A new method of healing
Athletic trainers Tyler and Alexandra Kleinhuizen work with pioneers of EVO neurological soft tissue physical training.
By Samantha Stewart and Sara Caldwell | Sports Reporters
Husband and wife Tyler and Alexandra Kleinhuizen work with a different kind of physical therapy. They specialize in neurological soft tissue medicine (NST), targeting electrical pulses through patients’ muscles to promote healing in alternate methods. Their therapy method has a four-step process: initial assessment, search, destroy and strength.
In the assessment process, the EVO Ultra Performance therapists run tests to see if patients, mostly athletes, are “out of balance” based on what issue is going on, and what needs healing, maybe a back issue or muscle strain. In the search process, the EVO team locates the physiological symptoms and identifies electrical disconnects between muscles and the brain and then targets a way to fix this. Next, they destroy the electrical disconnects by using electrical pulses. Finally, they strengthen the muscles by having the person use that muscle and strengthen it by exercise. These types of therapy can be used for bone breaks, muscles and ligaments, concussions, and joints.
“[NST] should be offered to everybody, I don’t think it’s fair if some people don’t have access to the technology” — Jordan Peterson, Athletic Training Major
The NST process can take months of recovery time and get athletes off the bench faster. Though it may be more expensive than the usual physical therapy, Jordyn Peterson, an athletic training major at Bethel University, says, “It should be offered to everybody. I don’t think it’s fair if some people don’t have access to the technology.”
Bethel has adopted the practice in its athletic training program. Though they don’t get to try it out on people with real injuries, students try it on each other.
“I don’t have any first hand experience, but I have heard it really helps with the pain,” Peterson said.
NST doesn’t just help with pain. It destroys pain.
Tyler Kleinhuizen has had patients come in with a sprained ankle and “within seven minutes of treatment or less, they are in minimal discomfort.” Sounding a bit more like magic than technology, Kleinhuizen breaks down what NST is really doing to a patient: “A specialized electrical stimulus device called the ARPwave to communicate to the nervous system and muscle tissue as if force is needing to be absorbed. We can then test muscle by muscle, area by area and determine where the neurological dysfunction begins. Once these points are located, we can then use the device to drive appropriate information to the nervous system from the affected areas. This allows the brain to interpret the information and correct the pattern of neurological communication, essentially making the right muscles do the right job in the right order.”
But while all this is going on, the trainers have the patient physically doing what causes the discomfort in the first place. All that being said, Kleinhuizen states it more simply by saying, “It makes a lot more sense to treat the origin of the signals than the result of the signals.”
While working in a hockey training program, Kleinhuizen once witnessed a colleague experience quick results. He then worked alongside Jay Schroeder, the head of the Arizona facility, who was learning how to use the system and technology that was neurological training.
“In the stack of … files in my cabinet, I am not able to find anyone we couldn’t help”- Tyler Kleinhuizen, physical therapist
Even though the key to the training is for the client’s injury to heal, Kleinhuizen wants a higher goal. When his business treats someone, he wants them to leave knowing how to take care of all the things that make the body run well: how to breath, sit, stand and walk.
NST technology could put injuries at a stand still. Out of all the clients who have come to EVO Ultra Performance, Kleinhuizen says, “In the stack of…files in my cabinet, I am not able to find anyone we couldn’t help.”
