Physical therapy in Boulder.
The original clinic, four blocks off the Pearl Street Mall and ten minutes from the Chautauqua trailheads — which is more or less the entire injury profile in one sentence.
Serving Boulder, North Boulder, Gunbarrel, Louisville, Superior, Niwot, and Nederland. No physician referral required.
Denver time
- Mon – Thu
- 7am – 7pm
- Fri
- 7am – 5pm
- Sat
- 8am – 12pm
- Sun
- Closed
Second floor of the brick building with the blue awning, north side of Elder between 9th and Broadway. The stairwell entrance is unmarked; use the glass door beside the coffee roaster and take the lift if stairs are the problem you are here about.
DirectionsAbout this clinic
Boulder is where Foothold started, in a room above a bike shop with one plinth and a second-hand force plate. It has moved twice since and grown into 4,200 square feet, but the equipment list has stayed stubbornly the same in spirit: more rack than table, more open floor than curtained bay.
The caseload here is what you would expect from a town where an ordinary Tuesday involves nine miles on Mesa Trail before work. Trail-running overuse, mountain-bike shoulders and wrists, climbing fingers and elbows, and a steady flow of post-op knees from the ortho groups on Broadway. If your injury involves altitude, gravel, or a rope, this clinic has seen a lot of it.
What’s different here
- Longest-running clinic in the group — Dana still treats here two and a half days a week
- The only clinic with a hangboard and a systems board, for climbing rehab
- Same-week evaluations held back daily, including for direct-access walk-ins
Fourteen dedicated spaces behind the building, entered from the alley off Elder. Two are accessible bays by the ramp. Street parking on Elder is free for two hours and genuinely enforced.
Four blocks from Downtown Boulder Station — the SKIP, JUMP, and BOUND all stop within a five-minute walk. Covered bike parking under the ramp, plus a floor pump we keep working.
- Private treatment room
- Force plate & handheld dynamometry
- Full squat rack and platform
- 240fps gait treadmill
- Step-free access from the lot
- Spanish spoken on site
- Hangboard & systems board
- Covered bike parking + floor pump
What Boulder treats.
All six of the group's service lines run at this clinic. Each is described in full on the services page — this is the same library every Foothold clinic works from.
Sports rehab & return to sport
Getting you back to the actual sport, with a number that says you're ready.
Full descriptionPost-surgical recovery
Protocol-faithful rehab that talks to your surgeon, from week one to discharge.
Full descriptionRunning & gait analysis
240fps video, a treadmill, and a plan that doesn't just say 'rest'.
Full descriptionWork-injury & industrial rehab
Modified duty that keeps you earning, and a return-to-work letter we write ourselves.
Full descriptionPaediatric & adolescent PT
For growing athletes, whose injuries follow completely different rules.
Full descriptionStrength & performance
The bridge between 'discharged' and 'actually robust'. Cash-pay, no referral.
Full description
Who you'll see at Boulder.
You get one of these people for the full hour, every visit — and the same one for your whole plan of care. Several of them also cover another clinic, so a move mid-plan doesn't mean starting again with a stranger.
Dana Whitlock
Founder & Clinical Director
Dana started Foothold in 900 square feet on Pearl Street after eleven years in a hospital system that wanted sixteen patients a day from her. Board-certified in sports, she still carries a caseload two and a half days a week — mostly post-op knees and the athletes other clinics have already discharged twice. She wrote the group's return-to-sport criteria and refuses to soften them.
Boulder·Golden
Skis badly, on purposeSamuel Okonkwo
Physical Therapist
Sam handles most of Boulder's shoulders — cuff repairs, stabilisations, and the overhead athletes who arrive convinced they need surgery and frequently do not. He is deliberate to the point of being slow in the first three weeks post-op and then aggressive in a way that surprises people, which is roughly the correct order.
Boulder
Bakes competitive sourdoughEloise Tran
Physical Therapist, Pelvic & Postpartum
Eloise splits her week between Fort Collins and Boulder and carries the group's postpartum return-to-running caseload. Board-certified in women's health, she is blunt about the thing nobody tells new parents: six weeks is a surgical clearance, not a training clearance, and the gap between them is about four months of actual work.
Fort Collins·Boulder
Open-water swimmer
Camille Devereux (Director of Patient Access) also works out of this clinic.
Ask for a time at Boulder.
The clinic is pre-filled — you only need to change it if you would rather be seen somewhere else, and the service list will change with it.
Your first visit
Bring the boring paperwork
Photo ID, insurance card, and your referral or surgical protocol if you have one. If you do not have a referral, come anyway — Colorado is a direct-access state.
Dress for the joint
Shorts for anything below the waist, a tank or sports bra for shoulders and necks. If you are here about running, bring the shoes you actually run in, worn and unwashed.
Ninety minutes for the evaluation
The first appointment is longer than the rest. History, hands-on exam, baseline testing on the plate and the dynamometer, and you leave with the plan and the discharge criteria in writing.
You will start treatment that day
Nobody gets evaluated and sent home with a photocopy. You will do real work in the first hour and leave with two or three things to do before the next visit — not a booklet of twelve.
Every clinic is step-free from the parking lot, has an accessible restroom and a private treatment room, and has at least one height-adjustable table. Say the word when you book and we will hold a ground-floor bay. English and Spanish at every clinic. ASL interpretation with five business days' notice, at no cost to you.
Who drives to Boulder.
Most of this clinic’s patients come from Boulder, North Boulder, Gunbarrel and the surrounding towns. If you are further out, it is still worth ringing — we’d rather tell you honestly that another Foothold clinic, or someone else entirely, is a better use of your time.
- Boulder
- North Boulder
- Gunbarrel
- Louisville
- Superior
- Niwot
- Nederland
In network with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Aetna, Rocky Mountain Health Plans, Kaiser (referred), TRICARE West, Colorado Medicaid, and Medicare Part B. We verify your benefits before the first visit and tell you the number — visit cost, deductible remaining, visit limit — in writing before you owe anything.
Questions before you book at Boulder?
Ring (303) 555-0180 and someone at this clinic — not a call centre — will pick up. Or send the group a message and it will reach the desk that can actually answer it.
Foothold Physical Therapy is a therapist-owned physical therapy group serving Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Longmont, and Golden — the Front Range from the Poudre to Clear Creek.