Three athletes train for Olympic Trials at sports medicine facility at CHI St. Luke’s Health - The Woodlands

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — The performance medicine department at CHI St. Luke’s Health - The Woodlands Hospital is training three Olympic hopefuls at their facility before they compete in the trials in Los Angeles on February 13.

Andrew Arthur, PT, the lead physical therapist at CHI St. Luke’s Health’s sports medicine department trains the three Olympic hopefuls and has worked with an array of athletes from high school all the way up to professionals and said training the elite is his passion.

“It’s been very enjoyable so far,” Arthur said. “It’s one of the things I’m passionate about, and [they] are highly motivated and determined athletes with a passion for what they do. Overall, it’s one of the fun things that I get to do to help athletes like them try to achieve their goals and their highest potential.”

Samantha McClellan, Jarrett Leblanc and Chris Bilbrew all began running at a young age and have started training at CHI St. Luke’s performance medicine facility. McClellan and Leblanc will both be competing in the Olympic Trials as marathon runners.

Leblanc came from a small town in rural Louisiana, and he said he always had big dreams as a runner despite having no track where he could practice at his high school. He said coming from a place where he didn’t have access to the things that enabled his dreams, he had to learn how to put his goal first everyday.

“You look at other athletes in your sport and see how far they can go, and you see them competing on the Olympic level so you kind of learn to model people like that,” Leblanc said. “It’s just a really slow process, but you kind of have that goal in mind that you’re going to get there one day, but you’ve got to take baby steps.”

Those baby steps led him to a career as a college athlete, and two years ago he moved to The Woodlands to join its local Olympic Development Team. After sustaining a back injury that severely hampered Leblanc’s training and put him out of running for two months, he made his way to the performance medicine facility at CHI St. Luke’s.

“I was told by a friend that St. Luke’s here has a very good, prominent lab that is willing to help people and work with people, so I got in touch with Andy, the PT, and came in and managed to set up something where we were rehabbing my back, and I was back in training,” Leblanc said.

The Olympic dream is relatively new for McClellan, and she is one of 276 women competing for one of the three available slots for female marathon runners. About a year and a half ago, she watched the Boston Marathon on television and the Olympic goal sprouted from there. She ran in college, and once she moved to The Woodlands from Michigan with her husband she joined a local running team after a one year hiatus from competitive running. The group would run short distance races, but she more enjoyed running longer distances.

“I want to excel and see what I can do,” McClellan said. “When you’re running, you push yourself as hard as you want to. It almost becomes a competition within your own, and it’s just something you have to look forward to, especially if you can get a quick time. That’s nice, so it pushes you to see how far you can get.”

McClellan noticed CHI St. Luke’s performance medicine department at a half marathon she ran about a year ago. She discovered that they had an anti-gravity treadmill available after her trainer recommended that she find a facility with the machine and start working with it to supplement her training.

“They had the equipment and the facility that worked for me even prior to meeting them, and it just kind of happened nicely,” McClellan said.

Training already-accomplished athletes is something their trainer, Andrew Arthur, is accustomed to, and while it may come as a surprise to some, Arthur said even at the elite level there is room for improvement.

“Surprisingly enough, even at the elite level athletes have a lot of asymmetries, muscle imbalances and restrictions that keep them from performing at their highest potential,” Arthur said. “I try to look for some of those things that I know are going to help their performance and reduce their risk of injury. That’s a big focus of what we work on. As I get to know the athlete, and depending on some of the training they’ve been doing, I also try to be a supplement in their work outs just to help them achieve their goals.”

McClellan said she experienced mental, physical and emotional growth as an athlete since training at CHI St. Luke’s. She said running on the roads alone mental strength is often the key to finishing a race with improvement. For Leblanc, remembering that there is always room to grow is something that he believes is key to success in any trade.

“When you convince yourself to stop learning at whatever trade or sport you’re in, that’s kind of an ignorant thing,” Leblanc said. “You always have to take everything that you’re going to be able to learn and grow from it.”

David Argueta, President of CHI St. Luke’s Health - The Woodlands, Lakeside and Springwoods Village Hospitals said its been a privilege to work with the Olympic hopefuls and that it has helped further the medical group’s mission to make healthier communities.

“I think that’s one of the most exciting things for us. It really fit together with building healthier communities,” Argueta said. “Our whole role is to help this community to continue to stay healthy and stay well, and when we have athletes like these taking care of their bodies and eating right, they really are an embodiment of who we aspire to be for our community as beacons of health making sure that we can do everything to educate for a healthier community and also being there when people need us.”

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