Due to the coronavirus lockdown, I’ve sadly had to close my clinic in Liverpool Street. However, treatment is absolutely continuing – just online instead of in clinic.
It’s really important to me that my patients don’t lose momentum with their recoveries, and I’ve therefore put together a number of solutions to make sure that I can carry on providing the best treatment possible during the pandemic period.
Online physiotherapy
Whether you’ve been to see me before or not, you may have noticed from my blog that when I’m in clinic, I use my hands a lot to assess and treat – especially at the start of a course of treatment.
BUT, as my past and current patients know, the VITAL thing that truly allows you to get rid of your pain, and to keep it away, is the rehab exercises that you do in between appointments to continue to progress. So even with online treatment, I can still provide about 80% of the benefit that I can in clinic.
During the lockdown, I’ve been training with England rugby physio Dave O’Sullivan, learning how to convert my existing physio skills into the online arena, and I’ve been practising with a handful of patients and other therapists.
You can read more about my switch to online physio here; and please contact my team on 0207 175 0150 or email them at help@nellmead.com to arrange your online physio sessions.
Online physio plus the Mobiliser
If you had physio with me in my Sun Street days then I might well have introduced you to the Mobiliser bed, invented by my friend David Newbound of Back in Action. I’ve been a huge Mobiliser fan for years – it’s essentially a fold-up mattress with motorised knobbly rollers; you lie on it and the rollers roll up and down under your body. It stretches out your joints and massages your muscles – in fact it’s the next best thing to having a physio in your house.
I have a Mobiliser at home with me; and so if you hire one from David during this period, I can go through the best way to use it to help you with your condition, in conjunction with online physio. You can read more about my collaboration with Back in Action and the Mobiliser here.
Pre-recorded exercises
The pandemic and lockdown are – unsurprisingly – stressful; and switching from an ergonomic workstation to a laptop on the sofa at home is less than ideal. It’s not surprising that people are starting to contact me saying they’re sore!
I have created several courses and routines that may help you during this period, but the two I think most likely to be relevant are Yoga for Stressed People, and Stretches for Home Based Workers. During the lockdown, all of my courses have been reduced to half price, if you use the discount code STUPIDCORONAVIRUS at checkout. You can read more about them here.
Other things to do during the lockdown
I have a bunch of lovely friends who have been putting together things to do, read and listen to during the lockdown, including personal trainers, Pilates instructors and yoga teachers offering online sessions, books on how to help each other through difficult times, and uplifting podcasts. I’m doing my best to keep this post updated but please do let me know if you have anything else you feel would be useful or fun!
I’m also working on…
Because more people are telling me they’re sore as a result of the switch to working from home, I’ve also been working on a presentation and talk to deliver live over Zoom to groups of office workers. This will help the home based workers, and will also help HR managers and Occupational Health directors meet their duty of care to home-working staff. It’ll be a 20-minute presentation with a 15-minute Q&A session at the end, accompanied by a resource sheet. To book that for your company, please email my team with your requirements and we will get it in the diary.
And then there’s the book I’ve been promising to write for the past couple of years… I’ve started honestly… and maybe during this period, my guide to injury treatment and prevention might become a reality. Watch this space!