🎙️ 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For decades, cardiac rehab has followed the same outdated script: light aerobic work, RPE-based guesswork, minimal resistance training, and low adherence.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.

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