The Unique ProSport Approach Has Been Used With And Trusted By...
The ProSport Physio Approach:
An Alternative Method For People Whom Traditional Approaches Have Failed
The beauty of Physiotherapy is there are many ways to help people recover and reach their goals. At ProSport Physiotherapy, our approach was forged through years of working with professional athletes who demanded complete solutions to perform at the highest level.
My journey began with a pivotal moment working with professional rugby. I watched two international players retire early despite receiving the best traditional physiotherapy treatment available. This experience hit me hard and sparked a decade-long quest to truly understand how the human body works - not just in textbooks, but under the extreme demands of sport and daily life.
Working with elite athletes revealed that our bodies are incredibly complex systems where everything is connected. An injury isn't just a localised problem - it changes how your entire body moves and functions.
What emerged was a unique approach that helps people not just recover, but often perform better than before their injury. While developed in professional sports, we've refined these methods to help athletes and non sporting people at all levels in Huddersfield who refuse to accept mediocre solutions or be held back by traditional approaches.
Our goal is simple: to help you return to what you love doing, with a body that's stronger, more resilient, and performing at its absolute best.
This is the ProSport Approach…
Understanding Pain and Movement
Pain Isn't Always What You Think
One of the most important things we've learned from working with thousands of elite athletes and non-sporting patients is that pain doesn't always mean damage. Often, pain is your body's warning system telling you that something isn't working quite right.
Think of it like your car's check engine light:
Your body works the same way. When it senses something isn't right, it might:
These are protective responses - your body's way of putting on the brakes. The problem is, these protective responses often stick around longer than needed.
Why Your Body Changes How It Moves
When you experience pain, injury or even just increased stress in a particular area or indeed on your whole ‘system’, your body creates backup plans - different ways of moving to protect itself. We call these "movement adaptations." Imagine:
These adaptations help in the short term but potentially can contribute to other problems if they stick around too long. They're like taking a detour around road construction - helpful temporarily, but you wouldn't want to drive that route forever. Think of it like your Google Maps needs updating to let it know, the road construction is over and it is safe to use the original route again.
The Hidden Cost of These Changes
These movement adaptations (or maladaptive strategies) come with a price:
- Some muscles or specific parts of the muscles work too hard
- Others don't work enough
- Your body loses its natural efficiency
- Movement becomes less smooth and coordinated
Over time, this can create a cycle where:
- The original problem might heal
- But your body keeps using these backup movements
- This puts stress on other areas
- Potentially contributing to new problems in the future.
You may not even have any pain but notice that something ‘just isn’t quite right’ or a lot more ‘effort’ to do certain things that it once used to.
In fact, you may not even notice any particular changes at all for years until all of a sudden you need to increase the load requirements on these tissues again, such as training for a marathon and your volume of running increases. From our experience, this is when these previous injuries may come back into play again.
Why Force Control Matters More Than Strength
When most people think about rehabilitation, they focus on getting the injured muscle stronger. But here's something crucial that most people miss: muscles never work alone. Every movement you make requires multiple muscles working together as a coordinated team.
Think of it like a rowing crew. Each rower needs to:
- Pull their own weight
- Time their movements perfectly with teammates
- Adjust their power based on what others are doing
- React and adapt to changes instantly
Your muscles work the same way. When one muscle gets injured, it's not just about making that muscle stronger - it's about helping it rejoin the team and work smoothly with all the other muscles again.
If your body is taking a detour around certain movements because it doesn't feel safe, trying to strengthen those movements is like trying to train one rower while the rest of the crew is using a completely different rhythm. You need to get the whole team working together first.
Each of these requires your body to precisely control force - not too much, not too little, just right.
This one point alone is very often why people travel from all over the world to see us who have failed traditional approaches and done all the strength work, yet are still in pain.
Understanding Force Steadiness
This is where force steadiness becomes crucial. Force steadiness is your body's ability to coordinate multiple muscles and precisely control movement. Think about these examples:
Each of these activities needs more than just strength - they need precise teamwork between muscles. Some muscles need to increase their effort while others decrease, all coordinating seamlessly to produce smooth, controlled movement.
This point above is why our rehab exercises initially can often look very different to most other physio approaches. Strength is still very important but we need to get these things right prior but we can really take the ‘handbrake’ off and load up the muscles.
When The Team Falls Apart
After injury, pain or even just increased stress on a muscle for a prolonged period of time, this muscle teamwork often breaks down:
- Some muscles start working too hard to compensate
- Others become lazy and don't contribute enough
- The timing between muscles gets disrupted
- Smooth movements become jerky and uncoordinated
It's like a rowing crew where:
- Some rowers are pulling too hard
- Others barely putting in effort
- The timing is off
- The boat moves inefficiently through the water
This explains why even after pain improves, movement often doesn't feel "quite right" and problems can keep coming back or they just feel like a lot more ‘effort’ than they used to be.
How The ProSport Physiotherapy Treatment Approach Rebuilds Natural Movement And Restores ‘Thoughtless, Fearless, Movement’
Our approach is different because we focus on restoring proper muscle teamwork before building strength. We do this in four key ways:
Think again about how Google Maps reroutes you when there's construction ahead. Your nervous system does something similar when it thinks movement isn't safe - it creates a detour. Even after the original problem heals, your body might keep taking that detour because it doesn't know the main road is clear again.
Our hands-on treatment helps:
- Show your nervous system the original route is safe
- Update your body's "GPS" about what movements are okay
- Reset overprotective responses that aren't needed anymore
- Restore confidence in natural movement patterns
This is why our hands-on treatment feels different. We're not just pressing on sore spots - we're having a conversation with your nervous system, helping it feel safe to move normally again.
Once your nervous system feels safer, we need to help your muscles remember how to work together. Imagine getting that rowing crew back together after a long break - they need to practice in very specific ways to rediscover their coordination and timing.
We use unique rehabilitation exercises and put your body in positions that:
- Give your muscles no choice but to work together
- Take away common cheats and compensation patterns
- Force the team to communicate and coordinate
- Help rebuild natural movement patterns
This is why our exercises might look different from what you're used to. We're not just making muscles stronger - we're teaching them how to play together again.
Often we can have professional athletes who are the ‘strongest’ in the gym at squats and deadlifts ‘sweating like babies’ with some of these simple movements in seconds :)
Think of your body's tolerance for activity like a dimmer switch for lights. After injury or pain, that switch often gets turned way down. The trick isn't to flip it straight back to full brightness - that could potentially trip the circuit breaker and put you back at square one.
Instead, we gradually turn up the dimmer:
- Start with movements your body can just about manage
- Slowly increase the challenge when your body shows it's ready
- Build confidence at each level before moving up
- Never jump so far that we trigger protective responses
This gradual progression ensures you ‘earn the right’ to progress and never skip steps which often causes ‘flare ups’ or ‘setbacks’. This step by step approach:
- Keeps your nervous system feeling safe
- Allows muscles to build better coordination
- Develops strength you can actually use
- Creates lasting changes that stick
And if you do get greedy and try to progress too quickly like some of our naughty patients (especially you runners!! You know who you are :) )...
- Old protective patterns / reroutes might kick back in
- Muscles might revert to their compensation strategies
- Movement quality could break down even though ‘strength’ increases
- Progress could stall or reverse
By following this sequence and respecting your body's responses, we help you build back better than before. The end result isn't just strength - it's a natural, confident movement that you can rely on. Or as a famous physiotherapist, Louis Gifford, once said: “Thoughtless, fearless, movement”. That is our end goal with every patient.
Getting muscles to work together in controlled exercises is one thing. But real-world function isn't just about your muscles - it's about your whole body's ability to handle stress and load. Whether you're playing sports, working long hours, or managing a busy family life, your body needs to cope with all kinds of demands.
Think of your body like a bucket that can hold a certain amount of stress:
- Physical stress from exercise and activity
- Mental stress from work or life pressures
- Environmental stress from poor sleep or nutrition
- Emotional stress from daily challenges
When your bucket is too full, even simple movements can become difficult and painful. This is why we look at the bigger picture:
Managing Your Body's Stress Bucket
Just like an athlete preparing for competition, we may need to:
This matters because:
Real-World Movement
Once we understand your total stress load, we can bridge to real-life movements. Unlike controlled exercises, real life is fast and unpredictable. Whether you're playing sports, chasing kids around, or just reaching quickly for something you dropped - your body needs to be ready.
Think about learning to drive. You start in empty parking lots where everything is controlled. But eventually, you need to handle busy streets where things change quickly and you need to react without thinking.
Making It Work in Real Life
This isn't about completely changing your lifestyle. Instead, we help you:
For example:
The Final Piece:
Building Resilience
True resilience isn't just about being strong or having perfect movement. It's about:
We help you develop:
What Success Looks Like
When you put all these pieces together, you get:
- Freedom to move without fear
- Confidence in your body's capabilities
- Better performance in daily life
- Tools to handle future challenges
You'll know you're successful when:
- Movement feels natural again
- You don't think about old injuries
- You handle stress better
- You recover faster from activity
Our Ongoing Support
While our goal is to make you independent, we're always here to:
This creates lasting results because:
The end result isn't just getting back to normal - it's being better equipped for life's demands than ever before.
That is the ProSport Approach.