Athletes on the mend: physical therapy with John Perdaems

With 15 varsity sports at MSU, injuries are a pretty common occurrence. The sports range everywhere from Rodeo to Skiing, but the most injuries come from football. In the 2022 calendar year alone, the football team had over 20 surgeries. The rehab for these injuries start with the MSU physical therapists and athletic trainers, a team of people who work behind the scenes to keep Bobcat athletes healthy.

John Perdaems, an MSU physical therapist, is one of the professionals involved in this effort, a partnership between Bozeman Health and MSU. He doesn't have a ton of work to do before a surgery or injury, but as the athletes begin their rehab process, his expertise is called into action. 

“My role here is simply doing rehab. Everybody is motivated, you have to more or less slow people down in their rehab. Put on the brakes so they don’t do too much too soon,” Perdaems said. “It’s always fun visiting with young people because they're all optimistic about their sports and future.”

Although many can recover quickly,Perdaems said, a lot of injuries require a certain amount of time before players can get back out competing at 100%.

“I don’t really have any dislikes; it’s fun to work with everybody young because they're college-aged,” Perdaems said. 

The athletes get all sorts of injuries while competing and training. While some might think ACL and MCL injuries are the most common, it’s not actually the case, Perdaems said. Back and neck injuries happen frequently from lifting. While track athletes don’t have the same sort of dangerous contact that football players do, each sport regularly lifts weights and practices conditioning, Perdaems said.

“All kinds of back injuries, and neck too, but definitely more back. I would say that’s our number one injury,” Perdaems said. 

While many athletes put a focus on getting back to competing as fast as possible, part of Perdaems’ role is to keep an open mind looking ahead at the future. It’s common to see athletes push themselves to the max whilst playing a sport in college and suffer the consequences later on. 

“Assisting the athletics training staff in getting our varsity players back to full health, but also with an eye to the long-term. Hopefully catching injuries early, get them out of the inflammatory stage, rehab them back to playing shape and give them enough time and assistance to heal and hopefully avoid surgery,” Perdaems said. 

No matter the injury, MSU’s student athletes are sure to be in good hands with Perdaems and the rest of the training staff.