NJ Council on Physical Fitness Promotes Access to Parks

John Gallucci, Chairman of the NJ Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, talks about the importance of creating more access to parks and fitness centers across New Jersey to promote exercise and healthy living.

10/8/16 #2585

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. It is my pleasure to introduce... we haven't had him in a while, but we're glad to have him right now. He's John Gallucci, chairman, New Jersey Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Good to see you John. Nice to see you, thank you. You've dedicated your life to, not just physical fitness but making sure that athletes, particularly young athletes, are taken care of. Why? Well, as an athletic trainer and physical therapist, throughout my career, the goal is to keep people healthy and try to keep them out of the office, and if we can keep children playing on the field instead of in an office getting treatment, that was one of the most important things to me when I originally built the business. As you know, the business has grown tremendously. That we're treating the entire demographic of the lifespan of health, and literally now we take care of everybody throughout the entire lifespan at JAG Physical Therapy. Talk about JAG a little bit before we talk about the council, which is so important. Sure. Who is coming to JAG? And what are they coming for? So JAG Physical Therapy is an outpatient orthopedic sport physical therapy company, that ultimately takes care of the entire lifespan, from newborns, we have a pediatric, two pediatric centers throughout the state, and then we go all the way up to our oldest patient, who was one hundred years old, and we like to say that we take care of everybody as a VIP athlete, and everybody gets the same attention, everybody gets the same care, and that's the most important thing that we've built, as you know, the business off of. Talk about some of the professional sports teams you've been affiliated with. So I'm the physical therapist with the New Jersey Devils, the Red Bulls, I was their head athletic trainer for many years, and then the commissioner brought me into the offices of major league soccer to assist running the medical, so I'm the... basically the medical coordinator for major league soccer that oversees all 20 of our teams throughout the country, the health and welfare of our athletes. Real quick, are we... I know this is a general question... a generalized question, are too many young athletes over training certain parts of their body to the point where it's causing problems long term? It's a fantastic question. I'm asked that all the time. And it's whether or not, you know, we try to separate sports now, which we didn't do as kids when we were, and... Yeah, played everything. Right, we played everything. And what we noticed, and research is showing us is multi directional individuals have less opportunity to get injury..."