“Running Repairs started at the finish. To be precise, at the finish of the Brighton marathon around a decade ago. I was watching in the Spring sunshine unaware that this was the beginning of my work and my life changing forever...
... As I watched the runners battle through that finishing stretch I was in awe. I cheered so much I was hoarse for days! I’ve always been a runner and have competed since primary school cross-country but I’d never tackled the ‘big one’. That was about to change. Within 24 hours I’d signed up for my first marathon, a race that ignited my passion for running rehab.
That started a journey of running and a journey of learning for me.
As I began training for my marathon, I pushed myself and was constantly keeping niggles at bay. I went on a runner’s forum to see how others were getting on and what I found shocked me.
There were so many runners managing injuries and all were struggling to find quality treatment. I searched online and everywhere I looked it was the same - poor advice, “must-do” stretches and foam rolling, multiple different opinions without any evidence behind them.
As a Physio I wanted to help all these runners, and I became a man on a mission! I spent hours answering question after question on the forum but with new queries arriving everyday I soon realised this wasn’t the answer. I needed to create something different, a home for quality, evidence-based advice on running injuries and running-physio.com was born.
I started writing an article on ITB syndrome - reviewing the evidence, using it with my running injury patients, and synthesising the research and practical application into a blogpost with advice on treatment and injury prevention. Article by article I covered all the key injuries I was seeing clinically.
There were injuries, complex problems and jargon that I was unfamiliar with, and I felt daunted by how much I needed to know. At the same time, I became determined to research all of these areas, use the research and my new knowledge with my patients, and share my knowledge with as many runners as possible.
I explored strength and conditioning, load management, training optimisation and psychosocial factors in injury, gaining knowledge and experience all the time.
As I researched and treated all sorts of running injuries, I found that the more I built my knowledge, the more I felt able to help runners in the clinic. I loved that feeling of having answers and solutions for them and constantly finding ways to get them back on track (literally and figuratively).
The results I was getting with injured athletes started to get noticed and I became the ‘go to guy’ for running injuries, seeing everyone from weekend warriors to international athletes.
My passion for treating running injuries grew and grew, fuelled by the clinical success extra knowledge was bringing.
Lots of people stick out in my memory from that time. An athlete who had been told by several people to stop running due to knee pain who I helped back to multiple marathons! A new runner who was exercising to lose weight and was stumped by shin pain who responded brilliantly and went on to tackle ultra-marathons. I’ve even helped world record holders come back to their best.
As my knowledge and passion grew I wanted to help fellow therapists get great results with athletes. I took what I learned and carefully shaped it into the first Running Repairs course which I presented in July 2014. It was an ambitious undertaking!
I wanted to cover all the key principles in managing running injury as well as how to treat all common pathologies we see in runners. With gait analysis, strength and conditioning and training load management to fit in too it was a full weekend but I loved every minute of it!