Bob Chen was born in the Mountain City of Wuzhou, where two rivers meet in a soothing and relaxing vista. When we talk about this famous sports rehabilitation specialist, we must mention the great influence and the impact he has had from the environment of the Chen Family’s “Movement + Medicine.”
Due to the strong influence of the family’s love for sports, Bob Chen began to follow his elder cousin and practiced weight lifting. Later on, advised by family, school, and his own interests, he learned martial arts, track and field, swimming, tai chi and so on, and finally he chose water polo as his main sport. During the course of several years, from an amateur sports school to the provincial sports school, from the Beijing University of Physical Education to the National Team, Bob Chen experienced different athletic teams, trained by various styles of coaches, and was influenced by different regions. This series of athletic practice and experiences has given him a personal insight and intuitive grasp for sports training and injuries.
Dr. Chen’s uncle was a famous local traumatic orthopedic doctor, so when Chen was little, he often saw his uncle carrying his doctor’s bag and using his magical healing hands to treat and cure athletes’ injuries. He found it so fascinating that he often went to the hospital where his uncle worked to watch him. During the period when he was an athlete, he also learned to help others. The influence of traditional Chinese medicine, coupled with more than ten years of subsequent study of Western medicine, had a far-reaching impact on his Chinese and Western “Integrative Medicine” of physical rehabilitation.
After his athletic career ended, Dr. Chen was fortunately admitted to the Beijing University of Physical Education. After graduating in 1982, he worked for the Guangxi Province Water Polo Team, and then for the National Water Polo Team. He also participated in the Fifth National Games, as well as many international competitions.
Dr. Bob Chen was baffled. “ I felt that my knowledge was too limited to help athletes to raise their levels or do more meaningful things.” He witnessed too many athletes and sports enthusiasts giving up their dreams due to injuries, including himself. Therefore, even though very few people at that time went to study abroad at their own expense, he was determined to study in America. He left China in 1985, and in the blink of an eye sixteen years passed. He was on a work-study program and got a dual masters degree in rehabilitation medicine and the science of human movements, as well as his doctoral degree in sports medicine and biomechanics at the University of Oregon. He was also a postdoctoral researcher for three years at the National Institute of Health (NIH).
In 1996, Dr. Chen was hired to teach and to be a graduate advisor at the famous department of rehabilitation at New York University. Sports Biomechanics is a laboratory science, which takes advantage of high-speed cameras to film movements of athletes. Through kinematic analysis and combining with human anatomical structure and dynamics, they analyze whether the movement is consistent with the laws of human science, so as to explore the causes as well as the patterns of sports injuries. This had fundamentally solved Bob Chen’s confusion over the years, and triggered his profound interest and enthusiasm for research.
The root cause of his quitting sports was, as he put it, “I could not hear clearly, therefore I was not able to communicate with my teammates while playing.” High-frequency hearing loss allowed him to catch only half of what people said. When he first arrived in America, this contributed more to his language barrier. Each time he attended class he would set a tape recorder on his desk. Then he would listen to the lecture repeatedly after class, even while he was washing dishes at restaurants, with his headphones on.
Something unforgettable happened to him while he was working on his master’s degree. A staff member who was working at the International Office found out about his problem, and helped him to contact an ear-nose-throat doctor. After the examination, Bob Chen was told that he needed to wear a hearing aid. But he could not afford it, so the doctor asked an unidentified American person who often provided sponsorship to Chinese students, and this lady took 3,000 dollars from her personal funds to purchase state-of-the-art hearing for him. When Bob Chen asked if he could express his heartfelt gratitude in person, she kindly refused.
This incident had brought him great warmth, and also allowed him to see life from a better perspective, which had a great impact on how he treated his patients later on. This is also why one often feels so much warmth while being with him.
During the time when he was studying in America, Bob Chen discovered that on the running track at the university stadium, people changed their direction everyday. If one ran clockwise today, then he would run counterclockwise tomorrow. People used this method to prevent sports injuries caused by one directional running. Such details shocked Bob Chen. The scientific sports concept has penetrated into ordinary people’s daily life overseas, and compared with conceptions of physical education back in China, it was like heaven and earth. This inspired him to go back to China to help with Chinese sports activities.
On July 13, 2001, at his New York home, like many Chinese people, Dr. Bob Chen was watching live television, waiting for the announcement about the host of the 2008 Olympics. His wife, Li Yan, still remembers clearly the moment when it was announced that Beijing would be hosting the Olympics: Bob Chen jumped up in excitement, and hugged his wife. He was like a child, and could not hold back his eagerness to go back to China. “One day, I will go back. I want to make contributions to the development of Chinese Sports.” Returning to China, returning to sports teams, these were his dreams during those long decades overseas.
“As soon as I was invited to come back from the States, I got an invitation to Guangdong Province to help prepare for the Ninth National Games,” said Dr. Bob Chen. “I was pleased that the leaders of the Guangdong Sports Technical College back then paid great attention to the introduction of new scientific training concepts and methods, and they lent their strong support to my work. I also introduced some advanced sports training and rehabilitation concepts and methods.”
They carried out scientific injury prevention rehabilitative physical training under the guidance of Dr. Chen, and the injury rate of players was greatly reduced. This was an achievement of the Guangdong Team during the National Games. Later on, he was hired as a consultant and expert by the host of the Tenth National Games, Jiangsu Province.
To date, Dr. Bob Chen has participated in five Olympic Games: the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the 2012 London Summer Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. He is one of very few physical rehabilitation specialists in the world able to participate in both summer and winter Olympics.
Within a month, he was able to improve Zhang Ning’s ability of squat lifting from 40 pounds to 140 pounds; in three short weeks, he amazingly assisted Zhu Fangyu to help the Guangdong Men’s Basketball Team to win their first gold medal at the National Games; with his help, three months after the operation, Zheng Jie won two gold medals at the Doha Asian Games; he assisted Yang Wei in recovering from his Achilles tendon injury two months before the World Championships in Denmark, where he achieved three gold medals; he helped Liu Qiuhong, who had 250 stitches following his thigh operation, back onto the ice to train; he assisted Lu Ying, who had long suffered from Swimmer’s Shoulder, and returned to competition two weeks later; Perhaps Fu Haifeng’s tearful words of gratitude say it best: “Dr. Chen, I don’t know how to thank you. If not for you, my arms would be useless...” I can go on and on with these miracle stories. However, while facing countless and endless praises, the most gratifying thing that Dr. Chen felt was that through his own efforts, he had spread the concept of physical rehabilitation widely in the sports industry, helped many athletes get rid of their injuries and pain, and restored the hopes and dreams of athletes so that they could have yet again opportunities to achieve their goals.
Because physical rehabilitation is a newly emerging industry in China, in 2010, in order to cultivate more practical and qualified physical rehabilitation specialists, he worked together with the Chinese Athletes Educational Foundation, and created the Chinese Retired Athletes Physical Rehabilitation Training Program. Since 2011, the training class of “Whampoa Military Academy of Physical Rehabilitation,” which was named by the former deputy director of the State General Administration, Duan Shijie, so far has trained three terms of students. Meanwhile, Dr. Chen also founded Dr. Chen’s Physical Rehabilitation Institute, which has created physical rehabilitation, sports rehabilitation, and health centers throughout the country for nurturing talents in this field. In order for the students to have a practice ground, especially combining service, research and teaching, Dr. Chen also created Dr. Chen’s Sports Training and Rehabilitation (STaR) Studio, which has summer and winter events in two separate locations, Beijing and Chongli. The studio located in Beijing was constructed out of six apartment units, whose design, decoration, process and other aspects were all arranged according to Dr. Chen’s thinking. “This is my paradise,” said Bob Chen.
Dr. Chen also pays attention to the development of scientific research. He serves as a visiting professor at the Wuhan Institute of Physical Education, a Jianhu Scholar at the Shaoxing University, and is both visiting professor and advisor for PhD students at the Capital Institute of Physical Education. He has slowly built up the theoretical foundation for the subject of physical rehabilitation.
Under the leadership of Dr. Bob Chen and through the efforts of the past few years, Dr. Chen’s STaR Studio hosted the first State General Administration’s Retired Athletes Physical Rehabilitation Training Class, and provided rehabilitation guidance and training services for nearly 60 Olympic gold medallists, 30 national teams, and dozens of provincial sports bureaus. The studio bore the responsibility for the Twenty-ninth Olympic Games in Beijing, the Thirtieth Olympic Games in London, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It also provides services for national top athletes, and has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Basketball Association, CCTV5, Sichuan Orthopedic Hospital and the Shandong Provincial Scientific Institute of Physical Education.
Although Dr. Bob Chen was raised as an athlete, and provides services for athletes, he focuses a lot of his attention on ordinary people’s athletic health, especially since the 2008 Beijing Olympics that started the fitness upsurge. Currently, more than half of the studio’s clients are from the general public. “This is a good thing!’ said Dr.Chen. “More and more ordinary people are starting to realize the importance of scientific movement and physical rehabilitation.”
In order for more sport enthusiasts to exercise and rehabilitate scientifically, Dr. Bob Chen participated in the recording of CCTV’s programs. In addition, during many international marathons, Dr. Chen’s STaR Studio worked with CCTV5’s program, “Run with Channel 5,” and received overwhelming compliments from large number of marathon enthusiasts. Dr. Chen has compiled and published books such as the Practical Motion Stretching Handbook. He also wrote articles for magazines for the general public, including New Sports, Swimming, Runner’s World, Channel Five, Men’s Health, and so on.
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