Dr. Kiana Cencula
Dr. Kiana Cencula played Division 1 basketball, and that is not a line of trivia on a bio page. It is the reason she reads bodies the way she does. She went from Stevenson High School to Western Michigan University, where the demands of a college season teach you what a textbook cannot: how an ankle behaves on the fourth day of a road trip, what a hamstring feels like the week before it goes, and how much of getting back on the floor is about trusting the leg again rather than passing a strength test. She earned her Doctor of Physical Therapy at Rosalind Franklin University and brought that athlete's eye with her into clinical practice. In an evaluation, it looks like watching how you actually move before deciding what to treat. The squat. The step down. The reach overhead. The quiet way you shift weight off the side that hurts before you are even aware you are doing it. Pain changes movement long before movement becomes the problem, and those compensations routinely outlast the injury that started them. Her care is one to one, and the person who evaluates you is the person who treats you. Whether you are a student athlete trying to get back into a season or someone who simply wants to take the stairs without bracing on the rail, the reasoning is the same.
Kiana evaluates the way a competitor watches film, tracking how the whole body behaves under load rather than treating the spot that hurts and hoping the rest follows.
What guides the work.
Recovery here runs through four phases, and Kiana will tell you which one you are standing in. Pain: calm the irritated tissue enough to move. Prime: restore the motion and the control the joint lost while it hurt. Perform: load it back to real-life strength, then past it. Prevent: keep the gains with the small amount of work that holds them. Baselines are set at your evaluation and re-tested as you go, so progress is something you can see rather than something you have to take on faith. Illinois is a direct access state, so most people can start without a physician referral, and we check your specific benefits before your first visit so the cost is never a surprise.