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The OT Fit Podcast emphasizes the importance of fitness and occupational therapy. Fitness is crucial for performing daily activities. Two classmates discuss their gym routine and how it helps with their OT work. They also mention the importance of proper form and the need for an OT in the gym to prevent injuries. Ricky, an athlete who underwent therapy for injuries, believes an OT in the gym would benefit older adults and those with injuries. Shelly, a fitness instructor, agrees that an OT in the gym could help individuals with limitations. She also believes that the YMCA would benefit from an OT's expertise. Overall, fitness and occupational therapy are closely related and can improve daily living and quality of health. Welcome back everyone to the OT Fit Podcast. My name is Ty and I'm here with my co-hosts Allie, Becca, Mike, and Brock. So the OT Fit Podcast, we really emphasize the importance of fitness and occupational therapy. So as many of you know, occupational therapy, we focus on activities of daily living, but activities of daily living really have no meaning unless you are able to do things physically. So fitness is really emphasized in occupational therapy in the sense of movement, ergonomics, strength, and range of motion. So in this podcast, we're going to discuss why it is important to be fit in OT and how those things can help you with your activities of daily living. So I'm going to hand the mic over to Allie here. She's going to be interviewing two of our guests and asking them about how they think OT and fitness relate. All right, so today I'm here with two of my classmates, Brock and Mike. We know that Brock and Mike, you both go to the gym very often. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at the gym and how frequent you go? Well Mike and I go about five to six days a week and we include both weight training and cardio. This helps us perform to our best ability and to help keep us in the best shape that we can be in. Mike, do you want to? Yeah, the fitness and everything we do, it helps with working as an occupational therapist on fieldwork especially. It helps with transfers, core strength, just making sure your mechanics are correct so you don't hurt yourself too. Nice, thank you for sharing that. At the gym, do you happen to see any sort of other population struggle using the equipment, completing their workout? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, often at the gym I see the older population struggling with adjusting the weights on the machine and honestly how to properly use the machine. We see a lot of older adults doing incorrect form that could ultimately lead to injury. So I think having an OT in the gym could help provide a safer environment to work out in. Yep, I think even the tempo sometimes you see people lifting a little too fast and just educating them on going through the movement slow and making it more functional so you can use it in your daily activities as well. Yes, thank you. So as OT students, you ultimately think it would be beneficial for an OT to be implemented into a gym setting? Yeah, absolutely. I think that OTs can do anything, especially help focus on the safety form and health of clients. Yep, I think any exercise in the gym too can be tied or related to a functional activity like a squat could be the same as a sit-to-stand transfer. Anything pushing could be helpful to get up off the ground, anything like that. So all exercise can be tied to an ADL. Okay, thank you guys. Okay, today I'm going to interview another guest here. I have my brother Ricky who is an athlete who also underwent some injuries himself and he did a lot of therapy to recover from those injuries. So we're going to talk to him today. So Ricky, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do to start off? Hi everyone, my name is Ricky Gladden. I'm a student and football player at Edinburgh University and I'm majoring in business administration. All right, and Ricky, are you familiar with the field of OT? I know you did a lot of PT after your injuries, but can you tell us what you know about the field of occupational therapy and what we do? Yeah, I know that occupational therapists, they work with people, possibly older people that are coming back from an injury or a disability that are, you guys are like working them back into stuff, doing stuff like that they would do in their everyday life. Good answer. So as I mentioned, you had a lot of therapy after your injury. Can you tell us a little bit about your injury and your surgery and what the therapist did to help you kind of get back to your daily routine? Yeah, so I fully tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus. I did that when I was playing football my senior year. I underwent a full ACL and meniscus reconstruction. Basically, the therapist, they were very encouraging the whole time. There was never anything to put me down. However, when I felt like I was ahead of the curb, they would, you know, have me do a few workouts that would probably humble me. It didn't really make me feel too good, but looking back at it, it really helped. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. I know, too, like a lot of older people who undergo maybe these surgeries or have injuries like this, it might be hard for them to get back into working out. It's a little bit different for you since you're young and you're very active. So do you think that having an occupational therapist in a gym could be beneficial for these populations? Do you think that it would be a good idea to implement an OT into the setting to educate these people on what to do to get back into a good routine at the gym? Yeah, for sure. I think even people dealing with little injuries like shoulder injuries or just older people that I think they could benefit greatly from having an occupational therapist there helping them, giving them some exercises to build strength in a part that they're lacking. I think that that'd be perfect. All right. Thank you, Ricky, for sharing. We've loved talking to you. All right. Thank you. So I'm here with Shelly Sheridan and I'm going to ask her a few questions regarding occupational therapy being incorporated into gym settings. So for my first question, where do you work and what do you do at your job? I work at the Eastside YMCA in Harbor Creek. I am the wellness coordinator and a fitness instructor. I instruct many different fitness classes with different, you know, strength training, cardio, Pilates, etc. And I organize the group exercise schedule and active older adult schedules and I'm in charge of all of that stuff. Okay. So are you familiar with occupational therapy? And if so, tell me what you know about it. I am familiar with it. What I think I know about it is it's rather than physical therapy, like moving the big parts of your body and walking and things like that, it's more of movements like with your hands and your fingers and more, I guess, I don't know, I guess when I think of occupational therapy compared to physical therapy, I think of it as more smaller movements of the body rather than the big movements. Yeah. Okay. So at work, do you ever see individuals struggling with a workout or a specific class due to certain limitations that they may be facing due to like an illness, a disease, or some type of injury that they've had? And can you tell me about some of the specific difficulties you've seen? Yes, I do see that frequently. I see people coming back from surgeries or illnesses, knee replacements, shoulder replacements, heart attacks and heart rehab and things like that. And we do see that maybe they're struggling more than they were when they were previous with us. One gentleman that comes to mind right now is a gentleman who, and I cannot remember what he has, but he does have a degenerative disease that will not get better. And so he went from walking around the track to walking very slowly around the track. Now he was walking with a cane around the track. Now he is with a walker and now he can no longer go down the stairs. So we kind of made him a pathway from one side of the building to the other so he can still get a full workout in. So he could benefit from some therapy. That's probably not the best example because I don't think that he will be able to improve. But I certainly see it with two people in my classes just had shoulder replacements and several have had knee replacements and they have come back from that. So going off of that, do you think that the YMCA would benefit from having an occupational therapist work directly with people to help make certain adaptations to their workouts, either individual workouts or during classes or whatever they may need to help make it a little easier for them? Yes, I think that probably would help. We have next door we do have a rehabilitation center and they sometimes do bring patients over and walk and especially I see them using the stairs with them. But I don't think I've ever seen any occupational therapy being done over inside the Y. And that probably would benefit of course those that needed it. And our fitness staff is pretty good at adaptations and modifications on exercises but we are certainly not experts or occupational therapists. So you know that is more involved in I think if we have somebody there that would be beneficial to them of course. So do you think that you and your other staff members would benefit from an OT kind of educating you guys on certain on other ideas or strategies that you guys can use? Oh yeah, I guess I didn't think of them educating us. Yeah, that would that would work really good. Yeah. Okay, well thank you very much for your time. You're welcome. Okay, so those were all some awesome discussions that we had there. Some great interviews that we heard, some great input that we heard from our occupational therapy students. As many of you learned, you know you can relate occupational therapy to physical fitness as yourself as an occupational therapist to make you more ergonomic when you're doing transfers, increase your strength so you have a decreased risk of injury when you're transferring people. And then overall strength and fitness and wellness really affect how clients are able to complete their activities of daily living and improve their quality of health. So I think we learned some really awesome things and I think we can really look forward to the next episode of the OT Fit podcast. So I'll see you guys next time.