Neil Meigh is a physiotherapist on the Gold Coast of Queensland whose career has led him to a PhD in kettlebells – those dumb, lifeless, lumps of metal whose only redeeming feature is their handle. So enamoured by their potential Neil is the proud owner of the website domain www.kettlebell.physio – but more on that later.
Neil was first exposed to kettlebells during post graduate education in functional movement. They are a small, portable and cheap tool for adding load to functional movement training. Neil saw kettlebells as an alternative to both the low-load Pilates that has swept through the Australian physiotherapy landscape and the intimidating gym where size can be off-putting for older people.
Neil built his Gold Coast clinic around the kettlebell and was inspired by the results being achieved, especially in the older population. One attendee of his classes, a 68 year old woman with bilateral knee prosthesis achieved extraordinary functional skills, peaking with split squats and the Turkish get up; ultimately translating to a much a fuller and confident lifestyle for her. In particular, Rosie was able to right herself to prevent two near falls which she attributed to the pertubation control she had learnt with the kettlebell swings.
Intrigued, Neil began his PhD on kettlebells. He was particularly interested in whether the alien movement of the kettlebell swing – where high forces, significant body perturbation and little knee movement – could help improve the function and symptoms of the arthritic knee. Two and half years on, early results are strong and Neil is now busily analysing the data. The Bell Trial was preregistered and the protocol published to the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/j7uey/
During the full time PhD Neil’s private practice website was no longer relevant and he simply didn’t have the time to maintain it. But rather than lose the strong links that had built up on the Web by abandoning the domain Neil simply re-directed it to his Facebook page. This time saving strategy means Neil can post interesting findings from his research to his Social Media whilst maintaining relevance to his domain name and the brand he is building. It’s like getting ‘two for one’ – a free website and social media content.
Neil is a super-strong advocate for physiotherapy and believes the .physio domain extension is a no-brainer for helping build the profession’s brand. Every .physio domain promotes the profession so the more people doing it, the more we all benefit.
Upon completing of his PhD Neil hopes to continue research into kettlebell benefits for back and shoulder pain, and to teach physiotherapists how to utilise the benefits of this unique strengthening technique. When that time comes Neil will simply build a new educational website on his powerfully branded domain name www.kettlebell.physio.
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