Lance is the webmaster, and technical expert here at Uncommon Physical Therapy. In addition to the technical side of things, he’s the go to person for all the various projects and ideas that we come up with here at the clinic. Lance has lived in Birmingham his whole life, and graduated from the University of Montevallo. Lance and his wife Kelly have been together for almost 20 years, and have been married since 2009. They have two children together, Ella and Edie, two dogs Sadie, and Bindi, and various other random critters.
Lance and Nate met at random, over 10 years ago. Lance was attempting to rehab his 2nd ACL rupture resulting from yet another soccer injury, which had unfortunately not gone as well as his 1st rupture. Lance was suffering from a condition called arthrofibrosis, which is an out-of-control healing response to injury or surgery that causes excessive scar tissue and adhesions. As a result of this, his knee was stuck in a locked position. It’s not that the care he was receiving from his doctor and therapist was “bad”, it was just “common”, and unfortunately not enough. After the ACL reconstruction and months of physical therapy, as well as two additional manipulations under anesthesia (MUA) in this time period which gave little to no relief, Lance decided to seek out other medical advice, and other physical therapist care.
After the 2nd MUA, and after reaching out and visiting with several surgeons, Lance ended up being paired with Nate as his new physical therapist. Nate took the time to learn about Lance as a patient, learn about what was working, as well as what was not, and then formulated a plan of attack. In addition to steering clear from the usual vanilla rehab protocol, Nate actually took the time to listen to new ideas that perhaps he hadn’t considered, vs assuming that his way was the only way. Slowly, but surely, Lance began to re-gain the motion he had lost in his knee. He was able to begin running in a reduced weight environment, and eventually, was finally able to return to play. It was an extremely long and tedious road to recovery, but without Nate’s Uncommon approach towards rehabilitation, there’s no way that Lance would have been able to get back to full range of motion, or ever have the opportunity to play again, let alone get back to a normal and positive quality of life.
Today, in addition to being the tech guy here at Uncommon Physical Therapy, Lance is the assistant varsity soccer coach at Pelham High School, where he has been involved with the program since 2009. The Panthers won their first ever State Championship in 2017, and have had 4 other Final Four appearances in that time period. If Lance isn’t at home with the family, or in the clinic helping out, you can likely find him on the field coaching the next wave of champions!
“Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.”
-Mike Singletary
