March Town Hall 2026: MovementX

All right. Well, good evening, Northern Virginia Family Practice family. Uh, my name is Dr. Mark Sullivan. I’m an internal medicine physician here at Northern Virginia Family Practice, and I’m pleased to be joined with our good colleagues from Movement X, uh, Meredith, Kirsten, KT, and Scott. It’s wonderful to be with them again. Uh, they’ve been a partner of our practice for long before I was here and one that I have had the unique privilege of collaborating with as we take care of our patients and specifically emphasize the importance of movement.

So today we are going to talk about some unique offerings that Movement X has and ways that they are going to partner with our practice to help our patients in that goal of staying active, of staying mobile, of staying nimble as we all reach our own healthcare goals.

And just reflecting back on the pillars that I try to help my patients with on a daily basis, I really focus on four, and I really try to get to know my patients early on in our relationship in four areas of their health. And those are sleep, those are sound nutritional intake, those are good regular physical activity, and those are work life balance that allows this to be sustained so that one can nourish or feed these important pillars.

And I’m so proud and happy to call my friends at Movement X our colleagues in this. I will be sharing with you that they have been with our organization for multiple years, starting out with a program that was developed early on with Dr. Dubois called Age Proof Your Body, something that really helped our patients even during the time of COVID, and they have just continued to expand and pivot in their services to help our patients make sure that they’re moving, that they’re staying healthy, that that is an active part of their health regimen.

I am very familiar with multiple of them, and they have come to our office. They have given us our own movement physicals here as a practice with the docs and the nursing staff and all the supporting staff, and we’ve really learned with them in an evidence-based way why movement is so important and how these exercises and these assessments that we can go through together even have some mortality projection and some mortality reduction projection in terms of specifics that they will be going over together with us.

The other thing that we will introduce is an exciting program that we will have with Movement X called the 30 for 30. They’ve been very gracious to partner with us to create a 30 minute assessment for our patients that will be held at Flex Gym, which we’ll share more details about, and that will be an opportunity for our patients or other members of the community to have a formal assessment with these individuals that have expertise in movement and physical therapy and personal training, and get on a good cadence of a plan that can be structured to ensure that that movement continues, that that movement grows.

They’ve also been very generous to share the proceeds, or actually donate generously the proceeds from that event, to a local organization that we are in support of called Arlington Free Clinic, that supports the uninsured and underinsured of our community and helping them achieve good health.

So, another way of evidence that Movement X is really plugged into our community, really cares, are really genuine people that really want to help our patients along through their health journey. So, with that, I’d love to turn it over to my colleagues at Movement X and have a good conversation about their program, what makes them unique, and this structured program that they’ll be going through with us in this 30 for 30. Thank you.

Perfect. And thank you, Dr. Sullivan. That was a wonderful introduction. On behalf of all of us at Movement X, we are so excited to be here with everybody tonight. We hope everybody in the NVFP family is having a lovely Wednesday evening thus far. We’re just excited to spend this time together.

I can say on behalf of myself and my three founding team members of Movement X, we just love collaborating with NVFP. It’s so important for us and all of our physical therapists and personal trainers at Movement X to know some of the best physicians and nursing staff in the Northern Virginia region, and NVFP, you guys are just the best. So, it’s so exciting to be here.

I can give a quick little backstory about the origins of Movement X, and then I’ll hand it over to KT with all of the really good stuff with the upcoming event. The quick story with Movement X is it was really founded and started under this premise that, you exactly hit on, Dr. Sullivan, that movement is one of the most important commodities in our lives, right? Think of all of the different ways that you move, and especially as we get older, right? We’re trying to enjoy vacations with our families. We’re trying to pick up our grandkids. We’re trying to walk with our spouse. That is what makes life meaningful, is the ability to move and move without pain, move without limitation, and move however that means to you, to move at your individual best.

And when things go wrong with your body, right? Some back pain happens, your knee flares up, you’re not as strong or as balanced as you might want to be. Why is it so hard to fix that? If you need help, you don’t want to wait three or four weeks to go see a PT or work with a trainer. You don’t want to necessarily get handed off to an assistant or an aide. The traditional physical therapy experience leaves a lot to be desired traditionally.

And that’s really why our founding team at Movement X, we knew there had to be a better way. So for the better part of nine years now, we’ve grown to be a really just amazing community of the best physical therapists, the best personal trainers, just people who practice with passion and who love giving our patients and our clients the absolute best care possible that we can give. One-hour sessions, you can be seen within a couple of days. You don’t have to wait weeks. You choose kind of when to be seen. You can be seen at your home, at our various clinics throughout Northern Virginia. You can be seen online. We’re trying to make access, make personalization, and at the end of the day, make the efficacy of the care that you receive exactly tailored to your goals. So, you can walk with your spouse, you can pick up your grandkids, you can take that vacation, and just live life to the fullest.

So, again, that’s the backstory. I have to pinch myself every single day, if I’m being honest, because I get to work with these lovely ladies, Meredith, Kirsten, and KT. Just such integral parts of our community, and it’s just been so much fun to practice alongside some of the most skilled people who I refer patients to all of the time. So without further ado, I’ll introduce KT. Do you want to take it from here and talk more about the offerings?

Sure. So, kind of an expansion of what Dr. Sullivan was saying, is we’re doing an event called a 30 for 30, where that will include a 30 minute PT evaluation, or also a 30 minute movement assessment, which Meredith will kind of go on in a couple of minutes. And I’m here to talk about what the PT evaluation might entail.

So, we all have, you know, aches and pains, as we’re coming off the winter season. Maybe we went skiing and went a little too hard on that last run on the first day, or are training for some sort of race, or even just trying to go on vacation with our family, really kind of get up into those longer walks, or just get back into the gym, and somehow we’ve been halted by some sort of pain. So that 30 minute assessment is for a physical therapist to take a look at that. They can give you that opportunity to see what’s going on here. And with that, we can look, okay, what do we do next? Do we have this exercise program here? Do we need more PT? Do we refer to personal training? Or do we need to see a physician and make sure this isn’t anything bigger than that?

And we take that, we can also make a treatment session out of it. We’ve done dry needling during it, cupping, manual therapy, really anything and everything. And we can also give you a home exercise program to just start your journey on.

And this is a practice that we’ve done — honestly, I’ve been with Movement X almost four years, we’ve done this since I’ve started at Movement X. And it’s been a really great way to get involved with the community, as well as people just to understand what physical therapy does. A lot of times people don’t realize that physical therapists can do way more than just make you do exercises. We can help build mobility. We improve strength. We improve quality of life. And so using this is a really nice way to see what we do, see how we can help you, and make sure we’re setting you up for success in just that 30 minutes. I’ll take this time to answer any questions if we have any.

I haven’t seen any pop up, KT. So, I think we can keep rolling forward.

Awesome. What I actually wanted to do is give Kirsten a moment to introduce herself. She is one of the newer providers with Movement X as a physical therapist. So, I wanted to do a warm intro to the NVFP community from Kirsten. So, go ahead and take it.

Great. Nice to meet you all. I’m pretty new with Movement X, so I’m getting to know the lay of the land, but I’m really excited to work with everyone on the team and to get to partner with organizations just like the one that we’re talking with now. I’m a physical therapist and I have an orthopedic specialization. I also work with some neurological conditions, so I’d be happy to help people who have that consideration. And also interested in vestibular therapy, so if there is dizziness that affects anyone, then I’d love to help you out. So nice to meet everyone, and I look forward to more collaboration.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Kirsten. Two questions just popped up, which is awesome. In one, Heather asked, if we are out of town on April 18th, can we take advantage of a 30 for 30 on another day? Our hope is that this will be a very popular event and we’d love to host more than just one. So, Heather, absolutely, and I’d love to reach out to you and we could even set up a different type of assessment that’s outside of the 30 for 30 if you’d like to kind of get a meet and treat with one of our physical therapists and/or personal trainers. So, love to reach out to you.

And then, what can you offer to the late 60s cohort? That is Lilia. Let me dive into a little bit more about the 30 for 30, and then we can kind of talk about a little bit more of how Movement X can help the 60-plus population significantly. We are very familiar, and very actually excited, to treat the 60-plus population. Because you, in the 60-plus population, are kind of in such a sweet spot in life — either close to retirement or already retired. Lots of family and lots of big plans, lots of things to do with your life, and you do not want to be held up by your body telling you no. So, we’re here to encourage your body to say yes so you can get on with what you want to do. So we can definitely dive into more of that.

So, my name is Meredith. I am a personal trainer with Movement X, and I’ve been with Movement X for almost six and a half years, which is wild. It’s been one of the best working relationships of my life, which is fantastic. And what the personal trainers would offer specifically at this 30 for 30 event is a functional movement assessment. So, in those 30 minutes, we would want to specifically look at different aspects of your functional movement patterns, and essentially give you a score, and with that score can evaluate what can we do to either maintain or improve your functional movement patterns.

So, for the list — and I don’t want to forget one, so I’m going to read off my handy dandy list here — and this will not be everything that we actually tackled today because we don’t have all the equipment and/or space we need in-home, but I did want to give you a little taste of the movement assessment. But for the assessment that you would get at the 30 for 30 functional movement assessment with a personal trainer, we’re going to test your grip strength with a little hand meter. We are going to see what your gait speed looks like at a normal walking pace — we call it a self-selected pace. So, seeing where you land on a self-selected pace, and then we’ll ask you to pick up the pace with your max gait speed.

Just for a little taste of why those two things are important — grip strength is a significant indicator of overall health as well as cardiovascular health, which seems totally crazy, like why would my grip matter for my longevity or my cardiovascular health, but both are true. And then for gait speed, we like to say that gait speed is actually like a sixth vital sign. So it really is a great insight into your overall health. And to put it just in life perspective, like if you needed to cross the street, a busy street, in a timed getting-across-the-street-before-the-cars-start-going-again scenario, can you do it? We want to say yes, but we don’t know until we test it. So, just like a little snippet of life, we need to be able to keep up.

To move on, we also do a 30-second repetitive squat test. We are going to tackle that today and see where we land. For squats, that’s simply one of the most functional things that you do every day. And if you think you don’t squat every day, I hate to tell you, but you’re wrong. You are squatting every day. You’re getting in and out of your car. You’re standing up and down from the couch, from a chair. You’re literally on and off the toilet every single day. So there are your squats, and we don’t want to miss out on the ability to do any of those things. So squats are a very big indicator of your overall strength, and again very directly correlated to your ability to do the things that you intend to do every day.

We’ve got a floor-to-stand test. This one can be a little bit tricky. It is a predictor of essentially how long you will live, which is really crazy to think, but it is essentially the ability to get up off the floor, utilizing your entire body — it’s core strength, it’s upper body strength, it’s lower strength, it’s physical capacity. So, if we hit the floor, which we hate to say will probably happen at some point, can we get back up? And we need to see how well we can get up from the floor.

We’re going to play with some push-ups today. Push-ups are also a very big indicator of your cardiovascular health and your upper body strength. And then we’re going to do single-leg balance, both eyes open and eyes closed. And of course, not only does single-leg balance correlate with fall risk, but it also is a correlate of your brain health.

So, that’s a lot to kind of digest and take in. It is a comprehensive test. We will send you, after that test, recommendations. So perhaps you score super high and you’re doing fantastic — we’re going to encourage you to stay on that path. What we imagine might happen is out of that lengthy list of tests, we’re going to find at least one or two deficits. And with those deficits we might uncover, we’re going to give you specific guidance. What we would hope you would land on is either personal training with myself or one of my colleagues, or maybe that’s not quite the right step, which is totally fine — we want to get you perhaps into a group exercise atmosphere, or anything that’s going to encourage you to get moving more regularly.

So, that is kind of a comprehensive picture of what a 30 for 30 functional movement assessment with either myself or my colleague Heather will look like at the event. So, also I’ll pause to see if some questions come through.

This is a tough one — I got Sandra: Is Age Proof Your Body still an option? I was a subscriber a few years ago. So, new classes unfortunately are no longer an option, but what is fantastic is the video library is accessible to everybody who would like to utilize them. And this is great — like say you’re not ready for personal training, you’re not sure if you’re ready for group exercise like at the Y or at a gym — Age Proof Your Body online classes, we’ve got hundreds of classes for you to pick from, would be a perfect additional avenue. So thank you for that reminder, Sandra. And we can also drop the link — Scott, would you mind dropping the link for the Age Proof Your Body video library. So if anybody today wants to browse that, it’s at no cost. It’s available for everybody. We want you to utilize it. So Sandra, again, thank you for that question and for that lovely reminder of Age Proof Your Body.

I did want to highlight that Meredith and Movement X were very generous to put years of their experience with Age Proof Your Body readily accessible to anyone in the community out there — that really helped motivate in terms of movement, and it really was a community, and I think what they’re looking for is more opportunities to do similar activities that were promoted through Age Proof Your Body, in person and virtually, in a more personal sense.

The other thing I would say is that these movement physicals are, dare I say, fun. We did do these together as a staff in our office — and I won’t use examples of who were the most competitive here in the office, maybe myself and Dr. Z — but it was really fun, and it really is a philosophy. It’s a philosophy of knowing that these movement goals are very predictive in terms of our overall health. They are very predictive in terms of our longevity and the reduction of morbidity and mortality. And it’s really having fun with it, with people that want to partner with you, with people that want to understand your inner workings, with people that really care about training your body in a way that looks at it holistically, and looks at even specific things that we’re trying to solve for — as was shared with Scott, in terms of carrying our grandchildren, getting across the street, dancing at a wedding. These are all important things that we commonly do, and many of us take for granted, but it’s because we’ve had some type of structure in our physical activity, some type of awareness of why this is important. And there are times in all of our lives when things get busy, when we plateau at our goals. And this is when folks that I’ve had the privilege of working with at Movement X have really been able to help our patients meet their own goals, set their own goals, and then when they do have these periods of plateau, how to reshift, repivot, and prioritize so that they can get the movement that they need to improve their quality of life.

Fantastic. So, we have covered — just to take a step back — the umbrella of this 30 for 30 event: you would have a 30 minute assessment with a physical therapist, or you would have a 30 minute assessment with a personal trainer, to help kind of guide your decision if you want to participate in the 30 for 30. If you are currently experiencing some kind of nagging problem — like we talked about, low back pain, the achy knee, shoulder that’s just grumpy every morning you wake up — that’s a good reason to dive into that 30 for 30 with a physical therapist so you can address a specific problem. And like KT said, you could do a little bit of manual therapy, perhaps a little bit of dry needling, to address that specific problem.

If you want more of a generalized assessment of your functional movement status, that’s where you would dive in with a personal trainer and do the functional movement assessment. We would not discourage you from doing both — that would be fantastic. You can sign up for two different slots back to back, and just kind of get a comprehensive picture of where you stand and get a little bit of help if you’re struggling in any specific area.

So, I think it’s a good time we can go ahead and answer a couple more questions. The date and place for the 30 for 30 event — the date is April 19th, which is a Sunday, and it’ll be from 1:00 to 3:00, and it will be in Courthouse, Virginia. I’m blanking on the address, but we will drop it into the chat. But it is right next to the courthouse, if you’re familiar, in Arlington, Virginia, just about a block away. And it is our Arlington hub for Movement X. It’s our dedicated gym space that our providers, both physical therapists and personal trainers, utilize. And it has — if you would like a private space for your physical therapy assessment — treatment rooms, as well as an open gym space that’s available for the functional movement assessments. And then, if and when you’re ready to personal train, lots of equipment to dive into with a personal trainer.

And then, can we have a contact number to contact you? Absolutely, we will drop that into the chat as well, but if you want to jot it down, my phone number is 540-359-5522. And yes, I would love to — Linda, reach out to you, or you can reach out to me, and we can chat more specifics on getting another assessment if you’re not available for that one.

Cool. So, I think we can go ahead and start to move a little bit. What do you guys think? Yeah. All right, so for our first assessment, I’d like to tackle the 30 second sit to stand. So, I’m going to get a timer ready. And for those of you at home, I can’t see you, but what I want you to do is try to find the most standard chair you have. 17 inches from the floor is kind of the standard, but just don’t pick your bar stool or your low-seated chair. Try to find something pretty standard. Doesn’t have to be perfect. And we’re going to do, for 30 seconds, as many squats to the chair, a sit to stand, as you can. So again, I’m going to pull up my timer and then I’m going to demonstrate before we dive in.

All right, so — and I have a high chair, so I’m going to swap that out for my low chair. And I do this perspective, pretty good. Okay, so a couple of rules for the 30 second sit to stand: you want to be sure that you are not using your upper body for momentum. So, I’m actually going to have you — sorry — cross your hands across your chest. And what I want you to do is, when you sit, you’re going to fully sit down and then stand back up. What I don’t want you to do is tap and go, like this, and try to cheat the system. We don’t want to try to beat a score — you want to try to accurately reflect what you can do in those 30 seconds so we can get a good picture of your capability.

Okay, so rule number one: hands across the chest. Rule number two: sit fully down before you stand back up. And I’m going to start our timer. Okay, so we’ll set up, we’ll be ready to sit in three, two, and one. Here we go. Sit and we’ll stand. Good. Perfect. Keep the count in your head. You’ve got 10 seconds left. My cat is cheering me on. In two and one. Perfect. Good.

Now, you can jot that number down, you can keep it in your head, but what did you note after that test? Are you feeling a little bit breathless? Are your legs fatigued, or are you feeling like you could do another three sets of that sit to stand? Good job. I’m a little bit breathless, so it was a good little warm-up for some of the other tests that we’re going to tackle today. So, again, sit to stand is a huge functional movement pattern that we will utilize for the rest of our lives. When we start to lose that ability to functionally or successfully complete a sit to stand, it’s a big red flag that we need to do more to improve that so we can continue to live our best life. So, just something to think about there.

All right, so push-ups — we’re going to do some push-ups. Now, that sounds scary, but you have a plethora of options. So, we’ll take it from the most approachable to the most difficult. Your first setup can be on the wall — I’m going to do right here since there is room for that. Wall push-up: your hands will be out from your shoulders here, and you’re simply going to lower your body to the wall and push away. Most of us could probably do this for a very long time, but if that is where you’re at for your push-ups, that is where I would encourage you to choose today.

Some other options you have are from the chair that we were just using — you can use the back of the chair right here, or you can use the base or the seat of the chair. Make sure that if you’re choosing one of these options, it is pushed up against the wall — we don’t want any chairs sliding and creating a false situation, so just make sure that your setup is very sturdy. So, when I set up for push-ups on the back of the chair, I kind of want to get a straight line from the back of my heels to the back of my head, and I’m going to lower my body to the back of the chair and push away. We want, when we are doing these push-ups in any of these variations, to count it correctly — we can successfully complete the push-up with chest all the way either to the wall, to the back of the chair, or to the floor.

Okay, so two variations I’ll show you for push-ups — I hope nobody is getting seasick with all of the movement of my computer — but we can do a kneeling push-up. If we set up in a tabletop position and then we walk our hands forward, one big click, then now I have a straight line from my knees to the back of my head. And then we’re going to lower chest all the way to the floor and push away, again, all the way to the wall and push away. My lovely helper over here.

So, last thing — we’re going to go from our toes, full push-up position. Again, if you choose this variation, you have to be able to get your chest all the way to the floor and push back away. Now, for this particular test, I’m going to cap us at one minute, but it’s just as many reps as you can complete. When we do the test with you at the 30 for 30, it’s max push-ups, meaning as many reps as possible, but for today’s purposes, I will put a cap on it at 60 seconds. But I want you to choose between the wall, the back of the chair, the seat of the chair, kneeling, or full push-ups on the floor. Choose one of those — think again, what can I successfully complete with chest to your object, or to the floor, or to the wall, with good form, as many reps as possible.

So, that’s kind of the hardest part. And again, this is why it’s good to do it with a provider, but I want you guys to play with your push-up form. So, try to choose a variation you think you could successfully do that anywhere from 10 to 30 times. Let’s say that. Okay, so I’m going to choose — I think I’m going to do the floor push-ups. So, I’m going to set my 60 second timer. I can’t believe I’m going to do one minute of full push-ups, but here we are.

All right, find your position, see what works, and we are going to go in three, two, and one. All right, got 60 seconds. All right, I’m running out of steam. You got this, keep going, keep going. Scott and I are the cheerleaders over here. All right, so for my max push-ups, that was either 19 or 20, I don’t know. But you’ve got — last, three, two, and one. All right, beautiful work. Nice job, everybody.

So, max push-ups, very heavy cardiovascular indicator for how many push-ups you’re capable of doing, also clearly your upper body capabilities. But very cool, such a unique correlation, that it is a cardiovascular indicator, but big for your heart health. As you can see, even just push-ups from the floor gets your heart rate up, gets you breathless. So, very good for your cardiovascular health.

All right, team, let’s move on. We’ve got single-leg balance that we’re going to try for 30 seconds, eyes open. And we have time for eyes closed as well, but we need to — we’ve got two feet, so we’re going to do left and right for 30 seconds. What I want you to do for safety is, I want you to be in arm’s reach of either a wall or a chair or something you can grab onto — so again, we’re not creating any undue fall risks. So, we’re going to practice 30 seconds on left foot, right foot, then we’re going to close our eyes and try 30 seconds, left foot, right foot. That’s where your safety is going to be especially important, so set up somewhere where you can hold onto a wall if you need to.

Here’s the thing, though: if you have to put your opposite foot down, that is when you would time out. I wish I had a timer — maybe we can all start like a watch timer, or again, this is why you want to do it with a provider, so you get that direct, really good information, because I’ll be able to see my time, but you won’t be able to see when your foot comes down if you time out on that. All right, here it is — we’re going to do, starting with your left foot, we’re going to keep eyes open for our first round. I want you to pay attention to the timer. When and if you have to put your opposite foot down, or you lose your balance entirely, that is when your time is up. We want to see at least 10 seconds, at least 10, but we’re going to try to reach that 30 mark.

All right, so I want you to set up really quick for position — this is your best bet here. You want to keep your arms out just as a little extra assist, your knee is going to stay high. Again, if you have to touch your toe down, or you fall out to the side, that is when your time is up. Also, if you have to hop at all, if your primary foot, your grounded foot, comes off the floor, your time also stops. Okay, find your setup — we’ll start left foot down, right foot up, in three, two, and one. Very nice, our first 10 seconds are down. Another 10 seconds — see if you can make it to that last 10 second mark to be 30 in total. Good, in three, two, and one. All right, very well done.

Okay, so you can shake that out a little bit — sometimes your ankle, your calf, your quad can get a little fatigued there. This time we’ll go right foot stays grounded, left foot comes up. And it’s okay if you notice an imbalance in your ability to single-leg balance — we’ve got stronger legs sometimes. But set up, here we go, in three, two, one. But also, kind of be mindful if you have that discrepancy from one side to the other. When you do that assessment, we will note if you have a discrepancy from one side to the other, and kind of make notes on how we could improve that. Perfect, that’s 20 seconds down, in three, two, and one. Perfect.

All right, so hopefully that was relatively successful for you. Remember, single-leg balance is very heavily correlated with fall risk. In hindsight, I’m going to skip the closed eyes, because you won’t be able to see the timer, and that kind of makes the test moot. But again, when you do it with the provider, we’ll have the timer, we’ll have the assessment, and we’ll be able to give you really good direct feedback.

So, what was our — oh, floor to stand. This one is always fun. And actually, any questions? One thing I just wanted to say real quick, Meredith, and I really appreciate it, is for those patients that did have some difficulty with those, the idea here is again getting a good assessment and seeing where you’re at, to then relay with our colleagues at Movement X, to give specifics on how to improve. So, I think it’s important to realize that one of these things is the assessment, but this assessment being a predictor for X, Y, or Z, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re locked into this and that this is going to be what your outcome will be. And that’s the whole point — the whole point is getting the assessment, working with these professionals to make tweaks in our active lifestyle, to make tweaks in our physical activity so that you can improve. So, I did want to share that, Meredith, and clarify that, for those, like myself, that struggled with some of these things earlier on in the movement physical and have stayed active and stayed engaged, these are things that you can improve at, and are expected to improve at, with the good support from these professionals.

That’s absolutely right. What we’re essentially doing is finding your current baseline with the testing, and that baseline can always be improved on. Even if you score with flying colors, we’re going to keep asking you to work out, we’re going to keep asking you to do hard things. But like I said, we’re more than likely, in the amount of tests that we offer, going to find at least one or two deficits, and that’s where we can encourage specific exercise tailored to you. And we want to change that baseline, we want to improve on that baseline. So, I think that’s a really good thing to clarify, Dr. Sullivan, that our whole goal here is to test your functional baseline currently, so we can continue to work on that to again be our best selves, so we can live our best life, and continue to move, to do all the things that we intend to do with our lives.

Fantastic. So, we’ll do one more test — it’s called the floor to stand — and then we’ll have a good chunk of time to go through any more questions at the end of our town hall here. So, the floor to stand can be a little bit confusing, because you actually think in point deductions. So, think of yourself as starting with 10 points, and anytime you have to use a hand or an object or an appendage to lower yourself down to the floor or back to a standing position, you’re going to deduct one point. So, I’ll show you what that means.

Now, the goal again is not to be a perfect 10 out of 10 here — we’re just trying to discover how much assistance you need. Cute cat toy. To get down to the floor or back up — so, the more assistance you might need, the more we can work on specific exercises that will improve your ability to get up from the floor if, for any reason, you hit the floor at home alone and you did need to get up by yourself.

So, for a perfect score, getting down to the floor would simply be sitting all the way down from a cross-legged position, usually. And then — I’ll see if I can do this, I’m not sure, it’s been a while, my cat is really just having a good time today — coming all the way back up without using any hands or other appendages. So, let me show you what a couple of scores that are not a perfect 10 might look like. So, if I needed to come down to a half-kneeling position and then use my hand to come down to the floor to then swing into a cross-legged position, my knee would count as minus one point, and my hand would count as minus one point. Same thing on the way up — we’ll just utilize a similar situation. I’m going to put one hand down to get into a half-kneeling position, but then I also might need another hand on my knee to stand all the way up, so that would be a minus three.

Okay, so again, the goal isn’t to get to that perfect 10 — I was just showing you for reference, but I want you to try to get down to the floor with as little assist as possible from hands, knees, or other objects, and the same thing on the way back up. If you do need to utilize them, please do, but just note that in your mind: “I had to use a couple things to get up, or I didn’t.” So, let’s say we’ve got two minutes before 7:50, which would be a perfect time to go into the Q&A and more open discussion, and kind of practice that getting down to the floor and standing back up.

All right, how’d you do, KT? Well, I have a dog crate behind me and a rolling chair, so we’re going to say not that great, but I’ll get myself on solid ground in a little bit and give it a try. Awesome, what about you, Dr. Sullivan, how’d you do? I think I did better than I did when we did this in the office, but definitely a minus three for me — getting down’s not so bad, but getting back up is the hard part. Gravity is our good assist down to the ground — fight it on the way back up.

Awesome, well good job, thank you for playing along. Well, it is 7:50, so I’d like to save that for any more Q&A. Scott, thank you for answering a bunch there in the chat. What other questions? Either Tara or Dr. Sullivan, do you know if we can open it up for verbal Q&A? I think we can do verbal, I will see if Tara’s with us to confirm that.

I know that we did get another question in the general chat here, in terms of — and this is from Amy Craft — about whether the balance should be more in barefoot or in sneakers, or if there’s a preference for that, that’s more evidence-based. So, in reality, barefoot is a very good indicator of how well we’re able to balance without support. And then on the other hand, some shoes have a lot of wobble to them, and they’re intended to be that way, because for example, running shoes have a lot of roll and squishiness to them. So, if I were to do this exam with somebody, I would ask them to be barefoot for the best data possible. And if you think about it, when you’re at home, for the most part, you’re probably going to be barefoot. So, if you’re practicing single-leg balance at home, or you’re in a position where you might need balance — you might be, that’s not totally true — but at home, you would be barefoot anyway.

Let’s see — can you tell us the results on the screen? So many push-ups. So, here’s the thing — I wanted to give you a taste of the test today, but because there are so many participants, what you can do is you can email me directly and I could give you the normative data. But what I’d encourage you to actually do is do the full exam with myself, or with my colleague Heather, or any of our providers at Movement X, so you can get that really specific data. This was just kind of, again, to give you a taste — it wasn’t very formal, and we’d want to give you your best results by doing a formal test one-on-one with a clinician.

Okay, any other questions you want to drop into the chat for now? I have a question, Meredith. So, as you are being introduced to new clients, and as you are being introduced to people that are really trying to figure out if this is right for them, could you share a little bit about your experience with early participants? I’m sure there are many people right now within our community that are really interested, that are really engaged by this, but they’re trying to figure out if this is right for them. What would you share with them in terms of how you encourage and how you empower those patients that are really unsure initially, to take the next step for this evaluation?

Yeah, I mean, so data can be one of your best friends. And having specific data tailored again to you, and only you, can be very helpful in uncovering some bigger red flags that we might find in this assessment. So, it’s one thing to go to a group exercise class and feel like you’re participating well, but you don’t really get that one-on-one feedback that you might be craving in your performance. And what is so special about these one-on-ones with either a physical therapist or a personal trainer, is that this is going to be tailored specifically to you — your data, your feedback, your assessment, your basically prescription afterwards, to help you reach your goals, is all going to be specifically geared to you. So, if you’ve ever felt lost in any number of situations where you’re just one of any number of people, you can be sure that this is going to be a very detailed assessment with just you. And the information will be specific to you, and the feedback that we give you is going to be specific to you — not to just the general population, but specific exactly to you, to reach your goals and to help you better any deficits we uncover.

Appreciate that, Meredith, thank you. Of course. Okay, awesome. What else? Okay, so what we’re going to do is drop the link for our landing page to sign up for the 30 for 30. This is going to basically generate a list, and then my job will be to reach out to each of you one-on-one to decipher if you’d like to do the physical therapy assessment, the personal training assessment, or both. And then we will get you assigned to a time slot. And please let me know via email — for example, it was Linda, and one other, I think it was Heather, who wouldn’t be available that weekend on the 19th — we’ll set you up at a different time, we will make it happen.

So, we’ll use — let’s see, I’m going to drop, should be right on the right hand column, Meredith, under the webinar chat, in terms of the sign-up. So it still says hosts and panelists for me. Oh, let’s see, actually I think Tara just hopped in and dropped it in — so that will be perfect. So the Stax payments link right there with Movement X. Did that go out to everybody? It did, and that is a secure checkout page, and that’s where you can just enter in $30, the price of the event, and that is how you can get in touch to RSVP. Absolutely, perfect.

Right, again, so if you sign up through this landing page link, that generates my list of people to reach out to, to get you set up for what you’re most interested in. And if we’ve got any more questions, I’d love to answer them.

Yeah, and while we wait for more questions, I just really wanted to thank our community at NVFP and our guests here, Movement X, who are not so much guests anymore, but really are part of the family, and people that we really trust. Really want to thank our patients for staying up with us tonight, and it was great to see some familiar faces on the list of attendees, and always feel free to drop any questions to us specifically, as physicians — myself and my colleagues here at Northern Virginia Family Practice are very familiar with the folks over at Movement X, and we communicate regularly about our patients, so it’s something that we also feel equipped to answer questions on as it relates to their organization and what it’s like to collaborate with them. But really appreciative to all of you as part of our community, and especially our colleagues at Movement X for their time and their good support of our patients.

Yes, and Meredith, I’ll kick it to you to officially close out, but thank you Dr. Sullivan. The one thing I was just thinking of is it truly does take a team, right? As an aging individual, you want a team in your corner, and not all of those team members, unfortunately, can be superheroes and do everything. We need the best possible people for the best-case scenario, for your goal that you have in mind. And again, that is one of the reasons why we just love working hand-in-hand with the physicians and nursing team at NVFP. And for any of these kinds of physical-related issues that you really want to dive deeper into and get stronger — you have a goal in mind — yeah, this is exactly the next best step so that you can learn more and see where that pathway leads you. This could be that fork in the road, right, that takes you towards your goals and towards what you want to achieve. So, Meredith, over to you to wrap us up.

Absolutely. Thank you to everybody who is willing to participate tonight. We would love to see you at this 30 for 30 event, and you’ve got the link in the chat today. You will get a couple more email blasts from NVFP that will have the same exact information. We’ll have a list of participants from today’s event as well, that we can send some direct emails to, and you should have my information — we dropped it several times into the chat — and I’m an open book, you can call me, you can email me, and I’d be happy to answer any of your questions. So, Dr. Sullivan, thank you for your time. Kirsten, KT, Scott, thank you so much for being here and support. And thank you to the NVFP community for being a part of your wellness journey with us. We’ll see you next time. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good evening. Thanks.