🎙️ New Episode: Redefining Cardiac Rehab—How One Team Is Disrupting the Status Quo

📍 Season 3, Episode 14 | Guests: Ashan Korala & Alex Cannon
🎧 Listen now on all major podcast platforms

For decades, cardiac rehab has followed the same outdated script: light aerobic work, RPE-based guesswork, minimal resistance training, and low adherence. The result? Underwhelming outcomes and missed opportunities.

In this episode, we spotlight a cardiac rehab model that challenges all of that.

Ashan Korala, Director of Wellness Services at Pinnacle Lifestyle Medicine, and Alex Cannon, Lead Exercise Physiologist at Valley Medical Center, join us to break down how they’ve rebuilt cardiac rehab from the inside out—shifting from subjective, nurse-led monitoring to a progressive, data-driven, exercise science-based program that delivers real outcomes.

🚨 Highlights from the conversation:
✅ Objective Testing Over Guesswork
Patients now undergo baseline submax VO₂ testing and 1RM assessments. VO₂ estimates are used to guide aerobic prescriptions, while strength training is periodized using real metrics, not assumptions.
✅ Resistance Training Is No Longer Optional
Forget light bands and 5-pound dumbbells. Their program integrates structured, progressive resistance training using Technogym’s BioCircuit system—allowing for safe eccentric overload, objective progress tracking, and meaningful improvements in lean mass and strength.
✅ Quantifiable Outcomes
•35.5% increase in VO₂ (vs. national average of ~10%)
•12% increase in grip strength
•27 average visits per patient (vs. 15 national average)
•Seamless transition into a structured, self-pay phase 3 program with high continuity rates
✅ Built-In Safety, Structure, and Oversight
This model isn't just scalable, it's smart. Safety features in the equipment, team-based staffing models, and consistent reassessments allow for aggressive progression when appropriate, and conservative dosing when necessary.
✅ Patient Retention Through Smart Handoffs
The “Vitality Visit” and integrated phase 3 transition model ensure patients don’t fall through the cracks post-rehab. Instead of handing them a generic home exercise program and hoping for the best, they’re walked directly into their next step—with purpose, planning, and accountability.

💬 “This isn’t just cardiac rehab. It’s a clinic-wide systems shift—fusing medical oversight with the best of exercise science. And it’s working.”

Whether you're a clinician referring to rehab, an exercise specialist working in a hospital, or a fitness pro hoping to collaborate across disciplines—this episode is a blueprint for what cardiac rehab should look like.

🧠 Data-driven.
💪 Strength-integrated.
🔁 Patient-centered.
📈 Outcome-focused.

This is how we bridge the gap.

Support the show

🏥💪 A Certified First in Medical Fitness: How One YMCA is Reshaping Community Health

🎙️ In the latest episode of the Medical Fitness Podcast, we sat down with Veronica Lopez, RN, Vice President of Health Strategies at the YMCA of Greater Brandywine—the first YMCA in the country to become Medical Fitness Association certified.

Hosted by David Flench, President and CEO of the MFA, this episode is a playbook for any organization looking to elevate their impact, credibility, and partnerships in the health continuum.

What you'll learn:

🔹 How a vision became reality: Veronica explains how her team took a bold idea—positioning the Y as a legitimate healthcare ally—and executed it across nine branches.

🔹 Behind the scenes of MFA certification: From culture shifts and weekly task-force meetings to scoring a 97+ on the audit, this is the blueprint for making medical fitness real in a community setting.

🔹 Why now?: With healthcare access gaps, transportation deserts, and chronic disease on the rise, the Y leaned in—not away—and created solutions like the Fit Truk, a mobile fitness and screening center.

🔹 What’s next? “Prescribe the Y” is launching soon, powered by encrypted EHR and real clinical referrals. Their team of certified professionals (mostly NASM) is trained, connected, and ready.

🔹 Key takeaways for leaders:

Don’t wait for the perfect time—start with your “why.”

Create cross-functional teams and track progress visually (think: red-yellow-green dashboards).

Certification isn’t about checking a box—it’s about credibility, partnerships, and long-term sustainability.

A certified facility gets a real seat at the healthcare table.

Whether you’re in healthcare, fitness, public health, or community leadership, this episode shows what’s possible when standards meet passion—and when strategy meets service.

👇 Tag a clinician, YMCA leader, or fitness professional who needs to hear this.

Support the show

🎙️ NEW EPISODE ALERT: “From Policy to Pavement: Building a Physically Active Nation” 💪🗽

In this powerful new episode of the Medical Fitness Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Young (MRF Institute) and David Flench (Medical Fitness Association) sit down with Greg Mihailovich, National Advocacy Consultant for the American Heart Association, to break down what it really takes to make physical activity a national priority.

🔥 We’re not just talking about guidelines — we’re talking about action:
✅ How the AHA pushes for policy, system, and environmental change
✅ The origin and evolution of the Physical Activity Alliance
✅ The inside story behind the launch of the New York Moves Coalition
✅ The challenges and equity issues in state-level planning
✅ Lessons from success stories in NYC, Michigan, and West Virginia

🎯 Whether you're a healthcare provider, policymaker, fitness professional, or someone fighting for a healthier future in your community — this episode shows how advocacy and collaboration can drive measurable change.

📣 “You can’t just tell people to move more. You have to create the conditions that make movement possible — and sustainable.”

👂 Tune in to learn how we’re scaling the blueprint for a movement-friendly nation. From state coalitions to national campaigns like “It’s Time to Move,” this conversation lays out what’s working, what’s scalable, and why your voice matters.

🎧 Available now on all podcast platforms.

Support the show