him better than he was.

And yes, that's true if you have $6 million, but we have a better way to do it.

Stay with us as we talk with sports medicine specialist doctor Nick Hebner about the right way towards fitness and injury prevention.

Next on Kentucky health.

>> Kentucky health is funded in part by a grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

>> If you are of a certain age, you may recall these words.

We can rebuild him.

We have the technology.

We can make him better than he was, better, stronger, faster.

Of course, that was from the opening of the 1970s TV show The $6 Million Man.

If we account for inflation today, the price tag would be over $32 million.

There are many ways in which we may view health and fitness.

When young, we dream of pro careers and a chance for an average salary of $100,000 in the WNBA, $37,000 in the National Women's Soccer League, $3.2 million if you're in the NFL, 5.2 million in the Major League Baseball, and $13 million if you make it to the NBA.

For many of us, as we get a little older, we just want to remain fit for the esthetics to prevent or delay the onset of chronic conditions, or to allow us to perform our jobs and leisure activities more efficiently.

As senior citizens, our fitness levels affect our quality of life, mobility and independence.

Whatever the reason, be it vanity, wanting to feel better or have a lust for that end of workout endorphin rush, we are neither too old nor too young to be engaged in a fitness program.

However, we must remember that there are no shortcuts.

Fitness does not come.

>> In a jar.

>> Rather, it is achieved through consistent application of age and body appropriate programs to give us an insight into how we can achieve a level of fitness and maintain that fitness, and prevent, or at least lessen our risk for injuries.

We have as our guest today, doctor Nick Hebner.

Doctor Hebner received his bachelor's degree in kinesiology and athletic training from the Pennsylvania State University and his masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in sports medicine and rehabilitation science.

Doctor Hebner has a very fertile mind and seemingly unbridled interest and curiosity.

His areas of focus include injury prevention and performance enhancement, and military and collegiate athletes, lower extremity injury, and biomechanical and neuromuscular risk factors for musculoskeletal injury, injury prevention, and performance enhancement.

In the ultra endurance athlete.

The application of portable wearable technologies for injury prevention and rehabilitation.

Doctor Hebner is currently an associate professor and Department of Athletic Training and clinical Nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences, and the director of University of Kentucky Sports Medicine Research Institute.

Of note, Doctor Hebner has been honored as one of the University of Kentucky Research Professors for 2025 and 2026.

Doctor Hebner.

Nick, thanks for being with us.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> So how many hours are in your day?

I mean, man, how do you do all this stuff?

>> Unfortunately, I have the same amount of time everybody else does.

>> No you don't, man.

I think that's part of your sports medicine thing.

So tell me, what is the Sports Medicine Research Institute?

>> Yeah.

So we're a collaborative research institute on campus focused on sports medicine and really trying to improve musculoskeletal health and giving people resources to stay active.

Whether you're trying to make it to the next league and and participate in physical activity and sports, or you're just trying to live a healthy lifestyle and try to gain longevity and function.

>> Well, as the NCAA commercials say, everyone is going professional, but not everybody is going professional in athletics.

Yes, you're doing more than just work for the athlete.

Tell me about that.

>> Yeah, correct.

So we are part of our partnership is with UK Athletics and we do get to help our athletes here.

But we do a lot more than that.

We've got research contracts and grants that really help focus on military and tactical athletes, on nontraditional athletes and industrial settings, workers, and with education and youth sports and other sorts of populations.

So we get to help a lot of people who suffer from musculoskeletal injuries, whether it's spraining your ankle, walking down the sidewalk, right, hanging out with your friends, or if you're having to pick up game of basketball and sprain your ankle, we're treating both those populations.

>> Is preventative.

Treatment a form of rehabilitation in that your, you know, as you're starting your rehab before you get injured.

I guess that's what I'm trying to.

>> Look at.

That's the ideal thing.

In fact, in sports medicine we have a term for it.

We call it prehab and rehab.

>> Right.

>> And that's really coined from when you when you do get injured and you're kind of set up for surgery, a common practice is to do some therapy ahead of surgery to set you up better.

Right.

And it's the same thing.

The more fit and the more prepared you are right in your life and having a higher level of fitness and function.

If you do get hurt, you're more resilient.

You can bounce back faster and bounce back better.

>> You know, when we talk about preventative health in terms of vaccines or other eating properly, and we'll come to eating a little bit, you know, that is to help a, you know, help us stay healthy.

But it also makes good business sense as people are at work and families are more productive.

So do companies like just throwing out names and not start ups?

Amazon or construction companies?

Do they come ask you and say, hey, how can we keep our people in better condition?

>> Yeah.

So those companies regularly have gotten into this.

So those big names like you said, Amazon, Boeing, Toyota, just up the street in Georgetown is really well known for its buy in to sports medicine in factory workers to prevent those injuries because there's a huge cost savings.

We've even been working with our local Lexington Fire Department and just having access to an athletic trainer to get to deal with some aches and pains and things that aren't quite developed into a worker's comp related injury.

We've been able to save them hundreds of thousand dollars, that city taxpayer dollars, just by reducing the amount of worker's compensation claims, reducing the pain and issues in firefighters.

And guess what?

Now those firefighters don't have to deal with those injuries either.

So it helps the quality of the life of the individuals.

>> What about for that person who is the desk jockey?

And I'm not using that in a pejorative sense, but we're sitting at a desk or we're not doing these big activities, but yet still they can have problems.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

You're still at risk.

And in fact, in some ways, you're more at risk for certain types of injuries and pain.

Right?

We have a lot of people with low back and back issues from sitting at a desk all day.

I sit at a desk for most of the day, unfortunately now.

Right.

But the key thing is getting up and moving, right?

Everybody says you need to get so many steps a day.

And that's right.

But the key factor is just building in movement throughout your day and incorporating fitness to your daily life.

>> Let's go to the steps things.

First, there is this concept of 10,000 steps.

I don't really understand from where it originated or what it means, but somebody came up with it and now we are all slaves to it.

>> Yeah, there was some.

There was a research study where 10,000 the number did come from a research study.

Right.

But there's more nuance to that.

But the message is still correct, right.

We need some level of movement throughout the day in order to have enough exposure to physical activity to improve our health, because there's nothing in a bottle that's going to overcome the commitment it takes to keep moving and stay physically fit and physically active.

And 10,000 steps gives us a good, nice round number threshold to get up away from our desks and have a little bit of movement throughout the day.

Doesn't mean 10,000 works for everybody.

Some people need a little bit more, some people might not need that much, especially if you haven't been that active.

But the other thing too is once you reach 10,000, your body gets acclimated to it.

Guess what?

You probably should do a little bit more, right?

And keep your body moving.

If your body is adapting to it, that's a that's a good sign.

That means you're getting better.

You're getting fitter.

We need to increase that then.

>> Sounds like my cat.

I can pet him for five minutes and he always wants more.

>> Always wants more.

We should always be wanting to be able to do more, right?

>> You keep using this term movement.

So I'm thinking about the person at the desk.

What kind of movement am I doing?

>> Well, you can get up and walk around, right?

But you can also do other things, right.

If you're in an environment where you can't get out of the building and walk around outside.

My personal preference is to get outside, but it may not be feasible.

Everybody, you can get up, do some squats at your desk, right?

Or do some other exercises or things just every hour, right.

And you can set some better goals.

And that still counts as movement.

And even you may not be getting the traditional 10,000 steps.

You're still getting the movement in that you need.

>> Put you on the spot.

Everybody has a computer at their desk now, and everybody's leaning forward over that and everybody's got back problems.

What do you tell people to do to prevent?

>> Well, your posture makes a difference too, right?

Bent over like this and your desk isn't going to be good.

Having a good, nice upright posture matters.

But the big thing is still, even if I'm sitting in an upright posture well, all day, if I do this for eight hours straight, that's still not good.

Getting up every hour, trying to move around, even if it's just for a few minutes at a time, helps alleviate and counteract those issues.

>> You know, I had a friend of mine asked me about using creatine, and the reason for this was their person said they wanted to help low protein, and they thought that this might be something to help.

How do you talk to people about nutrition?

They say, I want to, you know, I want to get nutritionally and I want to I want to get fit and I want to use the best nutrition.

And the first thing they talk about is nutritional supplements.

Yeah.

Where is your take.

>> Yeah, that's definitely we get a lot of questions about that to you.

And we're lucky at UK right.

I can say you need to talk to our sports dietitian.

Right.

And that's expert opinion.

>> And but you don't get off that here.

Now you got.

>> To tell me I don't get off that and that's fine.

But for most of us it really comes down to are you getting in the food that you need?

Right.

The the first benchmark is are you eating enough food?

Are you eating too much?

Right.

The amount of calories is still the biggest thing.

Like if I'm working with an athlete and we're trying to help improve their mass gain, even they want to play football later on in college or something like that, and they may want to bulk up if you're not getting enough calories to even sustain your exercise.

It doesn't matter how much protein necessarily you're taking, you need to have enough energy in your body to sustain that training level.

Same thing.

Too much for those of us who may want to lose weight.

You could take certain supplements that help with certain things.

But if you're if you're eating so many more calories than you're than you're burning and your body is made to burn, you're gonna that balance, that equation is not balanced when it comes to other supplements.

A lot of them, especially like creatine and protein, are really safe and and they're effective.

But really the recommendation comes through.

Are you not getting them enough in your diet?

The recommendation is if you can get them in your healthy, normal, whole food diet, that's the best way to get it.

But in some cases, with our busy life, and if you're training a lot and maybe you try, you're trying to have a higher increase or higher amount of protein in our diet.

Sometimes it's just hard to get that much lean protein in, and that's when supplements can be really helpful, especially with our athletes.

We'll see it after practice to get some more carbohydrates and protein in, to make sure they have what they need to recover.

After a hard training session.

Protein supplements become a real big part of that to make sure that they can get it easy close to their training session.

>> But you're talking about a very specialized athlete here at UK.

So you got a SEC school.

Yeah.

And you got these big giant guys was I think it was Peyton Manning had a commercial, said if you want washboard abs, unless you're a 23 year old defensive back, you're not going to have it.

So what about this kid who's playing in high school sports?

>> Yeah.

>> Boy or girl or the weekend person who loves riding their bike and jogging.

Okay.

Do they need this stuff?

>> You really don't need it.

That's.

That's what I'm saying.

You don't need it.

If you can just plan what you're eating and be intentional about it.

You don't need the protein supplement.

However, it can be helpful if for some reason your schedule and things are restricted, it's okay is the way that the recommendation sits is really trying to get a certain amount of protein per amount of body weight you have, so the recommendation is typically around 0.8 to 1 kilo or one gram of protein for every kilogram of body weight that you are.

That goes up a little bit if you're, you know, high school athlete trying, you know, working on your sport and you're, you're training a lot that might go up to 1.5g or something.

But you can get that through whole food diet.

It's not that bad.

We eat more protein than I think people realize we do normally, but there are some subpopulations that need that a lot.

I mean, you get into like competitive bodybuilding and powerlifting and then getting into high level sports and athletics and doing a lot of training.

We need a lot more protein in our diet to recover.

Most of the time we can get it, though, in our diet.

Unless you're an athlete training.

>> You touched upon it.

But what about the pre and post workout recovery?

Yeah.

Are there certain foods or things that someone needs you mentioned about a supplement?

Maybe then.

But I've wondered, do you really need again?

Is that sometime when you need a supplement?

Or can we again get it through normal things?

>> You can get it through normal food, but sometimes, depending on what you're doing, it's hard to get it within a reasonable amount of time.

Right?

So if I work out at 3:00 and I'm not going to eat dinner until seven, yeah, that's a lot of time.

I should eat something.

But you can just bring a snack too, so you don't need to pay the money to get protein.

But it is one option, right?

And some people, that's what they like and that's fine.

But the key thing is getting some nutrition directly after your exercise really helps start the recovery process.

>> Tell me about your thought process.

When we speak about prevention of injuries, be it for some of the specialized people, the military or that factory worker, or even the weekend warrior type person.

>> Yeah, one thing when it comes to preventing injuries, one of the first things we'll look at when we're working with a new population or new group, or just a new individual that comes to us just for a consult, is we have to look at how much volume of activity they're doing versus what they're trying to accomplish.

Sometimes one way that we see injuries occur is that they're overtraining or overusing a certain muscle or certain tendons, right.

So when we see factor workers come in and they have elbow pain, it's likely because they're doing a lot of repetitive tasks that are straining that muscle and tendon.

So the trick is trying to figure out, well, how do I unload that?

How do we vary their job amount?

So they're not always doing the same thing for eight hours a day.

Maybe they only do this task a couple hours a day, and then they switch to something else.

When we work with certain companies and things like that, that's a lot of what they look at is they say, okay, John's going to do this for a few hours, but then Susan's going to do this for the other hours, and then they're going to flip flop.

Right.

And now we can distribute that load.

The other thing we look at especially is going to be your general fitness level.

Because no big surprise as to why I'm sitting with you here, right?

People who are more fit are less likely to get hurt.

So by ignoring our fitness and ignoring physical activity, you're setting yourself up for more pain and musculoskeletal problems.

>> Along that same lines of repetitive injuries.

We see a lot of times now in our adolescents, you know, you get a kid, I'm an old guy, you played baseball, football, basketball, something else.

Now a kid is softball, baseball, basketball, soccer.

Yeah.

They just specialize in this one sport.

I got to believe that.

That's setting them up for injuries.

>> It does.

And it does set them up for injury.

There's a it's a hard decision as a parent.

Right.

And especially the pressures we feel to have our kids participate in sports.

So they get the look from the recruiters or look from the traveling team.

That gives them the opportunity.

But it does.

We see an increase amount of sport related injuries from these children who are specializing so early now.

Yeah.

Yep.

So it's a it's a problem getting to do more sports and more types of physical activity throughout the year, I think helps create a better diverse athlete.

And somebody who is more accustomed to different physical literacies.

Right.

So that's something we're trying to get for our children, right?

That's why we want them to play and participate in different sports when they're in elementary and middle school ages.

But same thing for sports specialization.

They might get good at the task, but they get more higher risk of getting hurt.

And we still have plenty really good athletes that we see make the collegiate scene that were multi-sport athletes.

>> Just don't hear about them as much anymore.

>> You just don't hear about them as much anymore.

>> Tell me if you will.

Let's talk a little bit about the rehab of things we talked about.

Prehab.

So rehab, what does that looking like now versus say, 25 years ago?

>> Yeah, it really comes down to the type of injury and how it looks.

What's changed.

Maybe we'll talk about that.

I think we've become more challenging to some things.

We've learned how in some injuries and some tissues, we can challenge and push athletes to load a little bit earlier.

And that helps induce better rehab or better changes and recovery.

But we've also become a little bit more conservative in other cases where we've learned, like, okay, certain techniques maybe weren't as helpful in the past as they are now.

The other thing that's been been great to see is there's different surgical techniques, and we've been able to use a lot more technology to help guide our rehab.

The key thing is we're seeing clinicians now being able to be more individualized in their rehab selections for their patients than maybe used to be.

And I think that's what we do, even in our athletes and in our patients that we help with is try to figure out an individualized approach, because we're not all the same person, right?

We come from different backgrounds, we're different physiology, right?

And we have different exposure to things.

So treating people as a person, a person as an individual really actually helps with the rehab too.

>> Tell me about the wearable things.

Where are we with that?

Because that seems to be a just a burgeoning business side.

>> Oh yeah, there's a big business for wearable technology, right?

And a lot of us use it and it's got its place for some of this, especially in sports performance.

But it's not a necessary tool by any means.

>> Really.

>> Yeah.

It's really it's really not.

What it does help is it does help eliminate some friction points for being able to see and flag issues that might be happening.

So a common population we work with for individuals who are trying to get active are runners.

Right.

It's a real common recreational activity for fitness.

Wearables have helped alert people when they're training a lot and maybe haven't had enough rest.

So that's been a helpful thing, and it gives them a way to automatically log their exercise where they maybe wouldn't have done it on their own.

But I can do the same thing with pen and paper in a journal so it doesn't change what we do.

It just changed how we do it.

>> What about though, in terms of directing you as to what you need to concentrate on to make this person better, or to even gauge if you're making them better?

>> Yeah, this has changed and morphed over the years, even in athletics here at UK, in terms of what we've tried and what's been helpful.

But there's different wearables on the market, like even smartwatches now they'll try to alert you when you didn't get enough sleep or what sort of things affected sleep.

I think everybody remembers, you know, when Whoop and Apple Watch and Garmin watches kind of came about, we started to realize like, oh, you know, sleep's important because it is right.

I can't just run off three hours of sleep like I used to when I was in my early 20s.

Right.

And in graduate school, that doesn't quite work now that I'm middle aged.

And I think it helped expose.

And it tells people a little bit of, of daily habits that are helpful and maybe harmful to their health.

>> All right.

So I'm going to the Heebner family.

I've opened your door and I've gone into your kitchen and I'm looking in the refrigerator.

Tell me about the typical meal that you all are having at your home.

Because you are fit.

>> Because I am fit.

Well, you there's going to be a lot of different things.

>> Be careful what you say now because you're going to hear this again.

>> Yeah, yeah, but you know, I don't eat anything special.

You're not going to find any kind of fancy supplements necessarily either.

You're going to find low fat milk.

You're going to find chocolate milk in my refrigerator constantly.

I that is my favorite post-workout drink is just Fairlife makes a great chocolate milk that's got higher protein content, I love it.

You're going to find lean meats and chicken and beef.

You're going to find rice.

You're going to find other sorts of things.

Yogurts, probably common things most people have in their fridge.

Yeah.

>> So I'm not going to find this whole shelf of protein powders and all this sort of thing.

>> That's unfortunately.

>> By the way, are you concerned?

>> I do have I do have protein powder.

I do keep that in there because it's great to have for an extra snack to make sure you can get nutrition.

>> Just out of curiosity, are you concerned with the new reports about lead being found in a lot of these protein powders?

>> Definitely.

And that's where I do urge people who really want to, and it fits into their schedule if they want to use protein supplements or any supplements, you need to get it from a really reputable company that has third party testing.

Okay, so you can see certain brands have third party tests that they'll advertise that actually send it off for each batch to a lab that tests for those sorts of things.

Also tests for banned substances, things like that.

So make sure if you're going to do it, pick a brand that's doing third party testing.

>> How do you know?

I mean, is there something on the label that says.

>> Yeah, so there's some there's some industries and organizations that certify those third party tests, things like NSF certified and Informed Sport is a real big one that we look for in the athletics world.

So brands that use that service for third party testing will say Informed Sport Certified.

>> All right.

Tell me the most exciting thing you got going over there at the Sports Medicine Research Institute?

The thing that really gets you going.

>> The thing that really gets me going, is working with our team on some of our, our our big military and tactical athlete projects we have on going now.

So we've got some really exciting funding looking at how we're learning more from wearables to help inform, return to duty, return to work protocols and to help refine physical performance.

Looking at how we keep people healthy and able to do their job.

>> So I guess after the recent lecture about fat military people, you're going to get a lot more business, I guess.

>> Well, maybe we're here.

We're trying to help our focus, though.

We have a lot people get hurt from all sorts of industries we like to look at.

How do we get them back to doing what they're doing?

>> Give me, if you will, the three big take home points that you think we should know about fitness and minute and a half we got left here.

>> Yeah.

Number one consistency.

And I mean that from if you're just working out every once in a while and then you fall off, it's really hard to see improvements without consistency.

Even if it's just one day a week, an hour a day, a couple days a week.

And the other thing is going to be if you do stop for a while because we all fall off our schedules, get busy, guess what?

You can pick back up.

It's not a big deal.

I see too many people that stop because life got busy and then they just didn't start up again.

And now you just keep growing the the problem or you keep falling behind.

Next is going to be don't neglect just eating healthy and eating good foods and getting good sleep.

When it comes to recovering, especially for our youth athletes that are pressured to do a lot of different things, you'd be surprised if you're getting in the the calories and the nutrition that you need and you're working out.

You're going to be better off than you think.

And that also comes back to being consistent about it.

And third, don't neglect any kind of pains that you have.

You know, don't be afraid to go.

Don't go get yourself.

See your athletic trainer at your high school.

Go see a sports medicine physician if things are starting to get an issue because the earlier you address problems, usually the easier they are to fix.

>> Short answer if I have been away from it for a while, do I pick up where I left off or do I kind of go back?

>> You do have to meter that back a little bit.

Let your body adjust.

Absolutely.

That's a great point.

>> Well, Nick, I tell you, man, I've enjoyed talking to you.

You've given us some really, really interesting things.

And yeah, there's a whole lot more to fitness and nutrition and just general health.

I think as we get older, we want to be fit so that we can still do stuff.

I know I do absolutely get out there and walk.

Thank you for being with us.

I also want to thank you for being with us today.

Fitness is many things to many people.

However, at the end of the day, what we all want is to live our lives to the best quality that we can.

One way to achieve this is to maintain flexibility, endurance and strength through regular exercises and good nutrition.

I hope that you are motivated to get active or even push yourself just a little bit more.

If you wish to watch this show again, or watch an archived version of past shows, please go to WW ket.org.

If you have a question or comment about this or other shows, we can be reached at KY health at ket.org.

I look forward to seeing you on the next Kentucky Health.

And if I don't see you, then I look forward to seeing you walking around getting your 10,000 steps, moving, exercising and in the grocery aisle eating good foods.

Thanks, Nick.

Appreciate it man.

Hope that was okay.

>> Kentucky Health is funded in part by a grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.