Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Jennifer Reed.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was first exposed to the wonderful career of physical therapy in high school as an elite soccer player. Unfortunately, I badly injured my knee when I was 17 and needed surgery. I tore my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and had nine months of physical therapy to prepare for my freshman season as a collegiate soccer player. Although this injury was devastating and took me away from the sport and life that I loved, I learned so much about myself, the power of the human body and mind, and the value of connection and guidance from my therapist in this experience. I came back stronger both physically and mentally, and was ready to take on the world of college soccer!
Unfortunately, I repeated the same injury on my other knee during my senior year of college. It was like deja vu, but my rehab experience went much differently, and I didn’t have the same time and caring attention during my physical therapy. Even though I had been through this experience just 4 years earlier, my knee did not heal nearly as well as the first time around. This showed me the extreme value of high-quality physical therapy. It became my mission to ensure that people felt heard, cared for, and valued in their experience recovering from an injury or medical event.
I quickly found that working as a physical therapist in a typical clinic presented many challenges to fulfilling this mission. In my first few years practicing as a physical therapist, I saw several patients who felt misunderstood and rushed in their interactions with their healthcare providers, didn’t have a clear idea of why their pain wasn’t improving, or why they weren’t able to get back to the lifestyle they loved.
I found that too often we were simply putting a band-aid on things and not getting down to the root cause, because we simply didn’t have the time to take our care a step further. I knew I could offer a higher quality service, especially to those who had been struggling with the same injury year after year, or continued to feel their pain worsen. So I decided to break the traditional mold and open my practice, Made Strong Physical Therapy & Wellness, right after moving to Colorado in 2020. It was a challenging time to start a business, but I knew that jumping into this adventure was the right move for me, my career, and my future clients.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Wearing all of the hats of a small business owner is not something I learned in physical therapy school, and starting a business during the pandemic brought additional obstacles. I have had to be open to learning the world of business I didn’t know, and step out of my comfort zone in communicating with other businesses and prospective clients.
It has taken a lot of resilience, personal growth, and mentoring to get to where I am now, but it has been 1000% worth it. I’ve learned to enjoy this process of growth and overcoming challenges, and can relate this to the process my clients go through with their physical therapy. The road to success, personal growth, or recovery from pain or an injury is not linear, so it takes learning to acknowledge and respect those ups and downs to stick with it!
We’ve been impressed with Made Strong Physical Therapy & Wellness, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I see those who want an elevated experience in physical therapy, specifically in understanding the drivers of their pain, and are motivated to keep that pain from returning and prevent injury in the future. I love working with complex cases that may have other healthcare providers stumped and working together with my clients to create a customized plan that is right for them and their bodies.
Most importantly, this looks like having quality TIME together in our sessions and making sure nothing is left unsaid. Overcoming pain or a recurring injury is no small task. It can make a huge impact on your life, and working with someone you trust and feel understood makes a big difference.
This also looks like working on optimizing movement patterns specific to your body and goals and correcting habitual compensation patterns that may have contributed to injury in the first place. By functionally addressing these things, you can come back in a better place than before you got injured, since you will also be preventing that underlying cause from repeating itself! It takes work to see positive changes in pain and movement, but I can guarantee it’s worth it.
Over the past three years, I am very proud to have continued to build a business that is consistent with my values and what I believe physical therapy can be. I feel extremely fortunate to continue to learn and grow not only as a physical therapist but also as a small business member of the community. And being able to play a part in getting people back to the things that they love makes my heart sing!
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I’ll go for the bad luck first, mostly because my bad luck has probably made the biggest impact in my career, and is the story for why I do what I do. As I said above, going through two major knee surgeries and subsequent physical therapy at a young age not only solidified my decision to become a physical therapist, but one that would continue to grow, learn, and provide the highest quality care I could.
Unfortunately, I went through this injury a third time just 6 months ago after a bad fall skiing. I’m still recovering from this now, and it looks a lot different than when I was 17 and 20 years old! However, it has been an incredible experience being on the other side of physical therapy now as a clinician myself. I feel I have gained so much perspective and empathy for my clients and the roller coaster that recovering from an injury brings (especially as a working adult!). I am motivated to continue to learn and grow as a PT because I know there is always more I can learn to help a current or future client. So while these injuries were “bad luck,” I knew that I would learn something valuable from them.
As for the good luck, I feel very fortunate to have gotten the education I did at Washington University in St. Louis. As the top PT program in the country, they are at the forefront of improvements and innovations in the field, and the approach that I’ve found to help so many people is all Wash U. I also am very lucky to have had the support, both personally and professionally, over the past few years in growing my business. Entrepreneurship is a challenging and lonely journey at times, so having my family, friends, mentors, and partner to lean on has been huge.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.madestrongpt.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madestrongpt/
- Other: https://maps.app.goo.gl/85ZH3ANBJtJkVpKM8?g_st=ic
