Introducing me…
I guess I should start this blog by introducing myself to you guys and explain how and why I am where I am now. Where to start is something I always struggle with when trying to write anything down, but I guess the beginning is a good place to start.
So that is what I am going to do. As young child I was always both clumsy and athletic. Anything from dance and ice skating to athletics at school, I was always taking part in various sports. In addition to this, the perks of having a younger brother is that we were always doing things and I quickly got to a point where I was participating in every sport going. However, it was not until I was doing my A-levels I found an interest in the behind the scenes of sports. The initial interest came after my own personal experience of injury and in combination with seeing injuries occurring when watching sport.
Anyone who knows me will also point out I have a slight obsession with Ice Hockey. Thanks to growing up around the sport and spending most Saturday nights since being a child sat in Block 11 at the Nottingham arena (it’s had a lot of names over the years!) and as you can imagine I saw a lot of injuries occur over that time.
Naturally, this all fell into place with me wanting to further my knowledge of athletic performance whilst always being fascinated with the human body. So, this led me to deciding on Sports Therapy as a pathway for my future, which turned out to be 100% the right decision. When in my second year at university, I got a placement that I never saw coming. This was at The Nottingham Panthers IHC, my childhood team that I had been introduced to through my grandparents as a young child. I also had possibly the worst injury I have ever had that was the end of my athletic career. 18 months on and both my left hip and lumbar spine are still not friends with me and probably never will be! This occurred during a rowing race down in Peterborough where I got my blade caught in a rock, causing me to get stuck in that position as the rest of the boat carried on. Stubbornly I carried on and trained for weeks before I saw someone (please don’t do this!) and it had a massive effect on my emotional wellbeing whilst trying to carry on like there was nothing wrong and I wasn’t in pain.
Going through this gave me the perspective to see how much goes into injury recovery and how important it is to look past the biological aspect of injury into what makes up a person both psychologically and socially. This lead me to wanting to be able to help others that were going through the same thing that I felt and try to find a way to help them, in dealing with the psychosocial factors that affect them when returning from injury. It naturally lead into me choosing this area of research for my undergraduate thesis and diving in depth into the psychological implications of injuries.
That has led me to where I am now, recently graduated from the University of Derby with a 1st Class Honour in BSc Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation (2020) fully accredited by the Society of Sports Therapist. Embarking on the journey of starting my own business to help with everyone aches and pains as well as getting people active and moving.
If you’d like to follow more of my daily life, you can find me on social media linked below!
- Amy
