Rock Solid

ROCK Institute is all about patients avoiding surgery through corrective therapy and the manipulation of muscles, joints and tendons. The best thing about it? It works.

By Rick Weinberg, Editor, California Business Journal.
Email: Rick@CalBizJournal.com / Mobile: 949-648-3815

FOR NEARLY A DECADE, Newport Beach, California attorney Alton Burkhalter had an agonizing sore back caused by a herniated and degenerative disc. He saw several doctors and went through years of physical therapy.

“Nothing helped,” he says. “I had given up. I was resigned to the fact that I was going to live with the pain the rest of my life.”

He stopped cycling and yoga – his two favorite activities — because of his back problem. Then one his clients, former major-league pitcher Mark Langston, told Burkhalter about Brent Concolino and ROCK Institute in Costa Mesa, California.

After one session, “I had immediate relief,” Burkhalter says. “I was shocked.”

On a scale of one to 10, Burkhalter’s pain level was at eight to nine before ROCK Institute. Today, it’s barely one. He now cycles more than he ever did – a few hundred miles on weekends – and he takes advanced yoga classes to boot.

When Burkhalter tells people about his recovery, “most don’t believe me,” he says with a laugh. “That’s because we’re stuck in this paradigm of traditional medicine: pop a pill and take a shot. It’s wrong.”

The better Burkhalter felt, the angrier he got — yes, angrier. Angry at doctors and physical therapists who had treated him – and the fact that the medical field and society in general are stuck in a vicious circle of taking medicine and undergoing surgery, rather than employing other alternatives.

“I can’t understand why doctors and physical therapists don’t practice the ROCK Institute method when it’s so effective,” Burkhalter says. “Why do they just give you a shot or pill and say ‘come back in a month?’ Why do they tell you not to do things — like cycling in my case? What good does it do to tell someone to stop cycling? That’s not the way to live a quality and healthy life.”

The philosophy of ROCK Institute is unique and innovative: it’s all about avoiding surgery. It’s about corrective therapy, manipulating tendons, joints and muscles.
When Jon Rankin, a former USA Olympian, fractured the third metatarsal of his left foot, all of his doctors told him one thing: “Get surgery.” That also meant being in a cast and on crutches for at least two months, possibly longer. Then it’d take another 3-4 weeks to get back into world-class running form.

Rankin had heard about ROCK Institute and decided to check it out before surgery — a last resort. After his first session, he had his first pain-free night of sleep in weeks. He went three times a week for three successive weeks and soon felt rejuvenated. Amazingly, x-rays revealed that the broken bone was perfectly fused.
“When my doctors saw the x-ray, they were like, ‘What’s going on here?’” he says. “They were speechless.”

Many athletes and non-athletes have walked into ROCK Institute in severe pain and departed pain free. They also left in tears – not from pain but from the elation that they were cured or on the road to recovery.

On the Mark

Following a stellar 16-year career in major league baseball, Langston suffered from a severe arthritic knee that would gradually become worse and impede his day-to-day movement.
“I didn’t know what to do next,” says the four-time All-Star and two-time 19-game winner.

One day, he ran into Concolino (whom Langston previously coached) and gave ROCK Institute a chance. Good thing he did. He’s pain free today.

“Had I known about The ROCK during my playing career, it would have enabled me to lengthen my career,” he says. “I was blessed to pitch for 16 years, but it could have been 19 or 20 – and the last few years would have been pain free. The ROCK has a 100 percent ability to lengthen a professional athlete’s career because of the therapy they do. Doesn’t matter whether you play baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis or volleyball, they can stretch your career.”

What’s special and unique about ROCK Institute’s corrective therapy methods is that “Brent just doesn’t hit the target area,” says Langston, the commentator on the Los Angeles Angels’ radio broadcasts. “Brent understands injuries. He hits the entire area and all the attachments. In my case, he understands the function of the knee and all the connected attachments. That’s how he attacks it.”

During Langston’s experience at the ROCK, he witnessed several patents walk into the facility in agonizing pain. Then he saw them “freak out because of what transpired before their eyes,” he says. “Some could barely move and after one session they felt great. No exaggeration. ROCK Institute is in the business of eliminating pain with its corrective therapy techniques.”

RI Langston as Angel in motionROCK Institute is a high-performance wellness facility that focuses on three specific areas: sports performance, injury correction and wellness longevity. Under sports performance, the ROCK provides sports, pro-draft and fitness training, performance nutrition, sports psychology and camp/team training. When it comes to injury correction, Concolino employs neuromuscular corrective therapy techniques along with corrective exercise therapy, phototherapy and stem cell treatment. For wellness longevity, ROCK Institute utilizes functional/clinical nutrition, stem cell phototherapy, IV therapy, and diet.

“Doctors are crazy not to embrace this style of treatment because if the two got together it would revolutionize the medical field,” Burkhalter says. “Brent’s philosophy is game changing.”

What Concolino does is use a special technique of elbow, forearm and hand massage for the surrounding injured areas, and then he isolates and works on the specific injury. The technique gets the blood flowing and stretches the injured muscle and tendon from attachment to attachment.

“It’s unbelievable what happens in just a few minutes,” Burkhalter says. “Then Brent goes in and does it all over again – and your injury keeps on getting better and better.”
Concolino gushes with pride and joy when his patients inform him of their recoveries. He’s also not surprised. He knows the therapy works.

“We have a purpose and a passion in everything we do, in every specific and detailed movement we do,” he says. “It’s all about position and movement. We love helping people and changing their lives.”

Rankin agrees, saying: “The biggest thing ROCK Institute does is facilitate the rapid rehabilitation of an injury — in my case a broken bone. Their theory is that if a bone is already broken, you can’t make it worst. So what they do is increase blood flow to the area and reduce swelling in order for your foot to heal as quickly as it possibly can. They eliminated all scar tissue so my foot healed as quickly as it could naturally.

“What Brent has done is introduce the idea that you don’t have to wait eight weeks before you start to do something with any injury whether it’s a broken foot or a hamstring injury. They start working on it right away and rapidly decrease the amount of downtime you’re going to experience. They had me walk on my broken foot my first day there.

“At first, I said, ‘Are you crazy? Do you know how much pain I’ll be in.’ But Brent’s philosophy is that it won’t make it worse and that you should put as much pressure on it as you can as soon as you can. His thinking is ‘start using it now.’ The longer you wait to use it, the harder it’ll be for you to get back sooner.

Broken System

The problem in today’s broken medical system is that a doctor’s first thought to treat an injury is meds and surgery. But why resort to surgery when you don’t have to?
“Nine out of 10 times we can fix people and help them avoid surgery,” Concolino says. “In the last year alone, we had just one person have to go through surgery.”

RI pillsDr. Jackie See has practiced medicine for 46 years and specializes in cardiovascular diseases and is trained in internal medicine. He is a big proponent of what ROCK Institute is doing.

What’s different about the ROCK versus other facilities, he says, is the corrective therapy it utilizes for hamstrings, ankles, knees, backs, shoulders — any injury.
“They don’t just ice you down or use anesthetic,” he says. “They exercise the right muscles, healing the right portion that is damaged. If you have a damaged muscle or joint or just a sprain, wrapping it in ice doesn’t help. You’re going backwards. Part of the healing process is accelerated if you put it through the proper exercises instead of resting it, icing it or placing it in a sling.”

Says Burkhalter: “The medical industry and people in general just can’t get their head around how great this therapy is.”

Physical therapy has its issues too. For instance, walk into any PT facility with a thigh or shoulder injury. In seconds, lotion and ice is applied to the injured area, then it’s wrapped, and you sit for an hour. The treatment can help, but it’s not the best and most effective way to treat injuries.

“The most healing technique you can do is by touch, but it’s the way we touch that makes our treatment so effective,” Concolino says. “We work the muscle from attachment to attachment. When you do any movement, like lifting your leg up, you move from attachment to attachment. It does not move in sections. So our therapy is based on working the muscle in one length. That’s the magic. We work on the muscle the same way a muscle moves when you lift it. We get the entire muscle at one time, from top to bottom, and stretch it out. You feel it in seconds, not six to eight weeks later.”