Dr. Maks Birikov, DPT. Manual therapy specialist. The practitioner Baltimore patients find after everything else has fallen short.
Doctor of Physical Therapy. Maryland licensed. The first master-certified dry needler in Baltimore and the only Functional Patterns practitioner in the city.
Request a ConsultationFull-hour, one-on-one sessions in Fells Point. No aides. No handoffs. No clock-watching.
He is not defined by a list of certifications. He is defined by what he does that most physical therapists do not: he finds what is actually wrong, explains it while he is finding it, and treats it with his hands.
He trained in the United States as a doctor of physical therapy, then pursued advanced study across manual therapy disciplines that are rarely taught together — dry needling at the master level, Functional Patterns biomechanics, global postural decompression through Pancafit, and Wim Hof Method breathwork. Each one added a layer of diagnostic precision the others could not provide on their own.
He treats with his hands first. He explains what he finds while he is finding it. Patients who have spent months in the dark about why they hurt tend to notice the difference immediately.
Most of the people who walk through this door have already been somewhere else. Conventional PT. Chiropractic. Massage. Sometimes all three. They are not here because those things are bad. They are here because those things did not work — and they are still in pain.
Dr. Birikov works with the patients others could not help, or did not try to hard enough. That is not a positioning statement. It is a description of who actually calls.
It is also why the practice is built the way it is. You cannot find the source of a problem in a 20-minute slot with a shared treatment room and a home exercise sheet waiting at the end. A full hour of direct, hands-on contact is not a luxury. It is the minimum the work requires.
Four firsts, across four different disciplines. Read together, they describe a practitioner who has consistently gone further than the standard of care required — because the standard of care was not enough.
Highly recommend!!
Supporting all of this: a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree, active Maryland licensure, and continuing advanced training across manual therapy, movement science, and breathwork.
Hundreds of them. Players from the Baltimore Ravens, the Orioles, and the Baltimore Blast have worked with Dr. Birikov. High-performance athletes require a different level of precision — small restrictions have large consequences when the demand on the body is that high.
Including opera singers passing through Baltimore on tour. Jaw tension, tongue tension, diaphragm restriction — these are not separate problems. They are one chain, and most providers treat only one link at a time. Dr. Birikov is one of the few practitioners in the country who understands vocal performance as a physical therapy problem.
Chronic pain, postural dysfunction, scoliosis, post-surgical restriction, sciatica, forward head posture, numbness and tingling, scar tissue, and movement dysfunction that has been present long enough that most providers have stopped looking for the cause. These are the cases this practice was built for.
The body is continuous. Fascia does not stop at the border of the muscle it wraps. A restriction in one region pulls on every region connected to it — which is most of them. Treating only the site of pain is the reason so many treatments produce only temporary relief.
A tight jaw can hold the tongue. The tongue can hold the diaphragm. A diaphragm that cannot move freely changes how the ribcage loads, which changes how the lumbar spine loads, which is where the pain shows up. The pain is real. The location is misleading.
That is the thesis of this practice: there is still a lot you do not know about your problem. That is not a criticism. It is the most honest explanation for why you are still in pain after doing everything you were told to do.
Every session is a full hour, one-on-one, with Dr. Birikov. Not a tech. Not an aide. Not a shared room. The entire hour is hands-on assessment and treatment, and what he finds in session one shapes every decision after it.
Physica Medica is an out-of-network practice by design. Insurance reimbursement structures determine session length, documentation requirements, and treatment frequency in ways that make thorough manual therapy nearly impossible to deliver. Staying out of network is not an inconvenience — it is what allows the work to be done properly. Many patients with PPO plans can submit for partial reimbursement; Dr. Birikov's office can provide a superbill upon request.
No referral is required. You do not need to be an existing patient to book a first appointment. If you have records, imaging, or prior treatment notes, bring them — they help. If you do not, an intake assessment will establish the baseline.
The studio is at 800 S Bond Street in Fells Point, Baltimore, MD 21231. Call 443-228-8029 or send a message describing what hurts and what has already been tried. Dr. Birikov reviews every inquiry personally and responds directly — not through a scheduling coordinator.
800 S Bond Street