Why I’m Both a Physio and Still on the Tools

Earlier this week I was on my hands and knees in a laundry, fitting new pipework behind a washing machine. The space was tight. My knees were on cold tile. My back was twisted into a position you’d never voluntarily hold for forty minutes — except you have to, because the job needs doing.

A few days later, I’ll be in a treatment room a few suburbs away, working on someone whose back and knees feel exactly the same way mine did under that washing machine. From a morning that probably looked a lot like mine.

Both of those things are my real jobs. Not a hobby on the side. Not a story I tell. Both of them, this week.

I’ve been a physiotherapist for nine years — clinical practice and research. I’ve been on the tools as a plumber for three. The order matters less than the fact that I’m still doing both right now. Because both keep teaching me different things, and the patient gets the benefit of both.

People sometimes ask why I haven’t picked one. The honest answer is: I can do both, and I want to. There’s no dramatic origin story. I trained as a physio because I wanted to help people, to take care of them — that part is simple. I picked up the trades work later, and when I started, I noticed something I couldn’t unsee.

What I noticed

Almost every tradie I worked alongside was in pain. Backs, knees, shoulders, hands. Most of them had seen a physio at some point. Most of them said the same thing:

The physio didn’t really do anything. They gave me some exercises.

At first I thought maybe they were exaggerating, or maybe they hadn’t given the program a fair go. Then I sat with it. And it made sense.

Think about a tradie’s day. By the time they walk into a 5pm appointment, they’ve already lifted, kneeled, twisted, gripped, and braced for ten hours straight. Their body is exhausted in the most literal sense. Then a physio gives them more exercises to do at home.

That isn’t treatment. It’s homework. And homework alone doesn’t fix the problem.

What that body needs in the appointment is hands on it. Manual therapy. Dry needling. Soft tissue release. Actually getting into the structures that have been straining all day. Then — yes — give them exercises to do at home. But the appointment itself has to do something.

That’s not how most physio works today. Most clinics run on a high-volume, exercise-prescription model because it scales. It works fine for some patients. It fails the people whose bodies have already done the work before they arrive.

Why staying on the tools matters

I could have stopped doing the trades work years ago. Plenty of physios with a manual labour background quietly retire from it once the practice is busy enough. I get the appeal — it’s easier on the body, the pay is better, the scheduling is cleaner.

I keep doing both because I think it makes me a meaningfully better physio for the people I most want to help.

When a plumber tells me they’ve been laying drainage all week and their lower back has seized up, I don’t have to imagine what that looks like. I was in that position last month. When a sparkie says their right shoulder is gone from running cable in a roof space, I know the exact movement, the exact loading, the exact fatigue pattern. When a chippie says their hands are aching at night, I know what gripping a hammer all day actually does to forearm tissue, because I’ve felt the same thing in my own forearms after a long install.

And it goes the other way too. Spending real days on the tools also reminds me what’s actually possible to change. There’s no point telling a tradie to “just rest” or “stop doing the awkward lifts” when the awkward lift is the job. So I won’t. We’ll work out what’s actually fixable, what’s worth modifying, and what we just have to manage smarter.

What this means for you

If you’re a tradie, you’ll get a physio who knows the job from inside. If you’re not, you’ll get a physio whose hands are on the work all week — which I think makes me sharper at the assessment, the treatment, and the realism about what your body can take.

You’ll get hands-on treatment first. You’ll get exercise as homework, not as the appointment. You’ll get someone who’ll tell you the truth about your timeline.

That’s the whole reason for doing both. The patient gets a physio who hasn’t lost touch with what bodies actually do for a living.