Incident Prevention Utility Safety Podcast

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

Kate Wade | Incident Prevention

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Hi everyone, and welcome to Incident Prevention's Utility Safety Podcast. I'm Kate Wade, the editor of Incident Prevention Magazine and your host for this episode. Today I am sitting down with chiropractor, Dr. Kevin Rindal, co-founder and CEO of Vimocity, a soft tissue injury prevention company that partners with utility organizations and others like them to help reduce common and costly injuries.

Kevin also has a robust background in human performance, including working with the US Olympic swim team. As a member of the medical staff over the last decade, he's brought the latest human performance and safety practices to over 40,000 utility workers through targeted education to promote physical and job readiness.

In this episode, Kevin and I will chat about the overlap between sports medicine and treating industrial athletes, the importance of soft tissue injury prevention programs for utilities and contractors, strategies to secure buy-in for such programs, and much more. So without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Kevin.

Kate. Thank you so much. Great to be on this. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, thanks for being here. I'm very excited about this. But before we dive right in, I'd like you to take a few moments and tell us about your professional background. What led you to co-founding Vimocity, that kind of thing.

Yeah, no, of course. Yeah, I never thought in a million years I'd be working with industrial ath athletes on a day-to-day basis. But it just has become my life's work and passion. As you mentioned, I spent about 15 years working with weight and professional athletes. A majority of those were with the US Women's Ice Hockey Olympic team, and then the US Olympic Swim Team.

So part of the 2012, 2016 Olympic teams and just like phenomenal experience, the, those athletes performed at such a high level and were so successful. And why I worked with them is because soft tissue injuries, so that's like an injury to your shoulder, your back knees. Those were the number one injuries that kept athletes out of training out of the pool and, compromise their ability to perform at the highest level.

And so absolutely loved that piece of things, and it was really fulfilling. But in 2016, a utility company where I'm based in Seattle, Washington reached out and some of their executives were patients at my clinic, and they're like, man. We wanna bring what you're doing to the Olympic team, to our workforce 'cause we're experiencing a lot of these injuries. And so that was like my first intro and to just understanding how big the problem was. And so when you look across all industries with a manual labor workforce, about 40% of all injuries just fit into that one category of repetitive use over exertion.

And then another, the close cousin is slips, trips, and falls. So about 20% of those injuries, or all injuries in that category. So you're talking about like 60% of all injuries somehow, have a relationship to soft tissue. So to me I saw it as a huge opportunity as I started working with utility workers and just looking at what was being done to prevent these injuries.

A lot was being done like stretch and flues, like the check the box. My perspective is no athlete has done stretch and flex prior to training or competition for 25 years. And yet that was the standard for how we were telling industrial athletes to prepare their bodies. And so we've just advanced a lot in terms of how to, incorporate dynamic movements, rolling out the muscles, engaging the core working on strength and activation.

So there are just so many aspects that I saw as a great opportunity to. To bring to the workers. The cool story in that first year that we implemented this program with them, they reduced their soft tissue injuries by 53%. They saved like $670,000. And so it was just this clear ROI from a business perspective, but then also from a quality of life.

And as I would talk to the people who were participating and engaged with this the thing that kept standing out to me was. What an impact it was having on them from a quality of life perspective. These are people who love being out in nature. Hunting, fishing, camping, doing stuff like that and soft tissue degrees really impacted their life.

And that's when it became this bigger why question for me. And so I grew up in a small town in Washington. Everyone in my family was a farmer, fisherman or a lagger. And my grandpa, you're the pipe fitter for 44 years, raised cattle on the side. And by the time he would been his late sixties, like it would literally take him.

30 seconds just to stand up out of his chair. And I remember I was like 10 years old. My grandma would have to put his socks and shoes on at the end of the day 'cause he couldn't bend over. He couldn't cross his legs. And you just look at someone who, he was like the hardest worker like I personally ever knew.

And yet he did not get to experience like enjoyment in those later years of his life after putting in all that time. And I just kept seeing a lot of people like my grandpa on a day-to-day basis when I've worked with a utility, I'm like, man. There's just this mindset out there that this is what getting old looks like.

This is just part of working in the trades. It's what should be expected. You rub dirt on it and that's all you do, and you just keep going and there's just such a different path. And so really we see a huge opportunity from a business cake to, for a company to address this issue.

But also, that quality of life aspect is just, so much that can be enhanced when people just have a solution. Yeah, what you're talking about is huge because I see it in our industry. I know what you're talking about. My husband also did he worked for a union local manual labor kind of job, and he didn't retire, but he stopped that job a couple years ago. But he, he's still, after 15 years with them, he's got all of these kinds of issues that, had they had some kind of program or had he known better when he was younger, how to do things that I think it could have prevented or at least mitigated a lot of stuff that's happening to him now.

But, I kind of wanna just jump into this second question then, and it's a two-pronged question. I think these days, soft tissue injury prevention programs like the one you're talking about, they seem to be pretty widely accepted. So I'm curious has that always been the case? And I guess my second question is, if a company hasn't invested in such a program, why would they consider doing so? Or why should they? And equally as important, what would encourage buy-in of that program from all the levels, whether it's frontline executive leadership, how do you get people to buy into something like that? Yeah, no, for sure. And what I would say is as we've, continued our work here.

I have seen a tremendous amount of innovation and I've seen leaders step up and companies just do some pretty awesome things to take care of their employees. I think culturally we have a tough time with prevention just in general. We live in a society that oftentimes is you don't address something until.

It's a major problem, and then it becomes going to the emergency room or going to the doctor, and then it's more triaged than it is prevention. And so I think just in general, our society has a tough time thinking about and how's this time really gonna be impactful? And one of the, I think the things that I have found interesting is a lot of companies, and I think for very good reason, they make warmup programs or stretch and plexes. Optional. And I think there are a lot of dynamics. I always come back to the fact that like when you talk about operations, you never talk about a 360 walk around of your vehicle being optional.

You never talk about maintaining your tools as being optional. Never talk about doing an inspection of your bucket before you get into it and go up on a power line being optional. But for some reason we don't want to talk about. Giving people a framework for how to take care of their muscle and joint health, how to ensure that they're fit for duty before they go out and do that work.

And it's not like stretch and flex or whatever it is, the dynamic hormone is gonna solve everything. But I think when people have a knowledge set of how they can prepare their body for activity, how they can think about maybe hydration, nutrition, sleep, they can maybe analyze, Hey, I'm in pain right now.

And if I'm in pain, I know that I'm at high risk making. An error or taking a shortcut, or I'm gonna position my body differently because, I don't want, I want to avoid pain. So I think there's just an overall, approach to seeing job readiness, being fit for duty, being prepared for the work in that 360 walk around of the human component.

From a utility standpoint, like your people are your greatest asset and absolutely like their bodies, that is their tool. That's their ability to make an income to support the family. And so taking care of that tool and maintaining it is absolutely critical. So I, while I've seen so much innovation, I've seen leaders really step up and offer these, I think there's some work that we can do as an industry to, to help prioritize, people taking.

The time to, make sure that they're ready to perform the job safely and that their body's ready to perform every single athlete. That is the top thing that they think about. They're like, am I ready to compete? And they do everything in their power to, to be ready to compete. And so it's just, that's one of the big differences I've seen from the sporting world to the the indu industrial world.

I wonder, you're talking about, how the 360 Walk around isn't like you have to do that and the tool maintenance and inspections and things they ha you have to do that. So people don't really mess around with that. And I'm like, I'm just wondering, and this is more rhetorical, I don't expect you to have necessarily an answer, but I wonder if we.

Got if the regulatory bodies got more involved, OSHA's working on, the heat, standard or that they're, that they wanna come out with to start protecting more workers from like the climate change, the increase in temperatures and everything. And it's is this something that like an OSHA or another body should be looking into?

Because maybe at some point. I don't wanna get into big government and all that stuff, and pe telling people what to do with their bodies. But if you are in that kind of industry, is there a place for some kind of standard that people have to adhere to make sure that they're taking care of their most valuable assets?

Yeah, and I think that's a direction you could go. I, there's always gonna be resistance, and I think for good reason. Whenever it's like something is mandated. I think that the opportunity from a leadership standpoint is just reinforcing, and I, again, I wanna reiterate that I've seen so many leaders who have really stepped up because success in this area does come down to leadership.

And it, it's people saying, you know what, you are a greatest asset. We're gonna give you the time, we're gonna give you the tools, we're gonna make sure that you're prepared for success. So I think, as a starting point, it's just again, helping leaders understand that yeah, this is a big part of the equation.

One concept that I've been talking a lot about in conversations like this relates to the capacity model. And I know that the capacity model, sticky, serious injuries, fatalities, energy, will, all this stuff has moved safety forward so much. And I think it's a huge step forward. But the main concept of the capacity model is that, again, human performance, we make mistakes.

Very rarely are those intentional. And so what we can do is we have control over our environments and we can create a situation where people can fail safely. That's such an important concept. What's interesting is in the sporting world, we focus more on the human capacity because what happens on the field is completely unpredictable.

And so everything that we do from a strength and conditioning perspective, from a training perspective, recovery, it all focuses on helping that human be able to be adaptable to whatever situation they're in. And having that resilience and capacity to be able to, stay healthy and perform at a high level.

One of the things I oftentimes say I exercise a lot, stay pretty fit, but if I were to take one snap and run the ball in a NFL football game, there would be a serious injury or fatality that would happen and I'm, what am I, like 5 11, 180 5? I see running backs all the time in the NFL who are close to that size.

They're taking the ball 32 times, getting hit by a 350 pound lineman and it, they just bounce up and invader it over again. It's because they have a greater capacity and they have the ability and that resilience to, to continue to do that. And so not that we have to, get the workforce to that level, but I think that there are steps that we can take that help focus on the preparation, the body maintenance, the hydration, nutrition, sleep recovery, that allow people to have more resilience so that now that if you pair those two, you have the capacity on the work site and you have.

A human group that has greater capacity. I just think that's where we're really gonna start to shift this needle in terms of reducing air, reducing injuries, preventing fatalities. That's something that I'm really passionate about right now. One of the things that we had a prep meeting before we got on this call, and one of the things that you said that really stuck with me is that everyone has pain.

And what, one of the things that we hear a lot about is people's struggles today with alcohol abuse, with addictions to painkillers and so forth. So another sort of two-pronged question, how can. An injury prevention program helped mitigate these kind of issues for utility workers. And also, should employers be looking beyond just this one module?

Is this an opportunity or a case for more holistic wellbeing programs in the workplace? Oh, for sure. And that's a great question because if you start to dig deep into the research you start realizing. About 80% of the workforce deals with pain on a, at least a weekly basis.

Some people, it's a daily situation. And what's interesting is it's not just people out in the field, the craft workers, it's actually office space workers. Sitting at a desk is, it's top on your body if you do that all day, every day. And I think that, even since COVID and the work from home, people are just moving even less and they're, in smaller spaces.

What's interesting is when you think about that, oftentimes we look at injury data and we focus so much on like recordable injuries, and those are lagging indicators, but, pain is a leading indicator that there's something going on. And so when I think about pain, it's like a fire alarm going off.

What we typically do is, it's almost like you take a fire extinguisher and put out the fire alarm, or you take the batteries out and you're dealing with that symptom. The thing that's blaring these days, safety and training managers are at a loss about how to control their line worker training programs.

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And so where I think. We can go as an industries is giving people creative tools for how they can offset discomfort, offset pain so that they have those tools in the early stages so it doesn't turn into something larger. And some simple things. We even teach people simple stuff like breathing techniques, which help help with pain modulation hydration, nutrition, anti-inflammatory diets. So there are just so many things that can help somebody from a more holistic standpoint. So that's where I think, if we provide people with solutions that kind of cover I think of it as three buckets. So one of them is like the body maintenance aspects.

So teaching people like you brush and closs your teeth every day. What do you do for your muscle and joint health, just from a body maintenance perspective. So that's bucket one. Bucket two is how can you perform your work in a way. That you're actually building yourself up rather than breaking yourself down.

'cause there's a mindset that the work that I do breaks me down, but if I go into the gym and deadlift, I could lift a really heavy amount of weight. If I do it with great technique, I'm gonna become stronger. If I do it with back at the bad technique, I'm gonna blow a disc. And so it's one of those things that I really am a firm believer that if people understand, the most optimal way to.

Position their body when they perform certain tasks. A lot of tasks that utility workers do, it's almost impossible to be perfect in your ergonomics and body position. But if you can optimize it, you can actually become stronger than breaking down. And then that third bucket focuses on the recovery aspect.

That more holistic aspect of how am I focused on regenerating my body so that I can be prepared the next day for the work ahead of me. So I guess my next question then would be like implementation, safety is obviously it's a stated value or priority of just about every utility organization I can think of.

But how, you. Productivity is also important. And so there's gotta be a balance between those. So how do you go about incorporating, some kind of wellbeing program? An injury prevention program like we've been talking about? Not only in ways that don't take up like a ton of time, but also I'm thinking about smaller, utilities that they just don't have, the money that a big investor owned has.

How do you incorporate these things? Still make a meaningful impact? And does technology offer any opportunities that our listeners should know about? Totally, no, I think such a great question. So yeah, the way that I think about this is there's a constant tension between safety and operations. If you spend too much time on this it's gonna impact productivity.

And when you multiply that by, potentially hundreds or thousands of workers. Totally get that. And so what I found is that you've gotta make it really quick, efficient, and integrate into the day-to-day workflow of people so that it's not taking a ton of time. That's where I think a lot of resistance comes from this.

And like our dynamic warmup program all of them, we call it the daily five. It takes less than five minutes to prepare. And oftentimes what we also try to do is, I'm of the belief like. I think it's great to do a warmup as a group like at, in the yard before you go out, but then you jump in your truck, drive 45 minutes to perform a task.

So I'm a huge advocate of how do you make, maybe make, take two or three different moves that target, like the cures that you're gonna be using in your body. Do a dynamic warmup in those areas. Takes a minute and a half. Maybe it's part of that tailboard or pre-job beef when you're at the job site.

So I think that's a big way. One of the things we also teach people is how to use a handheld massage roller. Some people have maybe used a foam roller, but what's pretty awesome is like you can take one of those handheld massage tools and just roll out your legs, roll out your forearms, your back.

We've got that tight muscle and literally in a minute, like people feel so much better. And so it's just a easy portable way that people can get prepared for that. But then I think it's also how do you. Continue the learning process. And what we're learning is microlearning is the way that adults learn.

And, five let's say 15 years ago, it was like 30 minute safety presentations on a PowerPoint or it was a video. And then about 10 years ago, YouTube was like, okay, it's five to 10 minute videos. And then Instagram came and then it was like. A minute and a half and now we're down to TikTok and so it's 30 seconds.

And so what we're realizing, 'cause a huge part of what we do is we create content. It's usually safety messages that are literally 30 seconds to 90 seconds that fit into that safety moment at the start of a meeting or at a tailboard because, every company incorporates a safety message before they start those meetings.

So it's just an easy way to just. Snag something, incorporate it there, and then you're continuing the learning. And what we're finding is that, 30 seconds to a minute and a half, one time per week is so much more impactful than a one hour lecture, one time a year. Just because, you don't have the same habit development.

And so I just, I think that technology's really enabling us to. Leverage learning in a different way. And we're just learning so much with this whole social media experience in terms of how people consume content. And it doesn't have to be overproduced. People just want simple stuff. And we'd be happy to even send you like some sample content that we utilize in our program that, again, just short bits of information.

So we can definitely follow up with that. Yeah, I love that. Let's definitely do that. We've talked about that implementation piece and I really think the stuff you're talking about these are great ideas and I think a lot of times we talk about like theory and all this kind of stuff, but it's like how do you actually put this stuff into practice and have it make a difference?

'cause knowledge isn't really super useful unless you're applying it. We've talked a lot about what happens at work, and we've touched on the addiction abuse portion of things, but. When it comes to safety, it's like a 24 hour thing. And so I'm wondering how, like wellbeing programs, injury prevention programs, how do they impact workers off the job?

And what things can they learn from the workplace program and take it back home and use it? Yeah. One really cool trend that I've seen in utilities especially like going back to safety moments is a lot of the safety messages that I've heard that have really been impactful for people. There are recommendations that impact somebody's life bulk on and off the job.

Like it's, we always say, you don't take your safety hat off at work. You follow the same principles. So I think that's a key component where you position things so that when people are learning concepts, they can apply it into every aspect of their day.

What we've found has been really helpful. So we have like a phone application and the customers that we work with, obviously a lot of this stuff gets integrated into the workday, but then each employee actually has our app. So if they wake up with a tight neck sore shoulder, they can go to our app, select that area of their body, and then it shows 'em exactly what they can do to work that out.

So I found that's been really impactful. We hear testimonials from people all the time that they're like, I never go on a trip without my roller, my app, because I'm always sore after, sitting in airplane seats. What is encouraging about that is that people are taking these body maintenance principles and they're making it up more of a lifestyle than just something that they do five minutes at the start of the day.

And that's to me, like the sweet spot of, the whole body maintenance and the safety thing because. You don't go on vacation and stop brushing your teeth just because you're on vacation. So why would you stop taking care of your muscles and joints just because you're on vacation? Or because you're not showing up to your pre-job brief and doing your stretch and flu.

And so I think it's making that more of a lifestyle. And so a couple ways that we've found have also been really successful is that we do challenges. So like we might have an organization with 5,000. Workers, it covers five states. But what we can do to our technology is we can put everyone on a team and then every time that they do their daily warmup they can click, I did my daily five.

They earn points for their team. There's a live leaderboard, and it goes, 21 days. So it's bulk, over the weekends and when they're on the job. And so it, it does, the teams that win are the people who are consistent, so it really helps reinforce those habits. Then the winning team gets a lunch and WWE championship belt.

Like those are co because everyone wants to. So that's been super cool. And then we also created a version of our app for employees, a family members and spouses partners kids. And it's amazing how many people say, when I show up at home and I'm complaining about my back, my spouse is like, Hey, remember you have this.

Let's do this. And or my kids play softball. And they're doing some of these things at home and they're again making it part of that life. So I'll say, I think there's this cool opportunity for us to extend safety, extend this body maintenance outside of, again just a work environment.

Yeah. I love the part you're saying about kids. 'cause even without the app being. Like four kids, just having their parents like knowing this stuff and doing this stuff every day. I don't know about you, but when I, like when I was a kid yeah, my parents and my teachers pushed dent, oral hygiene, brushing your teeth and flossing and everything.

But I don't know that anybody was really saying, okay, you need to, take care of your joints and your bones and your soft tissue and everything every day too. And so we're like, now we're passing it. Not only along to people in the workplace, but to the next generation of people who are coming up.

So maybe that they can prevent the same kinds of injuries to themselves. So that is awesome. I love that. Yeah. One cool story, one of our partners out in California, he is the director of TD operations for a utility construction company, and he is man, I love this. My daughter's a, golfer, she's 16 years old.

She's he is my, her team would benefit from this so much so we got 'em rollers that we got these postcards that have a whole dynamic warmup routine for golfers. And so he wouldn't taught the golf team, his daughter's golf team. So it's it's cool because you're starting to see this again, just really start to be something that's more lifestyle and really, interacting outside of the job.

But it's, these principles apply to anyone in your. I wanna say we've covered a lot here today, a lot of meaningful information. And I guess, before we close out, is there anything that we haven't covered that you wanna share with our audience? No, I, I guess the final thing is you'd asked about implementation, and I didn't necessarily give you a clear answer on that, but, oh.

I was just thinking back, we see this consistent pattern of the most successful partners. What is the formula that works for them? And there are three leading indicators that success that we've consistently seen. Number one is there's leadership engagement. And that's just absolutely critical.

And we're not just talking about like executive leadership. You have to have executive leader is saying, Hey, this is a priority. We care about our people. We're giving them the time. But then you also have to create that, that middle management buy-in. 'cause these are the people who are the foreman.

They're out on the job, they're leading the crews. And I think when they understand that bigger picture, they're oftentimes the people who are like second, third generation maybe linemen and they're like, man, my grandpa sounded like you're grandpa and I don't wanna end up like that. So let's, I'm, and when you get those people, those champions, I mean they really, take this to heart, and they're such an important part of the success of of any initiative. Number two is that it's integrated into the infrastructure. There are so many competing priorities on a daily basis, and so like, how do you fit one more thing into the day? And so it has to be short.

It has to just easily fit into the workday. Like I said, if you can, tie it into a safety meeting or pre-job briefing or a tailboard, it's just, it's such an easy way that you can make that a seamless part of that workday. And then number three is that from a sustainability standpoint, you have to have a process to get new employees onboarded.

Because if everyone had this experience, they understand the system, but then you don't bring, new employees up to speed or if you don't continue the learning it's gonna be something that. Everyone talks about the flavor of the week or we tried that as a flashing pan. You want something that's gonna last.

And so you really have to continue to nurture it, nurture the new employees that are coming through, continue to, that's why we think, challenges and some of these other things really help from that sustainability standpoint. 'cause you get those, boost of engagement and then, people, get busy and they lose their routine.

So you've gotta help nurture that, that routine and keep people engaged. I, that would just be the final thing is, those three leading indicators we've just found has been a really important formula for success. And I wanna thank you so much for your time today. I think this has been really informational and valuable for me and everybody listening.

As a note to our listeners be sure to check out Kevin's article that's gonna be in the upcoming December, January issue of Incident Prevention Magazine. And it'll cover a lot of the topics that we've discussed here today. And we've also put some contact information up. On the website at utility safety dot pod beam.com, and on our regular website, and you can visit Vimocity's website at vimocity.com.

Until next time, stay safe and be well anchored in safety. The IP Utility Safety Conference is setting sale to Charleston, South Carolina from April 29th to May 1st, 2025. Register today at utilitysafetyconference.com. The views, information, and opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of utility, business, media, and its employees. It is strongly recommended that you discuss any actions or policy changes with your company management prior to implementation.

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