There’s an old saying that’s as true in health and fitness as it is in life: work smarter, not harder. This means maintaining maximum efficiency for the outcomes you produce. For many of us in service industries that means maximising our most precious commodity – time.
Managing your time effectively not only means that your days will flow easier, quicker, and with way less stress, but you will also generate the best possible financial return on it. Here are our 5 best tips for making your schedule work for you, and not the other way around.

1. Time Blocking – ‘Task switching’ is a term to describe the cognitive load required to move from one task to the next. Think of it as the ‘loading time’, making even simple tasks take longer than needed to complete. One effective way to reduce task switching inefficiencies is to block chunks of time around similar tasks, so as to keep yourself in a similar mindset when getting similar jobs done....

Imagine having an extra week to yourself each year. What would you do with that precious time? Take a well-deserved holiday or maybe dive into an exciting side project? For health and fitness professionals, time is a valuable resource. Between client care and endless administrative tasks, much of our working hours go uncompensated.

Now, picture this: even a small daily time-saving of 15 minutes can add up to a whole additional workweek per year. That's right, you could have that extra time for anything you desire! This is where AxIT comes in. It's not just an assessment tool to enhance your client interactions; it's a time-saver too.

Here are four ways AxIT can put back at least 15 minutes in your day, giving you an entire week of extra time per year:

AxIT Does the Math for You

Testing your clients' strength is crucial, but it's only valuable if you understand the context. Is your client strong enough? Do they have any imbalances? How has their progress been since the last...

Time is the one thing nobody can never find enough of. Everyone is looking for ways to maximise what they have, especially in their professional lives, and client-based professions like physiotherapy that rely on filling a schedule have it especially hard. How do you help your existing clients, get all your notes and admin done, keep up your professional development needs, bring in new work, stay physically and mentally healthy, and keep the clinic lights on all at once? If you’ve ever asked yourself questions like these, then read on for our practical time management tips designed just for busy physiotherapists.

The Most Common Time Management Challenges

Before we can talk about what helps, it’s good to look at what most commonly hinders our ability to effectively manage our time. Commonly, these challenges can include:

• Inefficient planning: While scheduling tools like Cliniko and Nookal can take a lot of the labour out of planning your day-to-day workload,...

In the world of health and fitness, the abundance of performance metrics has revolutionized the way we analyze client and athlete data, but determining which metrics truly matter in risk reduction and performance enhancement can remain a challenge. 

Muscle strength ratios are a testing metric that has gained significant attention from health professionals in recent times and are commonly assessed during pre-season fitness evaluations, general client management, and post-operative testing batteries.

Ratios are single-value metrics made up of two parts: a numerator and a denominator. Essentially, a ratio quantifies the relationship between two quantities, showing how many times one value contains or is contained by another. In sports science, when we talk about symmetry, we're usually comparing metrics between different sides or muscle groups. When looking at ratios, particularly with strength testing we are often looking at the relationship between agonist/antagonist muscle...

A physical therapist's primary goal is not only to help their clients achieve their health and wellness goals but also to create and maintain a loyal patient base that sustains the financial aspects of your practice. Building a strong brand and investing in marketing efforts are essential, but true success lies in retaining your patients over the long term. Patient retention is not only important for good patient outcomes, it plays a pivotal role in the growth and profitability of any practice. Long term patients will also become your   biggest advocates and end up referring more patients helping you become the go to professional in your community.

Understanding Patient Churn: The Opposite of Patient Retention

Before delving into patient retention, we must first grasp its opposite: patient churn. ‘Churn rate’ refers to the percentage of patients who discontinue therapy before completing their full course of care. Unfortunately, churn rates in the healthcare...

Rebooking rates. For many health care professionals this dirty work stirs up images of sleazy sales people, gouging their patients for every last dollar through dishonest, over servicing practices. 

As a reflex, many patients simply don’t receive enough care, often left to fend for themselves amongst guidance that is spread too thin and a myriad of confusing information.

The balance of course is somewhere in the middle, with consideration for the clients situation, where they are on their journey and what is meaningful to them in their goals.

In this blog post we will attempt to break down some of these variables including strategies and techniques for rebooking your clients honestly, and in a way that achieves the best outcomes for their health and your business alike.

The Initial Phase Of Care.

The initial phase of care is the first critical juncture for health care practitioners to establish a strong foundation for the patient's treatment journey, and a...

Introduction

A recent pilot study has shed light on a pressing issue – physical inactivity among adults. As many adults fail to meet recommended physical activity guidelines, researchers from the University of Canberra and QUT sought to explore a potential solution: the gentle involvement of physiotherapists. This study investigated whether frequent physical activity measurement and very brief advice provided by physiotherapists could positively impact physical activity levels in insufficiently active adults in Australia. In this article, we’ll break down how the study was conducted and what it means for practising physical therapists.

Methods

The study followed a randomised controlled trial design, dividing participants into two groups: lower-measurement-frequency (LMF) and higher-measurement-frequency (HMF). Eligible participants were aged between 18 and 64 years, insufficiently active, and had no medical conditions limiting moderate physical activity. The HMF...

In the dynamic world of health and fitness assessment, we are constantly searching for better ways to unlock the full potential of our clients. Whilst smart handheld dynamometers and portable force plates will do most of the heavy lifting in generating baseline performance metrics to track over time, one often overlooked yet invaluable tool is the force trace shape. Picture this – as individuals undergo strength and performance testing, their force traces etch a unique and revealing path, holding the key to essential insights about their movement performance. In this article, we delve into 4 force trace shapes, exploring how it can offer more information to health and fitness professionals in guiding their clients toward optimal performance and well-being.

The peak force on a force trace during an isometric strength test is one of the most used metrics as it is considered a good reflection of maximum strength for several reasons:

Static contraction: In an isometric strength...

One thing we are noticing at SBN is an increase in the interest from health and fitness professionals to assess individuals not only for injury prevention and rehabilitation purposes but also for longevity and health optimization.

A recent study by Lichtenstein et al explored the trajectories of strength parameters across different ages in a healthy population ranging from 20 to 91 years old. The researchers compared new strength tests such as CMJ and IMTP with widely studied ones such as Grip Strength to determine their suitability for health surveillance purposes. The findings revealed that while most strength parameters followed similar downward trajectories after the age of 40, lower body explosive power exhibited a consistent linear decline throughout the observed age range. On the other hand, all other parameters demonstrated an accelerated decline with increasing age. These results provide valuable insights for assessing muscular fitness levels and comparing individuals with...

Retaining clients and keeping your schedule full is an essential part of making it in the competitive world of physical therapy. Of course, the number one driver of client retention is something you’re already doing: providing high-quality service that helps your clients strengthen and improve their bodies. But other strategies that can also increase your retention rates may fall by the wayside. Interpersonal client engagement, professional development, expanding your offerings, and giving opportunities for feedback are all ways you can encourage your clients to keep coming back and keep your schedule packed. We’ve put together a simple guide on how to incorporate these strategies into your daily practice below – let’s take a look.

1. Building A Relationship

Client engagement is a general, jargon-y way of talking about clients who turn up and follow through on the exercises you give them. An engaged client is an ideal client, because it feels like...