EP# 281: Dr. Walter Young's Holistic Approach to Athletic Performance at Performance Ability LLC

What makes Dr. Walter Young with Performance Ability LLC a good neighbor?

Dr. Walter Young is changing the physical therapy landscape with his performance-based approach that serves athletes, weekend warriors, and anyone who wants to get back to their favorite activities. Performance Ability LLC goes far beyond traditional rehabilitation, offering a refreshingly holistic methodology that addresses the complete person.

"We're capable of so much more than we expect out of our bodies," Dr. Young explains, challenging common misconceptions that limit our physical potential. With inspiring examples like an 80-year-old completing a grueling 135-mile ultramarathon and a 76-year-old finishing an Ironman triathlon, he dispels myths about what's possible as we age. His practice actively fights against defeatist attitudes and restrictive medical advice that tell patients to simply "stop doing" activities they love.

What sets Performance Ability apart is its comprehensive approach summarized as "eating, thinking, and doing." Dr. Young integrates nutritional guidance and mindset coaching with physical therapy techniques, believing that addressing all three creates transformative outcomes. His journey to this unique methodology began unexpectedly – from a career in landscape architecture and golf course design, through an economic downturn that prompted self-reflection, to discovering his passion for helping others achieve physical excellence. His personal transformation through fatherhood further deepened his understanding of human potential, leading him to create a practice that treats each client as a unique individual with specific biomechanical patterns, motivations, and goals.

Whether you're preparing for surgery, recovering from injury, or simply want to improve performance in golf or other activities, Performance Ability offers personalized guidance that acknowledges there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Ready to discover what you're truly capable of? Visit performance-ability.com or follow @performance.ability on Instagram to learn how Dr. Young can help you overcome limitations and achieve your physical potential at any age.

To learn more about Performance Ability LLC go to:

https://performance-ability.com/

Performance Ability LLC

[phone]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place
where local businesses andneighbors come together.
Here's your host, Skip Monty.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the
Good Neighbor Podcast.
So today I'm pretty stoked tohave a very special guest in our
studio for the first time, andI'm sure you'll be just as
excited to learn all about himand his business as I am,
because today I have thepleasure of introducing your
good neighbor, dr Walter Young,who is the owner operator of

(00:31):
Performance Ability LLC.
Dr Walt, welcome to the show,thank you.
Well, like I said, we're gladto have you and excited to learn
all about you and what you do.
So, if you don't mind, whydon't you kick us off by telling
us about your business?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah.
So Performance Ability isactually a physical therapy
based company, but it's a littlebit more than just your normal
physical therapy.
I call it a performance basedphysical therapy, so
specializing kind of inathletics or weekend warriors,

(01:10):
really helping to get people whowant to be back to some
activity back to doing thatactivity after injury, and it's
kind of expanded over the yearsto be a little bit of mindset
nutrition as well as thephysical aspect as I've come

(01:32):
along.
Very cool, some of the thingsthat, like I battle against in
the industry is really those youknow we have to stop at a
certain age and I try to instillthat in my clientele of, like
you know, we're capable of somuch more than we expect out of
our bodies, and that's wherethat kind of performance side

(01:55):
comes in.
So as I went along in my career, I started seeing clients who
just really didn't want tonecessarily do it.
They were told by their doctorgo to physical therapy and they
we have this notion thatphysical therapy is just
necessarily for injuries or, youknow, rehab, but it can be
prehab as well and so you canprevent injuries by getting

(02:20):
after things early.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Amen, amen.
I agree.
How did you get started in thephysical therapy business?

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Well, yeah, that's a uh, it's kind of a long road.
Um, I uh started initiallycoming out of school with a
landscape architecture degree,so, um, not usually what you
hear for physical therapy.
Usually most people are like Ihad an injury, I did physical

(02:50):
therapy and I really wanted tobe a physical therapist.
Well, I was a golf architect,so I had a landscape architect's
degree, moved to North Carolinaand did golf architecture and
during the kind of economicdownturn in the early 2000s I
realized that there was not muchfuture for me here in the golf
world.
Now I could have probably stuckout with it, but it just wasn't

(03:12):
lining up with, like, my goalsand my initiative.
It wasn't what I thought it wasgoing to be.
And so I kind of startedworking for a friend who had a
gym and training people and Iworked for another friend who
had a bar and kind of looked atboth of those two things and I
loved conversing with people, Iloved getting to hear their
stories and I liked trainingpeople and helping them reach

(03:36):
goals that way and I've meshedthem two together and it was
like that's like a physicaltherapist and and so I went to
Western Carolina University andgot my doctorate in physical
therapy and started there.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Wow.
Well, there you go.
Landscape architecture.
Yeah, you don't hear that much.
I bet you got a great lookingyard though.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
No, no, no.
It's very sad.
The landscape architect comes.
You know, the first thing thatkind of drops off when you have
uh duties and responsibility isyour yard work.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yep, uh, totally get that.
Well, what are some myths ormisconceptions in the physical
therapy industry?

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Uh, yeah, so some of the biggest myths, like I said
before, um is like I can't dothis, or my doctor said I can't
do that or I shouldn't be doingthis.
Like, uh, one of the biggestones that I hear all the time is
like I can't do this, or mydoctor said I can't do that or I
shouldn't be doing this, like,one of the biggest ones that I
hear all the time is like, oh,running, you know, running is
bad for your knees and I reallykind of contend that it's not if

(04:36):
you are running correctly andhave good form and have good
strength and have good strength.
Um, and so different thingslike that is usually what I'm
battling with is, um, weshouldn't be dead lifting or we
shouldn't be squatting.
We, you know, there is a, thereis an ability for us all to do

(04:56):
things.
Um, you talk about surfing.
My grandfather was wind surfinginto his eighties.
Um, I, I just recently, likeLast week, the oldest man to
finish the Badlands 135 mileultra marathon was 80 years old.
I ran at Ironman in Chattanoogaand had a 76 year old man

(05:20):
finish in front of me, likeright in front of me.
You know that is verydiscouraging for myself, but I
was like that's impressive forthat man and I use those
examples all the time, tryingwith my clients to say, like you
know, 60 is not that old, 70 isnot that old.
When you look at these athletesthat are doing 135 miles in the

(05:43):
desert at 80 years old, wow,Wow, yeah, I'm sure it was
discouraging, but at the sametime encouraging too.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, hey, 76, man, I can still be doing this.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, I want to be that guy.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Wow.
Well, I know recently in thenews this Indian guy from India
that was the oldest marathonrunner that was on record, I
guess 114 years old died fromgetting hit by a car while he
was running.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah 114.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I'm like geez, anyway , yeah.
Well, who are your targetcustomers?
Obviously people that haveinjuries, or maybe not.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Right, Well, yeah, I mean obviously the, the.
The low hanging fruit is thepeople who are injured, have
pain, have discomfort.
Really, I look at it assomething background in golf.
I do niche a little bit in golfand work with people on their

(06:53):
game as well as their bodies,and so some people come to me
with, just like, I have somerestrictions in my hips and I
want to be able to do my sport alittle bit better.
And so I ran, I run the gambitfrom like prehab, which is like
people who know they're going togo in for surgery and they want
to get stronger so that thepost surgery is better, to

(07:17):
people who have pain, discomfortand they can't do the hike or
the golf or whatever over theweekend.
And so it's a big range andit's a big range of age.
You know, I see anywhere fromteenagers to you teenagers to 80
and even close to 90 year olds.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Wow, wow.
Well, how do you attractcustomers?
Marketing is key to anybusiness.
What do you do to market yourbusiness?

Speaker 3 (07:43):
So my biggest marketing is word of mouth.
So client to client, peopletelling each other this is what
I did, and some of the bestmarketing I have is when you
know John goes out and outdrives his golfing buddies and
they say, whoa, what have youbeen doing?
And he's like, oh, I've beenworking with this guy, but other

(08:04):
than that, I do workshops withlocal gyms and I try to post as
much as I can on social media,but it's not as much as I should
.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
I hear you.
You ever thought about having apodcast.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Um, I've, I've definitely thought about it and
and the the range of topicsalways kind of overwhelms me,
from common sense things to tojust intricate detailed niche
things.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Well, we'll talk later.
We, we, we do podcasts outsideof work.
What do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 3 (08:42):
So yeah, outside of working, and a lot of people are
always like, oh, you play a lotof golf, don't you?
And I say no, I rarely everplay golf, because I have a four
year old son and most of mytime is spent with him and my
wife and at the lake or hiking,or just playing trucks or cars
or walking the dog.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Very cool, great, best answer Time with family,
especially if your wife listensto the podcast.
Just kidding, let's switchgears for just a second.
Can you describe a hardship ora life challenge that you've
overcome and how it made youstronger in the end?

Speaker 3 (09:28):
part of it, and and and I do have some hardships in
my life, but I think thechallenges is the biggest thing
that I found the change from andand, like I said, I have a
four-year-old son.
So, um, I got married sevenyears ago and then he's four,
and so I think with those twolife events, um, it spurred the
biggest change in my life.
So, with the coming of a sonand becoming a father, I kind of

(09:51):
dove deep and I didn't evenrealize I was doing it, but I
started diving deep intoself-improvement and reading,
adding listening to books andself-help so-called self-help
books and really changed the waythat I approached life and the
way that I approached who I was,whether it be communication or,

(10:14):
you know, mindset or health andall of those things.
And that's probably the biggestchallenge that I saw was being
a father, and then the changethat it's made in myself.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Awesome, dr Walt.
If you could think of one thingthat you would like our
listeners to remember aboutperformance ability LLC, what
would that be?

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, so I think one of the things I haven't
mentioned yet is, I mean, Itouched on it a little bit, but
it is kind of more a completeside of physical therapy that a
lot of people don't think of.
So I do a little bit ofcoaching when it comes to.

(10:59):
You can call it life coachingor mindset coaching or anything
like that, but it is differentfrom your normal physical
therapy.
It involves a lot of whatyou're eating, what you're
thinking and then what you'redoing, and all of that is
getting at the root cause of theissue that you're having or why
you're coming to see me, and soall of that combined it's kind
of like a complete coachingsession for physical therapy.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Eating, thinking and doing.
Yeah, mind, body and in soulkind of yeah, mind, body and
spirit, yeah, absolutely verygood.
Well, if, um, somebody like methat's.
You know, I stopped doingsquats and leg extensions about
10 years ago when my doctor toldme to, because I think for

(11:46):
years I used way too much weightand wasn't doing it properly,
so I've injured my knees andshoulders and everything else.
But for somebody like me whowants to get back in the swing
of golf or, you know, running orwhatever, and and we want to
learn more, how can we do that?

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, so it's.
It's finding somebody that youtrust and you align with.
Like you know, for me, forexample, myself and and getting
a getting an assessment, andthat's kind of the first.
The first aspect is talkingwith somebody who's going to go
a little bit beyond yourphysical and really get down to

(12:30):
why you want to do something andthen start working with you on
how you can do it.
What is, what are your barriers, and then what are your pluses
that you can to move into it,because everything has,
everything has, everybody has abiomechanical barrier.
We're not all one and there'snot one.
You know one answer one pill orone, anything for all of us.

(12:53):
We're all going to be different, we're all going to be aligned
a little bit differently.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Very true.
What if somebody in the, youknow, western North Carolina
region would like to learn moreabout you and potentially make
an appointment?
How can they do that?

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah, so all my information is on my website.
North Carolina region wouldlike to to learn more about you
and, potentially, make anappointment.
How can they do that?
Yeah, so all my information ison my website.
So that is performance dashabilitycom, as well as social
media.
Performance dot ability onInstagram.
Or built for golf on Instagram,with the four being F O R E.
So built for golf on Instagram,with the four being F O R E.
So built for golf.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Gotcha On Instagram, awesome, all right.
Well, dr Walt, it's beenfascinating.
I think you're the firstphysical therapist I've talked
to who actually does coachingtoo, so that's, that's unique,
but I really appreciate youtaking time out of your busy
schedule to talk with us andtell us all about what you do

(13:51):
and what makes you different,and wish you and your family and
your practice all the bestmoving forward.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
All right.
Well, thank you very much forhaving me, and you do, and you
the same.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Thank you so much.
Maybe we can have you backsometime.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah, that'd be great .

Speaker 2 (14:06):
All right.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Thanks a lot.
Back sometime?
Yeah, that'd be great, allright, thanks a lot.
Thank you for listening to thegood neighbor podcast.
To nominate your favorite localbusinesses to be featured on
the show, go to GNP try dashcitiescom.
That's GNP, try dash citiescom.
Or call 4, 2, 3, 7, 1, 9, 5, 8,7, 3.
719-5873.