Myos & Motus

Morning stiffness is one of the most common things people mention when they come in - and one of the most misunderstood.

Most people assume it means something is wearing away, degenerating, or breaking down overnight. It doesn’t.

Here’s what’s actually happening. When you’re still for a prolonged period, synovial fluid redistributes around the joint, and the surrounding soft tissues lose some of their elasticity as they cool down. Your nervous system has also been in a low-demand state all night. The stiffness you feel when you first move is your body waking up - not a sign of damage.

The fact that it eases within 20-30 minutes of moving around is actually reassuring. Damage doesn’t ease off with movement. This does.

The right response is to move through it - gently, not aggressively. A short walk, light movement, a hot shower. Not more rest.

If your stiffness is severe, lasts more than an hour, or is getting progressively worse over time, that is worth getting looked at - particularly to rule out anything inflammatory. But for most active people, it’s your body warming up. That’s all.

If you’re a footballer and you’ve been stretching your hip flexors for months without it making any difference, this is for you.

Hip flexor tightness is one of the most complained-about things I see in footballers. And the go-to answer is always the same - stretch it, foam roll it, hold it for 30 seconds before training.

But here’s the thing: if your hip flexors feel tight, stretching isn’t always the answer. In a lot of cases, that feeling of tightness isn’t actually about muscle length. It’s the hip flexor working too hard because something else in the chain isn’t doing its job.

The glutes, the core, the posterior chain - if those aren’t switching on properly, your hip flexors pick up the slack. They’re always on. And a muscle that’s always working feels tight - not because it’s short, but because it’s overloaded.

So the fix isn’t to stretch the muscle doing all the work. It’s to load the ones that aren’t.

That means training the hip flexor in a lengthened position under load - split squats, step-ups, exercises where it actually has to work rather than just being pulled on passively.

If you’re dealing with persistent hip flexor tightness and the stretching isn’t touching it, come and see me. We’ll look at what’s actually going on and build you something that fixes it properly.

Link in bio.

Some people picture whale music and a light touch. That’s not what I do.

Sports massage is clinical, targeted soft tissue work. It’s designed to do a specific job on specific structures - and it’s uncomfortable in places, because that’s how you know it’s working on something real.

Here’s what it’s actually useful for. When you train or compete regularly, muscles accumulate tension and fatigue that doesn’t fully clear between sessions. Recovery slows, movement quality drops, and areas that are chronically overloaded start to feel tight or sore. Sports massage works directly on that - reducing tension in overloaded tissue, improving how the muscle moves through its range, and helping the body recover faster between sessions. That could be between two football matches in a weekend, before a big race, or just after a heavy training block that’s left you feeling like you can barely move.

It also helps identify areas you didn’t even know were a problem. You’d be surprised how often I find significant restriction in a place the client hasn’t mentioned at all - usually because they’ve been compensating for it for so long it doesn’t register as pain anymore.

What it won’t do is fix a structural problem on its own. If there’s an underlying issue driving the tension - a movement fault, a load management problem, a nerve that needs addressing - massage treats the symptom but not the cause. That’s why when I think there’s more going on, I say so, and we bring in exercise rehab alongside the hands-on work.

If you’re training regularly and not getting regular soft tissue work, you’re leaving recovery on the table.

📍 Bannatyne’s Norwich📍 Sugg’s gym, Wymondham - link in bio to book

If you’ve ever been given a rehab programme and thought “this can’t actually be doing anything” - you’re not alone. And honestly, I get it. When you’re used to training hard, a banded clam shell or a slow terminal knee extension doesn’t feel like progress.

But here’s why it’s there.

When tissue is injured or irritated, it goes through distinct healing phases. In the early stages, that tissue is fragile - not because you’re weak, but because the biological process of repair is still underway. Push too hard too early, and you disrupt that process and set yourself back. Load it correctly, and you accelerate it.
Early rehab exercises are deliberately low-load. They’re not easy because your physio doesn’t know what they’re doing - they’re easy because that’s precisely the stimulus the tissue needs right now. You’re not training fitness, you’re training tissue quality and neuromuscular control at a level the body can actually respond to without flaring up.

The clam shell isn’t the end point. It’s the first rung of the ladder.

If your programme is designed correctly, those exercises get harder over time - more resistance, more speed, more sport-specific demand. Within a few weeks you should be doing something that actually challenges you. That progression is the whole game.
Here’s where people go wrong: they feel a bit better, assume they’re fixed, stop doing the exercises, and then wonder why it comes back three weeks later. The tissue felt better before it had the capacity to cope with normal activity again. You pulled the ladder away before you reached the top.

If you’ve been doing rehab exercises for more than three or four weeks and they haven’t progressed at all - that’s when to push back and ask your physio what the progression looks like. A good programme should always be moving forward.

And if you’ve been given exercises you don’t
understand the point of, DM me. I’m always happy to explain the why behind it.

📍 Based in Norwich - Bannatyne’s and Wymondham 🔗 Link in bio to book

If your groin keeps getting tight every time you play, and your solution is to stretch it out before the game and hope for the best - this is for you.

I see this constantly. Adductor tightness, the odd groin strain that you tape up and play through, maybe a week off here and there, and then it keeps coming back. And every time it does, it’s just a little worse off.

Here’s what’s actually happening. When you strain your adductors - even mildly - the tissue needs time and the right kind of loading to fully recover. If you just rest it and go back to playing, the muscle never fully rebuilds the capacity it had before. So the next time you go into a sprint, a tackle, a long cross-field pass, the tissue is being asked to do more than it’s currently capable of. And it gives way. Again.

Stretching doesn’t fix this. You can stretch a muscle that isn’t strong enough to cope with the load you’re putting through it all day long - it’s not going to change anything.

What actually works is progressive loading. You need to gradually build the strength and capacity of the adductors so they can handle the demands of football - sprinting, changing direction, kicking - without constantly getting overloaded. That means a programme. Not just rest, not just a stretch. An actual plan.

The longer you leave it, the more ingrained the pattern becomes, and the harder it is to shift.

If your groin has been an issue for more than a few weeks, it’s worth getting it properly looked at. I do a free pain assessment - no commitment, no obligation - just a proper look at what’s going on and a clear plan for what to do about it. Link in bio.

“I’ll wait and see if it settles.”

We hear this every week - and we get it. Life is busy. You don’t want to waste anyone’s time.

But here’s the thing: pain that’s been hanging around for weeks or months is almost always harder to shift than pain that gets looked at early.

What starts as a small ni**le can become: → Compensatory movement patterns → Muscle weakness from guarding → A longer, more involved rehab process
Catching it early usually means: ✅ Fewer sessions ✅ Faster return to what you love ✅ Less chance of it becoming a recurring problem

You don’t need to be in agony to come in. If something doesn’t feel right - that’s enough.

📍 Myos & Motus - book via link in bio

The first 48–72 hours after pain starts can make or break your recovery ⏱️

Here’s what actually helps - and what makes things worse:
❌ AVOID:

Complete rest (movement is medicine)

Ignoring it and pushing through regardless

Googling your symptoms at 11pm

Assuming the worst

✅ DO:

Keep moving gently within a comfortable range

Apply ice or heat depending on what feels better (both are valid)

Reduce the activity that caused it - don’t stop everything

Get it assessed early if it’s not settling within a few days

The biggest mistake we see? People either do too much or too little.

Pain is your body asking for attention - not a reason to panic, and not something to ignore.

If you’re not sure what’s going on, that’s exactly what we’re here for.

📍 Myos & Motus - Thorpe/Wymondham

Hot take: your muscle imbalances are probably not the reason you’re in pain 👀

We are human beings. We are not symmetrical. We never have been.

One leg slightly longer. One hip that sits differently. One shoulder that sits higher. One side you favour.
This is completely normal - and research consistently shows that these kinds of structural differences have a very weak relationship with pain.

Yet “you’ve got an imbalance” has become one of the most common explanations people are given for their pain. And it’s rarely the full picture.
So what actually drives pain?

→ Load — doing too much, too soon, without adequate preparation → Lifestyle factors - sleep, stress, hydration, overall health → Sensitisation - the nervous system becoming more reactive over time → Lack of capacity - the tissue simply isn’t strong enough for the demand placed on it

Blaming asymmetry is easy. It gives an answer. But it often leads people down a rabbit hole of trying to “correct” things that don’t need correcting - and missing what’s actually going on.

If you’ve been told your pain is caused by an imbalance and you’re not getting better, it might be time for a different conversation.

📍 Myos & Motus - link in bio

5 months after a full knee replacement - this client came to us for a structured rehab programme.

Strengthening, mobility work, and rebuilding range of movement.

This is exactly the kind of case we love. No guesswork, just a thorough assessment, a clear plan, and exercises that actually make sense for where they’re at in recovery.

Post-surgical rehab is often rushed or left to chance. It shouldn’t be.

If you or someone you know is coming out of surgery and needs a proper plan to get back to full function - we can help.

📩 DM us or book via the link in bio.

Here’s why your pain keeps coming back a few weeks after it clears up.

When something hurts, your brain and body adapt around it. You move differently. You offload onto other joints and muscles without realising. The pain goes - but the pattern stays.

Then one day you twist wrong, sneeze, pick something up off the floor - and it’s back.

It’s not bad luck. It’s an unresolved movement problem wearing a pain costume.

Real rehab doesn’t just chase pain. It finds the pattern and breaks it. That’s the difference between managing a problem and actually fixing it.
If you’re sick of the cycle, let’s talk.

📩 DM us or book via the link in bio.