Latest / The STA Clinician Podcast / Ep233 ‘Navigating Injury: Physical & Psychological Support’ with Dan Metcalfe, Nicola Hunt, Dr Katherine Dawson

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Ep233 ‘Navigating Injury: Physical & Psychological Support’ with Dan Metcalfe, Nicola Hunt, Dr Katherine Dawson · The STA Clinician Podcast

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You're listening to the Sports Therapy Association podcast, putting evidence
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back into soft tissue therapy.
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Music.
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And we are live. Welcome everyone to episode 233 of the Sports Therapy Association podcast.
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My name is Matt Phillips, creator of runchatlive.com. And as always,
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this episode is being recorded at eight o'clock on the Sports Therapy Association
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YouTube channel although tonight is as advertised on a Wednesday rather than
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the normal Tuesday but next week and for the foreseen future we'll be back on Tuesdays.
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This episode is part three of this month's focus on working
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with athletes with disabilities and it's entitled dealing with injury physical
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and mental support and very shortly I shall be bringing up my special guest
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Dan Willsdown Metcalfe who was left paralyzed from the waist down after motorcycle
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accident in 2014 and has since achieved three scuba diving world records and
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is currently preparing for the next ones.
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With Dan will be Nicola Hunt, Specialist in Neurological Vestibular and Respiratory
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Physiotherapy and Owner of PhysioCare Rehab, and also Dr.
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Catherine Dawson, Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist and Director of Sphere Rehab.
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But first, a huge thank you to my guests last week in episode 232 of the podcast
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entitled Invictus Games, Resilience and Cameradery.
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I was joined by Sam May and Gemma Barnes, both Team UK athletes recently returned
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from Invictus Games 2025.
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And with them, the wonderful sports therapist, Carla Spickerstaff and massage
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therapist, Jenny Lane, both of whom have experience of working in the Invictus Games.
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As always, if you missed that episode, it's available on YouTube if you watch
1:43
the video and all popular podcast apps.
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And if you'd like to join us for the recording of part four it's
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going to be next tuesday march 25th at
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eight o'clock and i will be joined once again by carla
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and jenny as they will be accompanying rich potter and
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rich davis both armed forces veterans and single below leg amputees who set
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world records at the end of last year on their limitless expedition conquering
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the himalayas as the first ever amputees to achieve the half and full length
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of the snowman trek in bhutan So if you are free next Tuesday,
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then I really encourage you to come along and ask questions live to our guests.
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Right, that's everything there for you. We're going to crack on with tonight's
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episode now. As always, if you have joined us live, do please feel free to ask questions.
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My guests have got permission to stop me in my tracks and just direct me to
2:33
any important questions you've got there.
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So do take advantage if you have joined us live on YouTube or Facebook to jump
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in with questions and write them in the comments and I'll bring up on the screen.
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So we will now start episode 233 dealing with injury physical and mental support
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with special guests Dan Willsdown-Metcalf Nicola Hunt and Dr Catherine Dawson.
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Music.
3:04
Evening everybody. I will introduce you in person.
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I'll say hi in person just so the people listening to the podcast get used to your own tones.
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So first of all, no particular order, Dr. Catherine Dawson, thank you very much
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for joining us. Hello, thank you for having me.
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Nicholas Hunt, Nicholas, where'd that come from? Nicholas Hunt,
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thank you very much for joining us.
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Hi Matt, great to be here. Welcome back as well, thank you for joining us again,
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your second or third appearance even on the podcast. I appreciate that.
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And Dan Wilsdown-Metcalf, thanks so much for joining us.
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Hi, Mark. Thanks for having me on. Dan will be altogether far easier for you
3:41
to identify for obvious reasons in the podcast. But there we go.
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Right. So I really appreciate you all giving us your time. Thank you so much.
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Part three of this series.
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I guess really to get straight into it, we should allow
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our listeners to have a little introduction to
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you Dan about your experiences and how
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you're here talking about the topic tonight I know it's tricky
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it's not exactly an elevator pitch for 60 seconds but yeah talk us through where
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you've come from where you are today I'm just here because you asked me and
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Nicola asked me really but yeah so obviously Wheels Dan is the is the name being
4:15
in a wheelchair it's kind of like
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what I am I'm paralyzed T8 paraplegic complete I do a lot of sports I have
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on a lot of sports and i've now finally found my
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track towards the end which is scuba diving i'm
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a disabled scuba dive instructor with two different
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organizations and also three-time guinness world record holder in scuba diving
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that's me as quickly as possible that was actually pretty impressive um i've
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seen your cv and list so you're very humble there yeah so and you were here
4:45
with the part one where you were with our other guests and you've come back
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which was a good sign as well,
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but you're joined this time by Dr Catherine Dawson and Nicola Hunt who have
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both worked with you in the past so maybe same question to you maybe if we start
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with you Dr Catherine Dawson what
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what is it you do what's your field of expertise and how did you meet Dan?
5:02
Yes so I'm a neuropsychologist so I work with people who've
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had quite brain injuries or spinal cord injuries in the community settings mainly
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although some hospital settings as well and Dan and I met in February 2019 and
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we completed some therapy until about November 2020.
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And our work was, Dan was a very interesting client,
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in terms of his initial challenges about accepting help, I think,
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if that's probably fair, Dan.
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Real independent work.
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And I think that it's a double-edged sword because it gets you really far in
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life because you're so resilient and have such a lot of grit.
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But I think sometimes it's difficult to kind of know what you need and express
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that and sort of reach out and accept help.
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So, yeah, it was a really, really positive therapeutic experience once we'd
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kind of got over those initials. She's trying to say hard work.
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We also have a treat, right, at times, to be fair. But in a good way, in a good way.
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I'm making a list of these adjectives, Dan. We'll go through the little bit. It's great.
6:18
But I think I should point out just on the timeline, because Dan,
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you kind of glossed over a little bit.
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Take us through, because it was 2019 you first met.
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So that was after the 600-mile charity bike ride with the injury.
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So you met him with those injuries not far after.
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So just remind us then, Dan, what that was about. Because I can understand why
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you were interesting when you first met Dr. Catherine Dawson.
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I mean, that's a nice word for her. you were probably just yeah i can think
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of other words yeah yeah a little bit unhappy so the
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the main crash put me in the wheelchair was 2014 so
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that was the most white crash paralyzed just on
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the road that was i had no real other injuries
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apart from being completely paralyzed and the rips
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smashed the pieces in that one so yeah that was
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that kind of just a physical problem and i could get over that one then
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i went in sports started racing hand cycles and
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did lots for the sports along the way got relatively good
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in hand cycling was picked up by team gb being
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tested for the olympics as well along with
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a few others came to fifth in the uk in hand
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cycling and obviously a 600 mile charity bike
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ride the type of blesmer 14 miles
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before the finish car decided to crash into the back of me
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going up a hill extremely slowly and he
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was going a little bit too fast and so crashing into the back of me
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gave me compression of c4 in the neck and obviously giving a good old whack
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on the head as well which was quite a bit of a mess for the ambulance crew and
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police to work out this this push fire called mangled up underneath the front
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end of a car and they thought i was actually a cyclist at the time until i told
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them i was already paralyzed.
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So they started that out in the end and then i went downhill with basically ptsd of the two,
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crashes being very similar to each other both being high speed noises big
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crashes from behind and i just turned into an absolute ass
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basically towards myself and maybe i'm
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happy with other people as well and obviously did a lot of work with both kathryn
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and nikola kathryn the biggest thing that came out of it was actually enabling
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me to speak about things and admit i did try to take my own life and admit that
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things got back yeah it got really dark you know but i couldn't tell people that before.
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It was a case of put it in a box, drop, kick it underneath the bed,
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not like I'm kicking it, but push it underneath the bed.
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And when it comes out, it's a nasty weekend, but you know.
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I'm now able to talk about things a bit better so prior
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to the 600 mile charity bike ride
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being hit in that things were kind of obviously you
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were coping with the paralysis but things were going pretty good in the sense
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of you're up for the olympics you're training you'd found hand cycling you'd
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already had massive success at i think across a range of different sports in
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fact you had to give up was it shooting or something which you're yeah so the
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team gb took me on me and another lad called Vinod,
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they took us on for shooting at Stoke Mandeville.
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We did tryouts there and I got through everything on that.
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But the problem was I couldn't do hand cycling and do shooting.
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It was one or the other because they're two both demanding on time and they
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two really contradict each other with the sport.
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So obviously hand cycling is fast, aggressive.
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You are fast twitch muscles. You've got to be really quick at what you're doing.
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Whereas shooting needs to be a lot more relaxed, a lot more calm and chilled out.
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And they just didn't mix together so i just had to
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decide one of them and i picked the wrong ones take me to
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the olympics so that was a bit of a bummer but you know
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if i went with a shooting i'd have gone because i wouldn't got crashed into so
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yes the the 600 mile charity bike
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ride crash that was a big one because i was i was going somewhere you know that
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knockdown of the first crash and all that problems getting used to it get finding
10:05
a place to be having a purpose in life and then you see that happens so yeah
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it does knock you back a bit it is what it is you know.
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Happens get on with it pick something else well that's
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exactly we'll get to that later on you did and and i think i've
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read i've read you diving literally saved your life you
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found diving and that was like which we'll which we'll get into but i'm
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interested in in maybe stopping at this point here
10:31
with the crash where nicola hunt when did you meet dams
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around this time or so yes i met Dan around
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the same time so around February 2019 after the
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second accident and again I was brought in
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as a result of this the head impact Dan had
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some issues with dizziness and further issues
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with his balance on top of the sort of
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the initial sort of injury issues and
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also because of the C4 compression I
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think before I got involved you were with another physio first
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but you transferred over didn't you and we had a few conversations about how
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it was presenting how it was limiting you and you know you were you'd had a
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lot to deal with you know you were doing so so well with your hand cycling and
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you were very much dig deep.
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Put up with the pain and I'm going to carry on and I'm going to still be a hang
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cyclist, which led to some interesting conversations.
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That's really good. Interesting again. But, but I think, you know.
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And I think that that's the, you know, that was my role is to sort of explain
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to you what the risks were and then support you to try and do what you wanted.
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And I think probably the turning point was, was it the Tour de Vail ride that you did?
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Um so you know you were very focused
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on wanting to return to hand cycling which was
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really really challenging because there was a lot of muscle
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wasting on that side where you've got
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the c4 compression there was a big difference in
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muscle balance from left to right which meant
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that you weren't going straight on it you went you didn't
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have the same power through each side and it was incredibly
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painful and hard work for you but you
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weren't going to give in so we you
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know we supported that journey we got
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you a cycling coach to get you back on
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the road because again that was from a trauma point
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of view quite a big thing to do is to actually
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get back out on the road on a hand cycle that
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you had had an accident on well not
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the same one because that wasn't fit to get out on the road but
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but you know to to sort of to get back so we got you you know we we had to think
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outside the box got a cycling coach to accompany you build your confidence up
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on the road and then he was your sort of support team on the race on the event.
13:02
So it was brilliant it was great and I think having done it I think that was
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probably when And you realised that...
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It was like the meaning of life is, and you went all quiet, Nicola.
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I was like so caught up then, it went quiet. And that's when you discovered what?
13:21
Sorry, that's when you cut off. That's when you discovered that there's sort
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of other sports to explore, because you were already diving at that point.
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But again, that was another thing that we had to sort of pass the challenge
13:32
of getting medical clearance to dive again after the head injury.
13:37
Okay. So I wanted to check.
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I want to go back to the PTSD because it's something which has been mentioned
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in the other parts we've done there by the other athletes.
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I wanted to go into that a little bit. But before then, I wondered whether this
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decision to have a cycle coach support you, was that difficult for you at first,
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Dan? was that actually a compromise was that something you ejected initially.
14:05
Yeah look at nickel and nod it's like
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yeah it might well have been yeah it was a no that i'm
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not having anybody with me uh i can do it on my own but actually
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very quickly realized i was having problems just
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being in public i couldn't go to wazdas i
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couldn't go shopping i couldn't do all that sort of stuff because i wanted to
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set into a rave imaginary match
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which is all to do with the ptsd side of stuff i
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couldn't be in restaurants with people walking behind me so i had to be in a
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restaurant if we ever went out anywhere i had to park myself against a wall
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that's something behind me so i couldn't get hit from behind and that it doesn't
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really raise its head much now but it still has them and it's not something
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i think you'll ever get rid of completely,
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I don't think you get over PTSD it just stays with you for life you just let's see,
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but yeah the cycling coach Stuart I'm sure his name is Stuart Andy,
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Stuart was the other guy so yeah he was really good and he just looked right
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up next to me as if he was drafting me not what we would do with hand cycles and he's one.
15:15
We did loads of training and we did the 65 mile
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I tore the veil which is the biggest one that tore
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the veil does so we did that and it
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it was good but the pain was insane and
15:27
every time I went on the bike it just got worse and worse and worse and then
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obviously fast forward like five years down the line I realized I know why it's
15:36
getting worse because I've got hardly any rear delt and I also had torn my shoulders
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pieces so yeah it was kind of I mean to be fair Nicola did say right at the very beginning,
15:46
you've damaged your shoulder significantly you need to get it sorted out but
15:50
none of the medical professionals wanted to do that so it was like,
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you know I could go from privately and cost me a fortune or wait for the NHS
15:58
to try and fix it which took five years for them to fix it.
16:03
How, Nicola, how did you manage to reach that compromise? Dan's kind of alluded
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to the fact it wasn't an easy, yeah, I'll do that. That's fine. Let's do it.
16:10
What were some of the, I'm interested in clinicians hearing about these difficult
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situations, which you're going to have, I mean, anytime you try and,
16:16
I mean, I work with runners, so tell a runner they should be cutting back or
16:19
not going for PB every park run.
16:21
It's kind of a similar situation in the sense that you can say it and they're
16:25
going to walk out and do it kind of thing.
16:27
What were some of the techniques or the strategies you use to try
16:30
and persuade somebody who's so against the idea to actually
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come around and do it i think it's just a case of
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working in partnerships you know it's it's not
16:38
my body it's not my rehab i was a part of your rehab but
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it was very much dan's rehab you know he's he'd
16:45
already gained a huge amount of knowledge around sort of you know how his body
16:50
works it must you know training after your first accident particularly you know
16:56
so i want you know it's it's making sure you're not coming in as the you know
17:00
what i'm going to tell you what to do It's very much,
17:03
let's discuss things, let's talk about the risks.
17:07
If you're very set on it and you understand the risks, then let's look at how
17:13
we safety net it so you can go on and do it.
17:17
I think you are fiercely independent.
17:20
Me coming in and telling you what you should or shouldn't be doing,
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it was always a conversation about, well, these are the risks.
17:28
Do you really think that they're worth doing and
17:31
sometimes you'd say yes and then we needed to
17:34
look at how I helped do that as
17:37
safely as you can and sometimes you did agree with me and you'd say no one of
17:42
them that springs to mind was the altitude training yeah please do expand so
17:50
because Dan was struggling to get back to the fitness level that he was before,
17:57
because of the C4 injury, that you thought it to be a good idea to do altitude training.
18:04
So use a device that would reduce the amount of oxygen that he was breathing
18:07
that was then going to increase red blood cell.
18:11
So you get an advantage fitness-wise, only increasing red blood cells makes the blood stickier.
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And when you have an inability to move lower part of your body,
18:22
you then combine that with thicker, stickier blood. It's not looking as a good combination.
18:28
But again, it was having those conversations like that with you,
18:30
wasn't it, Dan, as to, you know, well, this is why it's not a good idea.
18:34
Yeah, and I didn't try it and didn't pass out a couple of times.
18:38
Oh, good. It's good to know that.
18:40
Before that conversation, that was the trigger to that conversation. It was, yeah.
18:46
Well, I mean, I think, again, I just want to set the scene for people listening
18:49
to the podcast because we've chatted a few times and I've read your story loads.
18:52
And am I right in thinking that, was it the day after the 600 mile charity bike
18:58
ride you'd been hit with a car, you decided you still needed to go back and finish it the day after?
19:04
Yeah, I've kind of got a thing in my head. If I say I'm going to do something,
19:07
I'll do it, whether it kills me or not.
19:09
And I said I was going to complete a 600 mile charity bike ride.
19:13
And in my head, I hadn't completed it unless I completed the full 600 miles.
19:18
And the sponsorship money that i raised was you
19:21
know sort of like fake if i hadn't completed the challenge properly
19:24
so yeah stupidly enough i decided
19:27
to put in my smash-up hand cycle that
19:30
was had no rear wheels and half of a frame at the back on
19:34
a set of rollers in my front room living room and putting
19:37
sufferfest videos on i thought that was a good idea and
19:40
to finish the last 14 miles but luckily my
19:43
daughter sky was in the house and she woke me up three times whilst
19:47
doing that training and i just popped it off i fell asleep and
19:51
obviously it's quite clear i passed out the need
19:54
the time i also refused
19:57
to go to hospital after the crash because i'm fine there's nothing wrong with
20:02
me all that bravado which is a little rubbish three days later i actually had
20:07
to go to hospital because i couldn't take headaches anymore and they absolutely
20:11
gave me a good telling off to say it politely of what the hell are you doing three days later.
20:18
Yeah, it came around the wash sort of thing. I was all right.
20:22
And then I got to meet these two ladies that fixed me.
20:25
Like I said, this is the case history that a few months later you presented
20:28
to Catherine and Nicola.
20:30
Oh, yeah. Just one other thing I
20:31
should mention passing out in front of my daughter. Yeah, yeah. Just that.
20:34
And then it all went quiet in the room. And it was like, shut up and take a breath.
20:38
Can't just be my other appointments for today. Thank you.
20:41
Yeah. No, no. Amazing. I think I just, I think things like that set the scene.
20:44
Because one of the things about this is we are obviously exaggerating something
20:49
that does exist and that is we are dealing with individuals with needs,
20:53
desires, identities, take their sport away or something and with any individual.
20:58
Obviously the scale of that identity will change but it's something which as
21:01
therapists we need to think about when we're thinking we're telling them what
21:05
to do and then blaming the patient because I mean non-appliance,
21:08
people not doing their exercises for example is something that I think healthcare
21:12
practitioners do all the time saying off. They don't do the exercises.
21:15
How do they think they're going to get better?
21:16
And it was quite early on in my career. And I realized that if a client or patient
21:20
of yours goes away and they don't do the exercises you've given them, for example,
21:25
you have to kind of put the blame on yourself because either that individual
21:28
didn't quite understand the importance of them, or you gave them something which
21:32
physically they couldn't actually do because it was too much as a long list
21:36
or they don't want to join a gym.
21:37
So the onus is actually on the practitioner to make sure that,
21:42
As you were saying, Nicola, it's pure coaching, isn't it? It's reaching a decision together.
21:47
This is something that Joe Turner said, the amazing Joe Turner of Mihab. Joe said.
21:53
The beauty of her and joanne elphinstone they both said that they're all about
21:57
looking after therapists okay and and one of the things they said is if you're
22:01
doing coaching properly,
22:02
you don't have that pressure of did they do their exercises or
22:06
not did they do what i told them because you don't tell them to do anything
22:08
which is so beautiful when they said it because you reach an agreement and then
22:12
it's all kind of which is how it's supposed to be so that's what resonated with
22:16
me nick and when you were saying that you reached that decision it was something
22:18
which you paint together it's really interesting because you know in my clinic-based patients,
22:24
you know i will go through the exercises in great detail and
22:27
then they'll say you know well how many times do you want me to do them and it's
22:30
like well it's not me wanting you to do them how many times do you want to do
22:33
them they're your exercises so good and not it doesn't come naturally because
22:37
i don't think i don't know i still get the impression on courses and we're still
22:41
taught kind of like yeah give them three sets of 10 do this and sit this and
22:44
that and it's not like that you're not you're not thinking about the individual in front of you.
22:49
PTSD I wonder if we could spend a bit of time going into that and Dr Catherine
22:54
Dawson you seem to be the person to ask that question too.
22:58
Yeah so when we met I think it was it was probably the challenge of disentangling
23:02
the concussion and those sort of mild head injury symptoms with what you see
23:08
in PTSD because there's such an overlap between the two.
23:12
And I think certainly then there was a lot of challenge kind of getting your
23:16
head around the hidden difficulties associated with what you couldn't see related
23:20
to kind of changes in your memory and your attention, your emotions anyway,
23:24
and trying to work out what's related to the head and what's related to the PTSD.
23:30
And I think ultimately it was probably about us at the time formulating what
23:34
you wanted to work on first.
23:36
And I think a lot of actually what came to the surface was around this quite
23:40
strong self-critic you described.
23:42
Sort of, you know, that sort of man up, drop, kick it under the bed.
23:47
Don't want to think about it.
23:49
And it was almost actually if we can't look at that together and what might
23:53
be underlying that self-critic,
23:55
which was the kind of anger and the loss and being
23:58
able to kind of name it and talk about it with someone then
24:02
we don't really move forward on on moving the
24:04
PT at the sort of trauma related symptoms they were being fueled
24:07
by this very strong self-critic which in
24:10
some ways is quite protective because I think in some ways it helps
24:14
you hold on to your identity of you and
24:17
that is I think you said you know that sense of we have
24:20
to be really and we have to understand someone's identity connect
24:24
with their personality to understand how to work with someone because
24:27
otherwise you can't kind of just prescribe or
24:31
you know say what to do because that that person's
24:34
going to be left feeling but they're not really being heard or
24:37
listened to and I think sometimes it's a case of
24:40
having sort of planned failure in therapy supported failure
24:44
if you like because that raises awareness and then
24:47
I think you only then know what you might do differently next time or how you
24:51
might tackle something differently next time so I think a huge amount of our
24:55
work was done on those sort of bigger barriers before we started looking a bit
25:00
further down the line at the sort of trauma symptoms and your safety behaviours that you had in place.
25:07
Yeah so in terms of how we
25:10
managed it I think we went more for kind of
25:13
what was driving some of these difficulties and fuelling
25:16
them rather than a sort of classic treatment of
25:19
PTSD which would have been an exposure therapy would been
25:22
some processing work that kind of happens much later
25:25
on so it was yeah I
25:28
think I think it was done in a way that
25:31
you almost needed to stabilize understand what
25:34
was going on for you kind of stabilize your symptoms and then
25:38
process which was which happened much later and as you say I totally agree I
25:43
think treatment for trauma takes the heat out of the experience but I think
25:48
it's integrated into who you are kind of going forwards and you you know that
25:53
it becomes your part of your identity.
25:56
How does that resonate with you dad dan obviously it's been
25:58
a while since you had those conversations but as you say you're still
26:01
kind of you never get rid of it it's still there but what
26:04
yeah all the things
26:07
along the way shape the person that you are you know
26:10
whether they're success or failures they all shape
26:13
that person and and i i
26:16
massively i had this big thing i couldn't talk to
26:19
therapists i couldn't call katherine my therapist she was
26:22
my brain pt because i can take the physical thing so
26:25
i can take the fact that if i broke my body i
26:28
know how to physically repair it now i'm a level
26:31
three pt for disability anyway so physically wise i know how to repair myself
26:36
ish and do things i'm supposed to do it but with katherine it was like well
26:41
this is with the brain this is in my head i don't understand that and i can't
26:44
deal with that in a like sort of mental way because i'm a man and i can't go
26:49
into my emotions and always rubbish.
26:52
But i had to call my brain pt she said to
26:54
me that think about your brain as a muscle as a body as your
26:57
body is we need to train it just like you
27:00
need to you know build your body back up you need to bring build your brain
27:04
back up and decode what you've done you know damage wise and all this sort of
27:08
stuff and it works it did work to be fair i probably didn't do as well as a
27:14
lot of people did with my reluctance to what I do, the training sort of thing.
27:19
But what did come out of it is the fact I can talk about stuff.
27:22
And I think that was the biggest thing that could come out of something like
27:25
that is instead of just holding it all within myself and getting really in a
27:30
bit of a mess, I was able to speak about things eventually.
27:34
It still takes a long time to get stuff out. But admitting that I've done stuff,
27:39
admitting that I've been in those nasty places is probably one of the biggest things I could do.
27:44
So, yeah, it's a big thank you for that.
27:47
Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's not necessarily sort of the outcome, is it?
27:51
It's the process that you go through in terms of, and I think for us it was
27:55
just about how do we think together
27:57
so that you're not on your own trying to work it all out in your head and sort
28:00
of I'm an audience to that, but how do we think together about what's going
28:03
on for you and kind of how do you get your needs met sort of in a different way?
28:07
And I think you did really engage in that process.
28:10
And there's sort of, it's like anything, you don't, Not many people kind of
28:14
enter therapy with open arms.
28:17
There is always a degree of kind of fluctuating engagement and ambivalence because
28:23
you were arriving at this.
28:25
It's come from trauma, hasn't it? It's not come from anything, you know, positive.
28:29
So that is part of therapy, sort of naming that process and working with it.
28:34
So in that respect, yeah, it fitted with what you needed. Yeah.
28:39
And I think a lot of what you were doing was safety behaviours.
28:42
So you kept yourself safe, which made absolute sense. There was a threat.
28:46
You kept yourself safe. But I think what we started to look at was the unintended
28:50
consequences of keeping yourself safe.
28:53
Meant that actually you stayed stuck.
28:56
And then you got into vicious cycles. And it was more about how do we kind of exit from those.
29:00
And I think that was a sort of brain training. How do we think differently about it?
29:05
What behavioural routines can we put in place? And you really engaged with that aspect.
29:09
Yeah, I can go shopping in Asda's for that, trying to run everybody over that.
29:15
It's good. It's a tangible goal. It's a smart goal. You can measure that.
29:19
Nicola, what's your experience or anything you've heard about PTSD?
29:23
And what would you like to share with that?
29:26
Yeah, I mean, you know, because I work in the brain injury sphere,
29:29
I very often work alongside neuropsychologists quite a lot of the time with Catherine.
29:33
And, you know, it is around being a team all together.
29:38
And you know with you in the center of it really Dan or the client in the center you know it's about,
29:44
us adjusting how we work to meet
29:47
the needs of the person that we're working with you know and everybody has very
29:52
different responses to that so it was round about sort of you know doing the
29:57
rehab where you were comfortable so we did a lot of rehab in the home and then
30:01
you know when you did first get out on the hand cycle we used a track so a car-free environment,
30:08
which I know you were like oh tracks are easy but it gave you that safety net
30:12
of you can get back out outside on your hand bike rather than just on the turbo
30:16
trainer and nothing was going to come behind you because we were the only people
30:21
there and I wasn't fast enough to catch you up.
30:27
The it makes me think as well like we entitled this
30:30
or rather I entitled it dealing with injury physical
30:33
mental support and then Dr Catherine Dawson sent me
30:35
an email going could we possibly have that but i was i was stuck to
30:38
100 characters so i could have but it made perfect sense i mean it
30:41
was far in fact i might i might try changing after this navigating injury which
30:45
is brilliant i love the word navigating instead of dealing with it's got so
30:48
many connotations and it's brilliant and then the importance of physical and
30:51
psychological support which i get the distinction there but what i wanted to
30:55
ask about when i'm hearing you talk about ptsd for example,
30:59
there's quite a healthy popular trait i think in the last five years in health
31:03
care of should we be separating physical health and mental health.
31:07
And obviously, as we embrace the biopsychosocial model and things like that,
31:10
we realize that you can't really divide a person into their mental health and
31:13
physical health. It's obviously overlaps on many levels.
31:16
But is this a good example? Is PTSD a good example of where the two do overlap
31:20
and you need to consider both together in one person?
31:24
Or should they be separated into different clients and specialities and things?
31:29
I think you need the expertise coming from different angles.
31:33
But I think it's really important that everybody works closely together.
31:36
But I also think that whilst it's important to work closely together,
31:41
it's important that Dan knew that what he shared with Catherine was safe.
31:46
That was a safe space. and whereas if there
31:49
was any sort of headline things I needed to be aware of
31:52
I would be made aware of them but the
31:55
sort of the the nitty-gritty of the conversations was
31:59
a safe space for you to share and I think that's important because there has
32:03
to be some overlap and there has to be some things that you know not necessarily
32:08
particularly in your case but with some of other clients the neuropsychologist
32:12
is sort of fed in that you know well they're concerned about this particular physical task,
32:18
you know, going to this particular physical environment, and then I can work in it.
32:22
But I don't, I'm not in on the details of the conversation because that wouldn't
32:26
be appropriate. It's got to be a safe space. Interesting.
32:30
Yeah, and I think what I think is really useful is when we're both working with
32:36
the same person and so potentially there's lots of dizziness that's being reported.
32:41
I think that aspect that when Nicola works on that has a massive impact psychologically
32:47
on how someone creates with sort of just navigating in the community.
32:52
I remember us once working with someone and she just described constantly feeling
32:55
drunk and obviously then feeling judged by other people. And you think,
32:59
actually, that comes from a physical difficulty.
33:03
And if that's treated, that has a massive impact psychologically on how they're coping.
33:08
So I think that being able to kind of interlink like that and understand,
33:12
you know, the sort of dual approach and how that sort of feeds off each other is so important. him.
33:19
And I think also, you know, you're taking your personality into account,
33:23
you know, because there were things that, you know, we were offering you that
33:29
another person would have thought was absolutely amazing.
33:32
One, one being cleaner gate.
33:38
Cleaner, the cleaner, otherwise known as cleaner gate. Because again,
33:42
you know, from a physical point of view, when you've got injury and pain,
33:45
we want to conserve of energy for activities that
33:48
are meaningful and for you that was
33:51
very much around sport but you didn't want to let go of
33:54
any activities so it was sort of
33:57
we suggested that maybe you had a cleaner to do the deep cleaning of the house
34:00
so that you had more energy to do the other activities you wanted to do but
34:06
and you know and as I say there's a lot of people would have gone yes cleaner
34:09
brilliant but you were like no you know I want to do it all so I think we ended
34:16
up with a robot What, cleaner?
34:17
Yeah, Robo Rock. Little hoover that it went round the house.
34:21
Yeah, because then it was still you doing the cleaning.
34:26
Yeah, it wasn't somebody cleaning up for me, cleaning up after me.
34:32
That's so interesting. Yeah, it's really important to sort of individualize
34:36
it because, as I say, you know, people would have gone, yes,
34:38
cleaner, can I have more hours?
34:40
But you were adamant that, you know, you didn't want that sort of input.
34:43
So it's just about thinking, how do we do it in line with your values and what's important?
34:51
That's really cool. that's a really nice example of therapeutic alliance and
34:54
and coaching and reaching something that works for everybody you
34:57
know you're achieving it but through something that works for the the client
35:01
or patient very cool that was a massive thing for
35:04
me with with physical training as well as mental support because if i wasn't
35:09
training physically training i believe going in the gym or going on the bike
35:14
or get you know doing whatever physical training i need to do is mental training
35:17
as well because it puts puts me in a better place but i know lots of people,
35:23
when you build physical training puts you in a better mind then deal with,
35:28
met the the mental training if you want to call it the brain pt side of stuff
35:33
if i was physically tired and physically worked myself i wasn't ready to to
35:39
engage with catherine ish.
35:45
Yeah it's interesting hearing you say that i know it makes me think
35:48
but yeah what what yeah what are your reflections on
35:51
that when somebody says that i need to go to the gym and knock myself out
35:54
and do all of this because then i can deal with the mental stuff what what would
35:57
your comeback to that be either of you i mean
36:00
i think it regulates people that sort of particularly if
36:04
you think pre-injury that was how you dealt with
36:06
stress and i think for a lot of people that's actually a brilliant way of dealing
36:09
with stress kind of physically regulating so I think that does help and I think
36:14
that was again made you feel a bit more connected to you made you feel like
36:18
you had that bit of drive because I think when we talked about talked a lot about compassion.
36:25
And in terms of countering the
36:28
self-critic and sort of being kind to yourself and
36:31
not in a kind of fluffy bunny way because I know when we first spoke
36:34
about it you were you were not having that yeah and
36:38
we spoke a lot about like what compassion is and what it
36:41
isn't and I think I think in
36:45
terms of you we were trying to look at actually you've
36:48
got a really strong drive really strong kind of achievement values but how do
36:52
we soothe your brain and both from a trauma point of view from PTSD point of
36:57
view because basically your brain's on alert to threat so how do we soothe that
37:01
brain And I think we talked about different relaxation strategies and you just weren't,
37:07
you didn't connect to who you
37:08
were to spend a lot of time. I think you're brought in the breath work.
37:12
You did buy into breath work to some extent, but I think for you,
37:16
it was more about physically exercising, regulating.
37:19
The wood turning was a massive thing for you. It was like your mindfulness, I think, wasn't it?
37:24
That was so difficult for you to switch off thoughts and feelings,
37:28
but actually just absorbing yourself in something, which I felt was like active relaxation.
37:34
So I think that's what we moved more towards, not the sort of classic psychological
37:39
sort of anxiety management work because you just didn't really buy it but using those sort of active,
37:46
active strategies to help you switch off and i think that did that was a bit
37:50
of a turning point i think when you started doing woodturning what was that
37:53
so what does that involve.
37:59
What's this woodturning oh so it's oh here we go plug myself so it's on the youtube channel,
38:05
it's woodturning so what you imagine like your
38:07
granddad probably used to do it's it's a lathe where you
38:10
turn wood and we turn bowls or vases or sometimes
38:14
urns i've turned it in for a few people yeah it's
38:17
making stuff on a lathe basically wood turning using the gouge
38:20
to cut wood and it does yes
38:23
it it's something very similar to actually what diving has
38:26
now done for me is it takes the brain a
38:29
hundred percent well i say a hundred percent that we can't
38:32
accept that can you but it makes you think
38:35
of all all that you can think at the time and you've
38:38
got to be switched on you don't know what you're doing if you don't you get
38:41
smacked in the face by a gouge so it kind of like wakes
38:44
you up if you don't do what you're supposed to be doing but it does yes
38:47
you're right it takes all of the concentration all of
38:50
the time whilst you're doing it and it also takes a very long time to do so
38:54
yeah i think that that did help a lot very cool and i guess it's not i mean
38:59
i guess also you you're thinking about energy reserves and things aren't you
39:03
and energy availability like you said getting the robot in the house the robo clean whatever you.
39:08
Yeah. I mean, what I thought was if somebody needs to go to the gym the whole
39:12
time to feel good about it, I get that, but they're also depleting their energy
39:15
reserves, aren't they? So sometimes it's not the best strategy.
39:18
You might feel good after it and you've got the endorphin runs,
39:21
but then you've got like any kind of drug, you've got to come down,
39:25
haven't you? When the endorphins leave the body.
39:26
And I don't know whether it works that way, but you can overdo it, can't you?
39:30
I find for me, like when I do training or when I go diving, it's a physical exertion.
39:35
When i do that i can actually kind of kind
39:38
of shut the brain off a bit because i've been so
39:41
mentally focused at the same time because i'm focused
39:44
on what i'm doing i'm so mentally focused
39:47
i'm not just physically drained i'm mentally drained or
39:50
you know i've tired myself out of it so i can shut off afterwards
39:54
i do find that then i can sleep so yeah it
39:58
does help a lot the physical train very interesting
40:01
let's just let nikki off the hook nikki
40:03
mansfield said hello hello sorry so late so late to join the
40:06
other sta webinar a few technical issues and over around settling with
40:09
you guys right now settle in away nikki that's fine
40:12
we accept your apology and you can always catch up on the first half on youtube
40:16
or any popular podcast apps there you go good to see nikki yeah so yeah amazing
40:21
interesting stuff let's so we mentioned diving we've reached the point now where
40:26
I don't know if I need to let you off the hook for anything else you mentioned,
40:29
because, yeah, you decided...
40:31
Oh, yeah, you mentioned later on you realised what continuing with the bike
40:34
ride did you had actually...
40:38
Done some quite severe stuff to your shoulder what we mentioned was it bicep tears it was,
40:43
what was the extent of the injuries you discovered about five years later wasn't
40:46
it you had shoulders reconstruction injury wasn't it in 24 yes last year you
40:50
had that yeah was that a wake-up call for you as well i think you kind of alluded
40:54
to that already but that was kind of like yeah oh,
40:57
yeah that was a bit of a yeah kick in the proverbial yeah
41:01
so being stubborn and carrying on
41:04
on the bike was probably a very bad idea it was
41:07
the right idea at the time because that's where i needed to be and that's what
41:10
i needed to do but the the side
41:14
effects of it which i was told about gonna told
41:17
me like this time you you will damage yourself if
41:20
you carry on doing this and i also i think it's whilst we
41:22
were working together nicola i said to you i want
41:25
to go do a london marathon yeah in my day chair not a
41:29
race chair so doing it in a day chair is very very
41:32
demanded on your shoulder especially if you're paralyzed
41:35
at the level i am t8 so i've got no core so i
41:37
can't use my core to roll forward and push back up again
41:40
so if i try and lean forward i just
41:43
fall over and in that pushing it's a lot of hammering on the shoulder a hell
41:49
of a lot of hammering so of course i decided i was going to do it so i did like
41:53
four half marathons in my day chair just training up to it carried on training
41:57
on the bike as well which just was getting worse every time i went on it.
42:02
It's now not. It's now sat, well, it's actually away in the garage.
42:05
It's not going to be written again. I had to come to the realisation that there
42:08
goes the, you know, the Olympic dreams. That's not going to happen.
42:12
No way was I going to even try and stay with the guys anymore.
42:16
And so I had to give that up. It was a tough time. It was a really tough mental
42:20
time to say, oh, I have to give it up.
42:24
So I did, stopped it. But then I got the calls about the London Marathon.
42:29
They said, do you want to do it? Do you want to do it? Yeah,
42:31
I'd love to do it. So I deferred it for four years.
42:34
And then they said to me, well, actually, you need to do it.
42:38
If you're going to do it, you can't defer it again.
42:40
You'll have to give your place up this time. I was like, right, I've got three months.
42:44
Let's just do it. whatever happens what comes out of it comes out of
42:47
it i know it's gonna i know it's gonna break me or you
42:50
know damage my shoulder significantly doing this training and
42:53
doing the actual marathon but i did it i
42:56
did it in i think it was four hours 26 i thought
42:59
it was gonna take like five and a half hours but it just didn't so we
43:02
did well did really good on it but did significant
43:06
well just just added to all the problems in the shoulder so
43:09
i've got a 25 mil tear in my stupid his finatus tore my
43:12
bicep tendon i've got a bursar on my
43:15
anterior deltoid underneath it which was
43:18
nasty the great thing was watching it all on telly was whilst they were doing
43:21
the work it was brilliant i just sat there watching it he's like lasering all
43:25
this crap out of my shoulder brilliant and then i've got a photo which actually
43:30
should have probably sent you if you could put it up on on the screen but i've
43:33
got a photo of the consultant holding my bicep tendon.
43:41
Yeah, so I had it all pinned in in the shoulder, but it's a long run for that recovery.
43:48
I've been working on that for a year now.
43:52
But then, yeah, I had the operation done, got it all sorted,
43:58
and then 16 days later, I got sepsis and nearly died.
44:02
So that's my third time. Yeah.
44:06
And you say it with such joviality. I love it when you send me these things.
44:09
It's like, I nearly died again.
44:10
So there we go, paralyzed fellow with only one arm working. What a fun,
44:13
exclamation mark. It's like, yeah.
44:15
Is that an important part of it? Is tumor an important part of it?
44:20
Is it? Yeah, of course it is. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, I think really it's just
44:24
a mechanism to just not admit how bad it really is.
44:28
Just make you either laugh about it or you're going to cry about it.
44:31
And I've always had that saying that you can go and sit in the corner of a room and you can cry about it.
44:36
But you've got to come out of that corner at some point and you've got to deal
44:38
with it no matter what so what's the point in going in that corner in the first
44:42
place everybody has a bad day.
44:44
Everybody has bad times you know that's just natural that's all
44:47
and the more things you've been through like you
44:50
know myself and the other the other guys and
44:53
girls that have been on here with you you know we've been we've all been through
44:56
our own journey and it is all relative to each other you know your worst day
45:00
for for one person another person would look at it and go what really that's
45:05
your worst day yeah i've been through all this but actually it's that's their
45:09
worst day and i could put them in the corner room and make them have a bit of a moment but,
45:14
you've got to come out of that corner and you've got to deal with what you're faced
45:17
with if you just can do that sooner rather than
45:20
later which is i kind of like what everybody
45:23
said i'm so pig-headed or strong-headed whatever you want to call it it
45:26
that's what helps me is that i can just go when is what
45:29
it is i'll just deal with what i've got because you
45:32
know i got physically broke paralyzed well it's just
45:35
a case of deal with it then i got smacked in
45:38
the head and damaged c4 well actually just got
45:41
to deal with it no one's going to do it no one's going to fix it for you you've
45:44
got to do it yourself so just get on with it and fix it and then you go and
45:49
get an operation that's it's just like oh man every time i get somewhere and
45:55
it just goes downhill again but And we've done some amazing things along the way.
46:00
So we'll just keep going. Yeah.
46:03
And I think that's one of the questions that have come in to sort of hear a
46:06
bit more about your diving.
46:07
Yeah, Nikki wants to hear about the diving. We've saved the diving.
46:10
We've been through, yeah, the first... I hope you do do a book one day,
46:14
Dan. I'll definitely buy it.
46:15
But yeah, we've been through the first half section of chapters. But yeah, the diving.
46:19
So we mentioned a little bit the diving, something obviously you moved into.
46:22
Tell us a bit about the setting the records then. That must have been taking
46:26
you back towards a place where you think, I'm excelling, I'm the best at what
46:29
I'm doing now, I must have been a good place. Yeah, that was fun.
46:33
It came from a really, really simple, as usual with me, it came from a really
46:37
simple discussion with one of the divers at Stony Cove.
46:41
Yeah she said well have you ever done a lap of stony coke
46:44
before and i said it's really difficult to do not many people
46:47
have done it because it's demanded on
46:50
gas you might not have enough gas to get all the way around so you have to take
46:53
more cylinders and all this sort of stuff so it is difficult but
46:56
between six and eight meters you know it takes you about an hour hour and a
46:59
half to get all the way around all right great yeah cool so it's really difficult
47:04
like you might not manage it because i'd be harm swimming because i swim in
47:08
my house why do people say this to you why do people say you need a teacher
47:12
saying do not tell me i can't do this.
47:16
Challenging yeah exactly hold my point yeah yeah
47:19
well how can i make this difficult
47:22
and i originally went with right well i'm going
47:25
to do 10k then i'll do 10 laps of stony cove and then
47:28
i got told don't be so stupid that's not going to happen so
47:32
i worked it out and we said well okay we'll go
47:35
for five laps of stony cove i wanted to do a 5k
47:38
kinnick school record said we don't accept 5k we
47:41
start 10 or you can go for a specific thing so actually here's three why don't
47:46
you do the fastest mile one as able-bodied and one as disabled category and
47:52
also why don't you do a long resistance so right okay great i can now do three
47:58
world records in one day that's brilliant,
48:01
so we started training for it and and like you say
48:04
it is yeah when you start doing that kind the training it was a year solid snorkeling
48:09
in a pool just going up and down up and down up and down non-stop doing it's
48:13
a hybrid breaststroke that i do i can't do the full breaststroke because when
48:16
you get to the bottom and do that push when you push down i just breach like
48:19
a whale and if you do that that fails the attempt because you break the surface.
48:24
So, yeah, I did a full year of just swimming like an idiot up and down the pool.
48:29
And then we went into Stony Cove training, like two hours, three hours of dive training.
48:36
And people just were getting blown out of the water left, right and center.
48:40
They were my buddies at the time. It was only really four people that,
48:45
towards the end, that could keep up with me in the water.
48:49
But then we had a bit of it to do with getting school records.
48:52
And they said, oh, did we not say you need to be GPS tracked?
48:57
I thought, you can't use a GPS underwater. That doesn't work.
49:00
So the answer to that is you put an SMB, so a surface marker buoy,
49:04
strapped to your backside.
49:05
It's just on a line attached to the back of my wing that I was diving with. And then you tow it.
49:12
So not only was I swimming with just my hands and webs that we designed.
49:17
I was towing a surface marker buoy behind me with a Garmin watch, my watch.
49:22
On top of it you know monitoring me gps wise that's
49:25
slightly down so all of a sudden everybody
49:28
could now keep board with me but for the first mile we absolutely smashed
49:31
it we did i did a mile in one hour 28
49:34
and this isn't you know open water
49:37
swimming people are going to look at this and think an hour and 28 to
49:40
do a mile well that's not hard and if that isn't hard i
49:43
was absolutely smashing that in the in the pool because
49:46
i didn't have full dive equipment on i didn't have
49:48
a dry suit on a wing two cylinders an snd behind me you know but when you start
49:53
adding all that up it's like telling the bus at the same time so yeah but we
49:58
did that one so we did that with a swimming band on so able-bodied people can
50:01
take me on so that's the fastest mile then we did it with the disability category
50:05
as well so it's two for the price of one basically just cheated,
50:09
um and then we did the longest distance which was five and a half kilometers um,
50:14
5.2 kilometers a day for five and a half hours in the water swimming around Stony Cove.
50:20
They're just going around in circles like an idiot. It's great.
50:23
And I think you'd probably, for people who don't know Stony Cove,
50:27
just sort of say how wonderful the dive conditions are in there.
50:32
So Stony can be amazing. Everybody's like, Stony's are on them, don't go Stony.
50:37
So through three months of the year, through winter, Stony Cove is absolutely beautiful.
50:43
It's got between 15 and 18 meters visibility
50:46
lovely crystal clear but it's between
50:49
four and six degrees so it's very cold for the
50:52
rest of the year it's horrible it's like it's a
50:55
bit brown towards the beginning then it goes green because
50:58
all the algae bloom comes up and it's like diving in pea soup and
51:02
then it goes a bit brown again towards the end when all the rains come but
51:06
it's a local training site that we use a lot it's a
51:09
good sheltered water i can do any training with
51:11
most students apart from obviously tidal or anything to
51:14
do with drift diving so it's fantastic for a.
51:17
Training center and training site but it was incredibly difficult
51:21
to do one the recording because it
51:23
has to be filmed the entire time but yeah
51:26
it was incredibly difficult to do just the dive itself because
51:29
i had to learn to navigate stony cove and also
51:32
not go over the six meter shelf because that's
51:35
a training area they said do not come over that because we
51:38
can't shut the entire code just for you for a whole day
51:41
so yeah that was fun what's that
51:44
say there yeah it's a pitch black hole yes
51:47
yes you're right you do yeah i can't believe damn netcalf
51:51
is censoring nikki mansfield well they
51:55
told me i had to behave myself there is a question above that
51:58
yeah how long did the longest nikki says how long
52:00
did the longest time record take long enough for you to need a
52:03
nitrous mix all on air uh yes so
52:07
i was diving on multi-mixers so i had nitrox
52:10
mix 32 for a majority of the dive so that's 32 oxygen for the people that don't
52:16
know and then i had to do an air break because it was five and a half hours
52:20
in the water so we did a 21 half half lap which just got rid of all of the cns
52:26
loading which is several nervous system loading.
52:29
Then on the last half lap, they
52:32
gave me a huge, you know, congratulations by giving me a 52% mix of O2.
52:39
So that's 52% of O2 whilst I'm swimming.
52:42
It was absolutely brilliant after the first 10 minutes.
52:46
Because the first 10 minutes, my body just cramped up like hell.
52:50
Which I didn't think it was going to, none of us thought that would happen.
52:52
But when you swim with your arms and all of a sudden you can't
52:55
move your arm because you just cranked up was was actually.
52:58
Really really difficult to deal with and so stretching whilst
53:01
trying to stay hovering and through stoney was quite
53:04
difficult but then all of a sudden all the pain that the
53:07
four four hours 50 before that would
53:10
go because i was on 52% ot so
53:13
i thought yeah let's go and then i went straight past the
53:16
finish line and they all had to grab hold of me and call me back yeah
53:21
amazing good times very good it makes
53:25
me think and i think it's relevant because so far it's one of the biggest
53:27
things that's come out for me personally of these
53:30
talks with you guys i'm sure people listening to
53:33
this are thinking and we mentioned this off time they're thinking wow this is
53:36
inspirational stuff this is inspirational and i
53:39
think i think it's a relevant thing for therapists and anybody listening this
53:42
to take on board yeah because we
53:45
mentioned with rich potter's on next week and then but yeah i
53:48
mean somebody's listening to this thinking wow this guy's really inspiring me
53:51
what is it about that you don't like that word
53:54
and not just you but it's common amongst i
53:57
think yeah it is very common amongst all disabled athletes
54:01
maybe and maybe it's athletes in general to be honest it just gives you the
54:04
like it and the one of it yeah it just makes me feel really i don't know weird
54:10
in in time feeling like no because i'm not i'm I'm an athlete that I want to
54:17
beat, you know, everybody.
54:20
I had a big stipulation that a part of that world, those world records had to
54:24
be able-bodied world records because I didn't want to be just put in that disabled category.
54:29
I wanted to say, well, actually, if you want to come and take me on,
54:33
tie your legs together and use your hands.
54:35
Fair enough you'd take me on and now i'll beat you again afterwards because that's
54:39
what we are and and i think the inspirational bit which is yeah there's that
54:45
word it's like it means i'm well done you know you're you're you're you're good
54:50
you're good for other people to look at or you're oh look that poor lad that
54:54
poor disabled lad he's giving other disabled people you know.
54:57
Inspiration to go and do something now i'm not i'm just
55:00
me doing what i want to do i'm doing challenges that i
55:03
want to take on and i want to i want to attack and which
55:06
gives me drive and focus for life basically if
55:10
somebody get inspired because
55:14
of that that's then that's not because
55:16
that's not maybe being inspirational that's them taking it
55:19
and something that they think oh you know what i could do
55:22
that or i could have a go at that or maybe you
55:25
know i'd just like to come and just train with him or do that it's
55:28
not that i'm inspiring them it's like i
55:31
think matt said it's empowering or just giving
55:34
someone another idea i i i said
55:37
to you earlier that once you've heard the word you're
55:40
inspirational like so many times i just
55:43
give a fight in that fight because if that
55:46
vocabulary all the people want to use they're right
55:50
to tell them they can't so it's kind of like okay do
55:53
you know what if that that's what you think of it
55:55
i don't like that words i don't like it in a
55:58
setting i don't mind saying somebody's saying to me
56:01
oh you inspired me to do this that doesn't bother me but when somebody says
56:04
you're inspirational but it gives you that yeah it gives you that weird feeling
56:10
you're like no i don't like that that's cool i get that it's good i think it's
56:14
a really good message taken board as well as just like understanding the importance
56:17
of words which is something you know we've talked about a lot on the podcast yeah.
56:22
And if you're talking to your patient or client enough, you need to get to know
56:26
these things exactly where you need to go, rather than just doing orthopedic
56:28
tests and looking at the book and thinking, this is how I fix you.
56:30
These are the conversations that you need to have. So yeah, it's good.
56:33
Thanks for sharing that. Look, we're cracking on. We've already gone past nine.
56:36
This could have so easily been another hour, but I don't want to keep you all
56:41
from getting on with your evenings.
56:43
And just to make sure, you are in the process of setting some more,
56:47
aren't you? You've got something else lined up?
56:49
Yes. I've got two more Guinness World Records I want to set.
56:53
The fastest 10K, which I've just kind of alluded to that, going around Stony Co. 10 times.
56:58
I won't be doing it in Stony Co. It needs to be built in the sea.
57:02
So it already exists. Disabled diver owns it.
57:06
He already owns it. He beat an able-bodied diver by an hour,
57:09
which was quite impressive.
57:12
So I'm going to go beat him or do my best to and bring it to the UK,
57:16
which is not held in the UK.
57:17
So i want to bring it to the uk and hold it here that's
57:21
going to be difficult very difficult obviously i
57:24
needed i've already got a team started for that but i
57:27
still need people's help the biggest thing
57:30
we need is financial funding so you know it's one of those things and going
57:35
in the future and then the second one i want to do is the deepest paralyzed
57:41
diver this doesn't exist it's not a record that exists at the moment i know
57:45
of disabled divers that have been down to 80 metres.
57:49
I want to really splash it sort of thing, as usual.
57:53
So what I want to do, I set it out originally at 100 metres and then some of
57:59
the bigger guys in the world said, well, you can get qualified to 100 metres,
58:03
but why would you do something you can get qualified for? Okay,
58:07
right, fine. Well, I'll go 120 then.
58:09
So that's the guide again and they said, well, if you're going to take a risk
58:12
to go to 120 and you're going to do the maths and the science behind going to
58:15
120 metres, you might as well go to 150 because it.
58:20
Physiologically doesn't change that much between 120 and
58:23
150 meters it's just time on the
58:26
amount of time it takes to get back up again so it takes me
58:29
around about 12 minutes something like that to get down there and then
58:32
take me four and a half hours to get back so yeah
58:36
but that's what we're going to do we're going to we're
58:38
going to head there that one is a financial nightmare with
58:42
and any diver that is listening to this will know
58:45
a financial nightmare of doing this all on open circuit
58:48
is trimix so that's not it's oxygen
58:51
helium nitrogen it's absolutely
58:54
nightmare a very expensive yes do it on we're not
58:57
allowed to do it on rebreathers if anybody's thinking about that because guinness
59:01
world refills don't accept rebreathers at the moment so yes but the big thing
59:05
is all of my charity all my events have all been built for charity so and they
59:10
will be done for charity as well the 10k we've already decided will be done
59:14
for prostate cancer um for lose in.
59:19
So that's it's tricky isn't it the financing we could do a whole episode on
59:24
that sadly and I think we've mentioned it before no one's really interested you until you've done it
59:27
which is like guys it's about the journey please support me during otherwise
59:32
I can't do it but it's only they only come out of the woodwork when you've done
59:34
it and you're going to get some views which is a problem isn't it,
59:39
it really is it i think i said this to you before the bbc wasn't interested
59:44
until they said i don't know we won't do anything free but we'll do a piece
59:48
on you if you manage to complete it and that's not the point i don't need the
59:52
support after the event i needed it before.
59:55
But we'll say like we're gonna get that netflix special i'm already talking
59:59
to people oh yeah we'll sort that out he said ironically as if he had any,
1:00:04
wait at all but anyway brilliant okay look
1:00:07
running out of time i really don't want to keep you all too long people who
1:00:10
want to learn more about and indeed support dan if you've
1:00:12
got any contact or you want to get involved in this then best way
1:00:15
to contact you dan if people want to get in touch
1:00:18
with you they'd be facebook instagram that's
1:00:23
any of that well i think you've got all my links okay
1:00:26
we'll make sure it goes yeah it's the
1:00:29
big one that will get me so we've got instagram we'll make sure it
1:00:32
goes at least but wheels down underscore 1988 and also the youtube channel
1:00:35
which is just worth going along to regardless of
1:00:38
having a look at some of the material on there we forgot to mention the fact that
1:00:41
you were the you know first person will just do tough mudder which is like
1:00:44
and there's a video of it as well so i mean it's well worth going on to youtube and
1:00:47
checking that out just to see what we're talking about tonight and there's so
1:00:50
much more to what we've mentioned i love it wills down versus tough mudder i
1:00:53
mean it's like that's just cracking so go and check that out and in terms of
1:00:58
other great empowering stuff that's going on your wife now It must be difficult
1:01:02
in your household not to get involved in these crazy stunts as well.
1:01:05
But your wife, Eve, is also involved in the challenge as well.
1:01:08
Let's put this on the main screen so people can see.
1:01:12
Eve's fundraiser for spinal research. So how did that come about, Dan?
1:01:15
How did she decide to... How?
1:01:21
Yeah, how? It was just a crazy desire, really.
1:01:25
Yeah, pretty much. She's an incredibly busy lady doing lots of stuff.
1:01:32
She used to go out walking quite a lot with her dad. And obviously when he passed,
1:01:36
she can't do that anymore.
1:01:37
So she wanted to do something for her staff and go walking and do a challenge
1:01:42
whilst going walking, but also raise money for something really important,
1:01:46
obviously, sort of the husband that sat next to her, and thought with final research.
1:01:50
So she's doing an Alpine Trek challenge, which is over three days.
1:01:55
I think it's through the French Alps. Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:59
Nuts really thinking about what she's doing is and the
1:02:02
training obviously i'm training her doing the gym with snc
1:02:05
training and she's going out doing weekend walks
1:02:09
she did scarf out pike last weekend with a 10k weighted vest and the 10k rucksack
1:02:15
on wow so yeah then they did the hardest trek on scarf out pike so they were
1:02:20
there was something like 12 hours for a kid yeah amazing,
1:02:26
she's obviously empowered by you definitely um i think it's just to get away from me to be honest.
1:02:32
Yeah yeah yeah she's picked a great thing to
1:02:35
make sure you can't mind you having said that i can imagine you
1:02:38
somehow working your way up there already at the
1:02:41
top when she gets there how how did you do this anyway yeah
1:02:44
so people interested in that that'd be great uh check out eve metcalf you
1:02:47
can on facebook there's a nice page there and you can
1:02:50
see we'll put the link to the just giving in there but raising money
1:02:52
doing the alpine experience during 25 to raise money for spinal research we'll
1:02:56
make sure the link goes into that and maybe who knows maybe he wants to come
1:03:01
on the show and talk to us about that what it's like that would be a great episode
1:03:04
living with dan metcalf we'd have to make that a two-hour special but yeah yeah
1:03:09
yeah definitely that'd be great.
1:03:13
Make sure we yeah pass on our best wishes to eve that's fantastic really cool,
1:03:19
right that's it i've kept you all for way too long i'm sorry about that um if
1:03:23
people want to follow Nicola Hunt, who we haven't heard nearly enough of on
1:03:28
the show tonight, but that seems all about Dan basically, wasn't it? Let's face it.
1:03:31
But yeah, Physio Care Rehab Limited on Facebook, look at UpLTD.
1:03:35
And we've also got yourbrainhealth.io, which is where your courses are run from,
1:03:40
isn't it, Nicola? You've got a course coming up soon, have you?
1:03:43
Yes. So there is a concussion course running on Saturday that we still have
1:03:46
a couple of spaces left on.
1:03:48
We're happy to offer a 10% discount to any of the Sports Therapy Association
1:03:51
members. That's in London, the Institute of Exercise, Sport and Health.
1:03:57
Fantastic. We'll make sure you're still one of our go-to people for concussion.
1:04:00
I mentioned the other day on the advisory panel for Therapy Expo,
1:04:03
and now they're going to have to call you because the title of concussion came
1:04:06
up as a really important area which you need to cover.
1:04:08
And anybody recommend us a hand up on Zoom? Yep, Nicola Hunt.
1:04:12
Thank you. Yeah, no, definitely.
1:04:14
The episodes we've got on here where you're talking about that still get really good comments.
1:04:17
It's so full of misconceptions and it needs clarity and, yeah,
1:04:22
people looking after it. Absolutely.
1:04:23
And I mean, we have, of course, this Saturday, but keep an eye on the website
1:04:25
because we'll have more of up and coming.
1:04:28
Amazing. Thank you for that. And Dr. Kathleen Dawson, thank you so much for
1:04:31
giving up your time as well.
1:04:31
I'm sorry, maybe in another episode, we could have you again,
1:04:34
if you'd be gracious enough to come back and have more of your experience.
1:04:37
But thank you for what you shared tonight.
1:04:38
And if people want to follow you, then sphere-rehab.co.uk.
1:04:44
And then you've also got the Sphere Memory and Rehabilitation on YouTube.
1:04:48
Actually, I did find the YouTube channel. There's some good stuff on there. Check that out.
1:04:51
Looking forward to an update, but it's good. Some interesting stuff about sleep
1:04:54
on there, which was a few years ago but still very relevant that was really
1:04:56
interesting and then you've got the brain recovery zone as well the brainrecoveryzone.com
1:05:00
what's that what will people find by going there,
1:05:03
So it's virtual reality-based software to support people who are recovering
1:05:08
from brain injury and trauma.
1:05:10
Very interesting. I know somebody, Anna Maria Matsieri, went on a course herself to do with that.
1:05:16
I can't remember who it was with, but yeah, really up-and-coming technology
1:05:19
and using virtual reality. Very interesting. That would be a great show.
1:05:22
I'll talk to you afterwards.
1:05:25
That'd be amazing. But no, really, thank you so much. And of course,
1:05:27
man of the moment, a man of the episode, Dan Wills, Dan Metcalf.
1:05:31
Thank you so much for giving up the time and being so honest and sharing stuff really appreciate it,
1:05:35
no no no it's no honestly really i feel
1:05:38
it in here just hearing the openness of you for
1:05:41
talking with each other you three talking with each other is just
1:05:44
beautiful i think it's a wonderful opportunity for therapists and anybody indeed
1:05:48
just to listen and be privy to the conversations and the hurdles and the roller
1:05:51
coaster rides successes and the eyes and nose and all that so i really appreciate
1:05:55
your giving up your time and sharing that gary benson here has come in saying
1:05:59
thank you for your time this evening. Thanks, Gary. Gary founded the STA.
1:06:02
Thanks for joining us, Gary. Thanks for your questions, Nicky as well,
1:06:04
and everyone else who's joined us live.
1:06:07
We will be back next Tuesday if you want to join us for part four.
1:06:11
It's going to be Tuesday, March 25th, if you're listening before then,
1:06:13
eight o'clock on YouTube.
1:06:15
I'll be joined by Rich Potter and Rich Davis, who were here in the opening part
1:06:19
one and have been on the show before.
1:06:21
Both Armed Forces veterans and single-billed leg amputees.
1:06:23
We set world records at the end of last year on their limitless expedition,
1:06:27
conquering the Himalayas as the first ever amputees to achieve the half and
1:06:31
full length of the snowman track in Bhutan.
1:06:33
So with them will be Carla McStaff and Jenny Lane. That'll be concluding our
1:06:36
four-part series on working with athletes with disabilities.
1:06:39
So if you'd like to join us live, then that'd be amazing. But as far as tonight
1:06:42
goes, thank you once again to Dr.
1:06:44
Catherine Dawson, to Nicola Hunt and to Dan Metcalf-Wheels. Dan,
1:06:48
thank you so much for your time.
1:06:50
Thanks very much. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
1:06:53
Right, people, hopefully see some of you next week for the live video recording.
1:06:56
Until then, as always, take care.
1:06:58
Music.