That's what that last interview was.
That's pretty amazing.
Look at that.
The flyover of Anaheim there.
I did that myself on a drone.
Hey, mate, were you like flying the drone?
Were you like riding the drone?
Stock image.
Yeah, I just told her that.
It is nice.
Welcome.
The Circus Doc.
Yeah.
Do you introduce yourself as the Circus
Doc?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I carry the swag.
That, my friends, is not good branding.
That is great branding.
That's good.
Who designed that?
Yeah, actually,
a circus friend of mine who is big
in the design world,
she actually works for a couple different
sports teams and happens to be a circus
fan.
And she did it for me years ago,
actually won an award.
She's incredible.
And it's been fun working with her and
seeing the brand evolve and how much
longevity the actual design has.
She's just so skilled.
So let's give context for people who might
not know you.
And for the people who do know you,
they'll get to figure out where the origin
story was.
So your background is what?
We've talked about this before in an APT
orthopedics discussion.
But how do you set the superhero backstory
for how you got to where you are
now?
Yeah,
so I started as a gymnast as a
kid and discovered circus at a summer camp
in my early teen years and kept going.
I got completely hooked, addicted,
loved it.
I was enthralled by the idea of performing
instead of competing and getting claps
instead of scored.
I'm like,
that just was so much more fun.
So we got to go out there and
actually spend time learning that craft
and skill.
And at that point, it was really,
really uncommon to have circus.
And I was hitting it at the right
time.
And I kept doing circus.
I took time off between high school and
undergrad, undergrad and grad school,
and performed professionally for a couple
years.
And then kind of came to the other
side of things to take care of circus
bodies.
Yeah.
And it's such a small niche,
but your accounts reach so many people.
Why?
I mean,
circus artists isn't a huge audience.
How could it possibly resonate with so
many people?
Well, when you're on the inside of it,
it feels like a massive audience.
That's for sure.
It's exponentially growing.
There's been so much growth in the
recreational community,
especially in the United States over the
last decade, twenty years or so.
It keeps getting longer the older I get,
but it's been growing so much.
Back in the day,
we were on Sex in the City at
one of our trapeze schools in New York.
And since then,
I feel like it's just exploded with social
media.
The way people share information and
videos,
those videos are so cool to look at.
It's not just circus artists looking at
it.
It's everybody.
And then, like, Jimmy wants to try it,
I'm sure.
I've done trapeze.
Oh, you've done trapeze?
I did the one in D.C.
on the water.
Oh, excellent.
Yes.
My professor would bring her kids on
vacation, like the club med,
and they would do trapeze.
And, like, it's physical.
but it's also like fear.
It's like, okay, you're however tall,
and you're like,
I don't really have a problem with
heights, but you're like,
I'm gonna do what?
And you're gonna let go of the bar.
Yeah,
you're gonna choose to step off a stable
platform
at about twenty-five,
thirty feet up in the air and then
just dangle from a thing.
Correct.
By choice.
And you're going to time it.
I did like,
and forgive me with the terms, but like,
alright,
so I swung once or twice and then
I went upside down and hooked.
Yep.
And then I grabbed some other guy's hands
and let go.
You did a knee hang and a catch.
I mean, I don't want to brag.
You're basically a professional.
I knee hang.
You are ready to perform.
I knee hung and caught the hell out
of that.
Yeah, you absolutely did.
I wasn't even there.
When I was done, I was like,
I did,
because you watch like six people go and
you're like...
There's strength, timing, fear.
And you're like,
all these things have to happen correctly
in a row.
And then when it does, you're like,
I didn't screw that up.
Nice.
So give people like a who's who besides
trapeze.
Who were the other sort of avatars in
the land of circus?
So Flying Trapeze is certainly kind of
like this big, cool thing.
If you even look back,
I'm kind of a nerd.
You don't know this about me,
but now you do.
I collect cigarette ads from the nineteen
thirties and forties because they have
circus themes.
Yeah.
And so like the flying trapeze is always
kind of like the big thing in the
big star.
But we have so much more to circus
than flying trapeze.
There are actually very few flying
trapezes in the world for the public to
access.
But there are a ton of pole dance
studios,
aerial studios with aerial silks is
probably the most common or aerial hoop.
So a big metal hoop that hangs from
the sky.
Well, not the sky, the ceiling, hopefully.
Different types of trapezes that are
hanging lower.
Dance trapeze move in and out of the
floor instead of just working in the air.
We have acrobatics.
We have hoop diving.
So there's metal hoops stacked on top of
each other based on the ground.
You can dive through.
Yeah.
This is wild.
Super cool.
This stuff is made for social content.
Oh, exactly.
So it's really eye-catching and grabbing.
And then people see it enough and they're
like, well,
that looks like something I could try.
Is there something in my community?
You know,
there's partner acrobatics and then
there's acroyoga that's gotten really big
too.
People do it in the park.
People do it in the park all the
time.
All the time.
And we've got a sear wheel and German
wheel,
so big metal wheels that instead of being
the hoop in the air,
they're kind of the Da Vinci body and
you can spin around with that.
Or German wheel,
which looks like a ladder that's been bent
into a wheel shape.
It's actually a competitive sport.
So there's vaulting and you can watch.
German wheel competitions and vaulting,
it's amazing.
I didn't think we were going to go
this direction,
but Germany does have some crazy sports.
Yes, this is definitely one of them.
I got some corners of the internet.
Germany has a TV show where two
competitors are given an object and a
knife,
and it's an irregularly shaped object,
and their goal is to cut it as
close to half as possible.
So they're standing there with a divider
between them, and Joel is like, here is,
whatever, a shoe.
And they have to cut the shoe to
figure out where half is.
And they do by weight?
I don't know.
Okay, I'm like,
how do we determine half of a shoe?
Yeah, probably weight, mass, whatever.
And I just remember thinking,
you can make a game out of it.
Oh, yeah.
That definitely sounds like something some
teenagers would invent in college and just
spend a lot of time doing.
So when you create content,
which wasn't a term
I created content every day when I ran
a radio station.
We didn't call it content.
We called it going to work,
making some radio.
But now that is a skill set that
can help your business and your profession
and your friends and your community of
artists.
Why did you decide to start being like,
hey, I'm going to do this?
How did you do it?
And then also,
what's your thought process?
Because I love nobody,
no two people make a video or write
an article or do anything the same way.
Or recover from injury.
Or recover from injury, yeah.
So why did you decide to say,
I'm going to turn a camera on this?
And who gave you the right?
You don't need a right.
When did you feel like, yeah,
this is my thing?
You know, it really started...
Kind of two directions.
One was going to grad school.
I was like, oh, hey,
there is kind of a way I look
at my professionals and go, okay, yeah,
the shoulder works to one hundred and
sixty degrees that way.
And then what happens?
Because like mine goes to one ninety,
you know,
plus like what's happening up there and
them not having no answer.
answers,
or at least thankfully my professors being
willing to engage in the conversation,
which made it really fun.
So kind of my own curiosity and realizing
that there wasn't a lot of information out
there.
And then the permission was kind of
granted by the circus community.
In about twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
the American circus educators had their
first meeting at the American Youth Circus
Organization's annual conference.
And they were like, hey,
would you teach an anatomy course for us?
Oh, yeah, okay.
And so to have them reach out and
ask, and I realized that doesn't exist.
That bridge of that knowledge isn't really
going into the circus community yet
because it's been small and growing so
rapidly because we don't have the deep
pockets of money of sports yet.
that tie into those injuries and things.
There isn't that drive for that
information to get there.
And so I became really passionate about
distributing that information and making
sure that artists can train more
efficiently,
artists can recover from their injuries
and perform longer and do what they love
longer.
We have so many artists of all ages.
We have
performances and shows that are artists
all over the age of forty,
which isn't that old,
but is historically pretty old for a
circus artist.
And so to be able to have that
longevity of careers,
we really need to be able to support
them and to be able to have our
artists be able to make it to having
careers without getting sidelined by
injury is also huge.
And just giving them the training
knowledge of how to
get through the day get through the week
without extreme fatigue by monitoring the
training loads by teaching them training
ways that we know from other sports but
in the performing arts world in the dance
world in music um we just really don't
have that idea of what training loads look
like and that you can have high load
days low load days it's just like i'm
gonna grind i'm gonna push harder than
anybody else to get there and so there's
really been uh
a start of the conversation on my end,
and then the community really asking for
more.
Right, there it is.
They saw you as somebody who saw them.
Not to get too existential,
but you understand me.
I'm not normal, right?
Yeah, I'm not normal.
What I do is abnormal.
People aren't flying around or have that
range of motion or do those things.
But they said, you see what I do.
You're one of us, right?
And then if I hang around,
if I follow,
you are leading me to something.
Yeah, and if I ask you a question,
maybe I'll get an answer.
Yeah, I play around with those words.
People are like, social media is trash.
And I'm like, all right,
so tell me about, it's called a feed.
Right, so what are you eating?
What are you consuming?
You're consuming bad feed,
so don't do that.
Unfollow or, the tools are designed,
you can tell it what you don't like,
and you are, the more you like something,
it's like this, this, that, that.
It's the ultimate upvote, downvote.
If it's bad information, don't do it,
because you're gonna start to be pissed.
But if it's good,
there's an Instagram account that's just
like Good News Network.
Love it.
And when it pops up, I'm like,
just give me, like, I need ninety seconds.
I just need something, like, really nice.
Tell me a nice story.
Someone saved a puppy from a thing.
I'm like, great, man.
Great.
Love that puppy.
Feed cleanser.
Juice cleanse.
Same thing.
I do have to admit,
I have a whole separate social media
account for my dog where she follows
completely different things than I follow.
But you know what?
All the things on her feed make me
incredibly happy.
Dogs have it figured out.
Yeah.
what would you say because uh there's
about four thousand students here at csm
oh my gosh yes you can't you can't
go anywhere without there's a group right
there yeah and they travel i feel like
being uh the guy from uh uh nat
geo like they traveled in packs oh my
gosh watch what they they're they're not
your habitat they're foraging for
What would you say to a student who
maybe like tripped across your page and
they're like, but that feels out of reach.
I don't have enough.
I'm not enough to do that or to
start doing that.
The biggest question I get on my social
media account almost every day is,
do you know a clinician in wherever I
am?
These are from the performers,
from the recreational artists.
This is a massive population.
Business opportunity.
That is a business opportunity that is
looking for skilled, knowledgeable care.
That, hey,
I know now all of these students,
just like you've done trapeze once,
a lot of them have been doing circus
recreationally or have tried it.
And they're like, well,
I'm not a professional,
but can I work with this population?
Oh, heck yeah.
You don't even have to have ever done
it.
You just need to appreciate that other
people are doing it and understand it a
little bit.
I heard someone have great advice.
I think it was when starting a YouTube
channel,
but the idea was I don't need you
to be the world's expert.
I need you to be knowledgeable enough.
Yes.
And I would add in like, just don't,
Give them bad information.
If you don't know what to say, say,
I don't know.
Say, you don't know.
Or, of course, say,
I'm going to take time to look that
up.
Correct.
I find one of the most valuable things
I can ever do for my patient is
say, I don't know.
Or, you know,
I know someone who knows that really well.
Correct.
Go do that.
And then they will come back or they'll
send their friends because then they trust
you.
Correct.
And I would go a little further in
saying,
someone might look at your account.
I mean,
how many people are following along right
now?
Ballpark.
About thirty thousand.
They might look at that and be like,
well, she's got everybody covered.
But think about what you just said.
Do you know a clinician in?
Absolutely.
And there's so much need and they're so
tired of going to physical therapy or
getting care or not seeking care because
they're really afraid of getting told,
don't do that.
Correct.
Or being looked at a little askance,
especially our pole dancers.
They don't seek out care because they have
been shamed.
Stigmatized.
Yeah.
And it's really problematic.
And we can provide better.
Or going to get care and being told
to work their rotator cuff down here at
their side.
And they're like, well,
my pain is only when I'm hanging from
a bar.
Like, how do I...
How do I translate this to that?
One of my patients when I first had
school was a silks artist recreationally.
And she called us one day and was
like,
I just dislocated my shoulder at the gym.
I'm driving over there.
My boss turns to me and goes,
this is you.
We got it back.
She went and saw.
I was like,
you still should go to the emergency room.
You still go see your physician.
She did.
She came to me, and I remember explaining,
like, not above .
Like, nothing above .
We're going to work everything down below.
When you go home, nothing above .
She dislocated again, and she goes,
I wasn't above .
I was like,
show me what you were doing.
She's like, I was upside down.
And I was like,
and your arm was just straight up,
but it's not above .
No, my butt was over my head.
Yeah.
And I'm like, okay.
We'll just talk about anatomical position.
That's my bad.
Parting shot, everyone.
Last chance.
Mic drop moment.
Soapbox statement.
What do you want to leave with everybody
as we wrap up?
Um,
circus artists are amazing and deserve
really the best skilled care that you can
get.
Please take the time to understand them a
little bit better and, uh, and be curious.
Yeah.
Be curious.
And then I'll put it in the show
notes,
but when people want to follow along.
Yeah.
I'm at the circus.
The circus.
No underscore.
Yeah.
The circus duck.
Yeah.
Emily, appreciate it.
Enjoy your conference.
Jimmy, thank you so much for your time.
And we out.