Dr. Ramez M. Antoun
Dr. Ramez M. Antoun
PT, DPT, PNF, OMT, FRC
Physical Therapist, Clinical Team Director
BACKGROUND
Dr. Ramez Antoun has been a strength coach for 15 years and a board licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy for 10 years with a passion for sports medicine & orthopedics. His mission is to help active people, who’ve “tried everything” in the traditional healthcare model, see past the label of a medical diagnosis. His drive is to help people turn hopelessness into resilience by empowering them through movement, self-care education, and lifestyle habits to retake control of their lives.
After years of working in various traditional healthcare settings, one of Ramez’s biggest frustrations was patients being given an obscure “medical ultimatum” of what they can no longer do based solely off of a static picture of their anatomy (MRI or Xray) and their age! How could we have the audacity to give people a life sentence without systematically assessing the most vital sign of a quality of life… movement & function? A question that kept haunting Ramez was “Why are we so systematic at screening, testing, and applying deductive decision making with every other system & organ in our body yet when it comes to movement we just guess, hope for the best, or worse blame it on imperfect imaging & aging?” What was equally as frustrating was that, other than glazing over the medical history, there was almost no time dedicated to actively listening to patients’ stories and asking mindful questions to better understand them, their triggers, and goals.
Ramez believes that clients deserve to walk away from every consultation feeling that their specific challenges and goals are heard & understood. He believes clients deserve to be a part of creating an actionable & modifiable plan that helps them investigate & address the root cause of what’s holding them back. We don’t have to choose between the traditional medical system or a functional perspective; Ramez believes that they can co-exist, and that our community deserves a professional service that can reconcile both and refer out to competent physicians when appropriate, rather than demonizing the entire medical model.
With a passion for staying curious, continuing education, and teaching, Ramez has founded a Physical Therapy Consulting business called Neuropedics. The business serves & educates other Physical Therapists and acts as their second opinion on complex cases to offer an alternative perspective to help their patients overcome functional plateaus. Neuropedics has served as a consultant to a Major League Baseball organization, a private hospital, and various elite athletes ranging from martial artists, weightlifters, and powerlifters.
Ramez lives by the motto “health & family come first”. He is a dedicated husband to his wife Samantha, father to his daughter Lilly, and dog dad to his fur baby Callie. In his free time Ramez enjoys reading, listening to audio books, practicing mixed martial arts (I.e Tai Chi, Bagwa, Kung Fu), lifting weights, swinging kettlebells, going for walks with Callie, being by any body of water (especially the ocean), hiking with his family, and making awful dad jokes.
EDUCATION
Ramez attended Umass Lowell where he received his Bachelors in Exercise Physiology, minor in Nutrition, and Doctorate in Physical Therapy. After graduate school, he traveled to the west coast to complete a 9 month post Graduate Residency in Neurological Physical Therapy at Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Vallejo, CA to study Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF). After returning back to the east coast, Ramez then completed a 2-year Post Graduate fellowship program at The Institute of Orthopedic Manual Therapy (IOMT) where he underwent extensive orthopedic training in the evaluation and treatment of complex musculoskeletal injuries & orthopedic chronic pain.
LICENSES
LICENSES & CERTIFICATIONS
Ramez is currently a licensed doctor of physical therapy in both New Jersey and Philadelphia. He is a part of the Functional Movement Systems (FMS) organization, a medical & fitness educational company that establishes objective functional baselines through screening & testing fundemental movement patterns. He became an assistant instructor for the SFMA (Selective Functional Movement Assessment) which is the medical diagnostic system that helps brings a functional diagnostic perspective alongside the patient’s medical diagnosis. Ramez is certified as a Mobility Specialist by Functional Range Conditioning (FRCms) and is internationally recognized as an Orthopedic Manual Therapist (OMT) trained in spinal and extremity mobilizations and manipulations. He is also internationally recognized as a PNF Level 5 therapist by the International PNF Association (IPNFA). He has completed other certifications in soft tissue mobilizations such as instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization (i.e Graston & Cupping), Functional Range Release, and various massage techniques.