"Just knowing she's there in my corner, I feel like I've got another member of my team that I was missing." That's how Amanda, a triathlete and physiotherapist herself, describes working with Natalia, from Six Physio Fitzrovia, a year on from an injury that once threatened to take her out of the sport entirely.

A partnership, not just a treatment plan

From the start, Amanda describes the relationship as collaborative. "She really listened to me, and she could see the emotional angst I was in, and the importance of remaining physically active and getting back to that."

When the thing you love stops being possible

Amanda's neck pain did not stay in one part of her life. It moved into all of it, taking her training away first, then making its way into her work, and eventually into her mood too. It arrived at the worst possible moment, just as her first season racing under a GB flag lay ahead of her.

Why does physiotherapy matter for triathletes?

Physiotherapy matters for triathletes because the sport asks three very different things of the same body. Swimming, cycling and running each move the body in their own way, and each brings its own pattern of strain, from shoulder and neck tension built up over long swim sets, to the repetitive stress that running places on ankles and lower limbs. Layer in the hours of training that competitive racing demands, and it is easy to see how niggles that start small can, take an athlete out of the sport altogether, if left unmanaged.

This is why specialist physiotherapy matters so much. Not just to treat an injury once it has already stopped someone training, but to understand a body across the demands of three disciplines, and to catch things when they are still small.

Natalia is now also treating Amanda for a new ankle tendonitis, a reminder that specialist care rarely stops at a single injury. It grows alongside the athlete, adjusting to whatever the training block or the season brings next.

Where things stand now

This year, Amanda's neck pain has gone into remission. She has qualified for the World Championships in Hamburg next year, and automatically qualified for next year's Europeans in Kitzbühel too, with two major races now on her calendar and a podium finish very much in her sights.