Following a gruelling six-month selection camp that included events such as the left arm 1 rep max bicep curl and racing a great white shark I was given the honour to spend 4 weeks with the Average Joe’s down at Evolutio. It wasn’t all sunshine and smiles though. Two weeks before flying over from Glasgow I began to have the nervous shakes about coming to Melbourne and what happened next I will never forget. Team Captain Alex called me and said "Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life. But good luck to you. I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever." Now that may or may not be a quote from Dodgeball the movie and that may or may not have actually happened.

Truth being, I’m Canadian Eh and currently finishing up my Master’s in Physiotherapy degree at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland and emailed Alex about 7 months ago essentially begging for him to take me on for a 4-week elective placement. Having been on the CrossFit bandwagon for a few years now I knew I wanted to learn more about physiotherapy with athletes and more specifically CrossFit, Olympic lifters and power lifters. Unfortunately, in our program we don’t get exposed to working with this population and this is where Evolutio came in. When I came across their website I knew I needed to get into this clinic and learn from the crew here. It took a few months to sort it out but when Alex told me via Skype that this clinic was like no other, I knew coming here would be the right choice.

Throughout my time here I’ve learned numerous things. Most importantly is how crucial it is to look at the full picture when treating patients. The crew down here do an excellent job in not only treating the current area of pain but rather what caused it in the first place. Whether that be poor technique or something further up/down the chain resulting in a dysfunction. That’s what makes a good practitioner and will help people from re-aggravating the same issue down the road.

I also learned many other things throughout my 4 weeks:

·         Rhabdo is in fact real

·         Tim Tam Slams are the 8th wonder of the world

·         How not to spot a back squat in a powerlifting comp

·         Melbourne Demons are going all the way this year, let’s go Dees!

·         Barry’s tea is abnormally good

·         Don’t get caught with the phone further than 5 metres away, consider this your warning

·         Peta likes to eat

·         Fun fact: Bayden’s favourite muscle is glute med

·         Has anyone actually ever seen Alex’s degree?

·         Still not sure if Sean is saying “tree” or “three” but it’s all good good right?

Big thank you to everyone at Evolutio: Alex, Bayden, Sean and Peta for taking the time out of your days to teach me what you do best and most of all welcoming me to the Australian way: Work Hard, Play Hard.  Thank you to all the patients who we saw over the 4 weeks who had to explain how they got their injury for probably the 100th time and listened to our physio lingo while being treated. I’m looking forward to taking everything I’ve learned from you guys and putting it into practice!