Transcription:
Meet the Official Team Physicians for Mizzou Athletics

Prakash Chandran: Welcome to the MU Health Care Podcast. Today, we're getting to know Dr. Aaron Gray. Dr. Gray, thank you so much for joining us today.

Aaron Gray, MD: It's great to be here.

Prakash Chandran: So, I know you're in sports medicine. What made you choose to go into this field and why this specific specialty?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah. So, I was always an athlete growing up and loved to play sports. And when I kind of learned in medical school that there was this opportunity to take care of athletes, take care of people who like to exercise, I was like, "Oh, that's a field for me." I mean, it's, you know, kind of a dream to be involved with sport somehow as a career. And so, I like that I get to take care of young athletes, old athletes, real competitive athletes, weekend warriors, and all in between.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. That's awesome. So when you were an athlete growing up, what kind of sports did you play?

Aaron Gray, MD: Fortunately, I played about everything, tennis, golf, soccer, basketball, baseball, running, chess, you know, everything in between. And so, I think that's actually really helped me in my career because I'm able to identify and understand different sports and the demands of different athletes.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, I play a lot of pickup basketball and I know what it's like to injure yourself. And obviously, as I get older, I injure myself more often, but just the inability to get out there when you're not feeling well or you've injured yourself. So, this whole notion of like human performance and making sure that the bodies are tuned in such a way to where you can play consistently, I've always found that fascinating. Is that something that you resonate with and that's important in terms of how you're approaching your philosophy of care?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean there are physical and mental benefits, you know, of playing. And so, I too play like a weekly pickup game. And if I have a little injury for a couple weeks, it definitely kind of like brings you down. And the other thing too, is when you're staying healthy and playing on that regular basis, it then prevents future injuries because you're keeping your body in shape. And, you know, it's something that I saw during COVID where lots of athletes for different reasons maybe weren't able to play their sport for months or even over a year. And it's a lot harder to get back in when you've had a prolonged time away.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit at a high level about how you approach helping someone. You know, there's so many different types of sports and so many different types of injuries. So, tell us about like your favorite part of assessing someone and getting them back out onto the field.

Aaron Gray, MD: You know, the initial thing that I do is I want to know, you know, what sports someone is currently playing and then at what level. If someone's in the off season, often we can take a little bit more time to get them back and that's different than if you're days before the state championship game. I take care of college athletes, professional athletes and recreational athletes. And so, every athlete has different demands and their sport or their exercise has a different impact or importance to them.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. So, you mentioned doing a pickup game. I imagine that's a hobby that you're pretty excited about. What other things do you do outside of being a sports medicine doctor?

Aaron Gray, MD: You know, so I try to do lots of different sports and activities. One is just because I enjoy them. We live in a great town where there's lots of biking trails and hiking trail. And that also helps me like relate to my patients. And so, I've picked up tennis more over the past few years and so I definitely have a better understanding of the demands of the sport, potential injuries when I'm playing that on an occasional basis.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. I was going to ask you that, you know, as you pick up these sports and you start to maybe potentially even see injuries yourself, how does that inform how you help others? Because you're maybe older than some of the patients that you're seeing or maybe not, maybe you serve a wide demographic, but tell us a little bit about what you do in your personal life and how that informs you as a doctor.

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, absolutely. So, I take care of athletes who are five or six years old, up to 95 years old. And so, it's fun to be able to take care of athletes through the lifespan. And so, yeah, I mean, I think whenever I'm playing these things on a regular basis, I understand more the nuance of the sports and like with tennis, like the different grips and the different strokes and how different problems on parts of your arm or your elbow could affect different things. And so, really just being able to understand it and also being able to just talk the language of the sport. I always kind of say whenever I take care of like gymnasts, I know that important questions to ask them is what gym they train at, what level they are. Every sport has its own kind of like language, and so I'm able to better understand that, which helps me better connect with my patients and their families.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, definitely. And I think there's an element of trust there. Like it's like you're not just staying on the surface like a lot of doctors do. You're really getting into the details to where someone can say, "Oh, wow. You know, Dr. Gray actually understands what it is that I'm trying to do or how I'm trying to perform And he knows the nuances of my sport." So, I think that's awesome. Talk to me a little bit about how you stay so up-to-date with these different sports. So, you mentioned you play tennis yourself and some pickup. What about like, for example, being a gymnast, like how do you make sure to really thoroughly understand all the nuances of what it takes to kind of perform at the elite level in each sport?

Aaron Gray, MD: So, I'm the team physician for the Mizzou gymnastics team. And so, I take care of college gymnasts, like I said, down to, you know, five and six year old gymnasts. And so, one thing I've always tried to do during my career is like learn a little bit about a sport or an activity that I have not done a lot of before, and so like gymnastics is that. Sometimes I have ballet dancers in and I'm like, can you show me this different move or this different warmup?" And so, you know, always trying to be learning, always like learning from patients, learning from like high level athletes, going to the gym to watch them train, going to their meets, their competitions. And so, seeing all allows me to understand that. And I do feel like every year that I do this, like I have a little bit of a greater and deeper knowledge base to work from when I see future patients.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. That's awesome. I'd love to just get to know you a little bit outside of work. Obviously, you played these sports, but tell us a little bit more about your family life. Like, do you have a family that you hang out with and do these activities with?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah. So, I have a couple daughters and my wife and we like to do a lot of these things together. And so, you know, I coach some youth soccer for my girls. You know, fun to get them out on the tennis courts and teach them the sport, take them to the driving range, and just show them and help them to experience, lots of different activities.

You know, I'm a big fan of what we call trying to expose your kids basically to lots of sports, you know, and not specializing in a single sport. And so, that's my goal for my daughters, is that they play and try everything. And so that way, as they get older in their teenage years, they might decide more to focus on one, but then also just that they've been exposed to lots of things. And so, when they get later in life, you know, it won't be, "Oh yeah, I just started playing tennis in my forties, it can be, "Oh, yeah, I remember doing this when I was younger," and they start to have those muscle memory patterns that they can go back to like from their youth.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. That's awesome. And have they started gravitating towards any particular sport?

Aaron Gray, MD: It kind of just depends on the season, basically, you know, at this age. So, they're in elementary school, which is great. Whatever is in the season, we just play that as much as possible and then they kind of go onto the next thing. So, it'll be interesting to see what they focus on eventually.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. You must be just interesting as a father, because like as I have gotten older, my focus on like mobility and just human performance for the long run has just really been more top of mind. So even with my kids, even though they're really young and malleable and flexible, I also try to say, "Hey, you know, posture's important just as strengthening and flexibility is important." Do you find that you do that with your family as well, being the resident expert?

Aaron Gray, MD: I think I'm more on the thing of like I kind of have fear if they try to go to on a trampoline or trampoline park. That's probably more of the sports medicine doctor dad. That's probably where my concern is a little bit more.

Prakash Chandran: So, lot of patients might be looking at this and maybe not know too much about you personally, maybe what's an interesting fact that people may not know?

Aaron Gray, MD: So, I actually grew up in Columbia, but not Columbia, Missouri. I grew up in Columbia, Tennessee. And so, I think that's one kind of interesting thing. And yeah, I don't know. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. That's usually pretty interesting to people around here.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, definitely. What about, you know, you have all of this experience now, playing sports growing up, being in sports medicine, and it's obviously a very integrated part of your life. If you could advise or teach your younger self that was going in the same path, is there anything that you would change or anything that you would advise differently?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, I actually had this conversation with somebody the other day. I mean, I think one of the things that I would've taught my younger self or encouraged my younger self is to be able to speak Spanish and so be able to like connect with a lot more patients and reach a lot more patients that way. So, that would've been one of the things I would encourage my younger self to do. But professionally, I mean, I've always just tried to like learn, gain new skills, new knowledge every year. I'm definitely somebody who has a heart for lifelong learning. And so, you know, you just do the best you can when you're young, just learn as much as you can and you just keep adding to it as your career progresses.

Prakash Chandran: I love it. What are you learning right now that you're fascinated by?

Aaron Gray, MD: Probably a lot of just human movement, biomechanics. I find that I've always been interested in like throwing mechanics and pitchers and then running kind of mechanics. And just a lot of what humans do or, in the sports, our repetitive motions. And so, I take care of Mizzou track and field and cross country. And so, you have a lot of these athletes that are either running long distances, so it's the same stride over and over and over, or they're throwing javelin or shot put or discus. And so, it's interesting when you do a same thing over and over and over, small problems in your mechanics or your forms sometimes can add up and can lead to orthopedic problems.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. And that's another question that I always like to ask. You know, you've probably seen a lot of different patients. Clearly, there's a very wide age range. What's one thing that you know to be true that you wish more people knew? Whether it be about like human performance, sports medicine, whatever it may be. What's one thing you know to be true that you'd like to share?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, I think that whenever people are taking on like new activities or new sports or new weightlifting, is that you have to like gradually increase your training, your running. So, often I see injuries from someone who is, "Hey, I'm going to go, you know, run a marathon and I'm going to start by trying to run as much as I can every day" or a baseball player, "It's the off season. I'm going to throw as much as I can like every day." And so, our bodies are built to like gradually increase the training load, the training intensity. And when you do that, then naturally the body can get stronger, more resilient. But when we have like big kind of spikes in like the intensity or the amount of training, that's often where injuries such as stress fractures or overuse injuries, tendonitis can come into play.

Prakash Chandran: Gotcha. I'd always like to end each conversation with a little bit of a quick fire round. I'll just fire off a couple questions and you can answer them. Is that okay?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, it sounds great.

Prakash Chandran: Awesome. Tell us what was your very first job.

Aaron Gray, MD: My first job was washing cars and mowing lawns in the neighborhood.

Prakash Chandran: Nice. Who is a hero or someone that inspire you?

Aaron Gray, MD: Definitely both of my parents inspire me, that they've been married for 40, 45 years and just their love for us and their professions has always been inspiring.

Prakash Chandran: Favorite movie or TV show.

Aaron Gray, MD: Right now, I would probably say Survivor. I've watched every season except the very first one, and I've caught that one streaming.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. Interesting. And just, I guess, as a followup question, why Survivor? What is it about it that you like?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, I mean I think that part of it is this kind of concept that they're on this like shipwreck island basically. I like the social interactions and the strategy that they're trying to befriend everybody, but then only befriend them until you need them so you can stab them in the back. And there's this, you know, this constant push and pull. And then, the challenges and always this thing of like, "Oh, I bet I could do that," but it looks pretty difficult too.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. Awesome. If you could travel anywhere in the world that you haven't been, where would you go first?

Aaron Gray, MD: I would love to go to New Zealand. And, you know, a lot just because of the outdoor adventures and activities there, that you have the ocean, amazing mountain biking, you have the glaciers and the mountains. I mean, you have kind of everything there, so that's always a place I'd love to go and just explore outdoors.

Prakash Chandran: Awesome. And final question, if you weren't in medicine doing what you're doing now, what would you be doing?

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah. I would be a high school basketball coach. And so, my life path until I got into medical school was I was going to teach chemistry and coach high school basketball. And then, my final day of college, I got a call that I was off the waitlist and got accepted to medical school, and that's when my career changed.

Prakash Chandran: Well, basketball's still a very integrated part of your life. And your daughters are still young, so you may still do it.

Aaron Gray, MD: Well, let's hope so.

Prakash Chandran: Well, Dr. Gray, really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you so much for your time.

Aaron Gray, MD: Yeah, it's been fun.

Prakash Chandran: And thank you all so much for joining us today. For more information, you can visit mu health.org/team docs or call 5 7 3 8 8 2 b o n E. Once again, that's 5 7 3 8 8 2 Bone. My name is persh hundred. Thanks so much for tuning in and be well.