Dry needling is a treatment intervention that is gaining popularity in the US amongst a variety of health care practitioners, including athletic trainers.  Dry needling is a skilled intervention that inserts a thin monofilament needle/s to penetrate the skin and the underlying structures, stimulating underlying neural, muscular, and connective tissues.  This insertion creates a healing response within the tissue and can be used to treat a variety of neuromusculoskeletal conditions and assist in pain management.  In this lecture, we will explain the physiological pathways of dry needling, discuss safety concerns and demonstrate via video clinical application.

Applied sports science is a relatively new and upcoming facet of sports performance and sports medicine. ATs are now required to collect and analyze data from a variety of sources, including wearable and performance technology. While many of the tech companies provide analytic tools and algorithms to help interpret the data, what is missing is how the AT needs to consume the data and then disseminate to appropriate stakeholders. Often the needs of different stakeholders are not the same, therefore, the AT must be able to communicate effectively and efficiently with all parties. The purpose of this presentation is to provide ATs with valuable information on how to effectively communicate performance data to a variety of stakeholders.

Historically, the spine is a difficult area to evaluate and treat. While there is a significant amount of literature on interventions for back pain (1) and it remains one of the most common areas of patient complaints, athletic trainers are not often comfortable treating this area, due to a lack of knowledge and experience in this complex region of the body. In addition to this, manual therapy is a large part of clinical practice (2,3), yet is often misunderstood or improperly applied. This session will bridge the gap from research to clinical practice for both manual therapy and back pain.