Dr. Brandon Bellman

Physical Therapist & Owner of Bell Performance Therapy

I was connected with Cinnamon and spoke with her on the phone on 9/29/23.

My name is Dr. Brandon Bellman, I am a dual credentialed physical therapist and athletic trainer. I am the owner of Bell Performance Therapy. Born in Sheffield Lake, OH and living in Westerville, OH. I attended Otterbein University for my BS in athletic training, MS in allied health, and completed my Doctorate of Physical Therapy at Ohio State. I am the ONLY physical therapist to be vetted and approved by the Fraternal Order of Police. I was a professor of Exercise Physiology at Otterbein University this past spring.

My passion is to understand and implement human rehabilitation and performance. This stemmed from my own experience with neuromusculoskeletal injuries. In my schooling, I worked with varying levels of highschool, recreational, and collegiate athletes while I also sought out tactical athletes to serve on the side including military, firefighters and police in the US, UK , and Australia. I found that traditional sport athletes, although fun to work with, were not as rewarding to work with when compared to first responders. Traditional athletes have a season, planned competition, and rule sets. The stakes are a shot at a championship. The first responder has no season, no planned competition against an opponent who will follow a rule set or a referee that will right any foul play. The stakes are life and death for the first responder and/or the people they serve.

I started Bell Performance Therapy as a way to treat patients the way I knew I would be able to provide the highest quality care that often falls short in the traditional insurance/healthcare industry. I also wanted to create a one stop shop for a holistic approach that could curb barriers to early and easy access by including a mental performance coach, dietitian, and other health and wellness professionals.

As I began to dive deep into the statistics in first responders and their health, it became apparent to me how underserved they truly were. In law enforcement, 1 in 4 will have ideation of suicide, Greater than 80% of active and retired LEOs are overweight, Life expectancy of a law enforcement officer is ~21 years less than the general public. A cardiac arrest on duty can cost $400,000+ in medical spending. These statistics are just as overwhelming when it comes to fire and EMS as well. When you look at the statistics, 50+% of injuries and co-morbidities recorded could be prevented or mitigated. There will always be risks and exposures that cannot be prevented but when you can prevent more than half of injuries, improve length and quality life for the individual and save millions upon millions in medical spending, there needs to be change.

One of my current missions with Bell Performance Therapy is to serve over 10,000 first responders in the next 5 years. As of September, in partnership with others with a similar passion, we are running a 14 week wellness pilot for officers where we have provided a Performance/Wellness screen, in-person and digital exercise programming/training, and dietitian, physical therapy/chiropractic, and mental performance to establish this social proof that we can significantly improve quality of life, performance, and first responder satisfaction in a manner that would ultimately save agencies and departments money.