What Lonnie Soloff taught me

I served as the foot and ankle consultant for the Cincinnati Reds for over 25 years, making the annual trip to spring training each year. Several years ago, I consulted with Lonnie Soloff regarding my shoulder. At that time, Lonnie was the assistant trainer for the Reds; he is now the Senior Vice President of Medical Services for the Cleveland Indians.

This is what Lonnie taught me.

On a warm spring day at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, FL, I asked Lonnie for a quick examination of my right shoulder. I suspected I was dealing with simple subacromial impingement or bursitis. While the shoulder discomfort was only a minor nuisance, I wanted to address it before it became a bigger issue. After asking me a few questions and completing an examination, Lonnie confirmed it was indeed impingement. I then requested him to demonstrate an exercise to help strengthen my rotator cuff and mechanically resolve this problem. Although I had been doing some exercises, I was unsure if they were effective, and I didn't want to waste my time, so I sought guidance from someone more knowledgeable.

Lonnie said, always respectfully calling me Dr. Amis (I did my best to get him to call me Jim), "Dr. Amis, I will be right back." In about two or three minutes, he emerged from his office with some printed papers, about six sheets stapled together, demonstrating 19 different shoulder exercises for me. "Here you go, doc, do these every day, and you should be fine," he said, prepared to show me exactly how to do each one. I replied, laughing, "Lonnie, do I look like a professional athlete to you? First, don't answer that because the answer is obvious. I will not be doing 19 exercises per day, not even two. I want THE ONE that will do the trick". You see, a professional athlete's job is to do 19 exercises, but that is not my job or yours. We do one exercise or maybe two. If there are too many moving parts, nothing gets done. I know this from personal and patient-acquired experience.

Lonnie seemed puzzled, likely because he had spent his entire career treating professional athletes. After considering my request, he demonstrated the one exercise he thought might help, although he wasn't entirely confident it, by itself, would be effective. To my surprise, in about 6-8 weeks, my pain was gone. I'm not sure what Lonnie took away from our conversation, but it reinforced a valuable lesson I had already recognized from my experience with patients: most of us are naturally noncompliant, myself included, despite our desire to improve and our understanding of what we need to do to get there. Simple, straightforward solutions are always the best options because they encourage compliance. And compliance leads to success.

Many thanks Lonnie.