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A specialist back assessment with Maiwand at Cleary's Boxing Gym, Whitnash, for people across Leamington Spa and Warwick who've had back pain for months or years and still don't have a clear answer.
It started as something you could work around. Now you plan your day around it: how long you can sit, whether you can lift the shopping, whether tonight will be another broken sleep. You may have been told the scan is fine, been given a sheet of exercises, or had treatment that helped for a week.
A short appointment was never going to get to the bottom of a problem that has built up over months. A complex back assessment gives it the time it needs: a full history, detailed movement and load testing, and a clear explanation of what's driving your pain, with an expert who sees back cases like your's day in day out.
Maiwand is an HCPC-registered physiotherapist who specialises in back pain and spinal rehabilitation. He spent around nine years in rehabilitation with the Ministry of Defence, and his own competitive martial arts career was ended by persistent back pain, so he knows what it's like from both sides.
He has completed all three McGill Method courses (Foundation, Assessment and High Performance Training), developed by Professor Stuart McGill from his research on back mechanics. It shapes how Maiwand tests your back: rather than guessing, he finds the movements, positions and loads that provoke your pain and the ones that settle it, then builds your plan around them.
"Maiwand really listened and took time to understand what was happening, which put me at ease. The assessment was great, really comprehensive, and identified a couple of things I haven't been told before. The explanation of what was going wrong and the programme he put together to fix it was fantastic."
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A full history, then testing to find exactly what provokes your pain and what eases it: how you sit, bend, lift and move, where the strength is missing, and what else in your week is loading your back. You'll leave with a plain-English explanation of what's going on.
Changes you can make straight away to calm things down: the positions, movements and pacing that suit your back right now, plus hands-on treatment where it helps.
Not a sheet of twelve exercises you'll abandon by Thursday. We work out what actually matters, how little of it you can get away with, and where it fits — while the kettle boils, before the school run, in front of the telly. If you hate the gym, we won't send you there.
Progressive strength and capacity work in our performance gym at Cleary's, so your back copes with work, sport and lifting again. This is the stage that decides whether you're back here in six months.
A written summary after every session, your programme in an app with video for each exercise, and somewhere to ask when something doesn't feel right. Nothing left to memory, and no waiting a fortnight to find out whether a twinge matters.
Every option includes a detailed back assessment using current, evidence-based testing, an explanation of what's going on, and a plan.
The longer appointments give more time for testing, treatment and building your programme. If you're not sure which to book, call us and we'll help you choose.
History, back assessment, diagnosis, first treatment and a plan. Suits back pain that's been around for a few weeks or keeps flaring.
Adds full load and provocation testing, strength and movement profiling, and time to talk through what's kept it going. Suits pain lasting over three months or several problems at once.
Everything in the complex assessment, plus your programme coached in our gym so you leave knowing exactly how to do it. Suits long-standing pain and anyone getting back to sport or heavy work.
Follow-up appointments are booked as you need them. We'll give you a realistic picture of how many at the first appointment. We offer discounts for block bookings of over 5 sessions.
Low back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide. NICE recommends exercise and support to self-manage as first-line care, and doesn't recommend routine scans unless there are warning signs.
Scan findings often don't match pain: the same changes show up in many people with no pain at all. So we treat how your back is behaving, not just what a scan shows.
Approaches that combine making sense of your pain with graded movement have produced large, lasting improvements in persistent back pain. That's the thinking behind every plan Maiwand builds.
Back pain rarely comes on its own. These are the problems we see most often alongside it.
