New York PT Ming Chew achieves excellent outcomes with innovative techniques

By Brian W. Ferrie

Ming Chew, PT, is not looking for fame. But it may be inevitable with the success of his innovative treatments and the publication last month of his book, The Permanent Pain Cure: The Breakthrough Way to Heal Your Muscle and Joint Pain for Good, by McGraw-Hill.

Years of experience as a bodybuilder, martial artist, personal trainer and physical therapist have helped Chew develop a therapeutic treatment process he calls "The Ming Method." It is designed to heal injury and relieve pain through a combination of soft-tissue manipulation, hydration, supplementation, anti-inflammatory diet, stretching, strengthening and self-therapy techniques.

The Ming Method has produced remarkable results with hundreds of clients over the years, including professional athletes like NBA star Jason Kidd and New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi. Such achievements led to profiles of Chew in various newspapers as well as the national fitness magazine Men's Health.

School Days

Reaching this point has been an interesting journey for the therapist. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he attended Columbia University as an undergraduate and earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1984. At the time, he was also an accomplished bodybuilder, having won the titles "Mr. Teenage New York" and "Mr. New York." Chew planned to go to medical school but other factors dictated a different path.

"I was obsessed with exercise and making a body bigger, stronger and injury-free," he told ADVANCE. "Although I originally wanted to go to medical school, I came to realize their focus was mainly on pharmaceuticals and surgery. I wanted something that was more streamlined toward working with athletes, repairing injuries and making a body that was previously injured better than it was before. So even though I didn't realize it at first, my love was toward the healing arts."

An acquaintance suggested that Chew look into the physical therapy school at New York University (NYU) and he applied there in 1985. Having already earned a BS, it took Chew only two years to earn a second bachelor's degree in physical therapy, graduating from NYU in 1987. But he did not immediately begin to practice PT. Rather, Chew expanded the personal training business he had been running part-time for years.

Personal Training

"I actually started training people when I was at Columbia, getting clients because of my bodybuilding accomplishments," he explained. "People saw my big, muscular body with a lot of titles and they were impressed by that. When I was able to bolster my personal training credentials with a physical therapy degree, it made my business even better because I was the only trainer around who was also a licensed PT. It was a great way of advertising and allowed me to get a lot of customers."

Although the bulk of Chew's Columbia tuition was paid by grants and scholarships, he used the money earned from personal training to pay for textbooks. While at NYU, he paid tuition both with personal training income and money he made from appearing in television commercials.

"One of them was for Diet Coke," he recalled. "I got the part because they needed a large Asian guy. I played a young sumo wrestler who wanted to gain weight but couldn't because he liked diet soda so much. So I kept drinking it and my master would chastise me for not gaining weight. It was a cute commercial that helped me pay for a whole year of PT school."

PT Practice

By the mid-1990s, Chew decided to devote himself full-time to physical therapy.

"I opened my practice, Ming Chew Physical Therapy, on the upper west side of Manhattan in 1995," he said. "It was a natural, seamless transition because a lot of the people I trained had friends who were injured."

At first, Chew used many conventional modalities such as ultrasound, electrical stimulation and therabands. But an incident in 1997 forever changed his view of therapy.

"I'm a blue belt in Brazilian jujitsu," he explained. "At the time, I was studying under Renzo Gracie and badly hurt my shoulder. It was diagnosed as a partially torn rotator cuff tendon and labrum. There was also significant scar tissue and the doctor recommended I undergo surgery."

Chew was against that idea, however, and kept hoping his shoulder could be healed by other means.

"I just had a gut feeling it wasn't a surgery case," he said. "There was popping and clicking in my shoulder, it was very sore and the range of motion was greatly compromised. I couldn't sleep on that side and I was very despondent. For eight months, I contemplated surgery but held off on it."

Seeing the Light

While visiting a friend in Toronto, Chew finally found a solution. The friend recommended that he visit a local chiropractor, who performed soft-tissue techniques on Chew's shoulder.

"I basically was enlightened that day," he recalled. "After two 20-minute treatment sessions [of active release], my shoulder significantly improved, much more than from anything else I tried the previous eight months. I realized this was what I was missing. I continued to get myofascial treatment on my shoulder and for the past 11 years have studied different schools of myofascial therapy [with many experts]."

Controversial View

Today, Chew is a staunch advocate of this specialty, to the near exclusion of any traditional modality.

"I'm going to say something a little controversial," he related. "But after years of practicing, I basically no longer use ultrasound, e-stim or theraband exercises. Studying all types of myofascial therapy, my results improved so dramatically that I became convinced. Now I basically have a collection of myofascial therapies I call The Ming Method."

Chew acknowledged, however, there are two modalities he does still use because of their beneficial impact—cold laser and microcurrent.

"Everything else is my hands. I also put patients on supplement and hydration programs because you have to make the tissue biochemically correct before you treat it. One of the biggest concerns I used to see with patients was their tissues were often dehydrated. A couple key supplements make the job a lot easier. I also alter their diet slightly to reduce inflammation. That usually does the trick."

Patient Reaction

Chew has received dozens of testimonials from happy clients. The greatest publicity came from his treatment of Kidd, who first visited the clinic in mid-2004.

"He was playing for the New Jersey Nets and had sustained a left knee bone bruise very early in the year," recalled Chew. "It continued to bother him for about five months and his agent called to ask if I could fix him. I said it's worth a shot."

Kidd literally limped into the office but after one treatment, he claimed to already feel 70 percent better despite the fact his knee hadn't been touched.

"Myofascial therapy is based on the concept that the fascia is an all-encompassing tissue from head to toe," Chew explained. "What you have to do in order to fix, let's say a knee, is find the biomechanical distortions that may be contributing to the problem."

Upon examining Kidd, he discovered issues with his neck, left lower back, right gluteus medius, left tibialis posterior, left sacroiliac joint and left psoas. Simply by treating those areas, the player improved. That first session took about an hour-and-a-half, estimated Chew, with a half-hour of it spent simply in conversation.

"The last hour was treatment. I never touched his knee but rather many other areas of his body. It was funny because Jason [noticed I wasn't touching the area that hurt and] said to me, ÔMing, the problem is my left knee.' And I replied, ÔJason, you pass the basketball and I'll fix the knee.' He started laughing and when he got off the table, he understood what I was talking about because he felt significantly better."

When Kidd came for a second session about five days later, he claimed to be 90 percent better. After that, he was able to scrimmage in practice and soon returned to playing in games. Because of this stunning success, other Nets players with nagging injuries also visited Chew.

"This is the best part," he related. "I was actually a [New York] Knicks fan in 2004. And the Knicks got swept by the Nets in the playoffs that year partly because of me working on Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles and Jason Collins. Basically four-fifths of their starting lineup was coming to see me for treatments. So here I was helping the enemy, so to speak. But I became a Nets fan after that."

Spreading the Word

The treatment of Kidd, in particular, led to Chew writing a book. His innovative techniques with the star point guard were profiled in the New York Times, New York Daily News and Newark Star Ledger. From there, he received a deluge of calls from literary agents asking if Chew wanted to write a book about his unique brand of therapy.

"My initial reaction was, ÔI don't write books, I'm just a physical therapist,'" Chew remembered. "But then I realized there was a potential book here so I went through selecting a literary agent, writer and publicist. The whole process took almost two-and-a-half years but I finally finished the book."

Chew has high hopes for it, though a desire to see his name in the media isn't one of them.

"I really don't care about getting famous. To me, the most important thing is spreading the concept of manual therapy and the importance of myofascial work. It can absolutely help a patient avoid surgeries or very toxic drugs that have serious side effects. If the therapy is done properly, you can probably fix somebody in record time, which I've been doing pretty regularly for the past decade. I just realize this is the way to go and that's why I don't use conventional therapy techniques I was taught in school."

The Permanent Pain Cure is specifically geared toward people who don't have access to a myofascial specialist and want to practice the techniques on their own.

"Of course, it's not as good as having someone work on you, but it's the next best thing," concluded Chew. "I also hope therapists look at the book and recommend it to their patients because these techniques, concepts and stretches are totally different. I make some controversial statements but also provide all my explanations, which I think are legitimate and logical."

Brian W. Ferrie is managing editor of ADVANCE and can be reached at bferrie@merion.com