This is my dream job: driving around the island’s top surfing destinations, helping surfers get fit to do the thing they love.

There also happens to be the added benefit of early morning, midday and late afternoon sessions for me.

So where are my sponsored surfers based? Thurso and Lands End. To those not from the UK, that is the far north east corner of Scotland, to the far southwest corner of England.

Coming from the biggest island in the world (Australia), it gives you some perspective of how small the UK really is!

So what takes me to the UK’s “deep south, son?” Introducing Seb Smart, who is well worth the trip.

A case study – from rehab to performance

Problem

An X-ray of Seb’s broken patella

Seb is a 20-year-old surfer, and one of the nicest people you are likely to meet. Seb’s already been surfing for 17 years and has spent his last three years lifeguarding on Sennen beach. He has been trained by his older brothers Sam and Lew and is currently regarded as one of the country’s top young surfers. Seb is sponsored by Rip Curl, Vans and Gunther Rohn Surfboards and makes appearances in national and international surf magazines to showcase his entertaining and original style.

So why does he need me? An argument between his left patella and a reef left him with twice the number of knee caps he originally came with. Seb has already received professional advice from his orthopedic surgeon and was recommended not to have surgery.

He has spent a period of time out of the water in a cast, then a brace, and has been cleared to start gentle exercise.

So what was the advice he received from the medical community? Pilates, walking and little jogging. When I asked Seb whether he had any physio since his cast came off, he asked what “physio” was.

So, no.

As a goofy footer, Seb needs to be able to load his left hip, knee and ankle, so we took a slightly deeper look.

The process – the platinum tailored approach

I loved spending two days assessing and coaching Seb on his first phase of his corrective program, which is designed to create flexibility, static and dynamic stability to retrain his hip and ankle to stabilize his knee. In doing so, we have also needed to look further up the kinetic chain.

Not surprisingly, Seb’s hips were all over the place, including some compensatory dysfunction through his SI joint.

Step one: retraining the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex.

We also discovered a number of issues with restriction in his T-spine, that once sorted will massively improve his flexibility, and help to more effectively dissipate loads throughout his whole body, in order to take the strain away from his knees.

Often people get injured knees, elbows and shoulders and their low back as a compensation for a poorly functioning head/neck/upper T-spine complex. In Seb’s case, clearly a reef was involved, but it’s better safe than sorry.

Once his restriction is released, and then reintegrated into his motor memory, we should see a much more effortless, rail-to-rail flow in his turns that will make them more powerful than ever. A more effectively dissipated load will also actually reduce the load off his now structurally flawed knees.

Seb has a lot of self-myofascial release in his future, to allow greater flexibility, improved range of motion of the joint, and encourage faster recovery.

The result?

Look out for part two when we head back to Sennen to get Seb up and running with the next three phases of his rehab to performance program. These will take him through the phases of stability, strength, then, finally, power training.

Ash Boddy, Weekend Surf Warrior