The Sports Doctor is in! Dr. Robert A Weil, Sports Podiatrist, specializes in orthotics that improve alignment, stability, balance and performance. He has practiced podiatry and sports medicine for over 30 years in the Aurora- Naperville area and was recently inducted into the prestigious 2019 National Fitness Hall of Fame. Dr. Bob has treated many of the world’s premier athletes from all types of sports. He is the host of “The Sports Doctor™” Radio Show. The show is now featured on BBS Radio Network, UK Health Radio Network and Sports 4 Fanz Radio. Dr. Bob was formerly on Healthy Life Radio and was also on WDCB public radio in Chicago for over 20 years. He has written articles for many newspapers and magazines and is a frequent guest on other networks. And his new book, co-written with Sharkie Zartman, titled '#Hey Sports Parents! An Essential Guide for Any Parent with a Child in Sports' - is now available on Amazon! Join the Sports Doctor and his great guests for important topical information for injury free exercise, wellness and sports performance for both adults and kids. Frequent topics include the role of the foot in sports, all aspects of sports medicine including, proper sports shoes, youth safety, health, wellness, and sports performance for both adults and children.
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The Sports Doctor, September 23, 2026
Thursday, September 24, 2026 • Duration 52:40
The Sports Doctor with Dr Robert Weil
Sports Pharmacy, Competitive Weightlifting, and the True Summit Method with Jessica Beale Stall and Sean Swarner
Dr. Bob Weil hosts a doubleheader, talking sports pharmacy, NIL pressure, and youth drug use with pharmacist and weightlifter Jessica Beale Stall, then explores resilience and purpose-driven achievement with two-time cancer survivor and Mount Everest climber Sean Swarner.
A Doubleheader Opens The Show
Dr. Bob Weil opens live from Chicago with his usual sponsor rundown, thanking Global Schoolwear, Lower Extremity Review magazine, Bryan Therapeutics, and UK Health Radio, before promising listeners a doubleheader. He introduces sports pharmacist and weightlifter Jessica Beale Stall, calling her a returning guest and a female health and sports performance expert, and previews his second guest, Mount Everest mountaineer and one-lung survivor Sean Swarner, author of the True Summit Method. Weil recalls that when he first hosted Beale Stall roughly two and a half years earlier, sports pharmacy was a field new to him despite decades in sports medicine, and he frames the hour around that growing specialty alongside Swarner's story of surviving two terminal cancer diagnoses as a teenager. Welcoming Beale Stall back to the show, Weil asks her to describe her background and how the field of sports pharmacy has developed since her first appearance.
Sports Pharmacy Meets NIL Pressure
Beale Stall explains that sports pharmacy has grown as specialists recognize how medications affect performance differently across sports, an area she calls a blind spot for many patients and athletes. She and Weil discuss the explosion of women's sports alongside a lag in female-specific research, noting that women are now entering clinical trials and sport science without the decades of data available for men, echoing the historical absence of shoes built for a woman's foot. Weil raises the pressures of NIL money, and Beale Stall says young athletes increasingly turn to peptides to speed healing and return to competition faster, a trend she is seeing at younger ages alongside routine over-the-counter anti-inflammatory use for shin pain. She describes her own path to a gold medal at the Olympic-weightlifting world championships in the forty-five to fifty age group, her lifelong use of orthotics, and the perimenopause conversations she now has with fellow competitors, directing listeners to her website, The Athlete's Pharmacist.
A New Book For Sports Parents
Between guests, Weil dedicates a segment to his new book, co-written with former Hall of Fame volleyball player Sharkie Zartman, #Hey Sports Parents: An Essential Guide for Any Parent with a Child in Sports, noting the two authors bring more than seventy years of combined youth-sports experience. He outlines its four sections: Sports Parenting 101, where Zartman covers coaching and the parent-coach relationship; The Sports Doctor's In, his own material on injury prevention, choosing shoes, youth sports and drugs, essential exercises, football risks, and orthotics; Experts Speak Out, featuring eight contributors on nutrition, performance, and mental training; and The Parents' Perspective, drawn from about half a dozen sports parents. He also marks the tenth anniversary of Lower Extremity Review magazine, praising its evidence-based, multidisciplinary coverage of lower-extremity injuries for practitioners across specialties, before returning listeners to the live conversation and introducing his second guest of the hour, Sean Swarner.
Sean Swarner's Cancer Survival And Summits
Weil welcomes back Sean Swarner, calling him a longtime mountaineer, the man with one lung, and author of True Summit Method, and asks him to share his background. Swarner explains that he is the only person to complete the Explorers Grand Slam, climbing the highest peak on every continent plus skiing to both the North and South Poles, and that he has also finished the World Championship Ironman triathlon and, most recently, run seven marathons on seven continents in seven consecutive days. He says he accomplished all of it after surviving two terminal cancer diagnoses as a young teenager in 1988, a fourteen-day prognosis, and a medically induced coma lasting a year, and that he now has only one functioning lung. Asked how he prepares physically, Swarner says the mental side matters most, describing how he attaches a deeper purpose to every summit rather than treating a photograph at the top as the true measure of success.
The ASCEND Method And False Summits
Weil and Swarner discuss the mental game, and Swarner outlines his proprietary ASCEND framework: awareness, stretch, clarity, ethos, navigate, and design, each tied to what a goal truly means to the person pursuing it. He warns against what he calls false summits, moments where achievement and fulfillment fail to align, leaving a person chasing the next goal without ever feeling satisfied, often because the goal was inherited from family, friends, or social media rather than chosen. Swarner says resilience is built not through toughness but through loyalty to personal core values, so pursuing what truly matters makes perseverance come naturally. He recalls being a thirteen-year-old cancer patient sobbing on his hands and knees, and choosing in that moment to focus on living rather than on avoiding death. Weil connects the discussion to decades of sports psychology on the show, including the late Dr. Jim Vickery, and to modern athletes like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps normalizing conversations about mental health.
Tributes, Pearls, And What's Next
Closing the hour with his regular Sports Doctor's In segment, Weil previews upcoming guests including former Major League Baseball player Ryan Roberts, speaker Rebecca Whitman, podiatric wound-care specialist Dr. Wendy Cole, and professional boxer Nicola Bark. He pays tribute to the recent passing of his longtime friend and fellow podiatrist Dr. Lowell Weil of Weil Foot and Ankle, recalling their decades working with the Chicago Bears and Chicago White Sox alongside the late sports therapist Bob Gajda, and sends condolences to Lowell Weil Jr. and the family. Returning to childhood obesity, a topic he says he has covered for about thirty-five years, Weil calls it the leading cause of youth bullying and discusses the rise of juvenile type 2 diabetes tied to diet and inactivity. He repeats his standing pearls for foot health: roughly half the girl athletes he treats for knee and shin trouble have underlying foot pronation problems that orthotics can correct, and he urges listeners to strengthen their feet, ankles, and balance before signing off and thanking BBS Radio.
The Sports Doctor, September 16, 2026
Thursday, September 17, 2026 • Duration 52:54
The Sports Doctor with Dr Robert Weil
Menopause Research, Nutrition, and Decades of Volleyball Excellence with Andrea Donsky and Troy Gilb
Dr. Bob Weil hosts a doubleheader, talking new menopause research and nutrition with author Andrea Donsky, then digging into decades of championship youth volleyball and injury prevention with Great Lakes Volleyball's Troy Gilb.
A Doubleheader Opens The Show
Dr. Bob Weil opens live from Chicago with his usual sponsor rundown, thanking Global Schoolwear, Lower Extremity Review magazine, Bryan Therapeutics, and UK Health Radio, before promising listeners a doubleheader. He introduces Andrea Donsky as a women's health researcher, nutritionist, author, and menopause expert, and previews his second guest, Troy Gilb, owner and director of Great Lakes Volleyball's Sports Performance program, recalling that his own history with the club goes back decades to its earliest days. Weil frames the hour around his long-running interest in the mental side of sports and wellness, noting that a colleague once asked him why the word "men" appears inside "menopause," a question he says he plans to put to Donsky. Welcoming her to the show, Weil asks for background on her nutrition career and her personal path toward specializing in menopause, setting up the conversation that follows.
Donsky's Own Menopause Awakening
Andrea Donsky tells Weil she has worked in health and wellness for twenty-six years, and that about seventeen years into her career she experienced her first hot flash at age forty-seven, only recently connecting years of unexplained postpartum symptoms after her third child to perimenopause. She says the surprise stunned her, since she had spent her career educating others about nutrition and the body. Weil draws a parallel to how long nutrition and obesity went underexamined in sports medicine. Donsky describes research she has had published in the journal Menopause, including a 2024 abstract identifying more than 103 distinct menopause symptoms, far beyond the thirty-four commonly cited. She notes that nine of the ten most frequently reported symptoms are mental health and brain related, a finding Weil calls a validation of what he has called "the mental game" for decades. Both agree cognitive and emotional symptoms remain underdiscussed compared with hot flashes and night sweats.
Nutrition, Nourishing Menopause, And Balance
Donsky explains that her new book, Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition and Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best, published by Simon & Schuster, devotes its eleventh chapter to nutrition and introduces what she calls the BALANCE Blueprint, an acronym guiding women to balance blood sugar, add fiber, load up on protein, add quality fats like omega-3s, nurture digestion, choose more plants, and ensure hydration. She lists the five most common menopause symptoms from her research: fatigue and exhaustion, reported by more than seventy-two percent of women, followed by brain fog, sleep issues, memory issues, and anxiety. Weil connects nutrition, rest, and visualization to his own decades of coaching athletes, recalling figure skaters who practiced visualization when the technique was dismissed as "voodoo." Donsky agrees, describing how she now uses visualization with her own daughter, a basketball player. She closes by directing listeners to wearemorphus.com and nourishingmenopausebook.com and to her TikTok account for more information.
Troy Gilb And Volleyball's Deep Roots
After a break for his own book, #HeySportsParents, and sponsor messages, Weil welcomes Troy Gilb, owner and director of Great Lakes Volleyball's Sports Performance program. Gilb recalls arriving in 2007 after years bringing setters from Nebraska to train, eventually buying the company in 2022 from founders Rick Butler and Cheryl. Weil reminisces about the club's origins around 1980 with the late strength coach Bob Gaida, whose instability and balance training and attention to feet and ankles shaped the program's philosophy, and about athletic trainer Jimmy Spinazzola's recent return after years with professional soccer. Weil, a sports podiatrist, notes that forty to fifty percent of the volleyball players he has treated over the years have had knee trouble, tying foot mechanics to jumping performance. He recalls building orthotics for a young Danny O'Shea, now an Olympic pairs figure-skating gold medalist, as an example of how proper foot support can carry an athlete's career for decades.
Inside Today's Sports Performance Program
Gilb describes the scale of the operation today: about five hundred athletes in the competitive Sports Performance program, another five hundred in youth academy and seasonal programs, and roughly seventeen hundred kids nationwide in summer camps last year. He says the program now runs from pre-kindergarten through high school seniors, with a near-total rate of graduates continuing on to college volleyball, and credits staff including strength coach John Hugunin and director Seth Salmon. Discussing overuse injuries, Gilb explains that the club structures its three weekly practices to limit jumping early in the week and scales back further after tournaments played on hard courts. Weil praises the approach as consistent with decades-old safety principles from Gaida and Rick Butler, while noting the broader epidemic of early sports specialization. Gilb adds that the club still bars nail polish, encourages athletes to also play for their high schools, and has watched the girls' side of the sport grow noticeably more explosive and athletic in recent years.
Diabetes Awareness And Closing Notes
With time running short, Weil moves into his regular "Sports Doctor Is In" segment, previewing coming guests including sports pharmacist Jessica Bielstal, Everest climber Sean Swarner, former major-league player Ryan Roberts, and speaker Rebecca Whitman. He highlights his consulting work with LEAP, Lower Extremity Amputation Prevention, founded by his former medical-school professor Dr. Larry Rubin, describing rising rates of juvenile type 2 diabetes tied to diet and inactivity. Weil then discusses US Open tennis champion Alexander Zverev, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age four, and recalls former Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler's own type 1 diagnosis, framing both as proof that an early diagnosis need not limit an athlete's future. He answers a listener email asking about orthotics in skating, telling "Mary" that proper alignment matters across figure skating, hockey, and speed skating alike. Weil closes by directing listeners to the show's archive and thanking BBS Radio before signing off.
The Sports Doctor, September 9, 2026
Thursday, September 10, 2026 • Duration 52:59
The Sports Doctor with Dr Robert Weil
Naperville's Fitness Legacy, Youth Mental Health, and Overuse Injuries with Mayor Scott Wehrli
Dr. Bob Weil welcomes Naperville, Illinois Mayor Scott Wehrli to talk community health and mental wellness, then spends the rest of the hour on the US Open, aging Olympians, and the epidemic of overuse injuries in young athletes.
A Doubleheader Begins With Mayor Wehrli
Dr. Robert Weil opens live from Chicago with his usual sponsor rundown, thanking Global Schoolwear, Lower Extremity Review magazine, Bryan Therapeutics, and UK Health Radio, before promising listeners a doubleheader. He welcomes Mayor Scott Wehrli of Naperville, Illinois, noting Wehrli is the third Naperville mayor to appear on the show and framing the visit around his long-running theme of city and county support for fitness and wellness. Weil also tells listeners that Dr. Nathan Bryan of Bryan Therapeutics is expected later to discuss nitric oxide. Turning to his guest, Weil asks Wehrli to describe his path to Naperville and to the mayor's office. Wehrli explains that he was adopted at seven months old and raised there by two loving parents, calling it a duty to give back to a city that gave him so much, a commitment he says began when he started volunteering there at age twelve, long before becoming mayor of Illinois's third-largest city at fifty-seven.
From The Park Police To Mental Health
Weil asks about Wehrli's career before politics, and Wehrli says he spent thirty-five years as a lieutenant with the Naperville Park District police, retiring that December first after learning, in his words, "the good, the bad, and everything in between" about the community. He says he has become especially active speaking out about mental health locally. Weil calls the mental game one of the biggest topics the show has covered across decades, crediting Simone Biles and Michael Phelps with helping normalize the conversation, and recalling a Daoist therapist from the Netherlands who linked twenty-five-hundred-year-old principles of compassion and simplicity to today's locker rooms. He describes twenty-five years of monthly foot screenings at Edward Health & Fitness alongside CEO Pam Davis, and notes that some communities cannot find enough young people fit enough to pass military or police entrance tests. After thirty-five years covering childhood obesity on the show, Weil says the numbers are, in his words, still treading water at best.
Pools, Bullying, And A City That Listens
Wehrli traces Naperville's health-minded reputation back to 1990 and PE teacher Phil Lawler, whom Weil remembers as an early guest on his WDCB radio show at the College of DuPage, explaining that Lawler used heart rate monitors to teach students how exercise actually worked. Wehrli points to the city's neighborhood pools as another legacy, recalling how his son's West Point water polo team would find "Naperville, Illinois" popping up on national rosters beside places like Long Beach. Weil connects this to inactivity and screen time, noting that obesity and weight are, by his account, the leading cause of high-school bullying, ahead of disabilities and sexual orientation, and recalls a 2008 article he wrote called "Let's Get 'Em Walking." Asked how he handled his own kids' sports, Wehrli says he stayed a sideline parent who never spoke to a coach, letting his children learn from good and bad leadership alike, a hands-off approach Weil ties to Naperville's honors as one of America's healthiest and best cities to live.
From The US Open To Olympic Ice
With Dr. Bryan still not on the line, Weil fills the segment with sports headlines, starting with the US Open, where his former guest Mark Kovacs coaches Frances Tiafoe into the semifinals. He recalls a former patient, Tim Smyczek, who years earlier played Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open and asked for a re-serve after a crowd disruption, a moment of sportsmanship Weil says added to his patient's reputation even as Nadal won. He notes Novak Djokovic's rare first-round exit and the retirement of thirty-nine-year-old Lionel Messi from Argentina's national soccer team, pivoting to a running theme of aging elite athletes. Weil celebrates pairs figure skater Danny O'Shea, for whom he built orthotics as a young teenager, winning Winter Olympic gold near age thirty-five after a comeback, and Naperville's own Evan Lysacek, whose skates he fitted with orthotics around age ten before Lysacek won Olympic gold twelve years later, a fact he shares that Lysacek's mother, Tanya, always knew skating was her son's goal, not hers.
The Overuse Epidemic In Youth Sports
Still without Dr. Bryan, Weil shifts into the show's core mission: overuse injuries in young athletes. He cites Yankees orthopedic surgeon Dr. Christopher Ahmad's estimate that roughly twenty percent of Tommy John elbow surgeries today are performed on teenagers, and remembers Lou Vickery, a former Yankees pitcher whose career was cut short by shoulder injuries after training under Whitey Ford and who later hosted his own radio show, Lou in the Morning. Weil repeats the late sports psychologist Jim Vickery's rules for sports parents: do not be a critic on the ride home, and be a good listener about how a child is doing physically and emotionally. He credits psychologists Don Brady and Katherine Snedaker, creator of PINK Concussions, for raising awareness of concussions in collision sports, and recalls financial expert Frances Rahaim discussing the cost of travel teams. He closes with a story of LeBron James's mother telling him to sit down at his son's game, and writer Jim Brown's advice to parents to simply stay out of it.
The Book, A Pearl, And Next Week's Guests
Weil closes with an explicit rundown of his book, #HeySportsParents, co-written with volleyball champion Sharkie Zartman, describing its four sections: sports-parenting challenges, sports-medicine basics like shoes and orthotics, expert contributions from nutritionists and mental coaches, and parents' own stories. He offers what he calls one of his standing "pearls" for coaches and parents: persistent lower-extremity pain in the back, knees, shins, feet, or ankles is almost always foot-related even when the feet themselves do not hurt, which is why it often goes unexamined. He previews next week's guest, Troy Gilb of Sports Performance Volleyball, recalling handing Rick Butler his first volleyball decades earlier, and lists upcoming shows with menopause expert Andrea Donsky, sports pharmacist Jessica Beale Stahl, and Everest climber Sean Swarner, author of True Summit Method. He signs off pointing listeners to thesportsdoctorradio.com for more on the National Fitness Hall of Fame and the book, thanking BBS Radio as the show closes.
