Repeat after me -

"We are number one - and OU still sucks!"

(the Longhorn fan in me just had to say so)

After a phenomenal team effort yesterday against the University of Oklahoma, the Longhorns were rewarded today with the number one ranking in college football. Well, at least for the next week. The next three weeks are still going to be tough, with Missouri, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech all waiting in the wings for an upset. But for the next 7 days, we can celebrate the #1 status, something we've not seen here in quite some time.

Read more...

I have spent most of my career working with athletes, be they recreational or elite. They have run the gamut from endurance sports to power sports, and all points in between. Over 12 years ago, I completed the highest level of training in the McKenzie Method. Since then, I have been one of the few practitioners worldwide that has been actively applying this approach to a sports population.

With all of the approaches to care available, especially with athletes, why head down this path?

First of all, the McKenzie Method has a very intuitive “fit” with an athletic population. First and foremost, the active populace is typically in the “mind set” of self-treatment and training. Athletes, be they recreational or elite, seek treatment methods that are active and patient-centered. These patients are highly responsive to such measures and typically prefer approaches that facilitate “empowerment” and self-treatment.

The McKenzie Method also provides a great screening process – to understand the mechanical loading strategies, directional preference, and thus safe aspects of training that can be resumed early on in the injury recovery process.

The sports medicine world is traditionally very “pathology-driven”, so my first forays with McKenzie into this world were like speaking a foreign language.

Read more...

If you want a fine example of where this country’s health care system is headed without reform, just take a look deep in the heart of Texas. It’s not a very rosy future. As I have mentioned many times before, the key elements to the discussion focus on cost, quality, and access – all issues of significant importance to Texans.

Let’s start off with some terrifying numbers. Consider this: 25% of the population of Texas are uninsured. Nationally, 20% of all Americans under the age of 65 are uninsured. As they say, everything is bigger in Texas. Ah but it gets better. The Austin American-Statesman has recently reported that 500,000 state workers – those with some of the best healthcare benefits in the state – are facing a $143 million deficit in their health care fund. That amounts to a budget increase of 14% over the next year. By 2015, the plan that provides health insurance for 193,000 retired public school employees will be insolvent. This all amounts to increases in premiums and greater out-of-pocket expenses for state workers. And when state workers are impacted (those that already have good health insurance coverage), what happens to those that have lousy or no coverage at all?

Along similar lines, Texas and California have the highest healthcare costs in the nation. In Texas, you might even be one of the 3.4 million people that forego treatment because they can’t cover the cost of care. This is second only to California, at 3.6 million.

Thus far, coverage is shrinking and costs are rising. That’s not a very healthy outlook. But, again, it gets worse.

Read more...

I remember a Nike ad with Charles Barkley from many years ago. In it, he remarked ...

"I am not a role model".

Well, I am going to do my own ad ... and in it I will remark -

"I am not a friend of John".

In last night's Presidential debate, Senator McCain used this phrase 24 times in a 90 minute period. Everything ended or started in "my friends". According to my Canadian math, that would be once every 3:45. Oh, I forgot that Tom Brokaw had to spend a lot of time getting them both to follow the time rules - so let's subtract at least 5 minutes for that ... and I am sure there must be a couple of minutes of total time to actually have the audience ask the questions. So, let's call it seven minutes to take off the 90 minute total. Given that we would assume that his air time was half of the debate at most, this amounts to one utterance every 1:44.

Read more...