We’re looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Morgan Rodriguez (Riggins) PT, DPT, FAAOMPT. Check out our conversation below.
Morgan , it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
One of my goals for 2026 is to swim laps 1x/week. I swam competitively from the age of 6 all the way through college and in the last 10 years I’ve only swam a dozen or so times. I started to get back into the pool regularly in 2022, but then I started a business while working full-time and the pool was one of the first things to go.
Since then, I’ve been so busy working on my business that my workouts have been more focused on what is effective and efficient and won’t take more than 30-60 minutes from start to finish. My fitness routine as a business owner has been driven by discipline and necessity rather than joy and exploration like in my early 20s and collegiate athlete days. It has been amazing to get to this point as an entrepreneur where I am allowing myself the time and freedom to choose fitness first.
Returning to swimming has been an emotional, mental, and physical win for me. It takes me back to swim lessons as a tiny tot, swimming with my sister in my grandpa’s pool, and training in college with some of my best friends. It’s also incredibly humbling to see how de-conditioned I am and how quickly the body adapts to training or lack thereof. I swam 45 minutes the first week and lost count in the first 4 laps. The second week I made it an hour and did 3,000 yards. Yesterday I swam 3,000 yards and actually did a workout with sets, strokes, and sprints. It feels so cool to fall back in love with a sport I’ve known for most of my life and to remember parts of who I am outside of the world of physical therapy. It also inspires me to continue to empower others in my community to fall back in love with sports and movement that bring them this kind of joy.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am Dr. Morgan Rodriguez (formerly Riggins), PT, DPT, FAAOMPT. I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy and I own OPAL Movement Therapy, which is a cash-based orthopedic performance physical therapy clinic in Pflugerville, Texas. We work with clients in person and remotely around the world, and our mission is to empower others to move with confidence, freedom, and joy.
OPAL comes from the phrase Optimize Performance Achieve Longevity. Our vision is to inspire others to optimize their performance from daily activities to fitness and recreation goals never thought possible. We seek to help others achieve longevity by giving them the tools to move with purpose, vitality, and understanding in every season of life.
Our team consists of 3 physical therapists: myself, Dr. Magda Mitaszka, PT, DPT and Dr. Evan Jung, PT, DPT, and our amazing administrative assistant Natalie Barnes.
Our clinic is located in a health and wellness facility in Pflugerville with a small-group personal training gym called Bodies By Design and massage therapist Rebecca Alcava.
We serve our local community with one-on-one physical therapy and performance sessions, free educational workshops, and small-group movement classes. We also work with clients across the country and around the world with one-on-one remote movement coaching, free online webinars, and digital courses on different movement principles.
We love to educate and teach and we share a ton of free information on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
We specialize in meeting people where they are at and guiding them on their movement and fitness journey.
We are currently seeing clients every week, filming videos to share with the world, connecting with other providers and businesses in our local community, planning events like free injury screens and educational workshops, and working as a team to build an amazing brand, work culture, and environment for growth.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was unapologetically silly.
I wore giraffe print boots as a little girl until the age of 14 when my feet hurt too much to be squished into them. I came up with the most bizarre Halloween costumes–a bookworm, a bag of jelly beans, a bunch of grapes, a pinecone, a newspaper where all of the articles were about me doing my favorite things… I wore my cap and goggles (literally on my eyeballs) in the car to swim practice because I wanted to be prepared. I wore a Chiquita banana sticker on my forehead all summer (to this day I do not know why). I was obsessed with the letter W and named all sorts of things with W names like Willafredericks for my stuffed giraffe and Willis for my clarinet. I wrote Willis in big letters on my clarinet case and walked into middle school band with that bad boy in tow. I made up jokes that were not funny and my own words and wanted to save the whales. I played with all my toys and made up amazing cities in the living room with Legos, Playmobile, Breyer horses, and Polly Pockets all mixed together–much to my little sister’s dismay that I would let different toys comingle. I played in the yard and made up fantasy worlds around the eucalyptus tree that was out front and made a great mast for a ship. I loved science and animals and in eighth grade I studied the effects of different animal manures (from donkeys to pheasants) on the growth of radishes. I went all the way to the state science fair and won 3rd place.
Somewhere between the ages of 15 to 30, I stopped being silly. Or I buried it deep in my core under being high-achieving, responsible, resourceful, and focused. In the last 15 years I’ve had some glimpses. It bubbles up like laughter, Halloween costumes like Coach Cruella and the Bride of Frankenstein, themed-workouts, or random dance moves.
The older I get, the more I want to find that part of myself and unleash it again. But the more I think about it, the harder it is to find. I’m an eldest daughter and granddaughter, I’m an older sister, I’m a wife, I’m a business owner, I’m a boss, and I’m a healthcare provider. I’ve been called grounded, mature, and emotionally-level headed. Somewhere along the lines of my relationships and my career I squashed my ridiculous silliness. Maybe it seemed like I couldn’t be all those things the world needed me to be (or what I told myself it needed me to be) AND be creative, eccentric, and fun.
Here’s to changing that narrative in the next 15 years.
Do you remember a time someone truly listened to you?
In 2020, I was a student physical therapist on my 2nd clinical rotation in Lakeway, TX. Each week I had the opportunity to work with a 91 year old man who had a stroke 30 years prior. He drove into the clinic on his power scooter and dazzled the front desk and the rest of the staff. I quickly learned he really preferred talking and laughing to exercise, but he still politely appeased me and did what I asked with lots of commentary.
Fast forward 6 years, and I have the pleasure of visiting the same gentleman, now 97 years old, in his home to help him stay mobile and strong. He is one of the most unique and genuine humans I’ve ever met. When I say, “Hello! Happy Sunday,” he always says “Morgan, every day is a good day.”
A few months ago I came into his exercise room and he had a new mirror hanging up on the wall. I pointed it to it and he said, “I got a mirror so I can have better form on my exercises. The only problem is I keep falling in love all over again.”
He’s charming, funny, and has had an incredible life as a father, husband, civil engineer, and world traveler.
Every time I go to see him I feel heard. He looks me in the eye and asks about my parents, grandparents, husband, sister, etc. He asks about my business, my employees, and our skeleton George. He knows about all my interests–lifting weights, running, cooking, the possibility of improving my Spanish one day… When I talk to him, I feel like he truly cares and wants to know the answers to these questions. And he will follow up! If I tell him I’m going to show him a picture or send a follow up email that goes with my story, I better do it. He will remember.
He’s going to read this and ask me where his check is for all these valuable sessions we’ve been having over the years. I’ll see you next week!
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
About six months ago I made a video for Instagram on one of my pet peeves I refer to as “I feel it.”
How does your knee feel on those squats? “I feel it.”
How is your back doing with your deadlifts? “Oh, I feel it.”
How’s your neck doing on overhead presses? “Well, I feel it…”
At the time, I was motivated to make this video because I was seeing clients, gym members, friends, and family members trying to move through pain and I was frustrated. I want people in my life and community to be able to move pain-free.
We posted it to OPAL’s page and the next day I was warming up for the 6 am workout when one of my dear friends, who is a super fit 69 year old, told me she saw the video and it made her laugh because if she listened to her body and only moved when it felt good, then she would never be able to move and she’d be in our clinic all day.
It bugged me at the time and made me sad and upset with my profession, our healthcare system, and our societal beliefs around movement and pain. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I held onto these feelings over the last 6 months and I’ve finally been able to put new language around it.
I used to think I wanted people to be pain-free. Like me. But then I started to realize I’m not pain-free everyday. Even as a fit, super active, 30 year old, I still deal with pain almost every day. My back hurts when I sit for too long or I skip more than 1 day of working out. My neck hurts if I don’t do my daily mobility. My ankle gets pissy when I train for marathons and I skip my calf strength exercises. Sometimes I have nerve flares up that put me into fetal position and force me to go to bed at 8 pm.
Yet, if you were to ask me right now if I’m in pain everyday, my first reaction is still no. Because I have the tools to impact it. I know what to do if I tweak my back. I know what to do to calm down my nervous system. I know what to do if I overload a muscle in a workout and I need to rehab it back.
I realized I don’t want people to be pain-free. It’s unrealistic. I want to teach people everything I know so they too have the tools to reduce their pain, move around it, and find freedom and joy in movement everyday despite previous injuries, current problems, and future pain points.
I want to empower people to take action.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: When do you feel most at peace?
This is such a good question. I think my husband would say when I’m asleep (haha).
I love quiet mornings when the sunlight is drifting into our house and I’m working or reading in silence with my coffee. I love relaxing on the couch and snuggling with a cozy blanket.
But honestly? I think when I feel most at peace in the entire world is when I’m working out with my family. When I drink coffee in solitude I still get into my head too much. Movement keeps me in my heart instead.
I love putting together family workouts. My husband, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend are the OG crew because we all live in Austin and they have been coerced into enough holiday workouts that they now do family workouts with hardly any convincing.
I don’t have a lot of friends and the running joke is that most of my friends are related to me. So you can imagine, doing a family workout is like hanging with the best of friends doing my absolute favorite activity in the world. It brings me immense peace and for 40-60 minutes (or more depending on the theme) I get to just be present. The loudest thing in the room is my heart beating or the sweat trickling into my ear or my dad grunting and wheezing even though he’s in great shape (we’ve learned over the years he’s okay–he’s just loud). My mom always wants to listen to my “highschool rap.” There’s a point in every workout where the group hits a rhythm. The jokes and the complaints pause and everyone is moving through the workout and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this shared experience, our ability to move our bodies, and the opportunity to get stronger for our future selves.
I really love it. Next on deck for the fam will be a workout in March for my birthday. I hope they’re prepared because I’ve already had a few ideas pop into my head. xoxo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.opalmovementtherapy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/opalmovementtherapy/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/opal-movement-therapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/opalmovementtherapy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OPALMovementTherapy
Image Credits
Kade Fresco
