Tommy Del Favero knows more about the human body than most people will ever learn. He has a master's degree in human movement and corrective exercise. He works with clients every day assessing posture, breathing patterns, and muscle firing. He teaches people how their bodies are supposed to move. He is exactly the kind of person who thinks he has already tried everything.
And then he came in for his right foot and walked out with his whole body.
A Collapsing Arch and a Body Leaning Right
Tommy had been dealing with a frustrating, persistent problem: the medial arch of his right foot kept collapsing inward, which was causing his third toe to twist in the wrong direction. He was also leaning to the right constantly. No matter how many times he stretched, activated his left side, or worked to rebalance, he would improve for a while and then drift back.
He had been working with Galina Denzel, a movement and trauma specialist, and Dr. Kaisa Lopes. They assessed him and both identified something in the upper cervical area that needed attention. He had seen other chiropractors before. He had gotten adjustments. Things improved temporarily. But they kept coming back.
They sent him to me.
When we looked at his imaging, we found C1 rotated 33 degrees to the left and C3 rotated 22 degrees to the right. That is a significant amount of upper cervical misalignment in someone who had otherwise been doing all the right things and still could not get his body to stabilize.
We made the Blair upper cervical correction. He rested for 30 to 40 minutes. And when he stood up, his foot arch was back.
Not gradually. Immediately.
Structure Dictates Function — All the Way Down
Tommy understood instantly why it had worked, because his training gave him the vocabulary to describe it: the brain stem exits the skull right at the atlas. The atlas is the top of the chain. If there is a problem at the top of the chain, the entire body below it compensates. Fix the top of the chain and everything downstream has a chance to reset.
He had been fixing things from the middle of the chain down for years. Brilliantly. Professionally. With real, measurable results. And then they kept coming back because the top was still off and the body kept returning to its compensatory patterns.
Within a week of his correction, his pelvis went from 4.5 centimeters off to 0.1. His lower back muscles, which had been holding him crooked, released. His body leveled out. His pain disappeared.
He described it as all the messages he had been working so hard to send for so long finally traveling all the way down the spine and landing where they were supposed to go.
The Slackline Test
Here is the detail I love most about Tommy's story.
He uses a slackline at work. He gets on it regularly. You stand on a slackline, you wobble, you find your balance, you adjust. That is just how it goes.
One morning not long after his correction, he walked in half asleep, stepped up on the slackline, and walked straight across. No wobble. No adjustment. Just walked, as if it were a sidewalk.
His body, finally running from a structurally sound top of the chain, had a sense of itself in space that it had not had before. Balance is a neurological function. When the nervous system is interfering with itself because the atlas is misaligned, balance suffers even in people who train their bodies professionally. When the interference is removed, the body finds its center in a way that no amount of slackline practice alone would have produced.
He also noticed it in his heavy lifts. Weights that used to feel like a struggle, or produced back pain from poor stabilization, now moved with minimal effort. Not because he got stronger overnight. Because his nervous system could finally deliver its signals all the way from top to bottom without interference.
What This Means for Every Trainer's Clients
I asked Tommy what he would tell trainers and coaches who are listening, what signals should send a client his direction or mine.
His answer was clear: recurring issues. The shoulder that keeps coming back. The knee that improves and then returns. The hip that no amount of mobility work will fully release. When a trainer is doing everything right and the problem keeps cycling, something above the level they are working at is driving it. That is when the conversation needs to move up the chain.
He had already started using a quick assessment I taught him: watching how the feet change with the head in different positions, a simple indicator of which cervical vertebrae may be out of alignment. He tried it on a few of his clients within the first week and sent them in.
That is the collaborative model I believe in completely. Tommy stabilizes the movement patterns. I establish the structural foundation. Galina addresses the nervous system and trauma patterns. Each of us does what we are best at, and the patient gets more than any one of us could provide alone.
Find Tommy
Tommy Del Favero is at Athletes' Choice in Rancho Santa Margarita. Find him at athleteschoice-rsm.com or on Instagram at @TomD_ac. He does quick instructional videos on functional movement regularly, and if you are in Southern California and want to work with someone who genuinely understands how the body moves, he is an excellent referral.
And if you are a trainer anywhere who keeps seeing the same pattern of recurring issues in your clients that nothing below the neck seems to fully resolve: reach out. We should talk.
Listen to the full conversation with Tommy Del Favero on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Find Tommy at athleteschoice-rsm.com. Find us at wellconnectedchiro.com. To find a Blair chiropractor near you, visit blairchiropractic.com.
