Read what GP's think to our corrective exercise course!

Angela Hill – Proprietor Dronfield Health & Therapy Clinic

As a long established private practice we are used to seeing a variety of conditions requiring ongoing rehabilitation. Quite often the patients do not continue with their rehab programmes and return for further treatment in the future. I recommend the Woodlands fitness centre for ongoing rehabilitation as the staff’s expertise and knowledge for rehabilitation with good stabilisation is excellent.

I can confirm that The Woodlands Fitness Centre at Sheffield road, Dronfield offer a structured corrective exercise service. The Corrective Exercise service can be used as a ‘preventative exercise’ programme that can prevent mild postural problems from becoming more pronounced and also as a rehabilitation tool to help with long term improved biomechanics after surgery and physiotherapy.

I have the confidence to refer many of my clients to the programme as part of their rehabilitation. Due to high standard of coaching and the level of support the programme provides many of my clients also adhere to exercise in the long term and take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing.

I can recommend the Six Week Corrective Exercise programme for people with postural dysfunctions and altered biomechanics and for those needing motivation to increase their activity levels.

Angela Hill
Senior Physiotherapist
BSc Hons MCSP

The Corrective Exercise Course - a Doctors Perspective

Back pain is a complaint we see so often in General Practice – most of us will suffer a significant episode at some point in our lives and it’s one of the most costly conditions to the country.

The British Medical Journal estimated last year that the overall cost of back pain, including time off work, lost production and treatments, was of the order of £5 billion per year. This is a staggering sum - equivalent to approximately 6% of the total NHS budget.

Whilst some back pain may be related to specific injury; degenerative or rheumatic conditions, many sufferers we see in clinical practice are troubled as a result of postural and mechanical problems that are associated with putting weight on, and our more sedentary lives. This type of pain will often become recurrent and without attention increasingly restricted mobility and less capacity to enjoy free movement becomes the ‘norm’ as poor posture habits set in. Poor posture can lead to overuse pain elsewhere, such as the knees, hips and neck.

For selfish reasons, I took an interest in the Corrective Exercise Course that Matt Sanderson was running at the Woodlands Fitness Centre in Dronfield. My working day is predominantly sedentary, and hours spent sitting through consultations; paperwork, computer and telephone calls were starting to have an adverse effect on my own back. An occasional Ibuprofen would help, but that’s not a cure – the writing was on the wall!

I met up with Matt and he explained to me the basics of the Woodlands course. A careful individual assessment first aims to identify which of the key muscles that contribute to good posture are in balance, or too much, or too little involved. As a result, a customised muscle-by-muscle programme of supervised stretches and exercises is then formulated, the intention being to relax the tight bits of us, and awaken the slack bits!

The common result is that it helps to get people straight, functional and pain free again. The programme originated in the USA – and has been adopted there by the NASM – the National Academy of Sports Medicine. The beauty of it is the logical, analytical, common sense approach - and the need for almost no equipment. The exercises use the weight of your own body as the challenge (quite sufficient thanks!) - and significant improvements can often be felt in the first session.

Performing the initial sessions under supervision is essential to ensure the exercises are being executed correctly but thereafter the programme can easily be continued by the individual to maintain progress. I was surprised to find a degree of improvement almost instantly, and pleased to learn techniques that could easily be followed to ease ‘bad back days’.

I’ve no doubt that this type of restorative training will become mainstream in the very near future, and with the increasing emphasis within the NHS on preventative medicine, corrective exercise must surely become prescribable in due course.

Keeping active keeps you feeling younger, and keeping active needs a good posture.

I’d recommend the corrective exercise course to anyone, but particularly those who are starting to creak or feel the screws – better balance and less pain is good for the soul!

Dr Miles Davidson

General Practitioner

Stubley Medical Centre

Dronfield Woodhouse