We have a great team of Physical Therapists here on staff at Tensegrity. They each bring something unique to our team, and are a huge part of what makes Tensegrity, Tensegrity. We would like to introduce you to our very own, Kellie Cannon (DPT).
When did you first decide to become a PT and why?
“I was in 7th grade and my mom had gone through a couple rotator cuff repairs and I watched her get back to doing what she wanted to do. So I thought that it was pretty neat that you could help people get back to sports or get back to life. She was a PE teacher, so for her, she needed to be mobile in her shoulders, and strong. I watched her go through that and decided in 7th grade that Physical Therapy is what I wanted to do and I haven’t wavered since then.”
Where did you go to school?
“I did my undergrad at University of Oregon and then went down to North County San Diego for Grad School at University of Saint Augustine.”
How long have you been a PT and how long have you been at Tensegrity?
“I graduated December of 2013 and started working in March of 2014. I have been at Tensegrity for just over 3 years”
What do you think makes Tensegrity stand apart from other clinics?
“I think that we use more of a holistic and whole body approach instead of just focusing on one body part. I think that what sets us apart from the rest of the community is that we have a lot of technology that other people don’t have. With our force plate, our EMG, the gait analysis and the Biodex. People have an iPad version, but they don’t have the programs that we have and don’t have the technology.”
What do you like most about being a PT?
“I love that I can help people. I can help them get back to sports, I can help them get back to their job, but I really enjoy the fact that everytime they come in, they are a little bit different. Better or worse, you have to just start with a clean slate. It’s like a different puzzle even if it is the same person each week. So I love the challenge of ‘what is this person presenting like today, and is this different, and now where do we go from there?’”
Can you give an example of a patient who made significant progress here?
“We have a lot of junior high-high school girls that come in with knee pain, and we want to get to the point where we get them better before they tear an ACL, because that is typically where they are headed. One of my girls is a soccer player, and she had some knee pain, so we would go through movement patterns and test her on the Biodex, and we found out that she was weak in her glutes and over-utilizing her quads, so there was an imbalance. We worked on movement patterns and helped get her stronger in her hips and trunk, and she ended up preventing an injury and made it through her soccer career injury free, and now she is going to go to college and hopefully continue those movement patterns so she remains injury free.”
What is a typical day like for you?
“We see patients for 45 minutes. During that 45 minutes, we go through movement analysis, determine where they are strength wise that day, and ask what do they want to focus on today. With each patient, and you just pick a couple goals for the day and you try to accomplish those, and then you just continue.”
What is one of the biggest lessons you have learned since working at Tensegrity?
“You figure out how much you don’t really know. You learn something every day. Whether that’s from a patient or a colleague or our boss, you learn something new every day about the human body and just life in general.”