Why Physical Therapists Believe Weird Things
CDR Mark Riebel
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Why Physical Therapists Believe Weird Things — Commander Mark Riebel
Commander Mark Riebel has one of the more unusual career trajectories you'll find in military medicine. He started as a collegiate swimmer, served as a communications officer on a nuclear submarine out of Guam, went through Navy dive school in Pearl Harbor, then pivoted entirely into physical therapy — earning a DPT from Army Baylor, completing the West Point Sports Medicine Fellowship, and eventually going back for a Doctor of Science in physical therapy. He's done PT for Navy Special Warfare Group One, for officer and enlisted initial entry training, and now serves as the only uniformed physical therapist within the Marine Corps MARSOC POTIF program. Along the way he built and delivered an independently accredited continuing education course teaching barbell training to physical therapists — which is how our own in-house PT John first encountered him, apparently more focused on Mark's hamstrings than the curriculum.
This week Drew and Alex sit down with Mark for an honest, and at times uncomfortable, look at the state of physical therapy through the lens of therapeutic skepticism. The conversation covers why smart, well-educated providers end up holding onto beliefs the research doesn't support — confirmation bias, the appeal of a good story over a clean data set, and the incentive structures that keep questionable modalities alive long past their expiration date. Mark walks through dry needling, cupping, scraping, therapeutic ultrasound, KT tape, trigger points, and the tribal wars between systems like PRI, FMS, and pose method — not to skewer them, but to model what it actually looks like to think critically about tools you've been trained to use. He also makes a case for putting patients in the driver's seat of their own recovery, the fiduciary model of care versus the crypto salesman model, and why internal locus of control might matter more than whatever intervention you're delivering. The episode closes with a conversation on the Future Sailor Preparatory Course and an honest assessment of what the military is working with in terms of recruit fitness — plus the most unexpected exercise picks we've gotten out of this closer question yet.
Mentioned in this episode:
Therapeutic Skepticism — APTA talk by Mark Riebel and colleagues
Cunningham's Law — the best way to get an answer on the internet is not to ask the question, it's to post a wrong answer
Barbell Medicine — referenced on pesticide/produce misinformation research
Future Sailor Preparatory Course — modeled off the Army's Future Soldier Preparatory Course
Army Baylor — where Mark completed his DPT
West Point Sports Medicine Fellowship — where Mark learned to critically analyze research rather than chase magic tricks
Charles Vogel, The Art of Community — former podcast guest, on how social spaces are engineered against genuine connection
Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic
Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.
