The Doc Is In!

Meet Dr. Timothy Simansky
The WODdoc

By Mary McCashin

Dr. Timothy Simansky, DC, DACBSP, CSCS is not your average chiropractor; he’s also not your average CrossFit junkie. Instead, he’s WODdoc, a CrossFit loving chiropractor looking to help increase education and awareness in regards to mobility, functional fitness, and avoiding injury.

WODdoc was founded in 2014 as an informational website with an emphasis on functional fitness. It features daily videos to help educate individuals on various aspects of fitness and the way our bodies move.

Dr. Simansky is notably known for his involvement in the functional fitness community. He has been a member of the CrossFit Games Athlete Services at both the Regional and Games level since 2012. He has acted as the East Regional co-director of Athlete Services since 2015.

What made you decide to create WODdoc?
I graduated in 2009 and was working in a multi-disciplinary practice in the NYC area. My senior at the practice hated CrossFit for the “stereotypical reasons”. He was a prominent sports chiropractor, but had a very uneducated aspect of CrossFit. Some of the things he said were valid as far as injuries went, but I had coached for five years and only had one injury happen. It was an Achilles’ Tendon rupture so it wasn’t something I could have even foreseen.

Everyone at my gym called me “Doc”. I’m an overenthusiastic coach in that I am on top of correcting peoples’ form to prevent injury. They used to joke, “Oh, it’s WOD Doc to the rescue!” It originally began as Project 365. I decided in order to prove my senior wrong and help educate people that I would film a video every single day for 365 days. I never pre-taped them, every day it was something new. Now we’re at over 1,000 days – I just never stopped.

Project 365 is where is all began – it has helped thousands of people, but what impact did it have on you and your life?
Project 365 was a real life diary for me. I’m human, I have good days and bad days, and all of that can be seen or even heard in the inflection in my voice. It became my outlet, and it was a way to network myself with a broader audience. If I had a certain interaction with a patient or an athlete I was working with, or even something I’d read that day, it had the possibility to influence what I talked about. Nothing has ever been pre-recorded. Snowy days, holidays, sick days, great days; they’re all documented. That’s why I started using the hashtag #everydamn day. I’ve always said that the only worthless knowledge is the one that isn’t shared – WODdoc allows me the ability to share.

In your professional opinion, what is the number one key for improvement when it comes to mobility, stability, and technique?
Consistency. Our bodies are fabulous machines, but most machines wear down. Our bodies have the ability to adapt and it’s fascinating. Adapting can be metabolically expensive. If you’re the body builder in the gym every day, your body adapts and builds muscles. If you’re the body builder who breaks up with his girlfriend and is stuck on the couch, your body starts storing energy as fat because it adapts. Consistency is key. You have to maintain your machine and the only way to do that is consistency.

You have traveled all across the United States, and even the globe, teaching WODdoc seminars and lecturing. How have those experiences impacted your life?
It has been both rewarding and frustrating. Rewarding in ways such as having the opportunity to travel to places like Kuwait and to have experiences and interactions with different CrossFit boxes and people. The function fitness community is like no other. It can be frustrating when you cross paths with those people who don’t want to hear what you have to offer; they think they know it all already.
But you meet these people and they kind of pop back up in your life at unexpected times. That’s always encouraging to me. There are a couple people who always stick out in my mind because I truly feel like I helped change their life in a major way. That’s the most rewarding aspect of my job.

You film everyday – no exceptions. Nothing is prerecorded so that you can take a day off. Does that require sacrifice? How do you handle that pace?
It definitely has brought some heartache and tough choices, but the experiences make it worthwhile. There have been instances where I’m supposed to be at a wedding, and instead I’m overseas lecturing. Those are sacrifices and you just have to make your peace with them. As far as pace, I’m always typing ideas into my phone about things to talk about. Some days I follow that list, sometimes something else strikes me to talk about. I always have 10-40 ideas in my phone on any given day.

Check out The WODdoc on Facebook and Instagram (@woddoc) as well as his website (www.thewoddoc.com).