Originally from Shanghai, China, our therapist Sun received her bachelors degree at the Shanghai University of TCM, prior to traveling to the US where she got her masters in Pittsburgh. She joined UP just under a year after she graduated, and has been with us since 2019.

Passionate about cycling, badminton and reading, she’s a fitness-junkie and also loves group classes like body pump and spinning. Her only training goes hand-in-hand with her story as a physical therapist, we spoke to her to understand more about why she is so passionate about exercise and how that supports her career.

During the first two years when I joined UP, I felt exhausted from working all day. I didn’t have energy to do other exercises so I would stay at home and I turned into a couch potato. This led me to gaining 15kg!

I didn’t want this to be my lifestyle, so I worked to change two things.

First, I changed my eating habit. Secondly, I gradually started doing some exercising. I joined group classes and while I didn’t lose weight immediately, I felt more energetic. I started to invite my colleagues, friends and patients to exercise together because I wanted to share my happiness with them too!

After doing the exercise, it helped me to better understand movement technique. It also allowed me to work even better with my patients through their exercises and give them easier and clearer verbal cues.

I personally have experience with acute and severe pain and I believe this helps me understand my patients better.

Neck pain for my patients are mainly chronic due to poor posture, which can cause muscle tightness and stiffness. But one of my patients – he does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – got his injury by the throat locking. He had radiating symptoms from the right side of his neck to his right fingers and loss strength in his right arm. The images showed C3/C4 and C4/C5 disc protrusion. Myself and our ortho helped to reduce his symptoms and rebuild his neck and upper body strength and stability. After a few months, he was able to return to training at F45 and then gradually Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

When pain is at the acute stage, I take more care about my patient’s symptoms and try to better understand the patients feelings.

At the sub-acute stage, I will help the patient build up the ability for basic movement foundation, like being able to do some daily activities with minimal limitations or pain, such as, sitting, walking or transferring from different positions.

Once the patient is pain-free with daily activities, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are totally recovered. I’ll focus more on their functional movements and do more reinforcement treatment to reduce the risk of injury. We have a few different screens (like YBT, FMS, FCS [LINK]) that help measure some objective values, check movement quality and show any shortcomings.

Additionally, when I treat anyone with lower back pain, I also focus on the sacroiliac and hip joint as well, because symptoms in one area are often related to the adjacent area.

From my own personal journey, after I did self-physio therapy, I was about to return to lifting weights and cycling without any limitation. I benefitted from some functional therapeutic exercises and from feeling my own experience, I would like to help more people with lower back pain and knee pain patients get back to their daily activities and sports without any pain or limitation.