Captain Kerry Titheradge on Following Through, From a Rotator Cuff to Mental Health Mondays

Captain Kerry Titheradge left Miami somewhere around 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning to make a Saturday radio show in North Palm Beach. He had a boat job that ran long, a business to run, and a friend who had tried to talk him out of coming. He came anyway, with a couple of minutes to spare.

That friend is Dr. Dave Kashuba, and the two go back more than twenty years, to a rotator cuff injury and a home program that went north with Kerry when his work did. This week’s Pain 2 Power is the two of them and Mike McGann catching up on that shoulder, on the workout that ended up with Kerry’s name on it, and on what Kerry does with the attention Bravo’s Below Deck gave him.

By The First Rehabilitation Team · Reviewed by Dr. Dave Kashuba, Ph.D.

A phone call from a doctor, about twenty years ago

Dave opened with the backstory. He studied in Australia, at Curtin University in Perth, and he says the Australians he knew on the west coast took such good care of him that he never forgot it. So when he opened the business here, and a doctor called about a young Australian with a shoulder injury, the answer was easy.

The catch was paperwork. Dave said he wasn’t taking workers’ comp cases at the time, and the doctor knew it. As Dave remembers the call, the doctor said, “Dave I know you’re not on this insurance but can you take it?” Dave’s reply was that he would, “without question,” because of how he had been treated in Perth. (These days we do treat work injuries, and our work injury rehab page explains how that side runs.)

He also had a warning for listeners. If an Australian friend says he’s coming to visit, Dave said, expect him to stay about three months. That happened too.

Before he was Captain Kerry

Most people know Kerry as the firm captain in charge of the boat on Below Deck. Dave wanted it on the record that he knew him before any of that, and that Kerry was at his 40th birthday. Dave is 60 plus now, he pointed out, so do the math. The reason he gave for the friendship was the drive from Miami that morning. Kerry made a commitment and kept his word.

Kerry’s version was warmer still. “Any time I needed some help, you’ve always been there, and I genuinely see you as a very close friend of mine,” he told Dave. Dave admitted he didn’t know how to answer that, except “right back at you.”

The rotator cuff program that went to the Northeast

Mike steered the conversation back to the shoulder about twenty minutes in, and Kerry explained why it mattered so much at the time. He was working on deck. “It was a rotator cuff. At the time I was working on deck. Full motion is very, very important,” he said.

Dave put together what Kerry called a system. They had a few months together in the clinic to get the shoulder to a certain point, and then the job sent Kerry up to the Northeast before rehab was finished. So the program went with him. Kerry described it on air: “you gave me what I needed to do when I was away, with bands and so forth. And I’ve got full motion.”

That shoulder has had two surgeries since. Kerry said both times, Dave and his team got him back together. If you’re dealing with a rotator cuff of your own, our shoulder pain treatment page walks through what that rehab involves, and our physical therapy program page covers how a plan of care gets built.

Two to three visits a week, and the hours in between

Mike made the point that follow through is the part people are least likely to do. Dave agreed, and said he can tell every single time. He sees people two to three times a week for an hour to an hour and a half. The other hours belong to the patient, and the exercises have to be done correctly and precisely.

He was just as firm about the other direction. Don’t overdo it. Dave described the patient who figures that if ten is good, fifty must be better, and he said some exercises he sets for every other day rather than daily. Consistency was his word. And consistency was the thing he said he could see in Kerry, in rehab and as a dad.

Kerry had a line of his own about it, looking back: “I remember just following everything you said to the tee.” We wrote more about what that home program looks like once therapy ends in your gym program after physical therapy, and the kind of short sets Dave hands out are on our home exercises page.

How Dave’s workout ended up with Kerry’s name

This part of the hour turned into a running joke. Dave said he has put time and effort his whole life into physical training and rehab, and he built a plan using blood flow restriction work so people could train in 20 to 25 minutes, three times a week. People started noticing.

Shannon Cake did a television story on Dave, then brought Kerry on, and the program came out of it as the Captain Kerry workout. In Dave’s telling, twenty years of programming went away in ten seconds. Mike, who has spent a career in broadcasting, said that’s branding for you. Shannon tells her side of the same story in our Episode 19 recap.

“What size is that shirt?”

Dave also told the story from before Kerry started working out with him. At a friend’s event, Kerry looked him over and asked what size shirt he was wearing, since it might look a little tight on him. Dave’s answer: “Kerry, it’s the same size as you’re wearing, just fits me different.” These days, Dave said, Kerry is kicking his butt and taking it seriously. Kerry’s reply was short. “You still got me mate.”

When Kerry rounded off the shoulder conversation, he said following Dave’s protocols in the clinic and out of it was what got him back to health. If you want to keep training after your own rehab, our wellness program is where patients carry on once therapy ends.

Mental Health Mondays, and why he talks about it on camera

Most of the episode wasn’t about shoulders at all. Dave asked Kerry to explain his own podcast and what he is trying to do with the platform television gave him.

Kerry said that because he isn’t from America, he often has no idea who his famous guests are. Musicians, athletes, people from TV. He gets an honest conversation without any preconceived idea of the person, and only does the research afterward. The goal, he said, is “just to humanise these somewhat TV stars or sporting stars, where people think that their life is great because it has to be.” His point was that it takes a certain kind of person to get there, and they have the same struggles as everybody else, and maybe more.

On Mondays he does what he calls Mental Health Mondays, talking about things he’s working through himself. The idea is to show people that there is no destination. He said he hasn’t worked it all out yet, and that’s part of what he shares.

“It’s okay to be in that place”

Mike offered a line a very bright woman once gave him: you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond. (She was bright enough, he added, to be his first ex wife.) Kerry took it a step further. Something really bad might happen to you, he said, “and there is a moment where you are a victim, and it’s okay to be in that place. That’s part of healing, really. But what is staying there to do for you?” A lot of people stay, in his view, because they don’t know how to get out.

Mike asked whether the successful people Kerry has interviewed share anything. Kerry’s answer was adversity. Not always trauma, he said, but things they pushed against that made them stronger. Mike called it trial by fire.

Why Dave brought up men who don’t reach out

Dave cited some depression and suicide figures on air, and his point underneath them was about men. “Men don’t like to talk about it,” he said, and that’s what he values in Kerry: “Someone like Kerry here, who’s going out of his way to say hey guys, it’s okay to talk about this.” Dave added that people contact Kerry to thank him for it.

Mike thought the reason it lands is simple. “People can tell that it’s real,” he said. Kerry described it in his own terms. The show put a searchlight on him, and he wants to point it everywhere else. If one person who is where he was can see that he found a way out, he said, “if I can offer that cheat code to somebody by using this platform,” anything less would be a disservice.

If you or someone close to you is struggling, please talk to your doctor. That conversation is outside what a therapy clinic does, and it matters more than any shoulder.

A birthday, and a stage full of Amazon boxes

Mike asked what made Kerry want to give back in the first place. Kerry said he’d be brutally honest. Years ago, running a yacht and at the top of his game, he had a flash of it: “I’m just pumping diesel fumes everywhere. I’m at service to one of the wealthiest people in the country. What am I doing for anybody else?” Then his phone beeped, he said, and he forgot. That was as far as it went.

The watch party that changed his mind

What really started it came after the show began airing. During his first season he would host watch parties at local restaurants, free to come, where people could say g’day and watch the episode with him. Adrienne Gang, from that first season, pointed out that an episode was airing on his birthday and asked if he wanted to do something for charity.

His first reaction: “why would anyone give a damn about me?” She asked what was important to him. He said single parents, since it was Christmas. So the plan became bring a present for a kid, celebrate Captain Kerry’s birthday, and watch the episode. His fear going in was that only one present would show up and he would have failed.

He rocked up, he said, and “the stage was full of Amazon boxes.” People had sent presents in, all from a couple of posts. Asked how it felt, Kerry said, “Full of joy, full of warmth. There’s nothing like it.” His takeaway was to imagine what he could do if he really thought about it.

Huskies, veterans and an hour in the car

Most of the charities Kerry works with, he said, are ones that aren’t well known, and that’s deliberate. He wants to bring attention to the ones that need it. He fosters dogs for a husky rescue and uses his following to let people know when a dog needs help or surgery.

He traced that back to his first rescue dog. He was going through a divorce at the time, and he wanted something constant for his kids. “Kind of an anchor,” he called it.

Another group he named works with veterans and first responders up around Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, taking them out fishing and diving. He met some of its people at the Miami Boat Show, where they ran into him and Captain Glenn and asked how he could help. His answer was to show up at the next event. “It’s very little effort for me to get in a car and drive an hour,” he said, “just to help others out.” In his view, him rocking up, having a beer and saying g’day can do a lot for people.

Remember Me, and early onset dementia

Kerry’s help reaches into Dave’s own work outside the clinic. Dave runs a 501(c)(3) nonprofit for early onset dementia called Remember Me. He said there’s a story behind it, and he would save that for another show.

Here is how he described the work: “Early onset dementia, we get people off the streets. You know, they’re there, they need help, they need housing, they need nursing care. So we provide that for them. And Kerry offered his time and his money, just to help us out.”

Dave also noted that Kerry is involved with dog rescues. Mike’s sign off tied it together: he thanked Dave for what he does for people physically, mentally and emotionally, which he called “so deeply intertwined.” More on Kerry, with his clips from this episode, is on Captain Kerry’s guest page.

Jeopardy at 8:01, and the joke of the week

The last few minutes were family. Dave said he is lucky to have his son Nick helping him in the business. Dave gave a shout out to his oldest son Brandon, an engineer at United Airlines, who flew them up to Chicago and then over to Buffalo to see Dave’s mom. Brandon was thrilled to get them first class. He told his dad he’d spent $17 for the seat.

Then the Jeopardy story. Dave calls his mom every day at 7:30. One day she didn’t pick up, so at 7:46 he called again because he was worried. She answered, told him this wasn’t his time, and hung up. She called back at 8:01, once championship Jeopardy was over.

And the joke: a Baptist minister, a priest and a rabbit sit down at a bar. The bartender comes over, looks at the rabbit, and says, “hey, you’re in the wrong joke.”

Mike, for his part, admitted Dave keeps telling him to come by the clinic, which sits right across the street from the Legends Radio studio on US-1. He says he’s going to make it happen one of these days.

You can hear the whole hour on the Pain 2 Power podcast page, watch it in our video library, and catch the show live Saturdays at 8:30 AM on 100.3 Legends Radio. If a rotator cuff or a shoulder that never quite got back to full motion is what brought you here, call us at 561-624-4263 or request an evaluation. Questions about getting started are answered on our FAQ page.

This article is general information, not medical advice. Every situation is different, so please consult a qualified professional about yours.