Rory studied BSc Sports and Exercise Therapy, graduating in 2018. He is now a Director at his own business, Made to Move, as well as the Lead Sport and Exercise Therapist. In this blog, he tells us what he enjoyed about his course at Leeds Beckett and how it helped him achieve his amazing career in health.

Course: BSc (Hons) Sports and Exercise Therapy

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you've been doing since you graduated.

I graduated from BSc Sports and Exercise Therapy in 2018, after which I started working as a Sports Therapist in Sheffield in August 2018.

While starting up my own business, I started my MSc in Strength and Conditioning in 2018. My main interests are understanding movement competency (mainly lower body and how this contributes to injuries within sport and exercise). I take a firm interest in how effect screening and exercise programming can help reduce injuries in sports and allow participants to enjoy sport and exercise for as long as possible.

During lockdown, I learnt how to pivot to provide online injury assessments/ consultation and injury rehabilitation coaching to support my clients and the gyms I worked with. This has carried over to form part of my current business.

s lockdown loosened, I returned to in-person practice and became very busy. I took on a colleague to serve more clients and this is where the business took a positive turn.

I completed my MSc and graduated in 2022. I studied this MSc to enhance my injury rehabilitation and strength and conditioning knowledge to be able to create thorough and instructive rehabilitation programmes. These aim to support recreational sports and exercise participants to recover quickly and reduce future injury risk - something that is limited outside of elite sports.

In May 2022 I decided to turn Made to Move into a limited (LTD) company and we signed for our own 2000ft facility to grow the business into what I've always dreamed.

We now deliver a wide range of injury rehabilitation, sports therapy, physiotherapy and personal training, and support four sports clubs in our sports injury clinic and private gym based in Sheffield. We're home to seven therapists and three personal trainers who help deliver the services to the local community.

As previously mentioned, we also now deliver online injury rehabilitation and coaching support to clients all around the world, including Canada, Ireland, England and Thailand.

We're now working on the next phase of increasing our business outreach by hosting a monthly networking event for local health and fitness professionals in South Yorkshire. We sold out on our first event this May.

Tell us a bit more about your current role and why it's amazing.

In summary, my role in the business is two-fold. The majority of my time is spent working face-to-face with clients from screening movement quality and injury assessments right through to management and rehabilitation of pain and injury. This is either in the treatment room with manual therapy or in the gym strength and conditioning training or prescribing exercise online.

The rest of my time is focused on business development, whether this is networking, managing finances, implementing new products and services, strategizing marketing and sales and delegating this out.

I love both parts of working within the business and on the business. I've always been entrepreneurial, so learning how to use this to my advantage helps me strive to do more to improve both outcomes from my clients and staff but also keeps me motivated and passionate about the industry.

What support or opportunities did you receive at Leeds Beckett that have helped shape your career?

There was a range of opportunities offered by Leeds Beckett that helped me on my journey to graduating, including fantastic placement opportunities at major sports clubs and sporting events.

Without this experience, it wouldn't have been possible to gain the knowledge and adaptability needed to work in a high-paced environment. The additional courses available allowed me to utilise other practices to widen my knowledge and toolkit to assess, treat and manage sports injuries - which I still use in practice today.

Can you tell us about a project, piece of work or experience from the university that you're proud of?

One of my proudest moments of learning something important, which still supports my practice now, was understanding the importance of our work more so at a recreational sports and exercise level compared to elite sports. I had placement opportunities at Leeds Rhinos, Sheffield United FC, and Yorkshire Carnegie RUFC.

We do so much at an elite level to gain such a small percentage of performance outcomes. However, my experience in placement at a private sports injury clinic meant I was treating a range of clients from novice kickboxers to clients with amputations and overuse initiates.

Because of the level of sports participation, treatments and aftercare had so much more of a positive effect that I knew this was a population I felt most fulfilled with and wanted to help more people within this area return to sports and physical activity.

What would you say to someone considering studying your course?

Consider what life you want to live, whether you want to be employed or self-employed. Decide on the clientele you want to work with - NHS, general population, elite sports, recreational sports - and figure out a path and gain experience in multiple areas. Good and bad experience both have their merits to guide your future wants and dislikes.

What's next for you?

We're currently working on developing our team to provide more services and help more people in Sheffield gain access to honest, practical and scientific back injury risk reduction and rehabilitation services and products.

We have plans from 2027 to figure out the best next steps, whether this is opening another practice or doubling the size of our current facility, to help more people recover from injury.