Greg Roskopf works on a patient

Defying The Odds

How Greg Roskopf, an Englewood-based muscle function specialist, is helping Amy Van Dyken-Rouen get back on her feet — literally.

“It was just a friendly visit that turned into something. And then turned into a whole lot.”

That’s how Amy Van Dyken-Rouen recalls the start of a life-changing process at Craig Hospital late last June as friends and family flowed in and out of her room, trying to brighten her day after an ATV accident earlier that month left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Like the other visitors, Greg Roskopf believed his desire to help would be limited to offering words of encouragement for his friend, who was facing a long, difficult fight.

But, on his return visit two weeks later, everything changed.

A magnetic resonance imaging scan taken after her arrival at Craig revealed that Van Dyken-Rouen’s spinal cord had not been completely severed, as originally feared. There was still a partial connection, which meant that maybe, just maybe, she would be able to move her legs again and perhaps even walk again.

“Let me just try to work on you,” Roskopf, an Englewood-based muscle function specialist, told Van Dyken-Rouen. “I know you can’t move, but I want you to just think about lifting your leg up into my hand. Picture it in your head.”

Roskopf hoped visualizing a contraction would help her move her muscles.

With a close friend watching, Van Dyken-Rouen did as she was told. She couldn’t see it and she certainly couldn’t feel it, but in picturing her leg contracting, her muscles responded. Her friend saw the contraction immediately and had to leave the room she became so emotional.

“They were very light contractions,” Roskopf recalled. “But I was like, ‘Whoa, she’s actually resisting me here. We have big potential now.’”

* * *

Initially, doctors told Van Dyken-Rouen she would be never be able to walk again. Never be able to move from the waist down. Never be able to resume the daily activities of her previous life, the one before the accident left the six-time Olympic swimming champion on the brink of death.

But when that MRI scan revealed her spinal cord was still partially intact, she and her husband, former Broncos punter Tom Rouen, turned to Roskopf, a longtime friend and the founder of Muscle Activation Techniques.

He was the one man, they believed, who could most help her exceed the initial grim diagnosis.

After all, he helped her return to form once before.

Following the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where Van Dyken-Rouen struck gold four times, the Colorado native underwent multiple surgeries to repair an injured shoulder. The pain wouldn’t fade, but her hopes of winning gold again slowly did. In 1999, Roskopf began working with her, helping her regain strength and mobility so she could make the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“I was told after my first surgery that I was probably never going to swim again,” she said. “I thought I was done. He worked on me, I think it was probably not even for a half-hour, and I got my arm up over my head. And I didn’t have any pain.”

At the Sydney Games, Van Dyken-Rouen won two more gold medals.

“Without him,” she said, “there’s no way I would’ve gone back to my second Olympics.”

Fourteen years later, Roskopf was back at her side for a much different, much bigger task.

For about two months after that ground-breaking visit last July, Roskopf worked with Van Dyken-Rouen every two weeks at Craig. When she was moved back to Arizona last September, Roskopf started flying to Phoenix every month to work with her and her doctors at AZ Pain Centers, where she receives Regenexx injections in her back. Her hope is the stem cell-and-blood platelet injections, combined with general physical therapy and Roskopf’s muscle activation work, will continue to help her broaden her range of movement, improve her stability and get her back on her feet — literally.

His philosophy, known as M.A.T., has helped people who simply struggle to stand without pain, or for years have dealt with nagging injuries.

He was once one of them.

Sorry to blow up your feed, but I just graduated to crutches!! #WalkingWednesdayOnFriday #amysarmy

A video posted by Amy Van Dyken (@amyvandyken) on

With physical therapist Al Biemond by her side, Van Dyken-Rouen walks with the help of an exoskeleton.

I'm starting to get this standing thing down! #amysarmy #werk #IllBeWalkingSoon #GettingFittedForBracesNextWeek

A video posted by Amy Van Dyken (@amyvandyken) on

Eleven months after her ATV accident, Van Dyken-Rouen is learning to stand on her own power.

* * *

When he was 19 and working a summer job at a rock quarry outside his home town of Buffalo Roskopf accidentally fell 20 feet and fractured his vertebrae. His college football career at William Penn University ended abruptly and years of lingering injuries started immediately. Knee problems. Hip problems. Plantar fasciitis. One after another, with no explanation of how they came about or why they wouldn’t disappear. The more he stretched, the more he hurt. And the more he exercised, the weaker he got.

Greg Roskopf

Age: 52
Title: CEO and founder of Muscle Activation Techniques

Background

• Played football at William Penn
• Fresno St. strength and conditioning coach – 1985-88
• Master’s in physical education with an emphasis in exercise science
• Worked full-time for Broncos – 1997-2000
• Works part-time for Broncos, Nuggets

M.A.T.

Developed by Roskopf nearly 25 years ago, M.A.T. focuses on the body’s muscle function. Roskopf’s non-invasive process looks to correct the communication pathway from the brain to the muscles to ensure they fire properly, which can lead to greater stability and strength, and can ease pain and inflammation. Roskopf not only practices his concepts, but also teaches them through an M.A.T. certification program.

Notable M.A.T. Clients

Peyton Manning
Amy Van Dyken-Rouen
DeMarcus Ware
Carson Palmer
Terrell Davis
Odell Beckham Jr.
Rashad Jennings
Frank Gore

“I took a step back and asked, well, why am I so tight?” said Roskopf, 52, who has a master’s degree in physical education with an emphasis in exercise science from Fresno State, where he started his career as a strength and conditioning coach, in 1985.

“I thought about this idea when you walk on ice — you tighten up as a protective mechanism. What hit me then is maybe this tightness is a symptom, just like my pain is a symptom. And that it’s tightening up because of an instability issue.”

Roskopf’s theory: Correct the way in which the brain “talks” to the muscles. If the signal can’t be sent, the muscles can’t fire.

For nearly 25 years, Roskopf has been putting his theory to work, with widespread acceptance. He opened his first M.A.T. facility in Englewood 15 years ago, after working full-time for the Broncos for three years. (He now works part-time for the Broncos and Nuggets.)

While he is a firm believer that there is “no one answer to everything” he’s found a way to marry his practices with those of other specialists, including trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, physicians, and even personal chiropractors and massage specialists. He doesn’t treat pain. He doesn’t compete with physical therapists and physicians. He works with them, and often teaches his practices to them; for the past 13 years, he has trained some 2,000 specialists through his M.A.T. certification program, including Nuggets strength and conditioning coach Steve Hess.

“The one thing I do is improve muscle function,” Roskopf said. “By improving the ability of muscles to contract, that can strengthen the muscles and reduce the risk of injury and help speed up the rehabilitation process.”

For Van Dyken-Rouen, that meant figuring out how to get her brain to talk to her muscles again.

The past 11 months haven’t been a “kick start” for this once elite athlete, much like it is with Roskopf’s well-known professional clients.

This is a complete do-over.

* * *

Amy Van Dyken-Rouen

Van Dyken-Rouen holds out hope that she will one day be able to walk again.

Each one-hour session Roskopf spends with Van Dyken-Rouen is meticulous and exhausting — for both.

He begins at her hip flexor muscles, first testing them to see what they can’t do, what amount of force they can’t resist. Then he’ll perform a palpitating technique on each muscle at the attachment to ignite the communication. Then he’ll test them again. What can those muscles not do? What amount of force can they not resist?

Rinse and repeat. Again and again and again, with the goal of strengthening the muscles with each repetition. Then he moves to the next muscle, stressing it, testing it, stressing it again, testing it again and on and on until it fires properly. The laborious process takes him from her belly button all the way to her toes.

“I’m completely spent when we’re done,” Van Dyken-Rouen said. “For me, if I can move a toe, that’s the biggest deal ever.”

Each muscle is being re-trained to contract. At the same time, Van Dyken-Rouen is trying to master using her muscles together in a perfectly timed symphony of movements most people never think about. For a paraplegic, it requires extraordinary concentration.

“We’re doing things that haven’t ever been tried with paraplegics, to stimulate the muscles and get that communication between the brain and the muscles,” Roskopf said. “It’s based off this M.A.T. philosophy, but different from what I would do on a day-to-day basis with a client.”

In less than a year, Van Dyken-Rouen has gone from zero movement from the waist down to standing upright and walking with an exoskeleton, and riding a recumbent bike. She has regained reflexes in her knees and ankles. She’s even learning to stand on her own power.

“When he first saw me, there was absolutely no movement that I could do myself. None. Now, if he asks me to stress a muscle, I can actually do it,” Van Dyken-Rouen said. “Not to the extent that you would do it. But I can do it.

“Without Greg, none of this would happen.”

The work Roskopf does with Van Dyken-Rouen is a little different than what he has done with many pro athletes, such as the Broncos’ Peyton Manning and DeMarcus Ware, the Arizona Cardinals’ Carson Palmer and others.

“Our goal is to get the muscles strong and stable,” said Hess, who integrates M.A.T. into the Nuggets’ daily strength-and-conditioning regimen.

“We want to get these muscles so strong that nothing shuts them down.”

And it deviates from the regimen used with a middle-aged patient learning to get out of a chair without struggling, or the recreational runner trying to overcome knee pain. But the methodology is the same. And Van Dyken-Rouen’s progress has been a source of motivation, and hope — for both herself and other paraplegics.

“When you realize that you are paralyzed from the belly button down and you think about everything that’s below your belly button and it doesn’t work — that’s been the hardest part,” she said. “But working with Greg has kind of let me see that there is definitely a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“To me, he’s a miracle worker.”

Story

Nicki Jhabvala, Writer

Scott Monserud, Editor

AAron Ontiveroz, Photographer

Cyrus McCrimmon, Photographer

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