Sunshine Coast pilates instructor Gaby Shadforth feels the pain that tradies put their bodies through, week in and week out.
Gaby started teaching pilates eight years ago because she wanted to help people overcome afflictions, such as the back pain she had also personally experienced for many years.
August is National Tradies Health Month and the perfect time for local tradies to educate themselves on risks in the workplace and start constructing healthy habits.
Tradies Health Survey 2019 research reveals that 60 per cent of tradies often have aches and pains as a result of their job.
They are among the four million Australians (16 per cent) who report having back pain problems, as reported in Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017-2018 data.
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Sunshine Coast Persistent Pain Management Service senior physiotherapist Carl Stubbs said back pain was the most common injury experienced by tradies, as it was the part of the body involved in almost all the tasks that they undertook at work.
He said low back pain was often an invisible experience for those living with it and keeping moving could be key to recovery.
Other common injuries for tradies include:
- shoulder issues related to repetitive reaching and holding actions with the arms
- knee injuries related to repetitive bending to the ground
- ankle sprains related to working on uneven ground.
In an effort to get more men moving, Gaby has just started hosting Tradies Pilates Classes at her boutique home studio in Mooloolah Valley that is a combination of reformer and mat pilates, limited to only five participants.
“Being a former primary school language teacher, I do enjoy educating people and I feel a need for men to educate themselves and do something about their back pain,” she said.
“You don’t have to be a tradie to do classes, but invariably tradies have done years of physical work and done damage to their backs.
“They are in need of learning to engage their core abdominal muscles to use their damaged backs more wisely.
“We have a combined history of slipped discs, SIJ (sacroiliac joints) pain, sciatica nerve pain, arthritis and general degeneration of the spine in our classes.
“We identify these early on so we know what we are dealing with and how we can best manage these injuries.”
Having taught hundreds of people in many gyms around the Coast for six-and-a-half years before COVID-19 hit last year, Gaby realised classes might often have only one man in a room full of women participants.
“In a truly gentlemanly fashion, most men often place themselves at the front of the class so as not to make the ladies feel as if they are watching them,” she said.
“In doing so, they then put themselves in a very uncomfortable position. I have seen this time and time again throughout the gyms and think it a lovely display of chivalry.
“But men, too, require social interactions with other men for mental health, and not always over a beer.
“There is certain camaraderie in (my) classes as the men swap back pain stories and realise that there are a lot of men out there with the same physical pain.
“Besides the social interaction for mental health, there is the physical relief from pain that exercise brings to clients, that gives an added hope that there is something we can do to reduce our pain.
“I’m not saying that it will disappear completely, but I know that pilates can reduce it dramatically.”
Gaby said people always experienced muscular or joint pain for a reason.
“Apart from damage done to backs, there are certain muscles which, if they are too tight, can pull on back muscles,” she said.
“These are the quadriceps and hip flexors – part of the anterior chain of fascia (or connective tissue) running up the front of our body, or the hamstrings and gluteus muscles which are part of the posterior chain of fascia.
“If we can address which particular muscles are tight in a certain client, we can then set certain stretches as homework to achieve faster results and gain maximum relief from back pain.”
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Pilates works on three levels: improving flexibility to alleviate tightness, strengthening core
and supportive muscles around the joints to make them more stable, and mobilisation of the joints to increase the range of movement within those joints.
Gaby said the combination of all three could be “extremely life-changing” to a person living with continual pain.
She said no one enjoyed living with physical pain.
But no magic pill would fix it, other medications only masked it and operations for minor injuries had proven to be unsuccessful in many cases.
“You need to put in the hard work and strengthen, stretch and mobilise your own body for lasting results,” she said.
“Invest in your body and it will look after you for many years to come.”
For information on pilates, visit Gaby’s website.
For more on pain management, see Sunshine Coast Persistent Pain Management Service
