SUAMICO, Wis. — Careers for physical therapists and performance coaches are expected to expand in the next decade.
A physical therapist helped Sam Schwartz through a number of several sports-related knee injuries when he was in high school. Now, he is doing the same for others.
“I worked with a physical therapist who was someone who helped me more than just physically get back to who I was. She helped me feel myself again. She helped me find purpose again,” Schwartz said. “Yes, I wanted to be able to play sports again, but I thought to myself if I can do what she did for me one day for people all over, that would be totally worthwhile in my career.”
Schwartz is a physical therapist with Paramount Performance Physical Therapy & Training in Suamico near Green Bay. He’s worked in field the field for six years.
“We were dealing with a little bit of lower back pain, so that’s what I’m looking at: how the hip tightness plays into lower back discomfort,” he said about a patient he recently helped. “A lot of times people think to look right to the source pain. Someone says they have low back pain; it’s not always about treating the back. It’s about treating some of the stuff around it.”
The U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics reports careers for physical therapists are growing faster than many other professions.
It projects 13,600 annual job openings over the next decade. Growth is also projected in areas tied to performance.
Joe McGlynn is the director of performance at Paramount. He said the people he works with keep the job fresh. He works with three people at a time during hour-long sessions.
“The number one thing is the amount of different people I get to work with,” McGlynn said. “I have three people from completely different backgrounds, different ages, different wants and needs.”
He tailors his job around improvement for individual clients.
“They should leave here feeling better and more resilient and consistent in what they’re doing than when they came in the door,” McGlynn said.
Schwartz said his job is a mix of problem solving and treatment. Keeping up on the latest treatments and trends is part of his job.
“I get to teach people how to keep themselves out of pain, out of discomfort and hopefully keep them from needing to see me,” he said. “People don’t know how to do that piece of it. I’m better at teaching someone how not to get hurt than any of us are at getting people out of pain.”
