your body gets put in a forward position. All that stuff matters.
Kevin Durant has a significant “forward head.” He needs to correct his posture and he needs to get those muscles to fire together. If your head is not in the right position, that means your spine is not in the right position. If your spine isn’t in the right position, you have muscle imbalances. Athletes are able to compensate for a long period of time. Durant’s advantage is he’s tall; he has long levers and longer levers can produce more force. But if you look at his issues, they have not corrected his muscle imbalances because he keeps getting hurt. If they don’t fix his posture and get his muscles to fire properly, then he won’t be—if you look at everybody that has come back from an Achilles, they haven’t been the same. I would look at his pelvis first, his hips, and I would touch his foot last.
SPORTTECHIE: You’ve said that athletes have the ability to compensate, meaning all of their muscles don’t need to be firing properly in order for them to be great athletes. Is there a point where that starts to change?
REAVY: Athletes are great at compensating, they’re the best compensators in the world. That’s why they’re athletes. Around 25 or 26 is when professional athletes can’t compensate the same way—you see a lot of transition at that age, or they’re not the same player anymore. But why are some players able to play 20 years and other players can only play one? It’s survival of the fittest. If you get hurt in high school, you’re done. If you get hurt in college, you’re done. You get hurt in the NFL, you’re done. It’s the next man up. And so how long can your body withstand?
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If you can’t move properly, that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter how much force you can produce. You can squat 300 pounds halfway? No! This is the way I look at it: little kids can play 10 hours of basketball with string-bean legs and no muscle on their bodies. It’s not because they’re young: it’s because they have proper joint mobility. That’s what creates and absorbs force. If your joints don’t move, you’re not absorbing force properly. Most professional athletes can’t balance on one leg. They’re all messed up.
SPORTTECHIE: One of the athletes who keeps jumping to mind is New York Yankees outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who seems to embody the injury-prone label. He hasn’t appeared in a big-league game since 2017. Do you think some guys just get hurt so often that their careers can’t be salvaged?
REAVY: I completely disagree with that. The reason they get hurt is because of a muscle imbalance, unless it was a contact injury. You land on someone’s foot, fine. But you still have to make sure the body is back in alignment. I see all these injuries that are easy to fix. Everybody talks about active recovery and releases, but there’s an order to it. People don’t understand the reflexive order of the body. Do you grind your teeth? Do you have headaches? That plays a huge role in performance. People just don’t realize that.
All of these noncontact injuries can be prevented. Everyone is trying to do the right thing. Everyone has the best intentions in mind. But at the same time, they’re not looking at the body holistically. You have to be systematic in your approach. I created a system that tells you how to treat the body and put the body back in the line.
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You can take an athlete who was a great athlete—who is like 50% of what he used to be—and turn him back into a great athlete again by getting him to move properly. There was a time when these guys were great athletes. Then they either over-trained or got hit the wrong way, and their bodies came out of alignment. I have a proven methodology that works with all my athletes. There’s nobody that hasn’t gotten better. I got people back who thought they’d never get back. When athletes come out of alignment, they compensate until they can’t anymore. Something’s wrong; if you talk to them about what they can’t do, then you can fix that and correct their muscle imbalance.
SPORTTECHIE: In broad strokes, most of the wearables that athletes use measure either rest and recovery or speed and strength—exertion versus recuperation. But you’re saying that’s not exactly the balance that matters the most, right?
REAVY: When you just rest, the weakest link isn’t getting stronger and the alignment of your body isn’t changing. The season does take a toll, but what are you doing to prevent it from taking a toll on your body?
If you’re not a big stickler with form, then you’re doing it wrong and you’re creating greater muscle imbalances. If you don’t feel the right muscle when you work it, you’re creating greater muscle imbalances. Pain is not normal, but pain is a good thing. Pain tells you that something’s wrong. If you’re able to feel your body and use it properly, you won’t have pain.
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If you have a chemical imbalance or hormonal imbalance in your body, you have something wrong with it, right? If you have a muscle imbalance—people need to talk about this more— that means you have something wrong with you. Correcting that muscle balance is going to make you feel better, look better, and change the way you perform.
SPORTTECHIE: If you could get the brightest tech minds in a room to develop an app, what would you tell them?
REAVY: People need to start thinking more about how their muscles don’t fire properly. Athletes have the ability to compensate, so everyone thinks, Oh, you can lift a lot of weight, you’re fine. So, how do you create an app that tells you that you’re using your muscles properly? I don’t know; that’s a great question. I think tech is great, and collaborating with medical professionals would be very helpful in establishing the right data points to help with this recovery system. But I think people’s hands are more important than the tech right now.
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