Why My Myotherapy Clinic Is Inside a Gym (And Why That Changes Everything For You)
By George Fallaw, Clinical Myotherapist & Personal Trainer
Most people have done this dance before.
You go and see someone about your shoulder. They work on it for 45 minutes. It feels great. They hand you a printed sheet with four exercises on it, tell you to do them three times a week and book you in for a fortnight’s time.
You get home. The sheet goes on the fridge. You do the exercises twice, sort of…with a band you found in a drawer. You are not sure if you are doing them right. Nothing hurts, so you assume they’re fine. Two weeks later you walk back in and the shoulder is exactly where it was.
That is not your fault. That is a handover problem.
The treatment table and the gym floor are two different worlds and almost nobody works in both. So the therapist fixes the tissue, hands you a piece of paper and hopes. The trainer builds the program, but has no idea what is actually going on in the joint. You are stuck in the middle doing translation work nobody trained you for.
I got sick of it. So I put my clinic inside a gym.
I am a Clinical Myotherapist AND a Personal Trainer
This is the bit that matters and I want to be clear about it because a lot of people skim past it.
I hold both qualifications. Clinical Myotherapy on one side, Personal Training on the other. Every week I see a specialist strength coach in person twice and receive a weekly Myotherapy treatment myself. This is on-going and up to date professional development…. every damn week.
I am not a massage therapist who reads a lot of strength content on Instagram and I am not a trainer who did a weekend course in taping.
I have also spent my own life under load. Competitive sprinting, IFBB and ICN physique shows, powerlifting meets, football, athletics, marathons. I have been the guy with the cranky hip trying to squat anyway. I know exactly what it feels like to be told to “rest it” when resting it is the last thing you want to hear.
That combination means I can do something a lot of practitioners cannot. I can treat you, then walk you twenty metres onto a gym floor and load the exact movement we just worked on, while I watch. Afterwards you receive videos of said movements and are expected to log them in a fancy rehab app 🙂
What that actually looks like
Say you come in with lower back pain that flares up when you deadlift.
In a normal clinic: I release your hip flexors, do some joint mobilisation, give you three activation drills on a sheet, and tell you to go easy on deadlifts for a bit. You leave. I find out how it went in a fortnight, based on your description of it, which is filtered through your memory and your optimism.
In my room at Carbon Gym:
- I assess and treat. Hip flexors, glutes, the diaphragm, whatever the pattern is telling me.
- We walk out to the floor. Right then. Same session.
- I put a bar in your hands and I watch you hinge. Not a video you send me later. Live, in front of me.
- I coach the pattern while your body is still switched on from the treatment. This is the window where things actually change.
- I write the loading for the next four weeks based on what I just saw, not what I assumed.
- You train in the same building I work in. I see you. I can grab you mid set and fix something before it becomes a six week problem.
Point four is the one I would underline if I was allowed to underline things. Reflex Activation work has a window (see other areas of my site for full explanation of what that is).
If you do the drill on your bedroom floor at 9pm on a Tuesday, four days after we worked together, you have missed it. Doing it under load, in the same hour, while I am watching is a completely different intervention.
Rehab plans that get monitored, not just written
Anyone can write a rehab plan. Writing one is easy. The plan is not the product.
What actually gets people better is somebody checking whether the plan is working and changing it when it isn’t. That requires seeing you regularly. Which requires being where you are.
Because I am in the gym, I can:
- Watch your technique on the actual exercises in your program, not a substitute you’re doing at home
- Progress or regress the load week to week based on what your body and posture is doing, not on a template
- Catch the compensation pattern creeping back in before you feel it
- Adjust the program if a session flares something up, same day
The most common problem I see from lifters is pain front of their shoulder – usually brought about through improper pressing technique. Many clients are stressed they have ‘torn their rotator cuff’ or need a lengthy amount of time out of the gym… just when they were starting to feel and look better. I see this SO often and it is such an easy fix.
Learning how to do pressing properly inside of carbon gym during our appointment means that client won’t reinjure themselves there and therefore won’t need a myriad of treatments.. This is because we have addressed the root cause and eliminated it. If they’re unable to press with proper form, we address the postural issues holding this back and still allow them to train upper body and I give prescription on what exercise won’t razz it up.
Seeing the stress drop off my clients body when I tell them to keep training and just tweak their form is the most beautiful thing to describe. Your injury is not a death sentence, there is so much we can do around it!
Constant stimulation, not occasional annihilation
I say this to my training clients all the time and it applies here just as hard.
A 60 minute treatment every three weeks is occasional annihilation. It feels amazing. It changes very little.
Small, correct and consistent inputs. That is what shifts a body. Ten minutes of the right reflex activation before your session, four days a week, will beat an hour on the table every three weeks. Every. Single. Time.
Being inside a gym is what makes the consistent version possible. You are here anyway. Come see me for twenty minutes. Do the thing properly. Go and train.
Recovery is in the same building too
Carbon Gym has a recovery zone on site, the Dopamine Lab, with an infrared sauna and ice baths.
That means when I tell you to get some heat through an area or to manage inflammation after a heavy block, you are not being sent off to find a facility somewhere across town. It’s fifty metres away. The instruction and the means to follow it are in the same postcode, which sounds like a small thing and absolutely is not. Nobody follows advice that is inconvenient.
Who this is for
You are a good fit for what I do if:
- You have a nagging pain that comes back every time you go hard
- You want to perform better in your corporate role and your posture and neck pain is killing your productivity
- You have been given exercises before and you either didn’t do them or didn’t know if you were doing them right
- You want to keep training THROUGH the issue rather than sit on the couch for six weeks
- You are an athlete, a lifter, a fighter or just a person who wants their body to work properly
You are probably not a fit if you want a 60 minute relaxation massage and nothing else. I do remedial work and I do it well, but the whole point of this setup is that treatment and training are one conversation, not two. I also treat quite heavy handedly with firm pressure, if this is not what you’re after thats okay – there are other people more suited 🙂
Where to find me
I’m at 21-31 The Boulevard, Norlane, inside Carbon Gym. If you’ve never been, it’s a martial arts and fitness facility with a lifting floor, striking and grappling studios and a recovery zone.
It’s where I’ve built my practice for exactly the reasons above.
You do not need to be a Carbon Gym member to see me. Come in, get assessed and let’s find out what’s actually going on.
