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Observations over the last 5 years

My observations from at least the past 5 years:

A lot of massage therapists try to fix muscular problems (without the training)

A lot of sports massage therapists try to treat sports injuries (without the training)

A lot of personal trainers try to treat sports injuries and give their clients a ‘quick rub down’ (without the training)

A lot of remedial massage therapists try to be sports therapists (without the training)

A lot of physiotherapists try to be sports therapists (without the training)

A lot of people claim to be sports therapists (without the training)

Which makes me wonder; 1) why aren’t people happy to work within their remit? 2) Why don’t people just train to be sports therapists?

Re: Observations over the last 5 years

Folk will always get involved in things they don't have the training for - for various reasons they get drawn into it and it happens in every profession. If nothing else, it's indicative of the fact that there is a gap to be filled that covers a broad range from dealing with day to day musculo-skeletal aches and pains experienced by the amateur sports person (or indeed, non-sporting individual), to improving elite sporting performance.

One of the main problems is that very few people know what Sports Therapy encompasses, or have even heard of it. Even though I've been involved in sport all my life, I'd never heard of it until I came across Active Health and I have to admit that I was initially very sceptical. Until it's explained, it's very difficult to see where it fits in alongside physiotherapy, which most people equally misunderstand and tend to see as a general 'cure-all' for muscular aches and pains, even though they are frequently disillusioned.

In my view, one of the most important roles for the STO is to educate people via the media. Until folk know what to expect, they won't be able to differentiate between practitioners and make the right choice for their particular circumstances. Secondly, I think the level of training required before anyone can call themselves a Sports Therapist needs to be increased and/or more clearly defined - not to 'degree level' I hasten to add, because this means very little nowadays and Sports Therapy is essentially a vocational discipline rather than an academic one (nothing wrong with that) - but to my mind it should include some sort of supervised 'on the job' experience with sports teams etc in the same way that physios have hospital experience.

Even though Sports Therapy is not a clinical discipline as such, the boundary will never be clear cut, so even trained therapists are going to find themselves drawn into grey areas, not least by their clients. Therapists need to understand how to work with and support clinicians at one end of the scale and coaches at the other. Unless this forms part of their training, there will be a lot of toe treading going on and sooner or later there will be the sort of publicity no-one wants. Get it right and it could save the NHS millions!

Michelle