It was one of the moments Bears middle linebacker Bryan Cox lives for: rush the opposing team’s quarterback, bring him down and force a fumble, and it occurred for a crucial time for the Bears.
With a 2-5 record by Oct. 28, the Bears needed a win over Minnesota, and they got it in part because of Cox’s key sack of Viking QB Brad Johnson with just 1:47 left in the game, preserving the 15-13 Bears advantage.
Cox has been plagued by back and shoulder problems. But the East Saint Louis product has a few tricks in his bag. He swears by a conditioning and performance regimen set forth by kinesiotherapist Dave Buchanan of Mt. Prospect.
Cox says he’s not a particularly gifted athlete. “I’m not going to get a lot stronger. I’m not fast,” says the 6-foot-3-inch, 245-pounder. “What Dave helps me do is enhance the things I do well. We’ve refined my skills a little bit, improved my balance.”
At Ultimate Performance Therapy in Rolling Meadows, Cox works with Buchanan at least once a week on exercises to both rehabilitate his habitually sore back and keep his skills sharp. Other than team trainers, Cox has never worked with anyone else.
It’s all about getting the best performance. “We want to teach people the body is a moving, evolving organism and to use it correctly,” Buchanan says. “Human beings don’t come with an instruction manual. I look at a person in performance. I evaluate you and give you the tools to fix yourself.”
Cox began working with Buchanan six years ago while he was playing at Western Illinois University. Not considered a first-round pick in the professional football draft, Cox was pursued by Chicago sports agent Cliff Brady. Brady specializes in “second-tier” athletes who have a shot at the pros but who may need an extra push physically to reach the elite level of making–and staying with–a pro team.
Through a partnership with Brady formed nine years ago and through a growing reputation in the pro sports world, Buchanan has worked not only with Cox but such other NFL standouts as Jim McMahon, Mark Carrier, Keith Van Horne, Neal Anderson, Jim Harbaugh and Bernie Parmalee.
What’s Buchanan got that these pro athletes, and serious recreational athletes alike, want?
Part of it is the infectious enthusiasm and dedication of the burly 33-year-old, who played offensive tackle at Jacobs High School in Algonquin. Another part of the appeal is Buchanan’s approach to therapy. Kinesiotherapy is a fancy name for a simple concept: therapy that incorporates motion of the muscles, tendons and joints, or, simply, the whole body.
One of the things Buchanan’s clients like is that he incorporates their sport into performance evaluation. McMahon came to Buchanan after the Bears let the quarterback go in 1989. The chronically injured quarterback had an elbow problem. Buchanan’s diagnosis: “The severe trauma was one thing, but he also wasn’t using his hips properly and was shortstepping,” Buchanan says, analyzing McMahon’s passing motion.
The fitness regimen Buchanan prescribed, plus McMahon’s self-described fanatic devotion to preserving his body (and several corrective surgeries), put him into physical shape again, and the 37-year-old is still playing, with the Green Bay Packers.
The whole body approach is evident in the cavernous room where Buchanan conducts workouts for individual clients and for groups of college and hopeful pro football players brought in by Brady for weekly workouts in the winter and spring.
It is not filled with weight machines–Buchanan does not believe in them. Instead, a simple 15-foot beam of wood, a flat 2-foot-square board with a ball affixed to its base and a handful of flexible workout bands dominate the space.
Athletes work on body balance on the beam and the board. During a players’ workout, 250-pound muscle-bound men will try to maintain perfect balance on the beam while catching a 15-pound medicine ball. In another exercise, they do pushups on a large inflatable exercise ball.
Buchanan recalls one session when a client–a 10-year-old gymnast–showed up early and joined the football players’ workout in progress. “Guys were fumbling on the beams and she’s doing back walkovers and flips,” Buchanan says. “We did pullups and one football player got to 15 and he thought that was just great. Then she did 27. These guys were amazed.”
Besides balance work, Buchanan will work some clients on strength-building devices that look somewhat like weight equipment in a gym but do not have weights attached. Rather, the machines, such as a pulley that attaches to an arm or a leg, or another where the client steps onto disks and twists his feet (part of knee injury rehab), rely on the body’s own strength.
Other rehabilitative and strength-building tools incorporate the individual’s sport: Buchanan engaged a volleyball player in games of wallyball to gradually work him back into the sport.
Buchanan’s philosophy that “a body at rest remains at rest until it gets moving” was learned early. Ten to 15 years ago, rehabilitation meant the therapist literally moved the patient’s limbs for him. Buchanan not only gets the body moving, he seeks to combine aerobic and anaerobic exercise into one program.
Buchanan loves following older athletes “because they stand the test of time,” he says. “Their bodies are the most efficient.”
Watching boxer George Foreman recently on a late-night talk show, he was so awed by his good posture and back alignment he woke his wife, Susan. Susan wasn’t particularly interested, although the couple’s daughters, Katie, 9, and Jodie, 5, love working on the beams and balance boards.
Athletes with a hunger to make the pros have taken to Buchanan’s approach with success. John McGarry was playing semi-pro football in the mid-’80s when he began using Buchanan’s services.
He’d previously concentrated on weight and strength training, customary for a man of his size–6 feet 6 inches and 300 pounds–and position–offensive guard. He credits Buchanan’s whole-body balance and combination aerobic-anaerobic workouts for improving his balance and explosion enough to make the pros. McGarry played with Green Bay and Seattle for four seasons.
“He showed me how to do things at home with bands and the beam,” says McGarry, 33, of Chicago. “It’s like anything, you have to be motivated to do it yourself.”
Athletes are often preconditioned to separate cardiovascular workouts from weight training, but Buchanan opposes weight machines because he thinks they emphasize stress on specific muscles and muscle groups to the detriment of others. Buchanan also doesn’t believe in stretching.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Buchanan is a disciple of Bob Gajda, a sports performance and rehab specialist who was well-known in the Chicago area in the ’80s for his big-name clients including McMahon, Bear Gary Fencik and tennis player John McEnroe.
At the time, Gajda’s techniques were considered revolutionary by some, wacky by others, but they have since made their way in bits and pieces into the philosophies of many sports rehab and performance therapists. Buchanan, it should be emphasized, is not a physical therapist, a trained class of therapist who is allowed to use literally hands-on therapy to manipulate muscle groups.
Elmhurst physical therapist Paul Callaway, the professional golf tour’s physical therapy director in the mid-’80s, says evaluation and personally customizing are the most important things for improving an athlete’s performance. “We try to create (body) stability in people,” he says. Sounds like Buchanan–except for one thing. Callaway’s approach is based on lots of slow stretching exercises and a technique called myofascial release, which loosens up tissue around the joints to make stretching more effective.
In the end, Callaway says, “people have to get their own information and ask lots of questions” about what type of therapies might best enable them to reach their goals. Buchanan agrees.
Buchanan’s repertory of therapies dates back to Concordia University in River Forest, where he received a degree in exercise science and fitness management.
Under Dr. Lois Klatt, director of Concordia’s Human Performance Lab, Buchanan was struck by Klatt’s teachings of biomechanics, as she says, “body balance, body control from a postural foundation.”
“It comes,” Klatt says, “from the ground up.” The body parts need to be equally strong to prevent injury.
Buchanan’s method takes extraordinary self-motivation and dedication–especially to continue at home.
Brad Parkinson, 39, of Downers Grove was a highly competitive volleyball player until a year ago, when he was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. After following the Buchanan regimen, Parkinson had his best season ever.
But in July, Parkinson’s right hip blew out and he was told he’d need a hip replacement. He believes in Buchanan enough to place his rehab in his hands and is working to rebuild muscle mass and strength. Now his doctor believes a total replacement may not be necessary.
“He’s driven,” Parkinson says, “and he recognized my drive and tried to feed off of it. He gives you a reason for being there.”
Maybe that’s why Cox and Buchanan have been such a good fit–they feed off each other.
“When Bryan first came to me, one of the things I could see different right away was his heart,” Buchanan says. “Physically, he didn’t have all the tools. But he wanted to stay, and stay, until he could do it.”
