Sports Performance Physical Therapy · Chula Vista
Free In-Person Class · Only 10 Seats
A Torn Rotator Cuff Isn’t A Life Sentence. Most People Are Never Told What Else Is Possible.
One evening on what a rotator cuff tear actually is, how to tell whether yours needs a surgeon, and what it takes to get your shoulder strong again — taught in plain English, in a room of ten people.
- When
- Tuesday, November 10
6:15 – 7:30 PM - Where
- 861 Harold Place, Unit 307
Chula Vista, CA 91914 - Cost
- Completely free
Drinks & snacks provided - Seats
- 10 only
First come, first seated
Taught by Dr. Chris Garcia, DPT — CEO & founder, Sports Performance Physical Therapy · 300+ 5-star Google reviews
What you’ll walk away with
Three Things You’ll Walk Out With
No slides full of jargon. You’ll leave knowing more about your own shoulder than you do right now.
An honest answer on surgery
For many degenerative tears — especially after 55 — published trials show structured physical therapy producing outcomes similar to surgery. Some tears genuinely need a surgeon. You’ll learn which category yours is likely in, and why.
What it actually takes to heal a tendon
Quieting pain and rebuilding tissue are two different jobs. We’ll walk through what rest does, what a shot does, what strengthening does, and where shockwave and EMTT genuinely fit — and where they don’t.
Something to do Wednesday morning
You’ll do a real exercise with us in the room — one of the exact movements we use to start rebuilding shoulder stability — and take home a printed recovery guide with the rest of it.
In-person only. No recording will be sent.
These classes get conversational fast — people describe their own shoulders, ask what they’re actually afraid to ask, and we work through real cases out loud. Nothing from that room goes out afterward, so there’s no replay link and no “we’ll send you the slides.” If you want this, you’ll want to be in the chair.
Sound familiar?
Come If Any Of This Is You
Most people in the room are in their forties, fifties and sixties — golfers, pickleball players, swimmers, parents and grandparents who lift kids and suitcases and haven’t slept on that side in months. You do not need to be an athlete.
- You can’t sleep on that shoulder anymore — it aches no matter how you lie.
- You can’t reach behind your back to tuck in a shirt or grab something off the back seat.
- Lifting your arm overhead feels weak, or it catches partway up.
- There’s a clicking or catching feeling, sometimes with a sharp twinge.
- You were told to rest, handed a sheet of exercises, and sent home.
- You have a tear on an MRI, maybe even a surgery date, and you want a real second opinion first.
Why nothing has stuck
You’ve Probably Already Tried Most Of This
None of it was stupid. It just wasn’t aimed at the thing causing the problem.
Rest
Rest takes the load off, and things calm down. It doesn’t rebuild the strength or fix the mechanics that let the tendon get irritated in the first place — which is why it comes back the week you go back to normal life.
Cortisone
A shot can quiet a shoulder down, and sometimes that’s genuinely useful. But the GRASP trial published in The Lancet in 2021 found cortisone injections added no extra long-term benefit over exercise alone.
Symptom-chasing therapy
Fifteen minutes with a doctor, then handed off to a tech and a table of bands. Treatment aimed at where it hurts rather than at what’s driving it. Six weeks later, same shoulder.
Braces, ice, meds, massage guns, YouTube exercises
Short-term relief, if any. Generic exercises can’t know which of your rotator cuff muscles is actually weak, or whether your shoulder blade is the real problem.
Just avoiding it
You stop swimming. You stop golfing. You reach with the other arm. The shoulder stops complaining because you stopped asking it to do anything — and quietly gets weaker and stiffer.
How we actually treat it
Calm It Down. Find The Real Deficit. Rebuild It.
That’s the whole framework, and we’ll walk through all three in the class.
Reduce the irritation
Hands-on manual therapy, smart activity changes, and modalities to bring the pain and inflammation down enough that you can actually do the work that fixes it.
Identify the real issue
A 27-point assessment to pinpoint exactly which strength and mechanical deficits are driving your symptoms — because “rotator cuff pain” is four different muscles and a shoulder blade.
Build the plan
A progressive strengthening program built for your shoulder, your age, and what you’re trying to get back to — whether that’s a golf swing or a full night’s sleep.
And where regenerative therapy fits: jump-starting a dead battery
Shockwave and EMTT are adjuncts. They prime the tissue so the strengthening program actually sticks. They are not a replacement for a strength program, and they are not a replacement for surgery when surgery is truly indicated — we’ll be straight with you about that in the room.
Shockwave = the jumper cables
Rapid pressure-wave pulses through a handheld device. Kickstarts local blood flow and the repair signals your tissue needs to get moving. About 5–10 minutes per area; feels like tapping pressure.
EMTT = the trickle charge
A pulsed electromagnetic field through a padded applicator you rest against. Generally painless — a gentle warmth. Supports the cellular environment so healing keeps progressing.
Strength = the car
Neither one replaces the program. The tissue gets primed; the strengthening is what makes the result hold. No needles, no anesthesia, and you drive yourself home.
What’s at stake
Nobody Gives This Stuff Up All At Once
You just quietly stop doing one thing, then another. The earlier you deal with it, the easier the road back usually is.
A full night’s sleep
The first thing to go, and the one people mention most.
The top shelf
Reaching overhead, the back seat, tucking in a shirt.
Golf and pickleball
The things on the calendar with other people’s names attached.
The pool
Swimming is usually the first exercise to disappear.
Your kid’s games
Sitting through a whole one. Carrying the chairs. Being there.
The next twenty years
Shoulders you can still use at seventy, not just ones that don’t hurt today.
Your presenter
Who’s Teaching This
Dr. Chris Garcia, DPT
CEO & Founder, Sports Performance Physical Therapy
Dr. Garcia founded Sports Performance in 2014 and has spent the last twelve years treating stubborn, chronic orthopedic pain without rushing anyone toward a scalpel. He’s a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a Sports Clinical Specialist, a former physical therapist for the United States Olympic Committee, has held rehab roles with NFL combine training, and worked as a private therapist for professional tennis players in Europe.
He now brings that same standard of care to people who aren’t professional athletes at all — the 40-, 50- and 60-somethings who just want to sleep on that side again and get through a weekend without paying for it on Monday.
The shoulder we see over and over
Somebody in their late fifties comes in about eighteen months after the shoulder first started aching. They rested it. They got a cortisone shot that helped for six weeks. An MRI found a partial-thickness tear, which felt like a verdict. They did a round of therapy where they saw the doctor for ten minutes and a technician for forty, and they’ve been avoiding overhead reaching ever since.
What usually turns up on assessment isn’t just the tear. It’s a weak rotator cuff and shoulder-blade stabilizers, an overworked upper trap doing a job it was never meant to do, and a posture that narrows the space the tendon has to move through. Nobody had tested any of it. We’ll walk through cases like this one in the class — including the ones where we sent the person to a surgeon, because those exist too.
Why clients choose us
What’s Different Here
Time with an actual doctor
One-on-one with a Doctor of Physical Therapy for your whole session — not ten minutes of a doctor and forty of a technician.
The technology is in the building
Focused and radial shockwave, EMTT, HBOT, compression therapy and custom orthotics under one roof. No referral roulette.
We test before we recommend
A 27-point assessment first. If we can’t show you what’s driving your pain, we haven’t earned the right to sell you a plan for it.
Your goals set the plan
Whether it’s a golf swing or a full night’s sleep, the plan is built around what you want back — and we tell you up front how long it should take.
We’ll tell you to see the surgeon
When a tear genuinely needs surgical repair, we say so. You’ll hear the honest triage criteria in the class.
Two locations
Chula Vista and Kearny Mesa, San Diego — so follow-up care doesn’t become a commute you resent.
What you’ll learn
The Five Things We’ll Cover
Five pieces, plus a live demonstration and open Q&A.
1. What a tear actually is
Partial-thickness versus full-thickness in plain English — a rope with frayed strands versus a rope severed through. Which of the four rotator cuff muscles is most often involved, and why pain and tear size so often don’t match.
2. The four root causes
Age-related tendon wear, repetitive overhead motion, muscle imbalance, and posture. Roughly one in four people over 60 already has a tear on imaging — many with no pain at all. Age-related wear is the leading cause, which means this isn’t something you did wrong.
3. Do you actually need surgery?
What the landmark trials found — Kukkonen, Moosmayer, the GRASP trial in The Lancet, the MOON Shoulder trial — and the honest criteria that point toward a surgical consult instead: sudden traumatic tears, major weakness, real functional loss, or a genuine trial of conservative care that didn’t work.
4. Shockwave and EMTT, honestly
How they work, what a session feels like, and what the evidence does and doesn’t support. Shockwave has its strongest evidence in calcific tendinitis and a growing body of evidence as an adjunct for tendinopathy. EMTT is newer, with a still-developing research base. We’ll say so.
5. Warning signs and the twenty-year plan
What means “see someone soon” versus what’s usually fine to monitor — and how hands-on care, strengthening and regenerative therapy fit together into a shoulder you can still use in twenty years.
You’ll also do a shoulder-blade exercise with us from your seat, and watch a real one-on-one evaluation with a volunteer from the room.
Included with your seat
The First 5 To Register Walk Out With Nearly $300 Of Extras
The class itself is free either way. These are for the first five people who take a seat.
-
One free 60-minute Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy session
A full HBOT session at our clinic — one of the recovery tools we use to support tissue healing.
$149 value -
One free 30-minute Normatec compression session
Recovery compression therapy, on the house.
$49 value -
Special discounts on custom pillows & custom orthotics
Including our custom pillow — which matters more than people expect when a shoulder won’t let you sleep.
$99 value -
The printed Rotator Cuff Recovery Guide
Your recovery roadmap, the warning signs to watch for, and a home exercise program — front and back, on paper, in your hand on the way out. Every attendee gets this one.
Included
First five registrants only, and there’s no replay and no “we’ll send you the link” afterward.
Proof
You’ll Hear Real Cases, Not A Wall Of Quotes
Real clients, including the ones we referred out
We’ll talk through actual shoulders from this clinic — what we found, what we did, what happened, and the cases where the honest answer was a surgical consult.
A ten-person room
Small enough that you can describe your own shoulder out loud and get a straight answer from the person who treats these all week.
300+ five-star Google reviews
Twelve years in San Diego County, thousands of active adults, and a review record you can read yourself before you ever walk in.
⚠️ Only 10 Seats
We Keep This Room Small On Purpose
Ten people means everyone who has a question gets it answered, and everyone who wants a look at their own shoulder can get one. It also means seats go fast and it’s strictly first come, first seated.
Register
Tuesday, November 10 · 6:15 PM · Chula Vista
861 Harold Place, Unit 307, Chula Vista, CA 91914. Parking is right outside the clinic. Enter your details below and we’ll hold your seat.
You’ll get a confirmation email the moment you register.
Or register by phone — call or text (619) 397-1391
Questions, or need a different date? Email teamsp@sportsperformancept.com
Know someone who’s been living with shoulder pain for a year and been told to just rest it? Send them this page — they’re welcome to come with you.
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Will I get a recording afterward?
No. There’s no replay and no link sent out later. The class is conversational — people talk about their own shoulders and we work through real cases in the room — so nothing from it goes out afterward. If you want it, come sit in it.
Do I need a diagnosed tear to come?
No. Plenty of people come with a shoulder that’s been aching for months and no imaging at all, and plenty come with an MRI report they don’t fully understand. Both are the right person for this room. If you’re not sure whether your shoulder problem is a rotator cuff problem, that’s exactly the kind of thing we’ll sort out.
What happens at the end of the class?
After the open Q&A, we explain what care with us looks like and how to get your own shoulder assessed, for anyone who wants that. And if the honest answer for your shoulder is “go see a surgeon,” you’ll hear that instead.
What is regenerative therapy, and why start it early?
In our clinic it means focused and radial shockwave and EMTT — non-invasive treatments delivered through the skin, with no needles and no downtime. They’re used to calm the area down and stimulate the local healing environment so the strengthening work lands better. We start them alongside hands-on care and exercise rather than holding them back as a last resort. They’re adjuncts, not a substitute for a strength program or for surgery when surgery is indicated.
Who’s teaching it?
Dr. Chris Garcia, DPT — CEO and founder of Sports Performance Physical Therapy, a Sports Clinical Specialist, former physical therapist for the United States Olympic Committee, with rehab roles in NFL combine training and time as a private therapist for professional tennis players in Europe. He’s been treating stubborn orthopedic pain in San Diego County since 2014.
Can I bring my spouse or a friend?
Please do — as long as there are seats left. There are only ten, so register each person so we know to hold the chairs.
When, where, how long, and where do I park?
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 6:15–7:30 PM. Sports Performance Physical Therapy, 861 Harold Place, Unit 307, Chula Vista, CA 91914. About 75 minutes, including Q&A. Parking is available directly outside the clinic. Drinks and snacks will be there when you arrive — come a few minutes early if you can.
Sports Performance Physical Therapy
Physical therapy, regenerative therapy and HBOT, serving San Diego County since 2014 with 300+ 5-star Google reviews.
Chula Vista
861 Harold Place, Unit 307
Chula Vista, CA 91914
(619) 397-1391
Kearny Mesa
8911 Complex Drive, Suite F
San Diego, CA 92123
(619) 397-1391
Individual results vary. Nothing on this page is medical advice or a promise of any specific outcome. Statistics and research findings referenced here come from published health-education sources and peer-reviewed studies and describe groups of people, not predictions about your shoulder. Treatment plans, including regenerative therapy, are determined only after an individual evaluation. This class is educational and is not a substitute for a clinical assessment.
© 2026 Sports Performance Physical Therapy, Inc. All rights reserved.
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