Hey, I'm Zach.

I've always been able to do whatever I wanted physically, whether that meant playing a sport, training for a race, or just picking up something new on a whim. What scares me is the idea of one day losing that. That's a big part of why I do this work the way I do it.

I spent years in traditional PT before starting Embark, and I burned out fast. I was seeing six patients at a time, each one capped by whatever their insurance allowed, with no real way to check in between visits. Good people were getting fifteen minutes of my attention when they needed a lot more than that. Recovering from something real, whether it's chronic pain or post-surgical, takes a genuine lifestyle shift. It takes someone walking through it with you day in and day out, and I couldn't do that inside the system I was in. So I built something where I could.

If you're reading this because you're dealing with pain or a limitation right now, I'd guess it feels like you're lost. Juggling five different opinions from five different people, unsure who to actually trust, wondering if you're just supposed to live with this now. Maybe you've started avoiding certain movements or intensities altogether because you're scared of making it worse. I've heard that from enough people to know it usually comes down to not having a straight answer.

Outside the clinic, I'm someone you could grab a beer with and also ask about the latest research on your shoulder. I grew up an avid soccer player, joined my college triathlon club having never competitively swum, biked, or run, and used that same stubbornness to run the 2013 Boston Marathon in a hamburger suit. Since then, I've dabbled in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, now train CrossFit, and still get on the soccer field weekly. My wife and I spent two years as travel physical therapists, hiking national parks and scuba diving our way through Hawaii, before settling in Maryland with our three sons.

I care about this, probably too much if I'm honest. It's exactly why I built Embark the way I did.