Patient Case Study: Spinal Rehabilitation

Mo had seen five practitioners for his back. Two physiotherapists, an osteopath, a chiropractor, and another physiotherapist. Each helped in the short term. None of it lasted.

This is the story of why, and what finally changed.

Mo is 34, a regular football player, and a 9/9 on the Beighton hypermobility scale. He presented to Fit2Go with a small disc bulge at L5-S1, neural symptoms referring into his leg, and two years of treatment that had never quite resolved things. What the previous practitioners hadn't identified was that Mo's hypermobile joints were generating repeated compressive load on the same disc segment because the surrounding musculature, specifically his glutes and hip rotators, wasn't doing its job.

What followed was a three-phase programme led by three of Fit2Go's specialist physiotherapists. James Tomlinson managed the acute phase, reducing Mo's neural symptoms and restoring pain-free movement. Brodie Howatson, one of the region's leading spinal physiotherapists, then identified the root cause: inactive glutes and a hip rotational deficit that no previous assessment had picked up. Niall Stevens, Head of Sports and a former Premier League physiotherapist, then built a sport-specific maintenance programme to return Mo to football and keep him there.

This case study explores why integrated, multi-specialist care resolves presentations that isolated treatment cannot, and what that process looked like at Fit2Go Physiotherapy in Nottingham.