It’s February already… The year’s got off to a flying start – the busiest ever January and Feb looking just the same. Plenty of new interesting cases coming on board – and some I can’t take on too.

Why? Well, part of the skill of being a good practitioner is knowing when NOT to treat, as well as when and how to treat. I’ve recently referred on a couple of clients and enquiries where I’ve felt they’d be better served by someone with expertise that I don’t have. Some practitioners get stuck in regardless – and we all end up being tarred with the same brush when it all goes wrong.

I’ve had a taster session in Pilates recently – very interesting – for me personally – having someone look at my posture with a fine toothcomb rather than me doing it to them! and also professionally as some of my clients would benefit greatly from learning Pilates. It’s an excellent way of improving core strength – teaching your body how to support itself correctly after injury/imbalance/years of poor posture.

The best way to start is to find a tutor who will do one-2-one sessions first so they can best assess your needs, rather than a class with mixed abilities and needs. When time permits I will try and practice what I preach and continue with some more sessions.

Alexander technique

I’m shortly going to be finding out more about the Alexander Technique too – another method of assessing the body for strengths/weaknesses and I guess finding ways of correcting them. I don’t know anymore about it at this point – so I’ll write more when I do!

A couple of friends ‘persuaded’ me it’d be a good idea to try an Aquathon last weekend – it’s a swim followed by a run – not great distances for either (500m swim/5k run), so I thought why not… It was -8 when I left home at 06.50 Sunday morning, and -5 when I set out for the run – in a soaking wet costume and dripping wet hair. In fact I followed a woman with icicles hanging off her hair at one point!

It wasn’t a huge event – there were only about 17 entries (I wonder why?), and I certainly didn’t enter it to be competitive. I’ve only swum 3 times this year, and am pretty much cruising when I go out for a run once a week at the moment, so I hadn’t trained at all. I was glad to finish and it was nice to do something completely different for a change. Strangely I quite enjoyed it.

Team triathlon

I’m thinking of entering a triathlon in May – but am on the look out to recruit someone else to do the cycle bit – to enter as a team. I’ll do the swim/run bit, and maybe get a bit of proper training in this time. By then it shouldn’t be so ridiculously cold either, my lungs felt like they were being force-fed dry ice on Sunday!

I’ve been planning my marketing/advertising activity for the year too – I’ll be doing post-event massage at a few sports events local to the clinics – the Three Counties Challenge cycle event in July, the Wensleydale Triathlon in Aug, and maybe the Yomp in June although that’s not confirmed yet. Nice to have the chance to watch others put themselves through it…! The Hawes clinic doesn’t need much marketing at the moment – it’s become so busy I’m doing an extra ½ day over there which is fantastic.

I need to decide what CPD (training) I’m going to do this year – probably a 2 day course looking at Anatomy Trains. Nothing to do with diesel engines, its all about the dynamic connections between the different parts of the body and how connective tissue transmits forces and loads from one part to another. This links in very nicely with the way I assess clients in terms of compensatory movement patterns – and explains how injury/dysfunction can lead to over-loading within the musculoskeletal system – often in areas that can seem detached from the original problem area.

That’s enough for now, I’m off to nurse my aching bones before the clinic starts this evening.