Foot Instability and Body Imbalance Restored with Blair Chiropractic

There were a lot of things off with Tommy Del Favero like foot instability and body imbalance He received adjustments before but nothing was working until Tommy’s neck was adjusted through Blair Chiropractic. After 40 minutes, Tommy felt better and his right arch was activated again. He shares the whole process of correction from his Atlas and how helps client’s adjustment smoother.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Foot Instability and Body Imbalance Restored with Blair Chiropractic

I’m super pumped about my guest because he is a newer patient to me, although I’ve known him for a few years. I’m excited for him to share his story about what Blair Chiropractic did for him in his life and how it’s impacting the work he does. Welcome to my podcast, Tommy.

Thank you for having me, Dr. Hoefer.

We’ve known each other for about four years because we do this thing called the Be Well Summit. Every year, the gym that you manage is present as a vendor.

That’s Athletes Choice in RSM.

We’ve always been a fan of Athletes Choice. They’re right down the road from us. I refer a lot of people over there, a lot of my patients over there to work with a different kind of chiropractic that does more physical therapy training and also the trainers over there to get them moving well. We have a mutual friend, Galina Denzel, who you have heard her podcast on trauma and movement. She was doing some work with you.

I have been having some issues with my feet. The medial arch of my right foot, the inside part, likes to collapse in a lot, which is causing my third toe to twist and go the opposite way. After we did some assessments, we found that there were a lot of things off with me. I was working with Galina Denzel as well as Dr. Kaisa Lopes. In their assessment, they said that I had some things that were blocked up in my upper cervical area. I’ve had other adjustments before in the past and nothing was changing. They referred me to come see Dr. Hoefer and she did the Blair adjustment on me. As soon as we did the adjustment, my foot, instantly that same day after I laid down for about 30 minutes to 40 minutes to rest, everything settled on in. When I stood up, instantly my right arch was activated again. Instead of collapsing in, it was holding itself up and my whole body became extremely balanced immediately. From there, the rest of my body unwound. I was having some lower back issues where my whole body was leaning over to the right because my left side wasn’t turning on properly. Having that single adjustment, everything started unwinding and getting itself back in place.

You came in because you had a very specific arch issue and you wanted to see if having the neck adjusted, specifically the top of your neck where your atlas is, if that could make an implication in having your foot get fixed, and within 40 minutes it changed?

If you think about your brain stem, it’s attached to the atlas, that’s the highest that you can get on the chain. You fixed the upper part of the chain, everything else unwinds all the way down. If there are problems at the top of the chain, then there’s all kinds of compensations going back and forth down on your entire body and trying to fix those things.

For you, it happened to be the biggest issue with your foot?

Yeah, that was it. I got done with a long road trip and I had been driving for a week straight. My whole back and my hips were twisting, and I had a ton of things going on and my body was like Superman. After I got adjusted, everything unwound. My pelvis released. I went from being 4.5 cm or so off to being 0.1 cm in a course of a week. Everything leveled back out. My lower back muscles relaxed and my body’s never felt stronger and more stable ever.

When he’s talking about the measurement of his hips, we have people stand on a posture analyzer. The actual measurement is centimeters. So,4.5 cm. To have your hips twisted out of that much, it was a visible thing on you. When we show the patients when they come in for their exam, we show them what we call their ‘strings’ look like. They’re shocked to see how crooked they are standing in space because they think that they’re standing up normal and they have decent posture. You had mentioned you’d gone to other chiropractors. What, in your estimation, is the difference between a traditional chiropractic manipulation in the neck compared to the Blair correction you’ve got that made all the difference?

I do a lot of work with Dr. Mike Flores over at AMP Sports Med & Recovery, which is located inside our facility at Athletes Choice. We do muscle work and soft tissue work and compression work to get inflammation and things of that nature out of the body. Once you release those muscles, it makes adjustments smooth. I tend to have my hips adjusted, my lumbar spine, my T-spine, and those all fell great and made a difference. It felt good. If you’re only adjusting that far down the chain, all of the things up at the top of the chain are going to go back to these compensations. I’ve got my master’s degree in Human Movement and Corrective Exercise. I worked with all my patients and all my clients with getting their bodies moving functionally, resetting their nervous system, clearing their lymphatic system so that their nervous system and muscles can work properly.

I use that kind of work on myself all the time. I kept having the same issue over and over again no matter how many times I would do certain exercises. I kept being leaning to the right no matter what I did. I’d stretched, I’d react to be on my left side. It would work for a little bit and then it would go back. It was back and forth all the time. Those adjustments help to realign me for the time being, but I would go back to those issues that I was having. Once I had the upper cervical done, which is at the very top of the chain, mine was C1 and C3 where there was like 33 degrees off to the left and then 22 degrees on C3 to the right. Once those got adjusted, the rest of my nervous system could click, all the messages that I’d worked on for so long, all trail the rest of the way down the slide down the terrain, down the spine, all the way through, they released everything and I got everything back where it’s supposed to be.

[Tweet “Ever since I’ve had that adjustment, my body has never felt more stable. “]

I love Dr. Mike Flores. I’ve sent several people over to him because he does incredible rehab training and I don’t do that. My main passion is structural integration and nervous system integrity. Him and people like Galina, people like you take the structure that I’ve established it and run with it and make such a huge impact. Have you noticed it’s helping you train better? Are you more effective as a trainer and helping people understand their physiology with having the upper cervical correction?

As I work with people every day, I’m looking at posture; I’m looking at breathing patterns; I’m looking at muscle firing activation. I do that stuff all day long. I haven’t done a whole lot of work personally with the upper cervical. I’ve researched and learn this stuff over the years, but never had any work specifically done on me because I spend more time helping other people than helping myself. Since doing this, I’ve realized what a big difference that stuff all makes. Ever since I’ve had that adjustment, my body has never felt more stable. As a result of being more stable, that enables your body to create more strength and then therefore more power.

Doing heavy lifts like I would do before that were a struggle or it’d be sloppy and then I’d have pain in my lower back or pain in different areas, that stuff’s all gone. The highest weight that I did before with minimal effort. In addition, balance-wise, I do a lot of surfing. A lot of other sports as well, but surfing especially. I walk on a slack line all the time and it worked. I usually get up and you wobble back and forth. I went in there half asleep from being early in the morning, sit up on there and walked across without any issue. I didn’t wobble along. I was walking in a straight line and everything was turned on and super stable.

There’s a reoccurring theme with most of these podcasts, ‘structure dictates function’. If you’re in alignment from the top down, your function is going to be better and improved and the way that it was designed to be. That’s exactly what you’re talking about. Tell me what this looks like on a client that you’re working with? What would be something where you would know, “This person needs to get in and get care.” There are going to be a lot of people that go to their trainer and they have this all the time, “My left knee hurts. My right shoulder hurts.” What would you say to everyone, “If this is what you’re experiencing, maybe you should have a Blair practitioner check you out.”?

If you have a reoccurring thing where things are constantly showing up, “My right shoulder hurts all the time, no matter what I do.” It keeps coming back or it goes away and comes back, when I have clients like that, I’ll work on mobilizing that area. I’ll work on activating those muscles appropriately, stabilizing in the shoulder blade, doing all those things to get things working properly. I know that everything I’m supposed to be doing to fix that. If it keeps reoccurring, that means that there’s something higher up than where I’m working. That would lead me to send someone over to see Dr. Hoefer to check that upper cervical area.

Dr. Hoefer taught me a quick assessment that she does, looking at the feet with your head in different positions to see what cervical vertebrae are out of position. I did that on a couple of my clients and I was like, “You’ve definitely got at least three or so vertebrae that are out, “from doing this test. That tells me, “You keep having this back and keep having this neck pain, shoulder pain. You need to go see Dr. Hoefer so she can assess you.” From there, I know that all the work that I’ve done to reset the nervousness and to teach those proper movement patterns are all going to click. Once that pipeline is opened, all those messages go through you perfectly and your body restabilizes and it works so much better than it did before.

What you’re saying is if your head’s on straight, then everything you do is going to be enhanced. They’re spending better time, it’s quality effort, and the money that they’re spending to train is going to go longer because their nervous system is intact and able to receive the information.

It’s going to last much longer because once the Blair adjustment is done, the adjustments tend to hold forever, hopefully, unless you have some other trauma. For the most part, it holds up stuff all still. If you’d taken that on top of proper activation of your neck muscles and posture, and working with someone like me doing all the creative exercise and resetting the nervous system, all that stuff was going to stick even better and it’s going to keep your body bulletproof. Once you’re in that positioning you can get as strong and as fast and powerful as you want to get.

Where can people find you? There’s going to be someone here that are local to Southern California, that is going to want to have what you’re talking about. Where can we find you?

The place to find me would be on AthletesChoiceRSM.com. My name is Tommy Del Favero. You’ll see us on Facebook with that same name. On Instagram, it’s @TomD_AC and you can follow and see the people I’m training with, the facility that we work at. I do quick little videos in stretching and teaching about why this exercise is going to help with back pain or whatever this performance at your side depending on the day.

I’m so excited to have you on. You’re young in our little journey of Blair Chiropractic because it’s been a little under a month since you’ve been under care, but you’ve already been a champion. You’ve already referred four or five people in here, including your fiancé. It’s fun to be able to take care of the people that you take care of because we’re a team now. They have a great team helping them get their nervous systems regulated, get their structure intact, and then be as powerful as they want to be.

[Tweet “Once you’re in that positioning you can get as strong and as fast and powerful as you want to get. “]

We also look forward to having Tommy and Athletes Choice at Be Well Summit. If you have any questions about what the Be Well Summit is, go to our website at BeWellOC.com and check out our upcoming event. It’s going to be Saturday, March 10th. It’s a free community event. If you’re in Southern California, make it over to RSM and check out the Be Well Summit. You can meet Tommy; you can have him show you some really cool live demonstrations on different things you can do for functional movement. We look forward to seeing you there. Thank you so much, Tommy, for being on the podcast. I’m happy to say that your head is on straight.

It’s all nice and straight and feeling better than ever. Thank you for your time in having me.

You are welcome.

Thanks everyone. That was Tommy with Athletes Choice, an incredible trainer in our area and an advocate for the Blair Upper Cervical work. His right foot arch was restored because of one upper cervical adjustment. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, any issues that you may be having, and you want to know more, give me an email through the Is Your Head on Straight Podcast. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you. If you’re not local to Southern California, go to the Blair Chiropractic website, BlairChiropractic.com, locate a doctor. You can find a Blair practitioner near you. Thankfully we’re growing in number and you might be able to find somebody close in your area that can help you out. Thanks everyone and I’m hoping your heads are on straight.

About Tommy Del Favero

Tommy Del Favero has been involved in the sports community since the age of 6 as a competitive swimmer. He swam for the Oasis club team out of Palmdale, CA for many years. In high school, he swam, ran cross country, and wrestled. His love for competition and compassion for teaching led him to become a high school teacher in the Antelope Valley Union High School District where he worked as a long term substitute teacher and coach for the Quartz Hill Swim Team, Lancaster Cross Country Team, and strength and conditioning coach for a club softball team called STEALTH.

He received his bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of California, at Irvine and continued his education of the human body at A.T. Still University where he obtained a Master’s degree in Human Movement and Corrective Exercise. Since then, he has worked through all three levels of the Titleist Performance Institute Fitness Professional track in addition to various other continuing educational seminars.

Tommy is not only a corrective exercise specialist but a performance enhancement specialist as well. This enables him to correct dysfunctional movement patterns and improve any athlete’s performance in their respective sport at the same time.

Tommy uses movement screenings, such as the Functional Movement Screen, in order to determine any dysfunctional movement patterns or muscular imbalances they may have so that they can be corrected. Once these patterns and imbalances are corrected, risk factors leading to injury are reduced while the overall performance of the individual increases.

Important Links

• Be Well Summit
• Athletes Choice
• Galina Denzel
• AMP Sports Med & Recovery
• AthletesChoiceRSM.com
• Tommy Del Favero
• Athletes Choice’s Facebook
• @TomD_AC – Instagram

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