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The client who never gets better
You have one. Everybody does. Same person. Same complaint. Every four weeks, for two years. They love you. They rebook before they leave. They tell their friends about you. And they are exactly where they were the day they walked in. We tell ourselves comfortable things about this client. They're loyal. They just need maintenance. Their job is hard on them. Some people are like that. Here's a less comfortable option. A plateau is not a failure of effort. It's a failed hypothe
Sherry Routledge
3 min read


"My intuition tells me"
Last month a meta-analysis came out on the thoracolumbar fascia and low back pain. Fourteen studies, a thousand people, published open access in Sports Medicine - Open. Asaf Klaf Weisman shared it. His work is all about nociception, and his whole platform is that pain starts in tissue. He's loud about it. One of his headlines literally reads "I am not my brain." We don't agree with everything he says. We read everything he writes. Here's what he posted: "Interesting findings.
Sherry Routledge
4 min read


What if the headache isn’t coming from inside the skull?
It’s no secret that our work is second to none when it comes to the resolution of migraine headaches. In fact, our Upper Body class consistently outsells our Lower Body class for this exact reason. It’s also no secret that many therapists shy away from treating migraines because, truth be told, they’ve often made them worse. So, what are we doing differently? Most migraine conversations focus almost entirely on what’s happening inside the skull. With RAPID, we’ve always paid
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


We said WHAT?!
CONFESSION TIME. We were digging through some old RAPID posts and found this little gem from 2016. And… yikes. We said… “Adhesion acts like glue in the tissues of the body…” Then we went on to say that reducing adhesions could restore range of motion and strength while slowing the progression of arthritis. Oh, 2016 Sherry and Rob. So confident. So certain. Would we say that today? Nope. Back then, like a lot of manual therapists, we thought about pain very differently. If s
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


The post that made therapists lose their minds.
A few weeks ago we published what has become our most controversial post to date. Not because of the anatomy. Not because of the science. Because of one sentence. “You cannot rub a foot back to function.” The comments exploded. Some therapists agreed immediately. Others told us we’ve been “debunked.” Some insisted that rubbing muscles and fascia restores function just fine. Here’s the thing. We’re not saying massage doesn’t feel good. We’re not saying it
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


What If Fascia Was Never the Problem?
Have you ever heard someone say, "Your fascia is dehydrated"? It's one of those statements that's repeated so often that many people accept it as fact. But the science tells a much more interesting story. Yes, fascia contains a tremendous amount of water. The extracellular matrix is rich in molecules like hyaluronan that bind water and allow connective tissues to glide, transmit force, and communicate with the nervous system. But fascia doesn't simply dry out like a sponge be
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Why the Right Spot Matters
If you know me, you know I research every single day. This week I came across an article called Setting the tone: nociceptors as conductors of immune responses. It explains something that connects really well with RAPID… Nociceptors are not just simple “sensory discomfort wires.” Nociceptors are danger-detecting nerve endings. They respond to things like strong pressure, irritation, inflammation, heat, cold, and chemical changes in the tissue. They do not create pain by thems
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Your treatment shouldn't hurt? Let's talk about that.
I recently came across a post where the headline was… “Psst…Your massage shouldn’t cause you pain.” The caption read… “Your massage shouldn’t cause you pain. Pain does not equal healing, and treatment doesn’t need to be uncomfortable in order to be effective.” But wait…pain and discomfort are 2 very distinct entities. So…here was my response. Remember, discomfort and pain are two very different things. Discomfort, or more accurately nociception, is the sensory aspect of what
Sherry Routledge
1 min read


RAPID is not for everyone
At RAPID, we're not for everyone. And we don't want to be. Honestly? That's a good thing. There are incredible therapists out there doing beautiful work that has nothing to do with us. We're not trying to replace anyone's style. But there's a specific kind of therapist this is for. The one who got into this work because they wanted to actually help people. The one who's quietly wondering if there's more to clinical practice than what they've been doing. The one who finishes a
Sherry Routledge
3 min read


Ice is "neutral"? Let's look at the science.
Recently one of our therapists who was quite concerned over her colleague saying that ice won't speed healing, but that it won't delay it either. So we decided it was time to do some more research. TBH, this debate is much bigger than just ice. Halting inflammation is the real issue. Here's where we landed. The guy who invented RICE took it back. Dr. Gabe Mirkin coined the RICE protocol in 1978. In 2014 he publicly walked it back. His position, in his own words and paraphras
Sherry Routledge
3 min read


Your patient doesn't care which muscle you named
Most patients aren’t lying awake hoping for better thoracic rotation. They want to pick up their kids without wincing. Train without fear. Sleep through the night. Sit through dinner comfortably. Go for a walk without paying for it tomorrow. Patients don’t actually want more treatment. They want their life back. And sometimes as therapists, we forget that. We get so focused on techniques, assessments, and protocols that we accidentally start measuring success by what we did i
Sherry Routledge
1 min read


Why the best therapists don’t treat everything.
She'd been doing this for twenty-three years. Skilled hands. Loyal clients. A schedule that filled itself without a single ad. She came up to me after a seminar and said something I still think about: "I can treat most of what walks through my door without thinking. And lately that's exactly what worries me." She wasn't burned out. She was on autopilot, and she'd started to notice the gap between busy and good. Most therapists think experience automatically makes them better.
Sherry Routledge
1 min read


"Give it six weeks" might be the worst advice in pain care
Let's talk about timing. Not how often you book a session. Timing in the bigger sense - where a person's pain is on its journey when they finally come in to see you. A recent review (Grinberg, 2026) pulled together the latest research on chronic pain and made a point worth sitting with. Pain has stages, and the stage matters. In the early days and weeks after an injury, flare-up, or surgery, the body is making a decision. The nervous system and the immune system are working t
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Every Pelvic Floor Physio Should Read This
One of the concepts we spend a lot of time teaching in RAPID Core is intra-abdominal pressure. Ask any pelvic floor physiotherapist and they’ll tell you just how important it is. Improving the management of intra-abdominal pressure is central to treating incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, pregnancy and postpartum recovery, breathing mechanics, core function, and many forms of low back and pelvic pain. Most of us think of intra-abdominal pressure as something that stabilizes
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Why some people hate RAPID
A funny thing happened on social media this week. One of our critics spent several thousand words explaining why RAPID cannot “test neuroimmunology,” “measure neuroimmunology,” “regulate neuroimmunology,” or “treat neuroimmunology.” The problem? We’ve never claimed any of those things. Not once. As the discussion continued, the comments became increasingly dramatic. We were informed that we were committing crimes, practicing medicine, violating Canadian law, misleading the pu
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Are We Palpating the Wrong Things?
A post from Adam Meakins popped up in my feed this week asking… “Is palpation a dying skill?” And honestly… I hated it. And I loved it. Let me explain. I completely agree that therapists shouldn’t pretend their fingertips have MRI vision. If someone tells you they can feel your pelvis is “out,” your SI joint is “upslipped,” or your fascia is “stuck”…the evidence for those claims is, at best, pretty shaky. That’s not what good palpation should be. But I think we sometimes swin
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Deep tissue is a red ocean.
The Red Ocean Problem in Manual Therapy The more we watch the manual therapy world, the more we think most therapists are fighting over the same shrinking piece of water. The messaging is almost identical across the board… "Deep tissue." "Muscle release." "Breaking down scar tissue." "Relaxation." "Fixing your posture." "More pressure." "90-minute treatments." When everyone sounds the same, standing out becomes nearly impossible. You're not competing on value - you're competi
Sherry Routledge
3 min read


Is Fascia bull sh&t? Or what?
Recently, in case you missed it Adam Meakins -the Sports Physio, recently went on a click bait rampage against fascia, his biggest beef? That fascia doesn’t store emotions. Of course he did in his signature fine form of rubbing most (us for sure) the wrong way. I agree that fascia does not “store emotions” in the way that phrase is often used. A lot of the language around fascia has been wildly overinflated, and desperately needs to be cleaned up. But I also think we have to
Sherry Routledge
2 min read


Stop Sending Your Patients to the Physio Down the Street
Nearly every class, we hear from therapists who say, “I’d love to offer RAPID, but my clinic owner isn’t sure about it.” And honestly, we get it. Clinic owners have to think about the whole business, not just one therapist’s excitement about a new technique. But what often gets missed is this: Adding a highly specialized service like RAPID NeuroFascial Reset does not just benefit the therapist. It can benefit the entire clinic. Here’s how. Better Revenue Per Hour RAPID sessio
Sherry Routledge
3 min read


Your 90-minute massage is doing less than our 25
Provocative subject line, I know. Stay with us. The massage industry has convinced an entire generation of therapists that more time equals more value. More time equals better outcomes. More time equals worth the money. So we book 60, 75, 90-minute sessions, pour our bodies into them, and wonder why we're burnt out by year four with wrists that feel older than we are. And the patients? They feel relaxed. And then they wake up tomorrow with the same pain they walked in with. H
Sherry Routledge
2 min read
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