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June 13, 2025 • 15 mins
Tony talks with Bob Mangine from UC and NovaCare on ESPN 1530!
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back as we roll along on a Friday thanks
to Penn Station. It's our number three since he three
to sixty on the Home of the Bengals ESPN fifteen
thirty Cincinnati Sports Station. Yes, I said Home of the Bengals,
the NFL team that resides right here in Cincinnati, not
the team that resides in Pittsburgh. Although if you talk
to our next guest, he's very interested with what's going

(00:20):
on with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I'm more interested with what's
going on with the Cincinnati Bengals and a defensive player
that is going to play a large role in shutting
down Aaron Rodgers and the aerial attack that the Pittsburgh
Steelers have put together. Of course, I'm talking about our
good friend Bob Manjean from the University of Cincinnati and
novacare joining us right now.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hi, Bob, Hey, Tony, how are you.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm good, I'm good. How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
You're killing me dog. You know the Steelers, you know
they have that short bus from the nursing home and
they bring in Aaron Rodgers every day from the nursing home.
I get it.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I get you before I get into my Dax Hill
question what's going on with basketball, because I know you
guys get a lot of a couple of workouts throughout
town of the summer months. How refreshing is it to
be able to get all the new pieces together and
just get out and work out a little bit on
the basketball court.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well, it's really exciting because right now this week was
our first week of discretionary So the NCA allows you
eight weeks throughout the course of the summer to have
strength and conditioning. Coach Refel works with them, and then
on the court, the coaches get to work with them
and actually start to put the team chemistry together. So

(01:35):
you know, and again in this era of college basketball,
you're bringing in four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
and in some teams last year, you know, they're bringing
a whole new team. So the summer is really really
critical to start trying to get kids working together and
learning each other and playing some open gym. See how
the kids are going to respond whenever they're in different environments.

(01:57):
And we started this week and it's really exciting what's
going on up here in Clifton and a lot of
good talent and we'll just see, you know, how it all.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Evolves discretionary for players, never discretionary for you, is it, Bob.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, fortunately or unfortunately. If they're on the court, then
the NCAA requires sports medicine to be on the court
with them or you know, be in the building whenever
they're in the weight room. And so, you know, we
do have a lot of health and safety regulations that
we abide by, and but there are times where the
kids will you know, you've got some kids that are like, hey,

(02:34):
I'm going to shoot two, three, four times a day,
and they might come over in the evening and shoot
on their own. And again, you you're not covering that.
But anything that's considered discretionary workout formally in what we
call CARA, which is allowable accountable hours of participation. Then
you know, we've got to be on campus. Plus we

(02:55):
got to do all the physicals. We got to do
well is it nine new physicals or new physicals this year?
So and that takes a lot of work, cause you
can't really rely on the school that they went to
prior and all the medical information you can get from
the school as they transferred from. And I'm old school,
so I want to start all over again. So Basically,

(03:17):
we're doing an initial participation in intake physical and every
kid that we bring in, you know, just looking to
make sure that you know their health is well established.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
I want to ask from a Cincinnati Bengals standpoint. We've
obviously talked a lot about the Bengals defense this offseason
and getting to be able to practice with a new
defensive coordinator coming in. Dox Hill has yet to be
able to practice. He's been on the rehab field. It's
interesting how the Bengals are going to use him, whether
it's going to be outside corner where he slots in.

(03:52):
He's played some safety obviously. But the interesting part about
this is that dox Hill tore his ACL last year
in Week five against the Baltimore Ravens. That puts at
October sixth, So we're a little more than eight months
beyond the injury right now. When you start to get
to that standpoint, eight plus months out from an ACL injury,

(04:13):
you're working on the rehab field, what are some of
the things you're looking for as a player gets now
deeper into the rehab to make sure that he's trending
in the right direction.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, you're really trying to get an integration of what
they're doing in the clinic and the training room, what
they're doing in the weight room, and then working with
coaching staff on drills and reorienting their bodies and movements
back to football skill type of movements.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's not one single thing that counts over the years,
you know, I've actually published quite a number of papers
on ACO and return to play, and in my mind
there are factors such as, you know, how strong are they,
what's their race of the strength within the lower extremity

(05:02):
versus or core. You know, what does their foot speed
look like, what's their reaction time? In terms of when
you tear an ac album, people have to realize the
speed of tearing a ligament or when you tear your handstring,
that injury occurs at about two hundreds of a second.

(05:22):
The fastest muscle firing that we have in our bodies
is about five hundreds of a second. So theoretically you
can't contract fast enough to counterbalance and apply force. So
we look at the reaction capability in a single limb position,
because when you get hurt, you're basically getting her on

(05:43):
one leg. So we look at the foot position in
the ground, We look at the core reaction to that
and what we do on the field in terms of
return to activities in a sporting environment is probably the
most single important thing, and that is that you know,
you remember last year I had Tyler McKinley get hurt,

(06:05):
and Tyler's been full practice right around seven months, six
and a half months. But again we kind of ty
traded that up. And when we put them on the court,
you don't put them right out there, right on the
field and say hey, we're going to go through an
hour and a half practice. We're going to go through
station one, station two, then the next week maybe station one,

(06:29):
two and three, and then the next week. So when
you say full clear to return, it's basically a progressive,
step by step return to make sure that the athlete
can absorb the forces that's going to be put on them.
The other critical factor, believe it or not, is your
genetic makeup, and it's a proablic curve. There are people

(06:52):
on one side of that curve who are what I
like to call gumbies, people that are very loose joined.
You see that oftentimes in female and in those kids.
I take my good old time. You know, I'm dealing
with a couple of our athletes here that I classify
on that side of the spectrum, and you know, we're
not playing on them going back to probably twelve months,

(07:14):
maybe thirteen months, depending on their strength. Then you've got
kids on the other side who are super tight and
they scar in super tight and they have these big
thick scars that you can see when they get a wound.
And one of your teammates, Tony Carvetti, you remember Tony.
Tony played in the International Bowl up in Toronto. Tony

(07:36):
played eleven weeks and six days after his ACL reconstruction.
He got hurt in the Miami of Ohio game in
early September. We didn't play till or in late September.
We didn't play until just late December early January. And
Tony did an incredible job with his rehab and basically

(07:58):
was able to play. I'll stay right around twelve weeks
because he was so tight jointed in his muscles. Didn't
even know he had surgery. I mean, boom, they kicked
right back on. So it's a problic curve. It's not
everybody returns at the same time. You know, one ACL,
like I said, might get back quick within six seven,

(08:19):
eight months, and another one might follow the average curve of eight,
nine months, ten months. But then you have a small
group that you need to be careful with and take
your time. That's where your rehab person comes into play,
because if you go to a physical therapist who understands
the integration of the body systems and they can look

(08:41):
at that individual and say, wait, bit man, this is
a type jointed individual. We need to get moving and
we're gonna have a motion complication, or this is somebody
who's a gumby, and gumbies can literally stretch their acls
out between eight and twelve weeks just during you know,
high level listing activities. They don't have to be returned
to play because there are scar tissues not as stiffer,

(09:03):
or the collagenists makeup of the repair is not as
solid as somebody on the other side of the spectrum.
So you know, that's where rehab in the first probably
four months is the most critical, and you really need
to have somebody not just somebody who sees one ACL

(09:24):
every now and then, or you know, sees one athlete
every now and then. You need somebody who's continually seeing
you know, athletes like surgery. You know, I always tell patients,
if you want an ACL reconstruction, you want to have
a surgeon who's doing one hundred a year. You don't
want to go through a surgeon who does you know,
they dabble in it with one or two or three
a year. You know, it's the same thing with rehab.

(09:45):
You know you get referred to a physical therapist. Well,
you better make sure. And that's why Nova Care started
our program for what we call Sports Medicine Centers of Excellence,
and that you know, those individuals have gone through specific
certification in training so that you know they can handle
an ACO and they can handle a dislocated shoulder. So

(10:08):
once you get in the point B then it's a
strength problem where you really pushing strength. And then finally
you get into the point CEE where they're on the
field and you've got to progress them through that that
time frame on the field. And I'm assuming in his case,
he's going to be monitored through that whole process.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, because because he spoke this week and he said that,
you know, he he knows that full clearance doesn't necessarily
mean full participation from it. And again, I think the
timing of the injury obviously makes it different. Right now
they've got five or six weeks off, you could be
a little bit more cautious and and uptick him in
different ways. But he did speak of the difference of

(10:48):
full clearance with the ACL versus full participation once practices.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Start correct, correct and full clearance just means that everybody's
happy with clinical numbers that they see in terms of
the stability into motion, the clinical strength. But full clearance
to play is an algorithm where you've got to go
through these different drills and make sure that they can.
I mean, in Tyler's case, it took me six weeks

(11:14):
to start from you know, drill number one that West
likes to use all the way through him going through
an iron twenty minute practice. You know, it's not like Gene,
you look great clinically, let's just jump right in. It's
this nice slow titration up so that his body, their
bodies get used to the forces, their bodies start to

(11:35):
go back to encountering unknown forces. So it's like you
played football, right, you had no idea what way the
defensive end was coming, so you had to be prepared
for anything coming etchet. You know, I couldn't replicate that
here in the training room, So we had to get
you on the field and teach how to fall or
teach how to you know, react to when you got hit,

(11:56):
or teach you how to respond when you saw something
come out of the corner of your You can't do
that in the clinic. It has to be done in
the environment that you're going to play in. And that's
why you know that portion of is really critical to
have somebody experienced with getting you through those steps. And
at the professional level, there's people all over there that

(12:19):
that are looking at those steps right you know. The
last thing we're looking at right now is we've got
a major study with a company out of California name
CLR Neualistics, and we're actually able to now measure brain
function and look at the brains response to different activities.
And if you're not training on single legs on a

(12:40):
single leg program er, if you're not training in a
visual environment with blaze pods or Dina vision or something
that deals with visual field, that lights up your brain
and that really gets you to be very quick reactive.
So you know, we've got all kinds of testing now
from you know, testing to jump testing to ligament testing

(13:04):
and everything's fancy, but it still comes back too. Can
you go back into the environment that you got hurt
in and feel like you're confident that you can withstand
those forces? And then once you're there and again my
comment is, I've never returned an athlete to play, and
you know this. I'll walk up and say, do you

(13:25):
think you're ready to go? Because only you know am
I able to absorb, respond, react, and play and absorb force?
I don't know that it's your body. And too many
people think as soon as a doctor or physical therapist
or somebody who says, oh you're learned to play, well
that's the cure all to end, all just go right
in the game. No, it's a slow, steady progress, and

(13:49):
the athlete is the number one decision maker on do
I feel comfortable enough that when I get hit, I'm
going to be able to absorb the force, fall correctly
or respond correctly and not getting injured again. You want
to make them better than they were because they got injured.
So obviously they weren't you know, where they needed to
be when they got injured, So you want to actually

(14:11):
make them more improved power, improved balance, improved core.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Awesome stuff. As always, Bob, we always appreciate your time,
especially here on a Friday afternoon. Enjoy the weekend, and
by all means, send me any Aaron Rodgers' workout videos
you find this weekend.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Tony, I keep an eye on it. I want to
make sure that you can see the progress and is
making get and integrated into the Steelers' offense. That way,
when we get to the fall, you and Austin will
cry so bad whenever you know they get down here
because I really worry about you and Austin. Ye get
it on call that you know when you get too
depressed over the Bengals. This year, I told these counselors

(14:52):
that they need to have a couple of appointments open
for you in Austin.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Keep us on speed dial. Bob, have a great weekend, Man,
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Thank you guys, have a good weekend.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
That is Bob Manjean the University of Cincinnati and Care.
Whether you're dealing with injury or just making your health
a priority, Novacare Rehabilitation is here for you. No better
time to make Novacare's movement experts part of your healthcare
team than now. Starting care is easy and for some
may not even require a prescription for physical therapy from
your doctor. To learn more, go to novacare dot com. Today,
we'll wrap it up with Quick Hits next. Since he

(15:22):
three sixty thanks to Penn Station on ESPN fifteen thirty
Cincinnati Sports station
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