Read about Dr Mike Hobbs (Chiro), SYMBYX Research and Clinical Services Manager, experience at the PWR! headquarters in Tucson, Arizona:
"Recently, Dr Wayne Markman (SYMBYX CEO) and I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days with the PWR! team at their gym and headquarters in Tucson, Arizona.
PWR!, also known as Parkinson's Wellness Recovery, is one of the world leaders in Parkinson's exercise and movement rehabilitation. As well as having trained over 10,000 clinicians and exercise professionals worldwide in their PD curriculum, they also run the PWR! Gym, servicing the community of Arizona and beyond. People with Parkinson's had flown in from inter-state, as well as from Europe, to come train with them!
In the 2 days we spent there, I was blown away with the high degree of functional capacity that their members showed. Some had been diagnosed with Parkinson's 3 or more decades earlier, and were physically and cognitively fitter than many patients without Parkinson's that I've had, of the same age or even younger! We went there to talk about SYMBYX light therapy and our latest research, yet it was their members who were pulling up research papers to show me, not the other way around!
As a practitioner, I've always emphasised movement quality and individualised progression. We started our clinic in a high performance gym, and when you work with athletes, you learn that a slight technique adjustment can immediately take someone's elbow pain away, or help them PR their squat. With nearly all our runners, we'd video their run, breaking down their foot strike, mid stance and toe-off positions, and so I like to think that I'm pretty OK at watching peoples' movement abilities. Developmental kinesiology was a big part of what we worked with, and I used to teach it to other practitioners around Australia.
I love PWR!'s approach because it makes total sense from a functional movement perspective, and seamlessly integrates neuroplasticity, exercise training principles, developmental kinesiology, and the very latest in Parkinson's and exercise research. In other words, they're not just giving you a cookie-cutter recipe to follow (though they do give you very clear progressions), but am also teaching you how to approach the person in front of you. This is particularly important in the world of PD, which is a very heterogenous population to work with.
I cannot wait to learn more from Becky and the PWR! team. For our UK and European clinicians, would you be interested in a PWR! training? We need enough interest to help get them over here. Please register your interest by emailing us.
Thank you Becky and the entire PWR! community for having us. It was an absolute pleasure and we can't wait to be back, perhaps in 2026 for the next World Parkinson's Congress!"
Dr Mike Hobbs (Chiro)
SYMBYX Research and Clinical Services Manager
