Physical Therapy and the Path to Healing with Dr. Tom Walters, Part 1

Preventing Injury, Reframing Pain, and Using Physical Therapy to Avoid Unnecessary Surgery: Dr. Tom Walters is a board-certified orthopedic physical therapist, founder of Rehab Science , and author of “ Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal From Injury ,” an illustrated, body-region guide to common orthopedic problems and self-managed therapeutic exercises. Walters emphasizes using PT-style mobility and resistance training preventively to increase tissue capacity, manage load, and avoid overuse injuries, while warning against “no pain, no gain” and excessive volume or weight. He discusses “movement literacy,” hip and glute stabilizers, and how weakness can drive knee and back problems. Dr. Hoffman shares his own hip injury and recovery with targeted strengthening, illustrating that imaging findings often don’t dictate function. Walters explains the biopsychosocial model of pain, graded exposure, the limits of RICE and ultrasound, and roles for manual therapy, taping, TENS, shockwave, acupuncture/dry needling, and PRP. They advocate prehab/rehab around surgery and note PT training and career prospects.

You can listen to Physical Therapy and the Path to Healing with Dr. Tom Walters, Part 1 online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Physical Therapy and the Path to Healing with Dr. Tom Walters, Part 1 is an episode from Intelligent Medicine by Dr. Ronald Hoffman.

This episode is 29:27 long.

This episode was published on Apr 28, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Intelligent Medicine when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.