you enjoy the sustainable rewards of a healthier life far more reliably than that spruiked during late night tele-commercials.
Before I Even Had a Name For It Intuitively, I have always believed ‘quick fixes’ in health were a dangerous oxymoron. After studying the mechanics and physiology of the human body, I further resolved that true healing and optimal health could not be offered through some sleek “drive-through” medical service.
“If your goal is to enjoy a lifetime of good health and vitality, make a commitment to invest in yourself with longevity.”
As a young graduate, I embarked on my profession with the intention to provide clients with optimal life-long physical health through innovative techniques that clients found easy to self-manage, were specifically tailored to their individuality, holistic in nature and affordable for the long-term. Today we call it our Results4Life philosophy, but back then it was just the right thing to do.
My launch of this new thinking in health was humble. I founded our first practice in the single carport of our half-renovated home, which I walled up with thin cladding with the help of a close friend. I bought an inexpensive massage bed and a second-hand ultrasound machine to equip the room. I could only afford a modest $372 for necessary therapeutic creams and gels in my otherwise bare room. I wanted to offer superior healthcare to local clients who I believed were in many ways being dis-serviced by a traditional and ineffective approach. The seed for the Back In Motion Health Group was planted.
My intention was to introduce people to true health and not just assist them in recovering from their immediate injury or pain. My picture for them was much bigger than even the clients captured in these early stages. Everything I did was based on strong scientific evidence and medical research, combined with an intuition that made sense to my clients. I was applying mainstream medical knowledge and the science of human movement in a creative way, despite the cautions of some colleagues that my approaches were unlikely to succeed. I wasn’t deterred from pursuing the promise of a more progressive healthcare solution. Clients needed better clinical outcomes with lasting results. It was time for a new way of thinking.
I committed to treating family, friends and their friends with a determination to achieve leveraged health and wellness. In turn, excited clients passed the word along that they were getting new and better results with what seemed only simple variations to their lifestyle decisions. Consequently I gained more clients. Within five months, I was receiving optimistic referrals from prestigious orthopaedic surgeons and highly respected local medical doctors who were astounded by my clients’ results.
Whatever we were yet to call it, it was working! People were feeling more empowered from day one and physically better within weeks. They were adopting my simple strategies for wellness, and were exceeding physical achievements they had previously given up on. Men and women. Young and old. Sporting and sedentary. Professional and blue collar. The principles of this unique philosophy seemed wholly transferable and consistently effective.
“They were adopting my simple strategies for wellness, and were exceeding physical achievements they had previously given up on.”
Within 8 months the practice outgrew the basic home facilities, and I relocated to larger professional premises. I was now on a mission. By the second year the practice had tripled in size, a team of like-minded physiotherapists had surrounded me and we were determined to scale this new approach to anyone who was in need.
I’m not sharing this history to chronicle my achievements. However, I do want to impress on you that the philosophy that proved so effective and novel in my garage all those years ago is still the same approach that underpins Australia’s largest and fastest growing physiotherapy health group today. Christened in 2006 with the namesake Results4Life, this philosophy I’m describing became a way of thinking and a culture amongst our physiotherapists. Our innovative service has empowered clients to achieve new results in health that previously didn’t seem possible with traditional approaches.
“I realised I couldn’t keep doing what everybody else was doing, if I wanted to achieve a result that nobody else was getting.”
Since launching our small practice I have lived and worked with an inquiring mind, always searching to uncover further secrets about how the body moves. I realised I couldn’t keep doing what everybody else was doing, if I wanted to achieve a result that nobody else was getting. When clients excelled in their recovery and went beyond their once confessed physical limitations I continuously sought answers, explanations and rationale that validated their incredible results. I always attempted to reverse engineer whatever benefits my clients claimed. I immersed myself in the detail for a number of years to unravel the rich woven tapestry of strategy and techniques that were positively changing people’s lives. What felt instinctively right at the beginning of my career soon became something I could prove was working. My discovery was a principled approach that could educate and motivate people to take charge of their own health and wellness on a much greater scale, and allow them to experience for themselves real results for life.
The Two Faces of Healthcare In most healthcare practices, the phone predominantly rings because someone is in pain. The caller may have initially tried to manage their injury or condition themselves to some extent, but without success or at least lasting results. In this instance, the client typically visits the practice for treatment and expects some degree of relief to their focal point of pain.
“What felt instinctively right at the beginning of my career soon became something I could prove was working.”
Under a traditional model of care, the therapist’s assessment, advice and intervention is characterised by wanting to please the client with immediate results. Typically they commence treatment with strategies to minimise the client’s pain, thereby making the client more comfortable in the short term. After a series of approx. 4-8 sessions over 2-3 weeks, normally the client would experience some measurable relief of their symptoms, albeit not total recovery. It is very common that at this point clients either instinctively discontinue treatment and wrongly assume natural recovery will continue shortly afterward or the therapist (unintentionally) misleads the client to believe the same by prematurely discharging them with the invitation to only re-attend if further problems develop.
Notably, because the emphasis of care under the traditional model is to reduce pain, very often the underlying cause of the problem remains largely undetected or unresolved. The results for the client are incomplete recovery with a false hope that any current symptom-relief will last, and injury re-aggravation when they resume normal activities. The actions of the therapist are mistaken to be in the client’s best interests because they are saving them money on “unnecessary” treatment and not imposing lifestyle changes the client may find intrusive or overly assertive. This situation ultimately reflects poorly on the expertise and intervention of the therapist and, worse, robs the client of any value in the time and money they have invested in their recovery to this stage.
Invariably, what follows this traditional model is a cycle of repeated episodes of treatment as the client experiences re-aggravation of their injury or recurring symptoms. On each of these occasions, if the therapist follows a similar approach of symptomatic treatment only, rendering incomplete recovery, the merry-go-round is perpetuated. If continued indefinitely, it is only a matter of time before the client concludes their treatment is ‘not working’, and opts for a second opinion from an alternate practitioner, or simply ‘cuts their losses’ and decides to live with the pain. The unending costs and inconvenience of perpetual treatment, understandably, become unsustainable for most people.
It’s also not uncommon for traditional therapists to typically prescribe appointment schedules based on such things as their
