Dec 31, 2022 6 min read Meta

🦀 PT Crab Issue 119 - A Recap

We’ll end the year at PT Crab with something new to the newsletter, a recap of what has happened, changed, and been popular in the last 12 months. 2022 was a quieter year for the Crab than 2021 or 2020, based mostly on the activity-induced exhaustion that comes with a dog’s serious injury, buying and fixing up a new house, getting through clinicals, and prepping for the NPTE. Fortunately, two out of those four items are fixed up and I should have a lot more time for writing, growing, and changing in the new year. Still, the Crab plowed on, covering hundreds of research articles and generating tens of thousands of reads. And I’m ever so thankful for your readership. Below I’ll be diving into the most used, popular, and engaging topics of the year with some good highlights thrown in.

Before we do that, let’s talk resolutions a bit. Mine this year is to write more. Write anything, really. For those who don’t know, I do a bit of science and outdoors writing in my spare time and I didn’t do as much as I wanted in 2022. Overall, I let the perfect be the enemy of the good and held back my pieces as I did more research, editing, and redrafting. I’ve been working on a piece about what medical discoveries research on the hibernation habits of arctic ground squirrels have led us to for three months and it’s not close. I need to do better. I’ll also be doing better for the Crab, with more focus on community growth and involvement and finding new ways to engage readers through both this and other content development, like the giant CPG list from 2021.

I’m also resolved to get better about responding to emails. I’ll be honest y’all, I didn’t do great. And for that I’m sorry. I’ll be digging through to get to messages from as far back as September and I promise if you emailed me in the 2022 I’ll get a response back to you. I need to do better, and will do so.

I’d love to know more about your professional resolutions in this new year. How are you planning on changing your practice, approach, or methods? Do reply to this email to let me know, I always want to learn more about my readers.

With enough rambling about me out of the way, let’s move on to talking about the Crab. Even though it wasn’t as huge as years past, it was a big year in what was covered and its reach so follow along with what our readers saw the most of and enjoyed the most last year.

The Tags of the Year

I’m not sure if you know it, but every edition that is published on PT Crab’s website and sent to your email is tagged with a topic. This makes them easier to search through them and will eventually let me make them into a big map that can help you visualize everything we’ve covered. If you’re interested in searching the archive, just head to the site and find the search bar in the menu.

An image like this really points out the areas that I over and under published in. You can see my penchant for lower extremity and pelvic health with a surprise push of cardiopulmonary and pediatrics as well. I know some tags aren’t present in that chart since some of the 1 article tags were left out, but it shows I need to hit more neuro, back, elbow, rotator cuff, and muscle injuries next year.

What else should I focus on? Shoot me an email to let me know what kind of content you want to see in 2023 so I can start planning for it.

This year’s most read pieces included many different areas. In order of reads, we have:

Issue 99 - Dry Needling, Hokey Pokey? Nopey Nopey.
Issue 96 - Nutrition, Nutrition, Nutrition
Issue 107 - The Effectiveness of Efficacy
Issue 87 - Exercise for Olds, Exercise for All
Issue 85 - Leg Vitals Are Vital Too

They run the gamut of topics covered and there are many factors that could have led to more or fewer reads of each edition. The subject and tagline are key to getting opens, but there’s also the day, time of day, time of year, etc. that can affect things and most of these are on fine margins. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th spots were very close to the 6th, 7th, and 8th in terms of open numbers, but the top two were run away winners.

If I had to speculate (and I don’t have to, but I will), I’d say that the nutrition article filled a need that a lot of people wanted filled. We learn a bit about nutrition in school but it’s limited and most PTs don’t feel like they have the tools to talk nutrition with their patients. Some don’t even know if they’re supposed to or allowed to. Fuel Physio (who never shuts up about this, but in a positive way), and I are here to tell you that it is within your scope and it is really important. For more details, check out the nutrition, nutrition, nutrition article, it has a great breakdown of how and why this is in our scope of practice and how to talk to patients about nutrition.

For the dry needling one, I know that’s a controversial topic anyway and I’d imagine it ran away with things because everybody has an opinion on it. It was an interesting piece so give it a look if you’re one of the 28% of readers who didn’t.

New Subscribers

This year PT Crab added 315 subscribers, bringing the total up to about 1,800. Which is amazing! And I really feel the pressure and joy of writing for so many people each week. We also added 6 King Crab supporters, which is even more amazing! I appreciate every reader so much and the paid supporters even more. If you do have money to spare, please consider upgrading to support PT Crab as a paid subscriber. We make very little off advertisements and it’s the supporters who pay to keep the website live, the emails going out, and the articles read. Thank you x100 to them, I really appreciate every one. About 2% of subscribers become supporters each year. If I could push that up to as little as 5%, it would mean wonders for PT Crab’s potential reach so if you can, please do.

To you King Crab supporters already, thank you so much. You keep this newsletter and website alive for everyone and I wouldn't get to keep making this resource without you. Thank you.

And for everyone who wants to keep riding along for free, I really appreciate you too! Don’t think that I don’t love everyone equally. I am writing for each and every one of you individually and really appreciate the time you spend with me each week. Thank you for reading and sharing, since PT Crab does almost no advertising. Almost all 315 of the new subscribers came because you love the Crab and share it with friends and colleagues, thank you so much.

New Year

I’ve already updated you on some plans for the new year and do want to hear about the topics you want covered and what your resolutions are too. I’m resolving to write more, read more, and communicate better and hope that you’ll feel those changes as the year goes on.

Do email me with anything related to PT, the Crab, research, changes or updates you'd like to see, etc as well. I’m always down to hear from y’all.

For now, check out the issues above or these others from our archive that I think didn’t get the amount of readership they deserved this year. Weirdly, they’re all in the same period, published back in April/May. One recovers articles from the last year with updates on any changes in the research while the others just have quite interesting papers inside: