Interview With Tom Dalonzo-Baker, TMR Founder
Tom Dalonzo-Baker, MPT is the founder of Total Motion Physical Therapy. He has a Master’s in Physical Therapy from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master’s in Education fromWake Forest University, and a Bachelors in Business and Economics from Hawaii Loa College. He has completed over 400 hours of continuing education in manual therapy. He had an ‘ah-ha’ moment in 2002 that lead him to develop the first five foundational exercises (The FAB 5).
St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine had a chance to ask Tom a few questions.
St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine: What has been the best part of learning and teaching TMR to patients and clinicians?
Tom: What I like, is getting to see their mind set shift. They get to raise up to the idea that (their) belief has been; ‘I need to treat into injury, I need to treat on the injured side, I need to treat into restriction.’ And when all of a sudden, we go to the opposite side, and they see it works so quickly, they are dumbfounded. That’s probably the coolest thing to see that ‘ah-ha’ moment go off. ‘It’s like, ‘holy cow what I’ve thought so long, wasn’t necessarily correct!’ So that’s probably the neatest thing, planting those little seeds.
St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine: Who have you found TMR to work for?
Tom: TMR works for every setting of physical therapy. So, anything you are going to get done in physical therapy, obviously we are going to get done with TMR. St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine: What would you tell patients that are hesitant to return to physical therapy because they have not had relief or prolonged results with other traditional interventions (i.e. Manual therapy, exercise therapy, modalities, etc.)? Tom: I’ll ask the question, ‘when they treated you, did they treat you on the injured side mainly?’ Typically they say yes. Because of that, I can simply say look, did anybody ever try to go to the opposite side to fix this one? I say okay, cool. I am sure you went to some very skilled clinicians, but because you did not get better with those people, using that technique, this is a flip flop of it and you should get better. You have a very high chance at getting better. St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine: What should patients know about the Subscription Based format for ongoing learning and self-treatment using TMR? Tom: I was a teacher 25 years ago. What we have found is the best style of learning was called apprentice style learning. A little bit of instruction, a lot of doing time to get critiqued and get questions answered. So when you go to a therapist and they are explaining all of this stuff to you that’s great, if you can remember everything, but we only remember about 10% of the content. How cool is it to be able to go home and be able to review and rewind, and watch it 2-3 times. That is the ultimate type of learning and it will allow a person to apply something and implement something a heck of a lot quicker. That’s why we developed the subscription based format. You can now have access to what was learned in therapy at your fingertips 24/7. St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine: You have worked with clinics around the United States. Would you recommend patients come to St. Francis Rehab and Sports Medicine? What makes us unique from your point of view? Tom: My big comment is you go here, because they know how to do the traditional therapy, and they also know how to do the opposite sided stuff. They know the rules to make it happen. Most importantly, they know how to help you, help yourself.
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