In 2022, Marc Adams ’15 (D.P.T. ’18) asked Erin Walsh a simple question: What was her goal of therapy?
Walsh, a Norfolk, Virginia, resident who had come into Adams’ physical therapy practice with a bad knee, said “running again,” even though she believed it impossible. She had given up that love three years before when an orthopedist said her knee was too damaged by arthritis. Walsh became depressed when she could no longer travel to races or run with friends; she would go to sleep and dream about running.
But Adams and his wife, Amanda Bennett ’15 (D.P.T. ’18) had a practice named after their belief — Movement is Medicine. They focus on strength training, conditioning and mobility work, especially for active adults who want to stay pain-free.
Unlike other physical therapists she had worked with, Walsh said Adams and Bennett focused on the root cause of her arthritis. Adams pointed out that she was pigeon-toed, which involved more muscles than those in her knee. He showed her how to walk and run differently. He also noticed a problem with an old ankle injury. She had received an insurance-approved amount of therapy and had been declared healed, but her ankle was weak.
After a few sessions of physical therapy and strength training, Walsh was jogging around the parking lot. “I started to notice all of those ‘I can’ts’ at the gym had gone,” she said. “I was jumping. I was doing lunges pain-free. I was doing all the things I thought I couldn’t do.”
Adams and Bennett became friends as undergraduate students in the exercise science program at and were accepted into its highly competitive doctor of physical therapy program in 2015. They graduated in 2018.
By then, they had gravitated toward a similar philosophy of exercise based on the program’s teachings and started planning a future together — as personal and business partners.
“One of the more profound things we learned is that there will never be a stronger modality to help people in pain than exercise,” Adams said. They learned hands-on treatments to reduce pain, but clients “have to start moving to really achieve long-term results.”
As they began work in the field and remembered their personal experiences with therapists — Bennett was a dancer with the University’s Spirit Squad and a former pointe ballerina — they realized clinicians were often too busy to provide customized care. Also, athletic treatment often competed with financial constraints.
They wanted to elevate the profession, Adams said; they opened their Chesapeake, Virginia, practice in 2020 and chose not to accept insurance, unwilling to let companies dictate treatment timelines. They also wanted to do more than physical therapy.
“We bridge that gap between physical therapy and strength training.”
They moved their practice to Colley Avenue in 2022 to be closer to their Norfolk home and give lectures at their alma mater. They married in June 2023.
Working together has its challenges, like keeping work talk at the office. But Bennett said the benefits outweigh them, especially having a partner to execute their shared vision.
“It is nice to have a similar path for the future,” she said.