You are what you do, you are what you eat, and you are what you think

– Ola Grimsby

For our latest conversation, we get to speak with Ola Grimsby.  Ola is a titan in manual therapy education, not only in the United States, but throughout the world.  If you have heard of him, it is probably through his institute, the Ola Grimsby Institute.  A big reason to want to speak with Ola was that he is a co-founder for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists (AAOMPT).  However, in getting to speak with him, I soon found out there were much better stories to hear and things to learn!  For instance, we get to learn about the early days of manual therapy education here in the US, and how much of that depended on all the big names you’ve heard of (Mennell, Cyriax, Kaltenborn, etc.).  Also, how Ola came to the US and traveled around the country teaching what he’d learned previously in Norway.  Needless to say, if you are interested in history of manual therapy, or gain more understanding about what manual therapy is and what it can do, you’ll want to listen to what Ola has to say!

I would definitely like to see a consensus, first of all, in the amount of clinical supervision that a training is requiring.  Instead of having research done on topics that is either partly clinically irrelevant or done by scientists who have not treated patients.  That makes the outcome of the research rather questionable.  I’m not opposed to research, that’s not what I’m saying, but it should be done by the specialists in clinical care.  And the consensus should be based upon massive clinical experience and massive clinical repetitions of research projects.

– Ola Grimsby

There is nothing new under the sun.  My contribution is absolutely minimal, and I think that goes for most of these old time gurus that are sitting on other people’s shoulders. 

– Ola Grimsby

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Links of interest mentioned during our conversation:

Ola Grimsby Institute

American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists

International Federation of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapists